Getting Greeks to Pay Taxes Is Tsipras Biggest Test at Home
www.bloomberg.com/.../getting-rich-greeks-to-pay-taxes-is-tsipras-bigge...
10 Feb 2015 - The age-old problem of getting more Greeks to pay their taxes adds pressure ... Battle of the Titans with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, he may find he has ... said he repeated his offer to send 500 German tax officials to Greece to ... on control by politicians slows and tax collectors perform fewer audits,
Update 20 July 2015.
Email debate on Greece - Germany has not pushed Greece into un-repayable debt.
Greece was already bust when it joined the Euro in 2001/02, but it misled the
other Member States. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1095783.stm
Greece was bust pre-2001, because it emerged from a very
troubled, politically unstable and economically poor and primitive background
governed by an " offshore aristocracy" which had never and will never
pay tax - which in turn triggered strong left-wing local reactions, which
created the silly large pensions at 50 etc culture that the Greeks may have to
be painfully weaned from. For example, one family alone, Papandreou, hid
500,000,000 (half a billion) euro in HSBC Zurich. They are one of the 2,058
Greek secret account holders at HSBC Zurich on the Lagarde-List. Zurich is but
one of dozens of banks in 72 global tax-havens. (say 24 banks x 72 tax-havens =
1,728 nest-eggs to be counted, which the OECD and Wall St calculate at $32
trillion frozen offshore). The Greek diaspora (Council of overseas Greeks {SAE}
put the figure at around 7 million worldwide) is almost as large as the Greek
10M population. As soon as Greece, having lied about its balance-sheet, became
a member, with access to the EU banking system - they abused it and became a
channel for Russian mafia and other nations' tax-evasion-capital-flight -
screwing up the European balance sheet. Each Greek household is now in debt to
the EU of 120,000 euro (plus their normal mortgage etc debts). It has recently
been said that no other country on Earth, throughout history, has received (and
siphoned off) as much money-aid from other countries.
The dumb Greeks have been screwed by the clever Greeks.
Angela Merkel - Angel of Mercy - is not intent on
screwing the Greeks. She just happens to preside over the EU member with the
largest surplus - so the redistribution of EU wealth falls disproportionately
on Germany.
Hug a Generous Jerry
Noel
Yes. Fascinating.
As you know, one thing we learn from history is that we
learn nothing from history.
Germany was ground down post 1918, and look what
happened.
Germany has ground Greece down. What will happen? The
rise of extremist parties in Greece? It's already happening.
Massive public disruption? It's already beginning.
Greece is in an impossible position. They are not strong
enough to get out of their mess themselves. Germany got them into this mess.
Germany needs to lead the way out.
Basically it has to start by writing off much of the
Greek debt. I can't see Frau Merkel agreeing to this unless Hollande and the
IMF twist her arm.
This, and Obama's Iran Deal of the Century! What a
week!!!
Nick
On 17 Jul 2015, at 13:07, Mel Cooper wrote:
> Have a look at this:
>
>
> So if they now have identified a San Andreas fault
line between Germany and France, when does the earthquake shatter the whole
thing?
>
> Mel
****************
Update 20 July 2015. Letter to The Guardian
20th July 2015.
The deeply worrying implication of
Jill Treanor’s report of KPMG’s analysis “Banks expected to struggle with
ring-fencing target” Guardian 20 July 15; is that the 2008/09 £1.2 trillion
taxpayer bailout (£54,000 per UK household) was not nearly enough; and that
banks have also lost all the credit balances of today’s savers. Separate out
the ordinary depositors funds and the banks’ gambling arms will be revealed to
be in serious debt; so the logic goes. Why wait till 2020; ring-fence these
crazy transactions today. Will KPMG tell us how much more banks have lost - and
who has gained?
Noel Hodson
Oxford
Update 26 Jan 2015. Greece has Voted. Letter to the Guardian:
Your news, editorial and
speculations about Syriza’s victory in Greece, might now be followed by an
analysis of where Greek’s past decades of wealth, present revenues, EU grants,
loans and gifts have gone. Such investigation will rapidly conclude that VIP
Greeks have bankrupt their nation through massive, persistent
tax-evasion-capital-flight. The government suppressed Lagarde List
of 2,059 Greek accounts at HSBC, Zurich, is a small indication, as is the
fact that Greek ship owners are exempt from tax. Until these immense capital
outflows are all repatriated under existing tax laws (It is not “All perfectly
legal” it is self-invoicing fraud), and the drain is plugged; pouring in Euro’s
(from all of us) just adds to the swamp of offshore corruption. Will Syriza be
any different? Dare they challenge their (offshore) aristocracy? Will they plug
the drain?
