Peak Oil News and Message Boards

KaiserJeep wrote:...the government will take 50% of whatever I leave for my kids and grandkids, the so-called "death tax".

Sometimes I feel like starting a riot myself.

Poordogabone wrote:KJ, the U.S tax system is a feeble attempt to redistribute some of the wealth to level the Playing field, better yet than this halfhearted redistribution process would be to prevent the obscene disparity of wealth in the first place. That would spare us from the outrage of some that cannot bear giving up some of their hard earned money.
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KaiserJeep wrote:
I'm tired of people who want things given to them. You or anyone else is not entitled to a share of my income.

Greece’s banks have lost a quarter of their value in two days as the dual threats of a bank run and the loss of support from the European Central Bank threaten a liquidity squeeze.

The Athens Bank Index, a weighted index of Greek bank shares, fell to an all-time low on Tuesday with the country’s five biggest banks having lost €15bn - half their value - in four months.

Up to €8bn worth of deposits has been pulled out of Greek banks since November, according to Moody’s, with more withdrawals likely amid fears that the life support from the European Central Bank will be extinguished.

Syriza’s Alexis Tsipras, who was sworn in as prime minister on Monday, on Tuesday appointed the economist Yanis Varoufakis, a fellow fierce opponent of European-imposed austerity, as Greece’s finance minister.

The move was seen as a further sign that Greece is on a collision course with the EU over repaying debt and maintaining its bail-out programme, which currently expires on February 28. Mr Varoufakis, who studied at the University of Essex, has described Greece’s austerity agreements as “fiscal waterboarding”.

It's no secret what Varoufakis thinks Greece should do with its debt.

The economics professor at the University of Athens, who announced his appointment as the country's finance minister in a posting on his personal blog on Tuesday, has been arguing since the beginning of the crisis that Greece should default while staying a member of the euro area.


the shattered country can never begin to recover until its massive international rescue package is completely renegotiated

Greece should have never joined the euro area, but now that it's in, a departure would be like falling from a cliff, he said. "The last line in 'Hotel California' explains where we are: you can check out any time, but you can never leave," he told Bloomberg Radio in May 2012.

Poordogabone wrote:

KaiserJeep wrote:
I'm tired of people who want things given to them. You or anyone else is not entitled to a share of my income.

My point is that better to redistribute wealth is to avoid obscene disparity in the first place. It turns out that the so called nanny states, or countries which through higher taxes provide free quality education, free healthcare and a decent minimum wage are the countries that are doing best economically and in standard of living with lower percentage of unemployed and welfare recipients.

Leftist Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras threw down an open challenge to international creditors on Wednesday by halting privatisation plans agreed under the country's bailout deal, prompting a third day of heavy losses on financial markets.

After announcing a halt to the privatisation of the port of Piraeus on Tuesday, for which China's Cosco Group [COSCO.UL] and four others had been short-listed, the government indicated it would put the whole programme on hold.

It said it would stop the sale of stakes in the Public Power Corporation of Greece (DEHr.AT), Greece's biggest utility, and refiner Hellenic Petroleum (HEPr.AT), and put other planned asset sales of motorways, airports and the power grid on ice.

Tsipras, who met Russia's ambassador to Athens on Monday and the Chinese envoy the next day, told ministers that the government would not seek "a mutually destructive clash" with creditors. But he warned that Greece would not back down from demanding a renegotiation of debt.

France has ruled out a straight cancellation of Greece's debt, about 80 percent of which is held by other euro zone governments and multinational organisations such as the IMF. However, Paris has said it would be open to talks on making Greece's debt burden more sustainable and Tsipras is expected to meet President Francois Hollande before an EU summit on Feb. 12.

The response from Germany was frosty. Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel said Athens should have discussed the halt to privatisations with its partners before making an announcement.

The good news for Greece, of course, is that it now has all the optionality: it can use its veto power as a bargaining chip to unblock US foreign policy in Ukraine (because at the end of the day, Europe is merely losing as a result of the Russian sanctions) and demand a debt haircut in exchange for siding with John Kerry on further Russian "punishment." Or he may simply hold the line and hold off for a competing, better offer from Russia and the BRICs, whose leverage may be nominal now that crude is plummeting, but if and when the last shale junk bond investor blows up and the US shale renaissance is over sending crude soaring right back to $100, then watch as the oil exporters are back with a bang, and dictating geopolitical terms.

And whatever happens, please don't remind Brussels that point 40 of Syriza's 40 Point Manifesto, aka the "nuclear option", is "Closure of all foreign bases in Greece and withdrawal from NATO."

Six decades ago, an agreement to cancel half of postwar Germany's debt helped foster a prolonged period of prosperity in the war-torn continent. The new government in Athens says Greece – and Europe – now need a similar deal.

“Germany's resurgence has only been possible through waiving extensive debt payments and stopping reparations to its World War II victims,” economic historian Albrecht Ritschl told Der Spiegel in 2011, describing Germany as “the biggest debt transgressor” of the past century. “During the 20th century, Germany was responsible for what were the biggest national bankruptcies in recent history,” Ritschl said, pointing to the collapse of the German economy in the early 1930s, which sent shockwaves through global markets. “It is only thanks to the United States, which sacrificed vast amounts of money after both World War I and World War II, that Germany is financially stable today and holds the status of Europe's headmaster. That fact, unfortunately, often seems to be forgotten.”

Back in 1953, the money Greece gave up included a loan extorted during the gruesome Nazi occupation of the country, when thousands of resistance fighters and civilians were murdered and hundreds of thousands starved to death.

Alexis Tsipras’s decision on Tuesday to lay a wreath at a memorial to Greek communists murdered by the Nazis, in his very first outing as prime minister, was widely interpreted as a reminder of Germany’s historical debt towards Greece.

KaiserJeep wrote:I'm not buying it. My Father worked in the military - they don't pay a lot - and had six kids. That put us at poverty level - but my parents were too proud to take any handouts, including school lunches.

Which is why I have no patience with people who think that education should be given away. Things are worth what you pay for them, and there are already too many drones in college who regard it as an alternative to work.

EdwinSm wrote:An interesting picture of who stands to loose if Greek debt is written off



http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31067473