Athens Stock Exchange moves to Basel post box

The Athens SE has seen the destruction of many a 

saving account. It used to be that the Greek 

government used the ASE to rob its own

citizens. 

Now , with the crisis, the only value left there is

in Starvation Derivatives with Goldman.

check this: Swiss info

Coca Cola found Switzerland more attractive than Greece

by Matthew Allen, swissinfo.ch

In happier times, the relocation of a Greek-based Coca Cola subsidiary to Zug would have been met with unreserved Swiss joy. But the move in mid-October actually masks a deep crisis unfolding in Swiss cantons.

A showdown with the European Union over corporate tax breaks now has cantons at each other’s throats, with billions of francs of annual revenues at stake. On the line is also Switzerland’s reputation as a tax haven for multinationals.

Waiting on the sidelines are thousands of foreign holding firms that benefit from cantonal tax breaks on profits earned outside of Switzerland. The EU wants these financial perks, which tax domestic and foreign profits at different rates, to end, and the cantons fear a company exodus.

“There is an emerging understanding that these discriminations have to be renounced,” Thomas Cottier, a professor of international tax law at Bern University, told swissinfo.ch. “The alternative would almost certainly be to face retaliatory measures from the EU.”

Western models don't work in Greece

I know that ZH are a good bunch of investigative reporters,
but they doesn't know much about Greece and its economics.

You'll see from this that milk costs too much in a country with
a 30% drop in its GDP. What they're forgetting that Greeks
were never accustomed to fresh milk in urban areas, until the
last 30 years; one generation. Greece is a country which, for
the most part is too hot to supply enough grass to feed cows.
Greeks occasionally bought imported evaporated milk from
Holland.

So, naturally, some forward thinking guys have brought in
cattle feed which is invariable from the Americas and is
GMO crap. That is lawful, but they just don't tell us.
I found out from a news program, just recently.
So, was Greece winning because it had milk? 

Or, is this article a sign that Greece needs to open up
for competition. I'm guessing from the article that these
farmers all have houses in Monaco, so they don't care
about inflation in Greece @sarc.
They're surviving, but if you open up the Greek market
it will just mean more unemployed Greek farmers and
more importing of expensive food products.

Small countries don't need the Euro or globalisation.

Checkit:  Zerohedge

[You'd think, looking at the title that suicides are up, because milk is too expensive]

Greek Milk Costs More Than Anywhere Else In Europe As Suicide Rate Rises By 37%

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/22/2012 13:56 -0500

That Greek suicide rates have exploded over the past two years is very much expected: after all, in order to preserve the sanctity of the failed monetary status quo, the Greek economy and its less than prosperous population have been sacrificed by the legacy elite and the wealthy. The socio-economic collapse has resulted in a total crash in economic production of goods and services, an nosebleed-inducing unemployment rate which increasing at a mindboggling 1% per month, and the rise of neo-nazism, with the Golden Dawn party now the third most popular political organization in the country (and rising rapidly). Sure enough, Kathimerini has confirmed that the" Greece's suicide rate increased by 37 percent between 2009 - 2011, To Pontiki newspaper reported quoting police data. The data, which was presented in Parliament by Public Order Minister Nikos Dendias following a request by SYRIZA MPs, showed that 3,124 suicides and attempted suicides have occurred in the debt-stricken country since 2009, the weekly newspaper said." As noted, no surprise in this very tragic headline on the day in which the world's still wealthiest nation gives gratitude for all its "wealth."

...[THE LAWS FOR FARMERS] Cost of milk in Greece a problem for consumers and producers

To understand why milk costs more in Greek shops than anywhere else in the European Union, Stathis Aravanis's farm is a good place to start.

Tall elm trees screen the 4 hectares (10 acres) of land that Aravanis farms outside the small town of Orchomenos in central Greece, not far from the ancient city of Thebes. The silence is broken only by the sound of grazing cattle and a passing tractor.

Each day 200 or so cows produce 5.5 tons of milk that he has been selling to Delta, a division of food conglomerate Vivartia, since 1990. Delta, which collects the milk every two days, pays him 45 euro cents a liter.