Original Article: Greek Ruins.
As the 1% and their sycophants and acolytes assemble in Davos, to congratulate themselves on owning the World - or at least having legal title to paper that purports to attest to their ownership of the world - and of pacifying the dimwitted, somnolent 99%, a catastrophic time-bomb is ticking away in Athens. According to historians and economists*, it has been ticking for hundreds if not thousands of years; for so long that it has become part of the tolerated and accepted background of our entire money-economy. It is symptomatic of the deep fault lines in the rock strata at the foundations of our western capitalism.
The tiny, ancient nation of Greece, just 2% of Europe, the cradle of democracy and civilization, is sinking into the cesspit of endemic, irreversible, rotten, stinking, unchallenged, unquestioned, habitual corruption. Davos and the world will quietly, sadly stand by as Greece founders, sinks and implodes; making a terrible stink. The corrupt Greek 1% have long ago abandoned the country, fleeing to larger, more stable economies with all their nation's capital. The intelligentsia, less wealthy perhaps, talented professionals and grade A students have fled. This feckless, selfish, cunning Greek diaspora carries with it the viral disease of endemic corruption. They carry a deadly transmittable plague that contaminates the seeds and roots of any healthy economy they infest. Having killed the original host, they crawl onto and into the bodies of all neighboring civilizations.
"Look at how effortlessly successful I am in the Anglo-Saxon economic system. I outwit all governments. I don't work. I don't make things. I don't grow or harvest anything. I never risk my own assets. I have the best of everything. I am superior. I am clever. I pay no taxes. I contribute nothing to my society. I am a supreme consumer. I am the ultimate tapeworm and parasite. I am Davos." Their viral message is compelling and only fools reject it. Only fools get their hands dirty with toil. Only fools work. Only fools repair the national infrastructure. Only fools repay their national debts. Only fools and little people pay taxes. "Ask not, what can I do for my community - ask only, for how long can I suck the lifeblood from my neighbors." And all the other clever folk in Rome, Madrid, London, New York and Zurich - will catch the disease; and start to sicken their countries.
The infestation has at last killed Greece. Only the poor fools, the hoi-polloi, and their undernourished, uneducated kids are left in the hollowed out shell that is Athens. For the next century, the hapless indigenous population will be burdened by the international debts incurred by the diaspora - who shipped the borrowed cash abroad. Their prices will collapse. Their wages will be further decimated. They will be unemployed and underemployed. They will be the ultimate "flexible" workforce at the edge of Europe - but outside the European Union. Any new investment into Greece will be immediately stolen by the diaspora and will disappear into tax-havens. They will serve tourists, serve coffee, break plates, make mournful music and Zorba dance for their supper. They will catch fish, grow olives and grapes - but the diaspora, creditors and tax collectors will take the harvest. Their ferries and ships will sail but all the income will go the same day to tax-havens. Greek shipowners don't live in Greece and are tax exempt. Greece will revert to medieval peasant conditions.
If they recover slightly. If they overcome the Herculean tasks and rebuild any semblance of an economy - the survivors will themselves adopt the "clever" centuries old habits of their ancestors - and cheat and steal and emigrate, as fast as their brave Olympian legs will carry them. Nobody on Earth is so foolish as to try to rescue a crippled economy with massive long term investment. No Greek citizen is foolish enough to make some money and leave it in Greece. The siphons will be active and immediate and one way only - out to tax-havens. Tax-evasion-capital-flight** is a major symptom of the Greek disease - and after it has passed the diaspora event horizon - it is incurable.
Maybe Russia will buy Greece at a knockdown price. Or, perhaps the only possible future is total, calamitous, chaotic collapse and civil war - followed by 250 years of Sharia Law.
*"Greece needs debts cancelled and growth" Guardian letters 21 Jan 2015.
** "Up to $32 trillion is hidden in tax havens. Just who does this benefit? Not the people who own it - and they can't take it with them" Guardian letters 21 Jan 2015.
http://www.theguardian.com/tone/letters
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