Post: #1

Quote:At a newspaper kiosk in Wannsee, a well-to-do suburb in western Berlin, Christiane Schneider picks up her weekly television magazine and a book of suduko puzzles.

She’s focused on finding out what’s on the television, sipping a coffee as she leafs through the listings. But the 67-year old retired bank clerk is easily distracted from the task when the question of Greece is brought up.

“I really don’t know how much longer we should keep patting their backs and telling them everything’s going to be alright – here’s an extra 100m,” she says. “If my son kept coming to me for money to get himself out of trouble, I’d help him immediately, but I’d want to see that he was trying to get out of any mess he’d got himself into, wouldn’t I? I couldn’t afford to keep tossing banknotes in his direction.”
Tsipras to meet Merkel amid tensions between Greece and Germany
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Schneider is not alone in her thinking . According to a poll published a week ago, more than half of Germans would like Greece to leave the eurozone, a rise of more than 10% on February. It is a sentiment that is likely to hang heavily in the air when the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tspiras, makes his first visit to Berlin on Monday.

“It feels a bit like the Emperor’s New Clothes,” says Anton Brandt, referring to the Hans-Christian Andersen fairytale. “It just needs that child to stand up and say: ‘ha! they’re taking the piss out of us all’, but no one dares do it, especially not a German because we’re scared we’ll be accused of being anti-European,” the 38-year old administrator adds. “There’s no worse insult you can make towards a German.”

“The public mood is tipping,” said Thomas Oppermann, chairman of the Social Democrats (SPD) parliamentary group, speaking on a political TV chatshow Hard But Fair, which posed the question: ‘Bankrupt, insulted and brazen – does Greece deserve this image?’

The programme highlighted how any sympathy once felt for the Greeks is quickly drying up as feelings of resentment set in. Not least because Germany is the largest single contributor to Greece’s multibillion-euro bailouts and few see an end in sight to payments as long as Greece fails to implement any of the reforms it has promised. “But we must ask how dangerous would the exit of the weakest member from the eurozone be?” Oppermann added.

For years the German government has repeatedly excluded the possibility of Greece being forced to leave. The chancellor, Angela Merkel, appeared to repeat that conviction at the end of last week during an address to the Bundestag, in which she said: “We have a long and difficult road ahead of us.” But the more feelings of resentment towards Greece fester, the harder it will be for Merkel to keep voters – and members of her own party – on board.

It was no surprise that she drew nervous laughter from some politicians when she said she was looking forward to the opportunity to talk “and perhaps also to argue” with Tsipras. No one is in much doubt that arguing will be more likely than talking when Merkel receives him – with a military guard and a red carpet – at her chancellery.

The atmosphere between Athens and Berlin has soured in recent weeks over calls from Tsipras for Germany to pay war reparations for the Nazi occupation during the second world war.

German chagrin was only stoked further when the Greek defence minister threatened to send 10,000 refugees to Germany, and said he couldn’t guarantee there would not be a few Islamic State (Isis) terrorists among them.

This all followed years of tensions, in which Greek newspapers have repeatedly portrayed Merkel and her finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, as Nazis, and the German media in turn has depicted the Greeks as lazy and corrupt.

While opinions have been divided over the compensation claims, with Merkel’s government insisting the case was legally closed, one German couple took it upon themselves to, as they saw it, right a historical wrong.

On the back of an envelope, Ludwig Zaccaro and Nina Lange calculated that if the compensation claim was divided equally amongst the Germans, their own share would be €875 (£630), and so they paid the amount to a charity supporting austerity-hit families in the town of Nafpolio in the Peloponnese.

“We said ‘this is a symbolic gesture, that if we do this, maybe other Germans will follow’,” Zaccaro said. “It’s time to stop demanding the Greeks pay.”

Georg Franke, a 57-year-old market-stall holder in Potsdam, said while he believed the Greek government’s behaviour had been “childish”, he did not find its second world war compensation claims so outlandish.

“The trouble is, Germans know a lot about the atrocities carried out in their name by the Wehrmacht and the SS against the Jews from Germany, Poland and Hungary, as well as the Slavs, but we learnt very little in school about the horrors carried out against the Greeks. It was only recently, around the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, that I saw a documentary which touched on how they [Jewish Greeks] were almost all wiped out and it brought it home to me.”

The reason perhaps for the lack of discussion about the past is that for years, it suited both sides. Greeks began coming to Germany as Gastarbeiter (guestworkers) in their hundreds of thousands from the 1960s onwards. German tourists flocked to Greece’s holiday resorts. Both a mutual respect and a mutual dependency brought them closer together. Today, an estimated 300,000 Greeks live in Germany.