That is in line with the average farm-gate price in Greece of 44.79 cents, according to Eurostat, the EU's statistics office. Only in Finland, Malta and Cyprus is the price higher.

Aravanis said his running costs made it impossible to produce more cheaply.

His farm is too small for him to grow fodder for his total herd of 440 animals, so he has to buy in clover, maize, oats, hay and soya, which is imported from the United States.

"If the price fell to 40 cents none of us would be able to survive. We are barely getting by at these prices,» he said.

Aravanis reserves his harshest criticism for government bureaucrats, who he says make it hard for farmers to obtain land permits to expand and reap economies of scale. «It's not as if cows are going to be grazing in their living room,» he said.

...[CONSUMERS WITHOUT MONEY FOR THE MOST EXPENSIVE MILK IN EUROPE] At the other end of the dairy chain stand Greek shoppers, who wonder why they have to pay around 1.50 euros for a liter of fresh milk.

Agnes Papadopoulou, 46, a mother of two young children who lost her job as an accountant in January, stopped buying fresh milk months ago because she could no longer afford it.

"It's too expensive. It's impossible to get by when you need two liters a day, plus bread, plus food, never mind all the bills and taxes we have to pay. Fresh milk is a luxury,» Papadopoulou said, pushing a trolley stacked with pasta, lentils and tinned food in an Athens supermarket.

Attempting direct comparisons with prices elsewhere in Europe is treacherous because so many variables are in play, such as transport costs, rents and consumer preferences.

But Eurostat says the price in Greece of dairy produce -- milk, cheese and eggs -- was 31.5 percent above the EU average in 2011, the highest in Europe.

Greek dairy firms say they charge a fair price and their sector is one of the least profitable due to high costs.

But many Greeks assume that milk prices are rigged, a suspicion reinforced by a fine of 75 million euros that the Competition Commission slapped on several firms in 2007 for fixing prices between themselves and with supermarkets.

...[GLOBALISATION REARS ITS HEAD Dairy farmers oppose a long-standing proposal to extend the shelf life of milk to 10 days, as is common elsewhere in Europe.

This could be done relatively simply in the pasteurisation process, but Skordas said cattle breeders feared -- unnecessarily, in his opinion -- that this would open the door to increased competition from imported milk.

maybe not so sold-out, but not working hard either

I have been exercising my theories about
how everybody who "works" in the Greek
parliament being sold out.

Firstly, nobody has even made an ant-sized
step towards reining in the regal-size plunder,
in the former palace.

Their pay is amongst the highest in the EU.
They get a pension after 4 years. and it
starts after the 4 years, not at 65.
You see, the thinking is that politicians
are so hated, they must be taken care
 of in perpetuity. Poor guys.
I say "live by the impaler, die by the impaler"

I'm fairly sure that nobody in there is
giving back their pay to the society at large.
Not even the Nationalists at Golden Dawn.

I've been thinking that the Free Hellenes party
is probably better able to fight, but they're
not doing enough.
I wonder whether they can get their heads
around just how violently the framework
of daily life has shifted.

Recently, I heard from foreign sources
(I'll get them later) that said that the
next Troika-made law will give away
everything else, down to the kitchen sink.
So, I waited to see which party would
be going beyond the Trained Monkey
show on the TV news, where they
get their 15 seconds of fame, bad-mouthing
the Internal Troika, who have no morals
anyway. Why waste your time with them?
Their laws are going to pass.
 Comparing them to the Nazi puppet
governments is just another hole in the water.

A true Nationalist party would be on every
street corner telling everyone that the
government was giving away everything
else. The news story below says the
Free Hellenes party was raising hell,
BUTT in the parliament. FAIL

Checkitout: Newsit.gr

..Το "έλα να δεις" στην Βουλή! Αγριος καβγάς Καμμένου - Μαρκογιαννάκη - Μίλησε για κυβέρνηση Τσολάκογλου

- "Ούτε η κυβέρνηση Τσολάκογλου δεν είχε υπογράψει τέτοια επονείδιστα κείμενα!" είπε ο Πρόεδρος των Ανεξάρτητων Ελλήνων

- Καβγάς και Καμμένου - Ψυχάρη με σκληρές κουβέντες

- Για την επίθεση στα γραφεία της Νεας Δημοκρατίας  είπε: "Οι πυροβολισμοί που έριξαν το βράδυ οι παρακρατικοί στα γραφεία της ΝΔ είναι συνήθης πρακτική"

Την καταγγελία ότι, με το συζητούμενο νομοσχέδιο, «η κυβέρνηση υπογράφει την εκχώρηση της εθνικής κυριαρχίας και βάζει το τελευταίο καρφί στο φέρετρο της Ελλάδας» διατύπωσε ο πρόεδρος των Ανεξάρτητων Ελλήνων Πάνος Καμμένος, μιλώντας στη Βουλή.

Όπως είπε ο κ. Καμμένος, με εντολή της τρόικας «επιχειρείται να νομιμοποιηθεί το παράνομο και αντισυνταγματικό Μνημόνιο 1, Μνημόνιο 2 και Μνημόνιο 3».

Ταυτόχρονα όμως, ο πρόεδρος των Ανεξάρτητων Ελλήνων έσπευσε να προειδοποιήσει τους δανειστές πως ό,τι «και αν ψηφιστεί σήμερα δεν ισχύει, είναι άκυρο και δεν δεσμεύεται ο ελληνικός λαός να πληρωθούν οι πιστωτές, εισπράττοντας τα τοκογλυφικά επιτόκια που φόρτωσαν στις πλάτες του». Για εμάς, αυτές οι διατάξεις δεν υπήρξαν ποτέ, γιατί είναι αντισυνταγματικές και το Σύνταγμα δεν καταλύεται, είπε ο κ. Καμμένος.

Αναφερόμενος στις επιθέσεις των τελευταίων ημερών, είπε πως «είναι ξεκάθαρο πλέον, ότι κάποιοι επέλεξαν να είναι άλλου είδους τα πρωτοσέλιδα».

Οι πυροβολισμοί που έριξαν το βράδυ οι παρακρατικοί στα γραφεία της ΝΔ είναι συνήθης πρακτική, είπε ο πρόεδρος των Ανεξάρτητων Ελλήνων, σημειώνοντας ότι, πριν από λίγα χρόνια, πυροβολήθηκε ο Παύλος Μπακογιάννης, παραμονές της συζήτησης συγκρότησης εξεταστικής επιτροπής για το σκάνδαλο Κοσκωτά και ότι, πριν από λίγα χρόνια, πυροβολήθηκε στα πόδια ο βουλευτής της ΝΔ Λευτέρης Παπαδημητρίου, παραμονές συζήτησης της υπόθεσης της ΑΓΕΤ Ηρακλής.

«Σήμερα, λίγες ημέρες πριν τη συζήτηση της πρότασης για την παραπομπή του Γιώργου Παπανδρέου, του Γιώργου Παπακωνσταντίνου, του Ευάγγελου Βενιζέλου και του Λουκά Παπαδήμου, έχουμε κλιμάκωση της βίας που ξεκίνησε από τα γκαζάκια, προχώρησε στις μολότωφ στο σπίτι που μένει ένα τρίχρονο παιδί και έγινε Καλάσνικοφ. Ελπίζω να μην έχουμε άλλα, ως την Πέμπτη…» είπε ο πρόεδρος των Ανεξάρτητων Ελλήνων και πρόσθεσε ότι όλες οι πολιτικές δυνάμεις, σήμερα, θα έπρεπε να συζητάνε την εκχώρηση της εθνικής κυριαρχίας.

Η αναφορά στην «Κυβέρνηση Τσολάκογλου»

Η φράση του κ. Καμμένου πως «ούτε η κυβέρνηση Τσολάκογλου δεν έχει υπογράψει τέτοια επονείδιστα κείμενα, όπως αυτό που ψηφίζεται σήμερα στη Βουλή» ξεσήκωσε αντιδράσεις στα έδρανα της κυβερνητικής πλειοψηφίας.

