loansharks

Last week in the news we had quite a breakthrough. The police in Salonika managed to crack one of the most vicious gangs of loansharks. Members included bank managers and the highest ranking member of the local revenue department. Victims included many local businessmen who had needed to borrow money at high interest. More than 53 members of this gang where arrested and all week long taped conversations where being played on the news. Many of the victims where led to economic ruin by this gang and some to suicide. It is actualy a couple of suicide notes that included names of people above suspicion that led to this investigation. The sad part of this whole icky mess is the methodology used by the loansharks and how similar it proves to be to the methods of international lenders. There where four different gangs that lent money at different interest rates. When a borrower would be near default a new loan would be made up at a lower interest rate. The lender of course would appear to the victim as somebody who was unrelated to the original loan shark. Something of a good guy. Then when they couldn't squeeze anymore money out of their victims this way they would turn up the heat with more classical methods. The taped conversations are insane. First they are friendly and it sounds like they are trying to help somebody out. Then they become irritated and finaly threatening. The exact same techniques that collection agencies use. For anybody watching the methods used over the last few months by the EU and the IMF with Angela, Christine and Olli you will see the exact same methodology. First they want to help us out. Then when it is time to fork over the loan they become irritated and up the interest. Along with internal arguments, yeah sure, as to how unfair these interest rates are, new demands for deeper austerity measures are put forth. At present all loans to Greece are being installed with a three month delay. To make that clear to you, the money from the new loans arrives here with a three month delay while the old loan with the higher interest rate keeps running. The new loan is probably running too. So we have that turn of last century (1900s) situation where we are called upon to pay payments on a loan that was never deposited. Angela gets mad at Christine and when the two of them finaly agree Olli gets mad at both. They have their accomplices at Standard and Poors downgrade the victims credit rating thus upping interest on the original loans. Hedge funds are set up in third countries to profit from the spread in interest rates while the IMF and the EU Commission step in. Many thanks to Angela Merkel, Olli Rhen and Christine Lagarde... and their Troika reps that come to visit Athens every few months... break a leg guys or an arm or whatever it takes. Just get the money.

fakeloma

Does not rhyme with Oklahoma as the accent falls on the e. Fakeloma was the practice adopted by the Junta of the sixties and seventies to find out what everybody is thinking. Something like a witch hunt that would be the predescor to todays gallup poll. The big difference is that the junta wanted to know who was thinking. Name, address and social insurance number. It developed a police ID card that included someones fingerprints. We still have these today and along with the Cambodian Khmer Rouge Greece is the only country to have kept a file on everyone's fingerprints. So a moral police was set up where one could fink on their neighbour and do so anonymously. Phone taps and a complicated system of following every conversation by everyone with key or trigger words was also devised. I do not know if any of this is sounding familiar to anyone out there but it should be. No supercomputers in those days and everyone was kept on file, in Greek "fakelos". The practice of keeping someones private life on file, or of filing someone is described by the verb "fakeloma". So why should we care now. Espescialy after the burning of these files back in 1990? In fact there where multiple files of people in various government departments including hydro and telephone and police and moral police and secret police. 40 million files in all six for every woman man and child. This is the problem with despotism everywhere. It developes paranoid leaders who think that there original good intentions still exists. Just watch the news here in Greece as the bankers of the IMF the EU and other lenders get limoed around town. Heavy security everywhere guarding these hard and unrelenting faces. All week they refuse to discuss anything and only put forth their demands. The latest is that the Troika, the three horsed carriage of our "test" apocalypse, should simply appoint a Prime Minister for us. Sure would be more convenient as our new appointee would probably be a German native speaker and we could save the money on a translater. We would also save the expense and trouble of holding elections seeing as their is no chance of any of these present bastards, or anybody who will co-operate, ever ruling again. The latest gallup poll shows it. But I digress... the biggest savings yet has come with a worldwide voluntary fakeloma of a huge number of the worlds citizens. It has improved on the old system as the data entry is done by the fakeloma victims themselves. They can facebook or twitter and like or follow showing publicly their support, faces, thoughts and trends. As for those hard faces from the banking centers of the world, they can keep their money as they have bankrupted in smiles, charity, happiness. Why win the whole world if all you have to show for it is hell. Oh, and please read the label under our elected Prime Minister.
ps. You gotta like the "Macedonian" flag in the background, for us this adds insult to injury...

