Comments by sokrates_gr

So after ten years of "fiscal consolidation" that lead nowhere, it's the labour market. LOL LOL and LOL

I'm not sure I understood perfectly well. What percentage of the price of a Big Mac is raw material (food)?
And what's the percentage of the retail price of a Big Mac that goes for capital, advertising and accounting and profit?
Should the price be directly affected by the commodities that are part of it?

I don't know how terrible the NHS might be, but the serious analysis of S.S. tells me that some have decided a raid on public health service.

It should be clear that it's not statstics that's poor; it is the comparison between data that are collected in different environments.
A rather safe way to see how a country does is to check survival rates of quite a few diseases in comparison with countries of the same strata (income, life expectancy, geography, etc).
Don't let them lie to you about your country and they lie rather too often in newspapers and TV. I guess they're raising an agenda to sell the NHS to 'private investors" and then people get "competitive" cancers and stuff. Do we forget the famous US health disaster?

When it is said that poverty is a cause of terrorism they don't mean that the lower the income of a person the higher the propensity to become a terrorist.
Terrorism as a phenomenon is linked to acute and unresolved political and social tensions. Poverty is a social problem or a trait of a socio-polititcal status.
The persons that are members of violent groups need not be poor (or opressed) themselves. Extreme poverty may lead to micro-criminality; not to political action.
Terrorism is the word used when someone is against the objectives of a violent organization. Political violence is seen as a legitimate way to fight against dictatorship, an occupation regime, apartheid, etc, etc, etc, etc

@ Stefano Valenti
@James1234

I pointed out that lenders (should) know they may loose money. Nobody should be able to oblige a country to sell out. If we follow this path, there will be one day when Britain must sell land, the US should sell Alaska back or some other country should send workforce on a train.
That's the dream of some; giving the primary role to investors and let people live in slums.
I'm talking about principle. Surely, debtors must do their best to hold a good name and be able to sell bonds in the future, but there must be some limit to what banks can demand for their money.

@James1234

Shouldn't lenders loose money sometinmes? A country is not a business, whose assets can be confiscated. The state cannot be torn appart and have its people starved to death.
It was Adam Smith who said that a lender will consider a loss as part of the money game he is into. The people that live in a country that has defaulted will suffer a loss in real life.
Do buyers of stock have the unlimmited claim for compensation, did a company get insolvent? Where is the risk, anyway?

"...countries have proven surprisingly willing to suffer and become more German. Who's to say this can't continue?"
Well, the people themselves are those who are to say this can't continue. Economic war is essentially the same thing as war with bombs; only buildings stay more or less intact.
A war is being fought in the EU. Are we going to see a Normandy or a new Wall again?

@speculatorjon
9% is the yield of an already issued bond, when it is bought today by an investor from another investor. Ireland is not paying 9% interest as long as they don't sell bonds to investors right now. The problem lies with the holders of bonds whose value has fallen. If a bond was a share, the yield would be the dividend as a percentage of the price of the share.

The world economy has been f***** up either the "Greek Way", the "Icelandic Way", the American Way or any other way.
If you let banks fail, you're in trouble. If you save banks, the government is in trouble. If you raise taxes too high and cut spending too deep, the country is in trouble.
This means that the "measures" that are taken just shift the problem somewhere in the same room.
A big financial crisis can't be solved by cutting or by sending banks to the beautician (bad bank). And for sure no country alone can do the trick.

The fact that there are other serious diseases causing death doesn't mean that HIV is unimportant.
The 8 billion given out as assistance for HIV infection is less than 1:5000 of global GDP. Widening antiretrovirals availability is of great humanitarian importance anyway. Considering that transmission is slowed by drug availability makes every dollar given even more valuable.
Extending treatment and therefore learning more about HIV is also a way of acquiring more knowledge on a vast range of diseases of viral etiology; many cancers for example are a result of viruses and many viral infections are not a result of promiscuity...
Furthermore, prevention is better than cure, but you can't expect that you can eliminate every disease by mere prevention.
Should we stop using the internet to avoid back pain? Back pain costs a lot of money and is a bonanza for Big Pharma and the like.
Should we stop getting into a bus or plane to avoid common cold, that cost billions of dollars every year?
Can we expect that 6.5 billion people will live a "virtuous" life? Is there a single way of behavior that can and should be imposed to everyone?