Ιδιαίτερα, η στιγμή που ο κ. Καμμένος δεν δίστασε να απευθυνθεί στους βουλευτές, προειδοποιώντας τους ότι θα έχουν προσωπική ευθύνη επειδή, ψηφίζοντας, θα ανοίξουν δρόμο για την παράδοση της δημόσιας και ιδιωτικής περιουσίας του Ελληνικού Δημοσίου, έως και τον ορυκτό πλούτο, κλιμάκωσε τις αντιδράσεις.

Τη διαγραφή από τα πρακτικά της αναφοράς του κ. Καμμένου στην κυβέρνηση Τσολάκογλου, ζήτησε ο αντιπρόεδρος της Βουλής, Χρήστος Μαρκογιαννάκης. «Η φράση σας αυτή είναι δεινή ύβρις και για την κυβέρνηση και για τους βουλευτές που την στηρίζουν. Παρακαλώ να δεχθείτε να διαγραφεί» είπε ο κ. Μαρκογιαννάκης.

«Δεν παίρνω πίσω τίποτε από όσα είπα. Δεν μπορείτε να αφαιρέσετε φράση, από τα πρακτικά, προέδρου κόμματος, χωρίς τη συναίνεσή μου! Αίσχος! Ποιος είστε;» ακούστηκε να λέει ο κ. Καμμένος, λέγοντας ότι πρέπει να αποδοθεί μομφή προς το Προεδρείο.

«Δίνω, λοιπόν, εγώ εντολή να διαγραφεί η φράση» επέμεινε, όμως, ο κ. Μαρκογιαννάκης.

Επεισόδιο με βουλευτή

Ανάμεσα στους αντιδρώντες ήταν και ο βουλευτής της ΝΔ Ανδρέας Ψυχάρης, όταν άκουσε τον κ. Καμμένο να τον κατηγορεί: «Κύριε Ψυχάρη συνεχίζετε να παίρνετε στις επιχειρήσεις σας χορηγίες από τον ΟΠΑΠ, αλλά την ίδια ώρα, κάποιοι άλλοι πεινάνε! Οι φυλλάδες σας προσπαθούν να μας κατατάξουν στην ακροδεξιά. Πάψτε να εξυπηρετείτε άλλα συμφέροντα. Είστε μέλος του κοινοβουλίου!»

«Αναφέρθηκε ο κ. Καμμένος σε επιχειρήσεις που έχω και στις επιχορηγήσεις που λαμβάνουν. Τον ενημερώνω ότι ουδέποτε είχα επαγγελματική εμπλοκή με τον ΔΟΛ. Ήμουνα 20 χρόνια διπλωμάτης» είπε ο βουλευτής της ΝΔ, σημειώνοντας ότι δεν θα μπορούσε να περιμένει άλλη συμπεριφορά από κάποιον που λέει ότι ψεκάζουν τον ελληνικό λαό, που ποτέ δεν είχε επάγγελμα και που πρόσβαλε τον Πρόεδρο της Δημοκρατίας.

 

next stop, Civil War Land

We know that the EU is using Greece to manipulate the Euro's
value downward. It's using the crisis as a chance to run
Greece directly from Brussels.

So, the mainstream media is like - listening to a lawyer
present to you an impossibly squeaky clean story about
how his client is holy, and then shouting everything
verbatim into a bull-horn. No thinking in between
steps one and two.

Unfortunately, the Net media are also guilty of trying to
get famous one way or another, such as pronouncing
something profound about Greece descending into hell

Supposedly Greece is ready for civil war, according to
the Testosterone Pit, who is a German stockbroker and
all around news guy. I always have salt handy for his
pronouncements.
When it comes to the one below, I'll comment later.