Fakelaki

It is a time of changes here in Greece. A time of redirection and re-evaluation. Of changing values and behaviours. Of restructuring and reorganizing. The pressure is on and it is high. A volatile situation as the real problems we have been facing for years have been left unadressed by the government and the troika (the loan givers), governmental corruption, so deeply rooted in fact that it is considered improper not to partake. The latest scandal that has unfolded is a series of bribes needed to be buried in one of Athens three cemeteries. The funeral chapel driver was in charge of the bribing that included employees of the cemetery and even the police officer directing traffic to and from the cemetery. Certainly a bizarre case and typical of the "fakelaki" style corruption where one gives a bribe in an envelope to a civil servant or a doctor or whoever else need be in order to get through some red tape or to ensure better treatment in a hospital. I was of course against this bribing, espescialy of doctors, as there is an obvious conflict of interest when one bribes in order to have adequate health care. It is something I have been passionately opposed to, so much so infact that I have never attempted to write about it. I personally bribed both doctors who gave birth to my children. It is the way things are done here and one must do as the Romans, or opt for birth at home. Another repatriated Greek, and Ozzie, lost her husband in a car accident and opted to donate his organs. His organs went to save the lives of two people on waiting lists, in Italy. It is strange as one would think the organs would go to someone on the endless waiting lists right here in Greece. However considering that there may well be a market for organs, enabled by this system of tipping your doctor with a "fakelaki", signing up as an organ donor is risky indeed. Very few Greeks do. I am sure that the pressure to sign consent for the widow would be immense. Even more disturbing is the fact that the doctors need consent to get the organs and consent to remove all external life support so that they may remove the organs just as soon as the donor is pronounced dead. The organs need to be taken while still warm, so to speak. How can one trust a doctor who accepts bribes? Can you trust their opinion as to when to stop life support. There is the example, years ago, of a man who was pronounced braindead, in the very same hospital, and as the nursing staff began removing life support, shed a single tear. Luckily his family was present in the room and subsequently refused to co-operate any more. The man was kept on life support and although it may seem unbelievable I met him in the local grocery store with his daughter. He started his own family after his near death experience. It is crazy how a little bribing can change the dynamic of trust that is so nescessary when entrusting your life to someone else. We still need to take about fakelaki's predecessor, the dreaded Fakeloma and the modern day version, and very free, facebook. In another instalment though.

responde

those are some hard numbers...
well, its that or outright fire one third of the civil/public servants which would put close to 20% of the working population on the skids.
for perspective on my end, what is the cost of:
gas, bread, milk, a whole chicken, rent on a decent apartment, monthly hydro (electric)
how much income tax comes off ones cheque
what is the property tax on a small home in a decent part of a big city/small town and do people actually pay it.
has the "Occupy Greece" movement foused on putting pressure on the gov to make big industry start paying taxes.
Mentat is only as good as the information made available to him...

and a safe and joyous New Year to you too my freind
P.

I have to say my dear friend that you raise some good questions. Gas is 1.68 euros per litre, heating oil is somewhere above one euro, I can't afford heating anymore, milk is 1 euro and some change a litre, rent is in the 400 euro range for a family of four in my rural town, in Athens it would be close to 600. Rent is the only commodity that is dropping as owners can't afford to have empty apartments anymore, unemployment benefits, bought and paid for while working, last one year and there is no such thing as welfare. Those suited technocrats are coming back for another visit on the 15th and are already issuing warnings and sending messages for more taxes and deeper wage cuts. You are ill-informed about the civil service though as there has been already a firing of all those hired on temp basis and a shuffling of the rest into less sure positions. They better hurry up and fire the rest as these taxes that are called haratsi are realy draining us. The economy here has always been based on construction and tourism. Everything else feeds off of those two and agriculture. Agriculture has been dominated by EU regulations and has degraded into a nonprofit organization. Two years of a tax barrage have reduced new construction to zero as buildings completed in 2008 sit unsold. Property taxes is a very good question but were never part of our system here. The tax base has been the GST and recycled money through income tax. What can I say. There has never been a better time to be rich. Ever. Rich people don't get taxed anywhere it seems. A remnant of Reaganomics that just wont go away. Not without blood anyways. You should look up plutocracy.
So for a recap: average wage is under 1000, average rent is around 500, cost of living for a family of four is 1500 to 2000 euros without rent and let us not forget the haratsi tax added on to our hydro bills at 200 euros per month, on average. The average person that I talk to is talking about buying a kalasnikof as a wise investment, with bullets at under 100 euros... today someone stole a Picasso and a Monet from the national art gallery. A very easy robbery thanks to cutbacks.

Happy New Year

Here we are in the eye of the storm for the first few days of 2012. Today is the 6th of the month and the blessing of the waters. All over the world and wherever there is a Greek Orthodox congregation the priest will be blessing the local port or beach or lake and then will throw his cross into the water. Young men will jump into the frigid waters, or warm if down under, to have the honor of retrieving the cross. It promises to be a tough year. I thought I would take a moment to tell the world a little about our predicament. I will mention wages of people I know along with their family situation. Wage of a father of four working in the sanitary department of the local municipality, in 2009 was earning 1400 euros, beginning of 2012 800 euros and expecting the next wage cut. Wage of a father of one with ten years seniority paramedic, 2009 was 1200 euros, 2012 starting at below 800 and expecting new wage cut. Wage of published university professor, 1600 euros in 2009, below 900 and expecting new wage cut in 2012. The other big move on the part of government is to attempt to abolish easter, x-mas and summer bonuses. Along with new taxes and a 10 percent increase in electricity we should be able to put the country to rest by mid summer. The beat on the street from seniors, workers, civil servants, grocery store clerks and owners, taxi cab drivers, and the periptero (kiosk or newstand): no blood, no change...frangolevantes go home!