Greece will 'fight its way back' - prime minister

[Hoosier Daddy]

Source: CNN Website

BERLIN (CNNMoney) -- Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou "can guarantee that Greece will live up to all its commitments," he said Tuesday to an audience of German business leaders.

"I promise you we Greeks will soon fight our way back to growth and prosperity."

He was speaking as Greece braced for strikes in the face of government efforts to raise taxes and slash spending to try to close its huge budget deficit.

Papandreou said European nations needed to "stop blaming each other" for economic and financial problems that are threatening the stability of their common currency, the euro.



Read more: http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/27/news/international/Greece_economy.cnnw/index.htm?hpt=hp_t2

[AngryAmish]

1. no they will not

the culture is rotten

[stockholmer]

4. if by 'culture is rotten', you mean the banking culture of financial terrorism, then you are correct

[AngryAmish]

5. The Greeks borrowed a bunch of money

They cannot now repay it. They borrowed at a rate lower than the market rate because of the explicit backup of the european central bank. Greeks have a huge problem collecting taxes. Tax evasion is a way of life for far too many Greeks.

This is a cultural problem.

But it is a problem for a whole lotta banks because they lent the money to the greeks. Bankers tend to have the ears of governments. So the taxpayers of much of europe is on the hook for Greek spending. Cheers!

[Spider Jerusalem]

2. That's really not very credible

how are they going to "fight their way back" to somewhere they never were in the first place? The fiscal targets required for Euro entry were in the case of Greece nonexistent and based on nothing more than lies and false accounting, any growth Greece has experienced over the past decade and more since has been as a result of taking a free ride on the back of the single currency, which afforded them significantly better rates on their government debt than they would have otherwise been able to afford, and now that this is exposed, and the state of the Greek economy and the Greek government's fundamental inability to repay its outstanding debts, and its very bad risk for any others, threaten the stability of the Euro and the EU itself...of course he's going to say this, but it's just not believable. We're talking about a country with income tax avoidance rates of 60%, where no-one wants to pay tax and the public sector is the single largest employer (with a million public-sector employees in a country of ten million). This is not a recipe for future growth or economic stability.

[stockholmer]

3. mark my words, there will be a Greek default (a much needed one) by October 15 or so

The longer they try to stop the inevitable, the worse the global systemic blowback will be.

Haircuts for the banksters, NOW!

[Chan790]

7. Well, that's going to be great for the economy.

Oh well, we've got to hit rock-bottom and excise the rot entirely to turn things around eventually...better faster-down to start recovering sooner.

[customerserviceguy]

9. It does resemble CPR on a dead horse, doesn't it?

If you have any 401K's in stock funds, use the sucker rallies as an opportunity to stick them all safely in money market funds, while you still can. The sucker rallies are the signal to the rich to get their money out, heed them.

[closeupready]

6. No, they won't. LOL

[russspeakeasy]

8. Cut everybody's debt by 50% and watch them "fight" their way back..

:evilgrin:

[Nihil]

10. Nice one!

> "I promise you we Greeks will soon fight our way back to growth and prosperity."

Proof that Baghdad Bob *did* get a better gig after all!

:rofl: