July 17, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
49:14
3025 The Fall of Greece. Prepare Yourself Accordingly.
The world’s economic landscape has been rocked by the Greece Debt Crisis and as austerity looms over the Greek population - Athens burns, protests mount and fear of a Grexit rises. As discussions about debt forgiveness and a possible bailout continue the Eurozone is on edge with fears as to the future stability of the Euro and the possibility of economic collapse. As Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and German Chancellor Angela Merkel engage in a showdown with the world watching, everybody is looking for answers as to how this problem originated. | What is the Truth About the Greece Debt Crisis? How did this start - and how can it be prevented in the future? Those who don’t learn from their mistakes shall be doomed to repeat them. Sadly, politicians never learn. There will be no economic recovery, prepare yourself accordingly. | Includes: the Greek Civil War, Greek Economic Miracle, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), European Economic Community, the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), the Industrial Reconstruction Organization (OAE), the destruction of the drachma, the Koskotas scandal, the point of no return and much much more! | Source: http://www.fdrurl.com/fall-of-greece
Hi everybody, this is Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Main Radio.
I hope you're doing well.
This is a tour, a sprint, if you will, through how did Greece end up on the edge of the abyss as it currently stands, who's responsible, what are the trends, and perhaps what can be done.
We were actually thinking of putting a chime, like bing, every time something that happened in Greece directly mirrored something that happened in America or England or other Western countries, but...
It pretty much would be a constant Bing fest, so we've decided not to.
There are numerous parallels that are highly instructive.
So, let's go back to the Second World War, 1944, shortly before Nazi Germany withdrew their forces from Greece.
A civil war erupted between two anti-Nazi military factions, the communist EAM Elas and the democratic Edes, or EDES. Now, the communists, of course, anti-monarchy.
The democratic was anti-monarchy.
They wanted a republic.
That was socialist.
So you've got the choice between communists and socialists.
You know, death by beheading, death by slow poison dart, frog poison, and that's what was going on.
Now the communists, because nasty people tend to be incredibly dedicated at times, managed to take over virtually the entire country before the British army, which I'm sure had nothing better to do, defeated them and forced them underground.
Now, there was a second outbreak of hostilities in 1946, and of course, concerned about the possible spread of communism, the US backed the democratic forces under the Truman Doctrine, which was established in the mid-1940s.
Harry S. Truman said, you know, the US will come to the aid of all democratic nations under threat from an external or internal authoritarian or dictatorial set of forces.
And after three years of fighting, the communists in Greece were defeated, and the Greek government exiled them and their supporters from the country in a giant political science Ebola sneeze, spreading all of these communists out into neighboring countries, not Egypt.
Not great.
You have a terrible infection called communism.
Let's help you spread it by putting you out of the country.
This, of course, from the civilization that killed Socrates, who arguably has done less harm to humanity than the hundred million-plus slaughtered by communists throughout the 20th century.
They put Socrates to death, but the communists, who would have established the usual hellhole of starvation and gulags, political oppression, And persecution, they just exiled the Communists.
Socrates, you kill the Communists, you exile.
Now, the period after the Greek Civil War was marked by a significant influx of foreign aid.
So by 1950, about 50% of Greece's GDP came from the Marshall Plan, which is a U.S. program, to aid European countries in the post-war period.
It had very little to do with setting up freedom in these countries.
You can see the truth about Germany for more on what Germany did in this situation, was actually get free market reforms put in place.
But here you see the absolute madness of Of fighting communism, which is the forced redistribution of income, with the forced redistribution of income through taxes and foreign aid.
We'll save you from economic tyranny by subsidizing you to the tune of 50%.
I'm sure that will bring about a free market for you.
So with all of this international funding, the economy seemed to begin to rise from the ashes of the Civil War, but progress was of course very slow.
Now, what is called the Greek economic miracle, and we all know how realistic miracles are, in fact.
By the mid-1950s, the communist activities had been suppressed, and as one historian noted, once the Greek Communist Party was thoroughly crushed and the country was firmly in the western sphere of influence, there was no need for the United States to continue economic assistance.
To Greece.
You see, so the lesson is taught that if you destabilize yourself, you'll get huge amounts of foreign aid with which to bribe your citizens in voting for you.
But if you get back on your feet, all of those crutches will be taken away and your economic and political futures will fall flat on your face.