Check his stuff: Testosterone pit

The Price Of “Collective Trauma”: Greece At The Brink of Civil War

Saturday, December 15, 2012 at 7:39PM

“I’m wondering how much this society can endure before it explodes,” said Georg Pieper, a German psychotherapist who specializes in treating post-traumatic stress disorders following catastrophes, large accidents (including the deadliest train wreck ever in Germany), acts of violence, freed hostages.... But now he was talking about Greece. [as if it's possible for a German to understand Greeks- Costick 67]

He’d spent several days in Athens to give continuing education courses in trauma therapy for psychologist, psychiatrists, and doctors—for free, this being a country in crisis. He was accompanied by Melanie Mühl, an editor at the daily paper Frankfurter Allgemeine. And in her report, she decries how “news consumers” in Germany were fed the crisis in Greece.

It was “no more than a distant threat somewhere on the horizon,” defined by barely understood terms, such as bank bailout, haircut, billion-euro holes, mismanagement, Troika, debt buyback.... “Instead of understanding the global context, we see a serious-faced Angela Merkel getting out of dark limos in Berlin, Brussels or elsewhere, on the way to the next summit where the bailout of Greece, and thus of Europe, is to be moved forward another step” [also read... The Curse Of The “Irreversible” Euro].

But what is really happening in Greece is silenced to death in the media. Pieper calls this phenomenon a “giant feat of repression.”

And so they report their findings that cannot be dressed up in the by now normal euro bailout jargon and acronyms. There were pregnant women rushing from hospital to hospital, begging to be admitted to give birth. They had no health insurance and no money, and no one wanted to help them. People who used to be middle class were picking through discarded fruit and vegetables off the street as the stands from a farmers’ market were being taken down.

[I have seen that dreary activity even in Paris; if Mühl spent some time looking, she could see it in Germany as well. It’s not just in Greece where people, demolished by joblessness or falling real wages, are deploying desperate measures to put food on the table. And the largest consumer products companies are already reacting to it: The “Pauperization of Europe”.]

Heartbreaking, the plight of the Greeks. There was an old man who’d worked over 40 years, but now his pension had been cut in half, and he couldn’t afford his heart medication any longer. To check into the hospital, he had to bring his own sheets and food. Since the cleaning staff had been let go, doctors and nurses, who hadn’t been paid in months, were cleaning the toilets themselves. The hospital was running short on basic medical supplies, such as latex gloves and catheters. And the suicide rate doubled over the last three years—two-thirds of them, men.

“Collective trauma” is how Pieper described the society whose bottom had been pulled out from under it. “Men are particularly hard hit by the crisis,” Pieper said, as their pay had been decimated, or their jobs eliminated. They’re seething with anger at the utterly corrupt system and a kleptocratic government that have done so much damage to the country; and they’re furious at the international bailout politics whose money only benefits big banks, not the people.

These men take their anger to their families, and their sons take that anger to the street. Hence the growing number of violent gangs that attack minorities. The will to survive in humans is enormous, Pieper points out, and so humans are able to overcome even incredibly difficult situations. To do that, they need a functioning society with real structures and safety nets. But in Greece, society has been hollowed out for years to the point where it is collapsing.

“In such a dramatic situation as can be observed in Greece, the human being becomes a sort of predator, only seeing himself and his own survival,” Pieper said. “Sheer necessity pushes him into irrationality, and in the worst case, this irrationality transcends into criminality.” At that stage in society, he said, “solidarity is replaced by selfishness.” [again, not true. If they were Germans, they'd be eating each other- Costick67]

And so he wondered, “how much this society can endure before it explodes.” Greece is on the brink of civil war, he went on, and it seems only a question of time before the collective desperation of the people erupts into violence and spreads across the country. A ricocheting indictment of the euro bailout policies.

As the Eurozone flails about to keep its chin above the debt crisis that is drowning Greece and other periphery countries, and as the EU struggles to duct-tape itself together with more governance by unelected transnational eurocrats, Sweden is having second thoughts: never before has there been such hostility toward the euro. Read....  Sweden’s Euro Hostility Hits A Record.

say it proudly "Greece is a colony of the EU"

I wonder how many years it will take for the word
"colony" to be used to describe the situation for
Greece, as it slides into the abyss, from which the
only escape is through armed warfare.

Anyway , for now, check the interesting concepts
from PJ Media. Never heard of it before, and they've
got piss poor editing of spelling, but I hope their
ideas have been properly sourced.

