Comments by "Nigel Johnson" (@nigeljohnson9820) on "Greek government survives confidence vote despite angry protest" video.

  1. The greeks have been betrayed by the EU and their stooge government put in place and supported by the EU. When are they going to understand the EU is not their friend.
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  2. Anthony Burke have you asked them? The EU is looking for new members, like all pyramid selling scheme, it needful constantly expand to survive. It has a problem that it is finding it difficult to recruit quality and is being forced to settle for quantity.
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  3. Anthony Burke No, but the news reports all show all those happy smiling rioters extolling the virtues of the EU and what it is like living in their EU Paradise. I sure there are no complaints, after all they are loving the dream in the EU utopia. It must be true, big brother Juncker has told them so.. Maybe a Greek resident would like to comment. Did I mention that they are subject to more austerity, because they still have 220 billion euro of debt.
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  4. Anthony Burke it is a statistical trick to use differential to make negatives look positive, simply move up a differential until the curve is positive. If you start at a very low level the only direction to go is up. So glad you are concerned about the UK justice system. London is a multicultural city, where cultures fail to integrate and segregate them selves in ghettos. This may have something to with the growth in knife crime. That and the UK tight gun laws, which stop gangs shooting each other. At the risk of being accused of raceism, it appears that most knife crime is black on black, fueled by drug crime. London prides itself on being diverse and multicultural, but like most big western cities, it has failed to make the diverse populations integrate.
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  5. Anthony Burke I wonder if it is a case the Greeks do not want to leave the EU or are they trapped in it by financial dependence?
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  6. Anthony Burke This is about EU interference. The EU cannot expand into the Balkans if Macedonia can't use its name.
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  7. Peter FKE I don't watch fox news, it supports that egotistical idiot Trump. I have no idea who Alex Jones is.
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  8. Peter FKE if you are going to post the idea is to communicate in as clear as fashion as possible. A cryptic reply conveys little information as it can be (mis) interpreted in a number of ways, sarcasm being the most obvious. A knowing cryptic reply does not necessarily indicate the writer is wise or erudite, it may just mean they cannot think of an informative response.
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  9. Peter FKE my comment is not racist and I resent you interpreting things I haven't written. The EU wants to expand, but it also wants new members who will pay more into its budget than they taken out. The latest list of potential members meet the former requirement, but fail to meet the latter. This is one of the reasons they wish to join. The pressure being applied to Greece to recognise Macedonia comes both from the EU and NATO, as for some reason this dispute allows Greece to block the membership of Macedonia to both organisations. It is likely that the EU is applying more pressure than NATO, because it has more leverage. It is a fact that Greece was a small successful country, growing slowly, with a positive trade balance before it became involved with the EU. It also still had control of assets that it has now been forced to sell to pay its debts. Debts that can be traced to the contrived way in which it joined the EU and the euro zone. The marked differences between the Greek economy and the much richer members if the euro zone should have warned Greece that this was not a good idea. Many economists have highlighted the difficulty of having a shared currency without the fiscal control provided by a federal super state. The one size fits all cannot work for a currency union which has both Greece and Germany as members. As a minimum the Greeks should not have joined the euro zone, even EU membership was most likely a step too far. Now they are trapped, because they need the financial guarantee protection the euro provides. While there are positive signs of growth, the remaining dept is so large it will take life times to pay it off. In effect the EU has acted as the very worst form of loan shark, using similar tactics.
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  10. Peter FKE it is likely that it is too late for Grexit. The damage has been done and the euro zone membership is providing some level of protection. The Germans are unlikely to allow their currency to be devalued and so will continue to support Greek bailouts. But I do not see any escape from perpetual debt and austerity. The Germans will never write off the debt, which is the requirement to free the Greek economy from debt. There was a point early in the crisis, where Greece could have defaulted and left the EU. This would have been very painful, but recovery would have been faster. This action would also have been a useful shock to eu.