So Greece was weaned slowly off the foreign aid injections that had been receiving for years, but that money was replaced by foreign investment.
Now, not the good kind of foreign investment, like the foreign investment that arises out of a free market preference for local conditions, but out of a kind of subsidized mercantilism.
Following U.S. advice under the grip of massive amounts of cocaine stimulus Keynesianism, the Greek Prime Minister at the time inflated the money supply, reducing the value of the drachma relative to the dollar by a half, full 50%, and he abolished special import taxes.
So the GDP started to rise rapidly, and the period that followed was termed the Greek Economic Miracle, but not homegrown, not organic, and therefore not sustainable.
So the weak drachma and lucrative economic benefits, coupled with U.S. promotion of Greece among American companies, attracted increasing foreign interest and investments.
Quote, American businesses started investing in Greece gradually after the end of the Civil War and escalated such activity after 1953.
By the way, the sources, as usual, in the description below.
So, after 1949, oh, can you, can you, I can, can you smell the delicious aroma of the free market?
No, you can't, because after 1949, American firms gained control of major construction and waterworks projects and invested in mining and industry.
The government also signed an exclusive contract in June 1949 with an American-based transnational corporation, granting the company a monopoly, yes, not free market, a monopoly of the country's communications network, similar things, of course, occurring in Mexico at the moment.
The Greek economic miracle reflected a pattern which became common in Greece, stagnation without outside investment and financial support.
And of course, not for the first time nor for the last time, were American companies' votes and they were bought by giving them access to the capacity to export manufacturing jobs overseas.
After a period of political instability, following the ouster of King Constantine and a military coup, this ended in 1974, the Greek people voted to establish a constitutional republic instead of returning to a monarchy.
The result was met with celebrations in the streets of Athens and other major cities.
Now, very big topic.
Hans Hoppe has more on this if you want.
But a monarchy is not all bad because a monarchy has to give the kingdom to his children, right?
So he has to look to the long-term sustainable value of the economy.
A democracy is a hyped-up temporary monarchy where you don't care about the long-term value of the country because you can't will it to your country.
And so monarchies tend to be more sustainable than democracies, which is, you know, a massive pillaging of the body politic with very little thought to the future.
On January 1st, 1981, Greece joined the European Economic Community, which aimed to bring about economic integration between European member countries.
And we've got The Truth About the Euro just came out.
You can check that out on this channel.
In the Greek legislative election, October 21st in 1981, the Pan-Hellenic Socialist movement, PASOK, won a landslide victory over the conservative New Democracy Party, Andreas Papandreou, became Greece's first socialist prime minister.
The party's main slogan was ALAGI, the Greek word for change.
I don't know why anybody has any investment in philosophy or goes to school where you can just use the word change to attract people who like stuff for nothing.
When Papandreou took power, Greece's public debt was 28% of GDP. Ah!
The good old days.
And borrowing money was relatively easy due to their EEC membership.
So without wasting any time, Papandreou and the Pasok government went on a massive government spending spree.
So we'll see this over and over again, that the Greeks have a choice between some restraint and pure unbridled government spending.
And let's just say it's not a huge shock, given what we're seeing in Greece at the moment, which way the population went.
Under Papandreou's Contract with the People program, the new government immediately raised middle and low incomes through a system of wage indexation.
They instituted price controls, which of course lead to shortages, introduced tax incentives on investments, which is a payoff for the corporations who can't attract investment on the free market, therefore the government has to channel in a 401k style or RSP style tax break.
They have to channel money into the stock market that otherwise wouldn't be there.
And they offered easy credit to politically favored groups.
They expanded the social security system, strengthened labor unions, created a national healthcare system, Increased pensions for civil servants and much, much more.
Oh, and he also welcomed back the communists from their exile.
So, yeah, created a huge minimum wage that was tied to inflation and went on a giant spending spree.
Now, not only does that produce, like, visible distortions, like massive growth in spending and the public sector and so on, what's harder to see is what it crowds out, right?
You take all of that money, you funnel it into government programs, you're taking it away from the free market that otherwise might be using it to create sustainable growth.
So...
Papandreou campaigned on an agenda which includes exiting the European community.
But the alliance was in fact necessary to fund this massive welfare state expansion, which was almost exclusively financed through debt.