Read 'em:  PJ Media

The Greek Crisis: Yes, It’s That Bad

Greece today is a broken country, unable to break out of the vicious circle of EU over-dependency.

By Diran Majarian

November 30, 2012 - 12:00 am

Greece is now a virtual EU colony, waiting from bailout to bailout, each preceded by months of negotiations, more harsh austerity measures, riots, and an increasingly fractured political system.

The latest installment has been delayed by a growing rift between the IMF and their EU partners in Greece’s guardian, called the Troika. The IMF has looked at the ever-deepening EU recession and Greece’s inability to pay back debts given its own declining economy. It now wants to scale down future loans.

The IMF is hardly being radical. Its incredibly modest goal is that by the year 2020, Greece will only hold public sector loans amounting to 120 percent of its gross domestic product. That’s double the international norm. Yet even this basic goal probably won’t hold. In Europe, politics systematically trumps sound economic policy, and the ideology of a single currency zone precludes any rational discussion.

Germany, however, has elections coming up, and the government is not relishing having to tell taxpayers why their money is being spent on loans to Greece that will never be repaid. So there is now talk of an amazing compromise in which each EU state will decide how much it can give Greece without facing domestic political costs. This gives a good view of the EU method in such matters: the issue isn’t really dealt with, the crisis is kicked down the road, and the political elite declares victory.

The 44 billion euro loan Greece is expecting would just cover immediate obligations at best. For example, Greece has been staving off default by issuing short-term treasury bills that it dumps onto its commercial banks.  It isn’t surprising that this practice has brought on the insolvency of the banking system, whose capital was wiped out last spring in the last debt restructuring. So much of the new money will be used to refund the banks, which will then be put under the control of the Troika. Hence, Wolfgang Munchau of the Financial Times called Greece the first formal EU colony.

In this cycle that solves nothing, bailout loans prevent Greece from defaulting on its foreign debt. As might be suspected, this is a Ponzi scheme that inevitably will eventually collapse. Greece is loaned money to pay back old loans and the interest mounts.

Successive Greek governments (always the same policies and mostly the same people) are terrified that they won’t receive the next bailout loan installment and thus won’t be able to pay state employees or debts, not to mention foreign creditors. No one takes into account the effect of this mess on the Greek economy or the Greek people in bringing deepening recession and declining living standards.

Naturally, the Greeks then miss most of the targets set as supposed conditions to get the loans, sometimes due to bad administration, but more often due to simple economics. Deepening recession means declining tax revenues — as incomes drop and businesses go bankrupt — and rising public expenditure due to mass unemployment and impoverishment of the population.

On paper, Greece seems to be making progress as its balance of payments turns positive. But that’s only because the depression is reducing imports. As for things that would make a difference — like opening closed professions and more labor flexibility — these reforms could take a decade to show results and there is a great deal of resistance to making any substantive changes.

The popular myth, of course, is that tax revenues are never on target because of rampant tax evasion. One of Greece’s distinct features is a very large percentage of the labor force being self-employed. Most businesses are small and family-owned. This social category forms the backbone of the Greek middle class. In the U.S. and Western Europe, the percentage of self-employed is below 10%, while in Greece it is a whopping 30%.

According to IRS statistics, self-employed people are prone to heavy tax evasion from systematic understatement of income.  That factor would explain most of the tax revenue shortfall. The EU authorities would like to eliminate the large number of small businesses, which they see as inefficient.

Accordingly, the Greek government in this latest torture cycle to get the next bailout loan tranche has decided to remove tax exemptions from self-employed people and tax them at 35%/ 65% marginal rates according to purported income based on various arbitrary factors like where they reside and what car they drive.

This is symptomatic of where things are going in Greece in terms of highly aggressive taxation.  Last year, the Greek government assessed a real estate tax that was linked to electrical bills. This caused severe liquidity problems with the Greek Public Power Corporation since people could not pay both the tax bill and electric bill. The present Greek government is cutting power to these people and threatening to put their property on auction. Likewise last year, the government aggressively raised income taxes across the board on businesses and private income. The result: many businesses faced substantial tax bills without the income to pay, forcing them into bankruptcy. All this is causing immense social upheaval and fragmentation of the political system.