Germans still love to holiday on Greek islands. But Jorge Chatzimarkakis, born in the German city of Duisburg to a Greek Gastarbeiter, a member of the European parliament for the German liberal FPD as well as being a special envoy for the Greek government, in which role he has also demanded compensation and the setting up of a Marshall Plan-style reconstruction fund, said much of the erstwhile goodwill had evaporated since the financial crisis began.

“Relations are now a minefield,” he said. “I would not in my wildest dreams have imagined that there would have been such a hard confrontation course. It scares me.”

Despite the understanding of Franke, the market-stall holder, for the Greeks’ search for recognition for their wartime suffering, he believed, like many Germans, that it was wrong to mix the two issues.

“It makes you suspicious that the sum they’re demanding in compensation - around €300bn – is so amazingly close to the Greek debt total.” But he added that the German word for “debt” and “guilt” – Schuld – is the same. “The Greeks know that and they’re playing on that for all it’s worth,” Franke added.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/ma...ets-merkel

Greece needs to be removed from the EU and Schengen agreement (open border policy). Greece threatens to release millions of refugees if Germany doesn't pay bribes (free money) to Greece. Read this: https://refugeeresettlementwatch.wordpre...on-europe/

Post: #2

I got some gambling money invested into the Greek market. Go Greece!

Post: #3

They should pay them in Reichsmarks. A dead currency for a dead claim of reparations.

I hope the Germans get fired up and start acting like the Germans they are.

Post: #4

Quote:“It feels a bit like the Emperor’s New Clothes,” says Anton Brandt, referring to the Hans-Christian Andersen fairytale. “It just needs that child to stand up and say: ‘ha! they’re taking the piss out of us all’, but no one dares do it, especially not a German because we’re scared we’ll be accused of being anti-European,” the 38-year old administrator adds. “There’s no worse insult you can make towards a German.”

I don't think this is true.


But in all seriousness Greece has a completely broken political-economic system and is dead weight on the Eurozone.

Post: #5

(03-23-2015 11:53 AM)AntiTrace Wrote:  I got some gambling money invested into the Greek market. Go Greece!

Explain please.

I called the embassy here a year ago and told them to start premining their own crypto-currency they could use along with the euro which I thought was a great idea as if they mined a bunch of it then it went up in value as others started buying,mining,trading it they could use it to pay or partial pay pensioners. The people I talked to there and the ambassador couldn't wrap their Greek heads around my idea..

oh well but I do think it's time for me to go back there and run my big mouth.

Post: #6

Wait, do these German folk know that Greece leaving the EU would cause it to set in motion a series of events leading to the implosion of the EU and with it the German economy? The same economy everything is tied to? Shit, I doubt even the City of London could survive that Tsunami of destruction financially.

Greece would set the score for Italy, Spain and Portugal.

Post: #7

Fuck Germany. Bunch of goddamn hypocrites.

Back in 1953, they had 50% of their national debt forgiven.

They also never paid back a multi billion dollar loan extracted from Greece in 1943 at gunpoint.

They also never paid for even a small fraction of the amount of damage they did to Greece and its citizens.

Also, this whole thing is bullshit. They make it sound like Germany and the EU is giving a bunch of money to some lazy Greeks so they can go party. This is not true at all. None of the money actually goes to ordinary Greeks. Most of it goes right to French and German banks that made stupid loans.

Post: #8

(03-23-2015 11:53 AM)AntiTrace Wrote:  I got some gambling money invested into the Greek market. Go Greece!

You invested in a half dead horse. Consider your money gone.

Post: #9

(03-23-2015 11:53 AM)The Beast1 Wrote:  They should pay them in Reichsmarks. A dead currency for a dead claim of reparations.

I hope the Germans get fired up and start acting like the Germans they are.

Greece should pay money Albanians, Macedonians and Turks since Greeks are occupying their lands. And since we are at it. They should also pay money to Iran for all the things Alexander the Great did.

Post: #10

turuk, what's your beef with Greece? Are you Greek? What if they come out ahead are you going to meltdown here?

Post: #11

In two weeks the Greeks run out of money. Greece should be kicked from the EU immediately and end the Shengen agreement (open border policy) send NATO army to Greek border to enforce closed borders so Greece can't release millions of refugees into Europe. Greece can't be trusted. They vile, deceitful and treacherous in character and a 5th column in Europe.

Post: #12

(03-23-2015 12:46 PM)el mechanico Wrote:  turuk, what's your beef with Greece? Are you Greek? What if they come out ahead are you going to meltdown here?

I'm not Greek.

Post: #13

This is just empty saber-rattling. After having pushed its foolish policies on the eurozone for a decade now, Germany has much more to be afraid of than Greece if things start going downhill.

Post: #14

I don't feel sorry for the Germans at all. Tough shit. They're the ones who wanted to make a lot of money by floating bullshit loans that anyone with half a brain would have known were uncollectable.

