On 7/5/2015 2:46 PM, clipka wrote:
> Am 05.07.2015 um 09:55 schrieb Cousin Ricky:
>> On 2015-07-04 08:40 AM (-4), clipka wrote:
>>> Congratulations to your independence, USA!
>>>
>>> Now if only you'd let other contries have theirs, too...
>>
>> Isn't Greece scheduled to declare its independence from Germany today?
>
> Oh, believe me - we'd happily let them.
>
> It's when they /want/ something from us - like, say, borrow money - that
> we kindly ask them for a favor in return - like, say, make sure they can
> start paying it back in a few decades.
>
> Wasn't that what ticked off the USA back then, too? No money without
> something in return?
>
>
> In the international press the conflict might appear to be about Greece
> being held hostage by its current creditors on the basis of their
> current debts. It's not - it's primarily about Greece asking to be
> provided with /more/ borrowed money.
>
> The EU had already agreed to those additional debts, /provided/ that
> Greece implement some reforms, which Greece had also agreed upon, but
> now refuses to implement. (Not that I'd blame them for that refusal - I
> think those reforms are useless at best - but their new government
> wasn't particularly smart about how they approached the EU about this.)
> So is it any surprise that the EU's reply is, "fine - but then you won't
> get the money either"?
>
> Well, actually it's more like, "please, think it over - we're worried
> what your collapse might do to the Euro".
>
> So at the bottom line it's really about Greece holding the Euro hostage
> and blackmailing their creditors into relaxing their demands for reforms
> attached to the promised further credits. And today the Greek people
> decide whether they want to set the hostage free.
>
>

All that is one point of view. Certainly the one we get from all the 
pundits.

When I've listened to the Greek politicians being interviewed. They all 
say that the current situation puts them in the position of loan shark 
victims. Well, that's what it sounds like to me, paraphrased.
I think the Euro zone banks should give Greece loans at a rate that can 
be paid back without grinding the faces of the proletariat, any further. 
Whoops!  <gets back down off soap box>
I don't see how setting up contracts that cannot be fulfilled is helping 
anyone.

> That all said, I think Germany's darkest spot on their perfectly white
> clothes is not how they treat Greece about the current issues, but how
> they reacted to Greece's demands to make amends for the time /before/
> they gained their independence from Germany some 70 years ago.
>

It just makes memories longer. :-(

In Crete. I've had the owner of a restaurant throw his arms around me. 
Then drag me into the kitchen to see what they were eating. Because I 
was an English tourist in a German tourist restaurant.
They have long memories.

-- 

Regards
     Stephen

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