The May elections resulted in a sharp decline of the two major traditional parties. The socialists (PASOK) fell from 40 percent in October 2009 to only 12 percent. The conservative party (New Democracy) dropped to below 20%. The main winners were the Euro-Communist (SYRIZA) and the far right Golden Dawn party, which is nostalgic for the years of rule by the military junta when Greece was a thriving emerging market economy with rapidly rising per capital income levels.

Both parties attracted droves of Greek youth, but SYRIZA had the edge because many former PASOK members sought refuge there. There was no majority in the May elections; but under threats and with media support, the Greek political elite concocted out of the subsequent June elections — to the great joy of Brussels — the current ND-PASOK coalition with basically the same  unpopular pro-austerity program and many of the same people as the previous government.

Greece is a small, very dependent country. The political elite are conditioned to think like a client state latching on to a patron with deep pockets to resolve their problems. Greek politicians think of state-centered, top-down economic strategies funded by EU loans and state-sponsored deals with private and public investors. Traditionally, the  Greek public sector has been the employer of last resort.

An example of this mentality is the popular concept that Greece could resolve its economic problems by getting a loan from Russia on favorable terms in exchange for giving Moscow a naval base.

Another key element to understand Greece is the rapidly aging and shrinking population.  The 2011 census results were horrible. The economic crisis is leading to increasing emigration by younger Greeks fueled by 50 percent youth unemployment. These people have no interest in being burdened by big debts at home and want to seek their luck abroad.

Ultimately, the major decisions concerning Greece’s future will not likely be made by Greeks, but rather by EU policymakers and the politicians of other countries.  They will decide whether Greece will be allowed to stay in the euro currency zone.

Greece today is a broken country, unable to break out of the vicious circle of EU over-dependency. The political elite have no problem sacrificing a whole generation of their young in this process; but for the Greek people on the whole, the purported utopia of European prospects is turning into a bitter, ugly nightmare.

Get out of slavery card

Demetri Kofinas of RT's Current Account show
said that we have returned to the slavery model
of capitalism as existed in ancient Greece.

If you didn't have the money to pay back debts,
you became a slave. That's what is happening
to Greece now.

The other model was the Amagi, Jubilee model
which said, every so often, debts had to be
forgiven, or else the situation would degenerate
in many ways.
Perhaps there is a fine balance between running
a society that needs workers to do the grunt
work, therefore, you grudgingly have to give
them enough respect by not enslaving them.
They will be your soldiers after all. You wanna
be without soldiers? See if you can do it.

Now that the oligarchs can make money on
the stock market by exporting jobs, and by
sucking money from governments through
graft and fraud, then they actually don't need
us and our bodies.

This is why we're all slowly going to be enslaved.
Pre-Industrial economic theory, that's what
bankers and economist have brought to us, in
their wisdom.

Greece, however might be a case of enslavement
now to cream off the future oil riches. We all
know this is going on behind the scenes.

read 'em:

..Reuters: Έσοδα 600 δις για την Ελλάδα από το φυσικό αέριο

Από newsbomb.gr | newsbomb.gr – 1 ώρα 4 λεπτά πριν..

Κρατικά έσοδα 600 δισεκατομμυρίων δολαρίων εκτιμά μία νέα επιστημονική μελέτη ότι μπορεί να αποφέρει στην Ελλάδα το φυσικό αέριο που βρίσκεται στο υπέδαφός της, σύμφωνα με δημοσίευμα του Reuters.

Η μελέτη των κ. Αντώνη Φώσκολου, Ηλία Κονοφάγου και Νίκου Λυγερού, η οποία σύμφωνα με το πρακτορείο, έχει ήδη παρουσιαστεί στον πρωθυπουργό από τον περασμένο Ιούνιο, εκτιμά στα 3,5 τρισεκ. κυβικά μέτρα τα αποθέματα φυσικού αερίου στην περιοχή νότια της Κρήτης.