I think one should say: What is produced must eventually be consumed. When demand goes below supply or vice versa, there's trouble.
Not all countries can be net exporters nor can they all be net importers.
(-10)+(-10)=-20 (Bad)
(+10)+(+10= +20 (Bad)

@ozden 1
Freud, Adler and Co would love to work with people like you! I admire you and your ideas! Write more.

It is not called "loss of lives". You say plainly "murder". Can you imagine people shot by Israelis wondering: "Where did I put my life, anyway?" Their lives were not missplaced. They were intentionally murdered. Israel wants people from all over the world to feel terrified.
Israeli political and military elite should be tried by an international tribunal.

Wouldn't it be better to channel money directly towards to people? They would happy to spend it rather than hold it.

So can anything be done not to collectively punish a people? And then another and then another?
Or "The pound of flesh which I demand of him Is deerely bought, 'tis mine, and I will haue it".

The solution was given in NYSE. Trades were annulled and things can again return to normal.
So, Greek troubles could be taken care of with a rollback. Was there too much borrowing? Undo it. Call a few islands in the Atlantic or anywhere off-shore, call Zurich, Guernsey, Delaware and Goldman &Co and ask for the money back. It was a technical glitch, after all.
Everything can be fixed. Didn't you see what the US of A did to fix it? The kids of Wall Street would have urinated in their beds like little babies, so papa fixed the problem.
Hallo my friend Schadenfreude! I missed you!

@ Schadenfreude and others

What did happen today? A "technical" problem at NYSE? Ooooh, what a pity! All this trouble in Europe and suddenly the devil strikes in the US of A? I understand, those damned computers!
Yeah, it's all technical. Let me see into it, you should not press that button too many times. Computers are sooo delicate. One could destroy the whole game. Mammy is gonna shout at you.
So the markets may also have done a technical error and sold short, by mistake of course, bonds in the EU. Shouldn't papa come and fix our little toy before the house is burnt down?
You know how kids are when they're told off by mammy: they urinate in bed like little babies.

Tomorrow the British elections will be over. It is fairly possible that the "markets" will be selling off British papers. Will a few friends in here be advising the British to stop whining and grow up? Will they tell the British that they've lived beyond their means or that they were spoiled with luxury living and now it's time to pay?
The day after tomorrow German or US papers may be on the row for a dump. Will we say that Germans and Americans should at last learn to live in the real world?
It's really terrible to see people in all the world enjoying their wiener wurst with beer, not understanding that they destroy their economy, when they demand to be paid for their work.
All this self interested people! They want money to go to work! Couldn't they work for free and stop voting and reading newspapers? Voting incurs costs and a newspaper is sold against money. Money is something to be kept for the enlightened few. To pay a 100.000.000 bonus, we have to collect another $ from a hundred million people.

Another "did you know?": A fresh medical doctor (35 years of age) gets around 1000 euro X 14. That's 14.000 annually. A typical 2 room flat in an old building will cost you around 450-500 euros a month and of course outside the smart neighborhoods of Athens. If our MD is lucky and does some night shifts and the sort, he/she can reach a little higher.
Ain't that rich!

Ha! The Greek budget had to pay over 1 billion euro for this to happen! Now there'll be a merger with Aegean Air, which did not succeed to buy Olympic in the first place.
Aegean is a star alliance member, where Lufthansa is the leader. Another German company behind a series of deals where Marfin has played the middleman? (The other one includes the triangle Deutsche Telekom - OTE (Greek state owned telecom)- Marfin).