UPDATE 2 - Greek government urges unity, protesters defiant

[struggle4progress]

Source: Reuters

Tue Oct 4, 2011 10:11am EDT
By Harry Papachristou and Renee Maltezou

Oct 4 (Reuters) - Angry protesters blockaded Greek ministries on Tuesday despite appeals from the finance minister for the public to rally around the tough measures the Athens government needs to achieve fiscal targets and avert default on its colossal debt ...

Tuesday's blockade of government buildings, including the finance, labour, agriculture and development ministries, follows similar protests last week, when state workers tried to disrupt talks between the government and EU and IMF inspectors.

Police said there was disruption at the ministries on Tuesday but work was not halted inside. Police were on hand, especially at the finance ministry, but there were no reports of serious clashes. There were bloody battles between riot police and protesters in central Athens in June ...

Planes and trains will be halted on Wednesday, schools will be shut and hospitals will have only limited staff as workers walk off the job to protest against austerity ...

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/04/greece-idUSL5E7L413R20111004

[Democat]

1. Do the protesters have a plan?

Or are they just mad and hoping another EU country will bail them out?

[JDPriestly]

3. They probably want the lenders to share in the losses on the debts.

Makes sense to me. It's called a "work-out" in commercial real estate. If a lender makes a bad loan, then both the lender and the borrower take the loss.

Traditionally, we view a bad consumer loan as being an isolated incident. But in recent years, capital has been concentrated so much in the hands of a few that the majority could not borrow with a realistic opportunity to repay the money. The wealthy fools who grabbed all the money and then "loaned" it to those with no money should have foreseen that the disparity between their wealth and the wealth of the borrowers would mean that the borrower could not repay the loan.

That principle applied to the mortgage loans here in the US as well as to the loans to the Greek, Irish, Spanish and Icelandic governments and people.

Quite obviously if housing prices tripled or quadrupled within say 5 years but wages for the potential homebuyers stayed pretty stagnant during that time, any lender could figure out -- even without a complex spreadsheet -- that the lenders would not have the income to repay the loans.

Same true with regard to the loans to Greece. Where did the lenders think Greece would get the money to repay the loans? They didn't. The lenders didn't care.

And that is why the Greek people are correct when they demonstrate and urge the government to refuse to repay the loan. The lenders have to take some, if not all, of the losses. Whoever the lenders are, they should have done the math before they loaned their money.

Words to the wise -- if you "lend" money to someone who has none, don't fool yourself, just call it a gift and don't hold it against the person who has no money if they don't pay it back. Money given to the poor is charity. It is a gift, not a loan.

Don't give or lend what you can't afford to do without.

[dipsydoodle]

4. That is also the justification

For not lending them anymore.

[JackRiddler]

5. The protesters have a lot more of a plan than the EU does, you can be sure.

Their plan? Greece will default. Greece will not burden the young with an odious, unpayable debt. The EU has no interest in bailing out Greece. These are not bailouts of Greece, they are bailouts of German and French banks. Greeks will have to be more self-sufficient, but they will be free of this debt. Just like Argentina. The EU has no plan, because all these "bailouts" will do is extend the inevitable: Greece will default.

[Ian David]

2. This thread is useless without photos of Riot Dog. n/t