Man, I love my democracy. It is so awesome, every three years I can vote someone in, and it doesn't even matter what they say because they all do the same thing!

in italys case its a former goldman sachs bigwig. hows that for a kick in the balls?

Seriously, what did you expect Sic? If Greece refused to bring someone in to ram austerity through the rest of the Euro zone would refuse to loan Greece any more money, and even if Greece immediately defaulted theyd *still* have to accept immediate cuts in services far greater than the austerity package.

I know you have a strong dislike of bankers, but exactly what options does Greece have at this point that dont either involve massive pain now and effective ostracism from external markets, or less pain now but effectively handing their economic future to the IMF for a decade?

Revolution is nice and all, but revolution dont pay the bills - and if you dont pay the bills, pretty soon people refuse to sell you things. Like food. Or oil.

Id actually love to hear what hellalt has to say. We're watching it on CNN, he's *living* it

Doesn't, not dont above. Jesus, autocorrect, why do you keep fucking me?

And yes, I've bagged on the Greeks as this debacle unfolded, but there's a big difference between saying "Jesus, you're building with unreinforced brick on a fault line, are you stupid? " and "holy shit, that earthquake jyst knocked your house down! "

Greece has been ramming austerity through. It's failed miserably. Greece is the victim of a banker conspiracy to destroy the country. Their debt was lower than many other countries, and speculation caused the cost of loaning money to skyrocket.

Time for revolution.

Not surprised Strat is in favor of banker coups, though.

I copy/pasted this, but it's dead on:

"Under the system of private central banks issuing all public currency as a loan at interest, the total debt always exceeds the total amount of money available to pay that debt. So, one can see the European Union (and indeed any nation or nations under the slavery of a private central bank) as a boat with 11 holes in the bottom, but only ten corks. Everything being done to "save" Europe amounts to yanking a cork from one hole and pounding it into another one in full view of the cameras while proclaiming that one is working on the problem. Yet the water in the bottom of the boat continues to rise and the ultimate outcome has not changed one bit. Water pours in through the hole underneath Greece's seat on the boat (drilled there by Goldman Sachs, I might add), so the cork pounded into the hole under Italy is yanked out and pounded into the hole under Greece. Now the water is flooding underneath Italy, to the cork under France's seat gets yanked out and moved over. Now the leak is under France, etc. Because all new money created by a private central bank is a loan, one can add a new cork to the boat, but only at the cost of a new hole in its bottom.

Everyone in that boat is doomed, and the only thing they can choose is which one gets to drown last."

What we need in this world is more metaphors to deal with real world problems

sometimes that's the best way to reach the simpletons.