So the debt-to-GDP ratio just went through the roof, as we can see.
And so, you know, the EEC, it's like the Roach Motel.
You can check in, but there's no mechanism by which you can check out, which is why the Grexit is such a challenge at the moment.
There's no recognized or known mechanism by which you can get out of the EU. So because they were...
In the European Commission, and they were anticipated to start leeching off or hooking into more responsible countries' history credit rating, then they got a whole bunch of money for free.
What would have happened if they had not joined this union is that the interest rates that people were willing to lend Greece at would have gone through the roof, which would have minimized the amount of money that they were able to spend.
As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman noted, quote, Greece, alas, after it joined the European Union in 1981, actually became just another Middle East petrostate.
Only instead of an oil well, it had Brussels.
That's where the EU is headed.
Which steadily pumped out subsidies aid in euros with low interest rates to Athens.
And you bought.
You bought your way in.
So...
Big picture perspective time, less than 40 years after a bloody and violent civil war to oppose communism, which killed 158,000 people out of 9 or 10 million, and relocated over a million Greek inhabitants, Greece decided basically to give communism a try anyway.
It didn't take long after a democracy was established for the will of the people to be heard loud and clear, with one loud, thunderous, greedy, leech-like voice, they cry, We want free stuff!
So, here is state spending in millions of drachmas, 1974 to 1990, also known as the escalating slope of infinite doom.
Well, not quite infinite, I guess.
I can only assume that the white line at the bottom is their tax base.
But that's the amount of spending that occurs.
See, relatively low, right?
And then they get in, they join the EU, and it goes...
This would normally be limited by higher interest rates in lending, but because they were considered to be backstopped by Brussels, that there would be a lender of last resort called the European Central Bank, people were willing to lend to them, because they're basically lending to Germany and other countries.
In 1982, government intervention raised weekly earnings in manufacturing by 7.8%.
Since there was also a reduction of hours of work, the real hourly remuneration increase reached 10.3%, while at the same time, output per person declined by 3%.
This is the same kind of stuff the governments always do.
I can remember Obama was saying, oh, we're going to cut your premiums by thousands of dollars, because, you know, he's a business genius with vast amounts of experience in the healthcare provision industry, so he can confidently say that with the power of the state, he can save you lots of money.
So he goes into politics rather than becoming an untold billionaire, Offering better products in the free market or what's left of the free market in the U.S. So whenever you see wages going up and output per person declining, it's the hand of the state, the bloody fist of the state, rearranging things to their own benefit.
So this hurt exports, of course, by making Greek goods very expensive overall.
So do they repeal this onerous legislation that makes exports...
More expensive?
Of course not!
They just devalued the drachma by 15% in January 1983.
Now, that makes buying goods out of Greece cheaper.
But of course, currency devaluation makes all of your imports more expensive as well.
So due to the wage indexing program, any short-term gain in competitiveness due to cheaper Greek exports was immediately eroded, right?
So when you devalue the currency, inflation hits, but because all of your public sector workers have wages indexed to inflation, your costs go up.
So you don't actually make anything anyway.
You just completely dislocate the economy and confuse anybody with an entrepreneurial bone in their body.
The comparative rise in import prices due to the devaluation was immediately transmitted to wages, and thus the costs and prices are the joys of central planning.
This vicious cycle made doing business with Greece incredibly difficult, devalued the currency compared to other countries overall, and didn't lead to any increase in exports.
The increase in labor costs reduced profitability and economic growth almost completely stalled, from 3.1% per year in 1975 to 1980 period to 0.7% per year.
Between 1980 and 1985, rising to 1.4, between 85 and 90, when they got some cheap money from the European Union.
So, the usual crap.
So, it hurts exports, and more fundamentally, it hurts Greek brains, because you get thrown into this kaleidoscopic frappe blender mission maker of government regulations and taxations and manipulations and currency devaluations, and it becomes almost impossible to plan for any kind of business.
So here are exports of goods and services as percentage GDP from 1960 to 1995.
As you can see, quite a bit lower.
You know, 10-15 percentage points.
And that, of course, trade and balance.
Imports of goods and services much higher.
Tragically, they were not importing any rational economics textbooks.
But this is a big, big problem.
So once Papandreou gets into power, exports decreased, but imports remained relatively constant.
