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http://www.businessinsider.com/greece-tell-brussels-to-take-a-hike-and-let-the-troika-bail-out-the-ecb-instead-2012-9
?maxX=400
Awful as Greece’s GDP has been, it doesn’t do justice to the economic fiasco.
Take new vehicle registrations: in August, they plunged 46.7% from prior year. Only 3,886 new vehicles were sold. A collapse of 80% from August 2008 at the cusp of the crisis. For the first eight months of 2012, sales were down 42% from prior year, and 65% from 2008. People have stopped buying new cars. And not just cars.
“The situation continues to deteriorate,” wrote an acquaintance. “My normally honest friends and relatives have all begun to find ways to avoid the ever increasing taxes. The horrible bureaucracy worsens even in this small town of 5,000. It took a friend a month of running from office to office just to get a permit to repair, not construct, but repair an existing balcony. Hopeless.”
Ten years ago, he built a house in Southern Greece not far from Sparta—”with many fine workers, most of them Albanians and some excellent Greeks as well, but it took a long, long time.” The house is surrounded by citrus and olive groves. In the distance, mountains and the sea. He writes:
“I detest going to Athens because of the gridlock. Buildings built over the last twenty years have little or no dedicated parking. Why? Parking is low or no-revenue space that city planners have reserved for cronies with fakelos (envelopes with cash). Thus cars and scooters clog not only streets but sidewalks.”
Read more: http://www.testosteronepit.com/home/2012/9/27/greece-tell-brussels-to-take-a-hike-and-let-the-troika-bail.html#ixzz283138JZy
?maxX=400
Awful as Greece’s GDP has been, it doesn’t do justice to the economic fiasco.
Take new vehicle registrations: in August, they plunged 46.7% from prior year. Only 3,886 new vehicles were sold. A collapse of 80% from August 2008 at the cusp of the crisis. For the first eight months of 2012, sales were down 42% from prior year, and 65% from 2008. People have stopped buying new cars. And not just cars.
“The situation continues to deteriorate,” wrote an acquaintance. “My normally honest friends and relatives have all begun to find ways to avoid the ever increasing taxes. The horrible bureaucracy worsens even in this small town of 5,000. It took a friend a month of running from office to office just to get a permit to repair, not construct, but repair an existing balcony. Hopeless.”
Ten years ago, he built a house in Southern Greece not far from Sparta—”with many fine workers, most of them Albanians and some excellent Greeks as well, but it took a long, long time.” The house is surrounded by citrus and olive groves. In the distance, mountains and the sea. He writes:
“I detest going to Athens because of the gridlock. Buildings built over the last twenty years have little or no dedicated parking. Why? Parking is low or no-revenue space that city planners have reserved for cronies with fakelos (envelopes with cash). Thus cars and scooters clog not only streets but sidewalks.”
Read more: http://www.testosteronepit.com/home/2012/9/27/greece-tell-brussels-to-take-a-hike-and-let-the-troika-bail.html#ixzz283138JZy
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