Greece is a poor country full of rich people: fewer than 5,000 Greeks declare a taxable income in excess of €100,000 and yet the parking lots outside the Athenian nightclubs are full of Ferraris and Lamborghinis. It is estimated that Greeks evade income tax to the tune of €15 BILLION a year! Others think it could be more than twice that figure.
And yet they're paying themselves pensions which are the highest in Europe: on average 95.7% of their last income! By contrast, German pensioners - who are now called upon to bail out Greece - receive 43%. A quarter of all Greeks work in the public service on comfortable salaries and they can not be terminated.
Here are two real-life examples: Thanssis Avramopoulos and his wife Despona live in their own comfortable apartment in a fashionable suburb of Athens, with two cars parked outside. He's a former telecom worker who at the age of 50 retired with a "golden handshake" of 12 months' salary and a lifelong pension equal to 100% of his last salary. His wife, aged 49, went on a pension seven years ago, at 60% of her last salary for the rest of her life.
Now the European Union and the IMF want to impose some austerity measures before they hand over €60 BILLION. How do the Greeks feel about it? They're protesting.
"Hundreds of dockworkers blocked passenger vessels at Greece's largest port, Piraeus, on Wednesday to protest the austerity measures."
Maybe there were German taxpaying tourists on the boats, who wanted to see for themselves where their money would be going. They may just get to see what they are looking for on a grand scale:
"About half a million Greek civil servants are planning another 24-hour strike on Thursday."
Wow, half a million civil servants! And those are just the ones protesting! (Greece has more than a million public servants.)
Something that has been lost on the press and their readers is the nature of a bailout. When a company, or a country, requires a bailout, they aren't getting the money for themselves. That money goes to the creditors. Otherwise they wouldn't need a bailout.
Where did the UK taxpayers' money go in the Royal Bank of Scotland bailout? It turned out that of the billions of dollars the UK taxpayer gave to Royal Bank of Scotland, USD$841 million of it went to Goldman Sachs to pay for the losses incurred by the bank from its investment in the collateralised debt obligation (CDO) structured by... the "fabulous" Fabrice Tourre.
Can you guess who AIG's single largest creditor was? Yep, Goldman Sachs. So AIG gets bailed too. And the Treasury Secretary just happened to be a former Goldman Sachs CEO...
When you bail out a company (or country), you pay their creditors. The attention should be on them.
Are you wondering who Greece's creditors are? We know Goldman is involved in Greek CDSs again, which they used to help hide Greece's debt levels.