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  11. Peter FKE Peter FKE 1 is not a question, so I cannot answer it. 2 Greece was betrayed by conclusion between the EU and the banks. Greece should never have been allowed to join the EU and certainly not the euro zone, but the EU was keen on expansion for political reasons. The mismatch between the rich economies and the poor in the euro zone was a Recipe For Disaster. Much is made of the bailouts, but in practice the money is not spent on Greece, but travels in a circle paying back Germany banks. So EU generosity is in fact a bailout not for greece but the German banks. The EU facilitated the sell off of Greek assets at a cut down price, in a form of asset striping. A cynic might think that was the intention in the first place, there was certainly some unhealthy conclusion between the banks, the culture funds, the IMF and the EU. 3 had the Greeks defaulted on the debt and left the EU at the start of the crisis. They would have been in control of the debt and the repayment process. The would most likely not been forced to sell there assets. They would have returned to using their own currency and not be shackled to a currency who's value is set by the most successful economy in the EU. They would again have been free to set their trade policy. There is no doubt the process would have been painful, but the imposed austerity of the EU would have been avoided, Greece would have been in control of the process. The EU would most likely have been forced to write off the debt as they really would not have had much choice in the matter. As this is hypothetical,it is difficult to offer proof, but I refer you to the comments of the Greek government at that time. 4 I am not sure I have a solution now. I have not claimed to have a solution. I refer you to 3. It can be argued that membership of the euro zone is not a good idea as the Greek government cannot set the value of its currency. In the long term, I do not think EU membership is a good idea. 5 being shackled to the high value euro made Greece uncompetitive. 6 a loan shark takes a vulnerable victims who is just managing financial and promises to improve their financial position, and then does the opposite. The EU membership allowed Greece to borrow more money than it should at a low interest rate until it was hopelessly in debt.
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  12. Peter FKE The double negative in the first line of your reply says a lot about your understanding. I have nothing to prove the Greek economy is still in a mess and EU membership is largely to blame a fact that most economist agree on. There is insufficient space in these post to deal with the complexities of economics, let alone Greek economics. You completely failed to take account of how Greece earns a living. According to you it's all done by borrowing, completely neglecting the importance of trade and its effects on employment. According to you it was all the fault of the Greek government and the EU was a perfect example of financial probity. You neglect the political aspects of EU involvement or its part in ignoring Greek referendum results or its part in replacing the Greek government, when the one in office refused to do what the EU wanted. As to having you nothing to say, I have a lot to say and an equal right to say it. I would very much like the corruption that pervades the EU to be exposed.
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  13. Peter FKE there are documents that show that the EU was fully aware that the Greek economy did not meet the conditions for joining the EU and euro zone when they were allowed to Join. These rules were put in place to stop the very situation that Greece eventually found itself in. It was just convenient for those involved to ignore the rules and make money from the negotiation.
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  14. Peter FKE Those involved in criminal activity do not generally publicise their Modus operandi and I am not sufficiently brave to post names without a folder of document to back up the position. With regard to conspiracy theories, the press have publish comments that Goldman Sachs were involved in hiding the fact that Greece did not meet the Maastricht conditions for joining the euro zone. The question remain as to why the EU due diligence failed to identify that Greece was not an eligible candidate. The same is true for other members of the euro zone who failed to meet the criteria for membership, but we're still allowed in. Are we to assume the EU is completely incompetent or ,as it has happened more than once, are we to assume that political consideration took precedence? Of cause the other explanation is that there is corruption at the heart of the EU. Those on the outside must rely on press investigations to discover what is going on and try and work out the most likely inner workings from observations of public observable events. I personally do not archive all that I have read on the topic, so it is difficult to post documented proof at the drop of a hat. I can only post the conclusion I have reached and sometimes recreate the analysis by searching again for the original source material.
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  15. Peter FKE if that is the case explain this report https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/greek-debt-crisis-goldman-sachs-could-be-sued-for-helping-country-hide-debts-when-it-joined-euro-10381926.html
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  16. Peter FKE very brave of the writer to name names if there is nothing to back up the claim. I am sure that there are reports from this time. I will investigates but there are other examples of corruption.
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  17. Peter FKE there were not any prosecutions regarding corruption, but that is not surprising given the payment terms that were made to forestall them. A google search of the period revealed many news REPORTs from that time naming those involved and the money that was paid. I have no doubt that corruption was involved even if the passage to the correct were blocked by the powerful groups involved. There is a similar air of corruption around the sale of Greek assets. I suggest that you do a similar search. The fact that legal was not taken just indicates how high the corruption extends.
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