The Greeks had a big party with the money...and what did you expect? I had a good time over there with them in the Balkans and like them a lot. Mediterranean cultures like Italy, Greece, Arabs, etc. are not like the cold, efficient northern Europeans. They're kind of like Brazilians, but with culture and civilization.

It's all about having fun...and God bless 'em.

Now pass me the olive oil....

Post: #15

I think the Greeks should tone it down more than a little with their ridiculous threats. As a people they are very nice and friendly. I've been there twice but the same people/government screwed up their finances.
Collecting pensions for dead people, tons of people registered as blind to collect welfare, government workers getting paid twice for the same job, people not ever paying income tax (rich and poor) and worst of all people collecting their pension as early as the age of 45 ( some jobs) while in many other countries in Europe people have to work till 67 to pay tax that goes to Greece. The same pensioners opens businesses, have jobs and barely pay tax.

Greece has the worst tax regulations in Europe and probably in the top 25 of the world too. I know, we all hate to pay tax but it's kind of what make a country economically reliable, a safe place to live, great infrastructure, healthcare etc etc.

It's the same with the police, every hates to get tickets but without any police the streets would be war zones.

Post: #16

(03-23-2015 12:14 PM)el mechanico Wrote:  

(03-23-2015 11:53 AM)AntiTrace Wrote:  I got some gambling money invested into the Greek market. Go Greece!

Explain please.

I called the embassy here a year ago and told them to start premining their own crypto-currency they could use along with the euro which I thought was a great idea as if they mined a bunch of it then it went up in value as others started buying,mining,trading it they could use it to pay or partial pay pensioners. The people I talked to there and the ambassador couldn't wrap their Greek heads around my idea..

oh well but I do think it's time for me to go back there and run my big mouth.

"See, you give me a Euro and I give you two MechCoins. Then you sell your two MechCoins for 1.5 Euro! Pure profit!"

Post: #17

The way I see it: € =/= EU
If Greece wants to be a sovereign country again, they should leave the € and reintroduce their own currency. If they stay with the €, they will be slaves to the interest rates forever.

Post: #18

Why should I pay for something that happend way before I was even born?
Bringing ideas like this up is poisoning the relations between Germany and Greece.

Post: #19

Germans and Northern Europeans in general should just staright up forgive Greek debt 100% and end this nonsense.

They could decide to do it tomorrow and Greece would be out of their worst economic downturn in living memory.

Post: #20

(03-23-2015 12:41 PM)turuk Wrote:  

(03-23-2015 11:53 AM)AntiTrace Wrote:  I got some gambling money invested into the Greek market. Go Greece!

You invested in a half dead horse. Consider your money gone.

I didn't invest anything, I gambled. Only time will tell if my gamble pays off.

El Mech Wrote:Explain please

I just chose some greek stocks that have been hammered but will rebound nicely if the greek situation improves. The greek situation could go any direction, which is what scares investors off. I however don't mind throwing some money at some hail mary stocks and seeing what happens. Some men like the blackjack tables, some men like the roulette wheel, its the same thing

Post: #21

(03-23-2015 03:54 PM)Sonsowey Wrote:  Germans and Northern Europeans in general should just staright up forgive Greek debt 100% and end this nonsense.

They could decide to do it tomorrow and Greece would be out of their worst economic downturn in living memory.

If Germany owed Greece money Greece would be calling them every minute of the day one day after the loan was given and there would be no excuse good enough trust me!

I say Germany should forgive the debt but take Crete or whatever they want from them to teach those lazy bastards a lesson.

Post: #22

How long until Greece has another military takeover?

Post: #23

Quote: I just chose some greek stocks that have been hammered but will rebound nicely if the greek situation improves. The greek situation could go any direction, which is what scares investors off. I however don't mind throwing some money at some hail mary stocks and seeing what happens. Some men like the blackjack tables, some men like the roulette wheel, its the same thing

I like all the things you speak of here. How do you buy Greek stocks?

Post: #24

(03-23-2015 03:59 PM)el mechanico Wrote:  

Quote: I just chose some greek stocks that have been hammered but will rebound nicely if the greek situation improves. The greek situation could go any direction, which is what scares investors off. I however don't mind throwing some money at some hail mary stocks and seeing what happens. Some men like the blackjack tables, some men like the roulette wheel, its the same thing

I like all the things you speak of here. How do you buy Greek stocks?

Lots of them are listed.

Check NBG out. 750ish prior the 2008 collapse. down to $1.50. Pure speculative play, but if Greece turns around and that banks aren't nationalized then some small play money now could be worth some serious retirement money ten or twenty years down the road.

Post: #25

I'm just worried there'll be boatloads of Greeks coming here to mooch off their rich relatives and creep on all the hot girls.