Οι επιστήμονες υπολογίζουν ότι τα αποθέματα αυτά μπορούν να αποφέρουν στην Ελλάδα κρατικά έσοδα 599 δισεκ. δολαρίων σε 25 χρόνια.

 «Θεωρούμε ότι αυτή είναι μία πολύ συντηρητική εκτίμηση», δήλωσε στο Ρόιτερς ο κ. Κονοφάγος, η εταιρία του οποίου Flow Energy στην Αθήνα συμβουλεύει άτυπα την κυβέρνηση για την ενεργειακή στρατηγική.

Η μελέτη αναφέρει ότι η γεωλογική ομοιότητα με το πλούσιο σε αέριο κοίτασμα Λεβιάθαν, όπου εντοπίσθηκαν οι πρόσφατες ανακαλύψεις της Κύπρου και του Ισραήλ, υποδηλώνει ότι και τα αποθέματα στη θαλάσσια περιοχή νότια της Κρήτης μπορεί να έχουν αντίστοιχα χαρακτηριστικά.

Επιπλέον, η μελέτη εκτιμά ότι τα αποθέματα της περιοχής αυτής αρκούν για να καλύψουν τη ζήτηση φυσικού αερίου από την Ευρώπη για έξι χρόνια και αντιστοιχούν σε 1,5 δισεκ. βαρέλια πετρελαίου.

 Ο κ. Φώσκολος, ομότιμος καθηγητής στο Πολυτεχνείο της Κρήτης και το Καναδικό Ινστιτούτο Γεωλογίας (Canadian Geological Survey) ανέφερε ότι οι υποθαλάσσιες εκπομπές μεθανίου και η παρουσία κοιτασμάτων υγρού αερίου στο βυθό υποδηλώνουν την ύπαρξη μεγάλων αποθεμάτων.

 Σύμφωνα με πηγές του υπουργείου Περιβάλλοντος, Ενέργειας και Κλιματικής Αλλαγής, το υπουργείο έχει ξεκινήσει μια συστηματική διαδικασία για έρευνα, αποτίμηση και εντοπισμό του δυναμικού της χώρας σε υδρογονάνθρακες, με την ανάθεση σεισμικών ερευνών σε ευρεία θαλάσσια περιοχή.

 Όπως είναι γνωστό οι σεισμικές έρευνες στη θαλάσσια περιοχή νότια της Κρήτης και στο Ιόνιο πέλαγος ανατέθηκαν πρόσφατα στη Νορβηγική εταιρία Petroleum Geo Services (PGS). Οι έρευνες αναμένεται να ξεκινήσουν στα τέλη Οκτωβρίου, ενώ θα ακολουθήσουν η επεξεργασία των δεδομένων που θα προκύψουν από αυτές και η προκήρυξη διαγωνισμού για την παραχώρηση περιοχών (των λεγόμενων «οικοπέδων») για ερευνητικές γεωτρήσεις.

 Εκτιμήσεις της προηγούμενης πολιτικής ηγεσίας του ΥΠΕΚΑ ανέφεραν ότι «είναι ρεαλιστικός ο στόχος σε βάθος 15-20 ετών να καλύπτουμε από εγχώριες πηγές Υδρογονανθράκων το 30% των αναγκών της χώρας, με άλλα λόγια να αντικαταστήσουμε το 30% των σχεδόν 12 δισεκ. ευρώ που δαπανούμε για εισαγωγές πετρελαιοειδών κάθε χρόνο, με ελληνικούς Υδρογονάνθρακες».

 Οι ίδιες εκτιμήσεις ανέφεραν ότι τα κοιτάσματα στις περιοχές Πατραϊκός κόλπος, Κατάκολο και Ιωάννινα, που έχουν προκηρυχθεί για έρευνες, υπερβαίνουν τα 250 εκατ. βαρέλια ισοδύναμου πετρελαίου, κάτι που σημαίνει ότι τα έσοδα του Δημοσίου από την εκμετάλλευσή τους θα φθάσουν στα 10 δισεκ. ευρώ σε βάθος 20-30 ετών.