The massive devaluation of the drachma should make the goods more attractive to outside countries due to the lower cost, but nationalization, wage indexing, and all of that destroys all of that stuff.
So this is not a sustainable situation.
So these continuous pay rises and other redistributive income policies since the early 80s aided creating this less productive middle class, and they were attracted to almost unrestrained consumerism, especially related to imports.
Bing!
Given the destabilizing economic policies, Greek businesses declined, as it was difficult for them to compete in both price and quality with outside companies.
Greek retail, which had previously been dominated by small family businesses, was overtaken by large wholesale companies.
As politics gets more involved in the economy, as the government gains more and more power over the movement of goods and services and capital in an economy, larger companies tend to dominate because they can influence government policy a lot more.
So if you care about mom-and-pop shops, you need to keep the government as far away from the economy as possible.
The Greek market was saturated by foreign-branded products, particularly electrical goods and automobiles imported under exclusive distributorships.
Right, so...
When I was an entrepreneur, I was in charge of a research and development department.
And it was a challenge, right?
Because the business as a whole was always like, well, this is overhead.
I'm like, no, this is the future profits of the company.
You can reduce R&D. You can reduce marketing and so on.
And you can also offer massive discounts.
It's called stuffing the pipe to people to buy your stuff in the here and now.
But all you're doing is inflating your numbers now at the expense of...
Your growth in the future, and this is what happens.
People stop investing, worker productivity goes down, and that's really the basis of economic growth.
So it appeared these businesses are going to succumb to bankruptcy, but the newly created state-owned Industrial Reconstruction Organization took them over and continued to run them at a loss.
Say hello to bailouts, also known as the multi-decade Japanese strangulation of the economy and the fertility of the youth.
After initially giving trade unions more power and control, the government reassumed control over labor union activity.
The socialization of various important means of production, which was to promote worker participation and improve productivity, instead led to the massive amounts of state subsidies for inept I mean, the creative destruction of capitalism requires that companies that are incompetent go out of business, thus releasing the labor and the capital to more productive areas.
But of course, everybody who's got a job wants to keep it, while those who would have had jobs if the capital had been reallocated don't even know what they're missing, which is why it doesn't work when you get people to vote on economic policies.
Civil servants, and this is a number that is far outstripping the relatively minor growth in population.
1972, 53,000.
1986, a peak of 107,000.
And these are people who, it's like a crazy loss to the economy because they're being taken out of the private sector, being put into the public sector, where mostly they're interfering with the private sector, plus they're accumulating massive pension obligations and all this.
Early retirements.
And the early retirements, of course, open up new opportunities for young people.
You get people to retire at 50 or 55, they're replaced with younger people, which artificially depresses the unemployment numbers, right?
Because they're getting these artificial jobs because people are retiring early, and then that pops, as we've seen recently, after the economic crash of 07-08.
In Greece, overall public pension expenditures increased from 5.8% to 10.7% of GDP between 1979 and 1985, so almost doubled in six or so years.
During the 1980s alone, the number of pensioners increased by a shocking 42%.
In 1988, the gap between the pension expenditures and contributions was equivalent to about 3% of GDP's total gross national product.
Absolutely unsustainable.
Until the late 1970s, Greece had one of the smallest public sectors of any European country.
But general government outlays increased dramatically, from 33% of GDP in 1980 to 39% in 1981, 48% in 1985, and 53%.
In 1990.
So again, almost doubling in a matter of 10 years.
And it's not good when the socialists are worse for the economy than the military dictatorship of the late 60s and early 70s.
Greece also won for itself with the special socialist prize of the highest inflation rate of any European country during the 1980s.
Consumer prices increased by more than 13% a year since 1978, and sometimes by nearly twice that rate.
By 1985, the annual inflation rate had risen to 25%, which led to a further devaluation of the drachma.
This is the price change of goods and services since 1970, 1980 to 1995.
This is Italy, France, Spain, Germany, the UK, and Greece.
Germany, scraping the bottom of the barrel of fiscal sanity once more.
Hey, let's save up all this money so we can give it to Greece later.
And here you can see, I don't know, if you squint, you know, try closing one eye and squint.
You might be able to see the outlier, which is the...
Greek fiscal cliff of doom.
And that is mad.
Absolutely mad.
Price change of goods and services since 1970.
This is 1970 to 2014.
Here you can see, right, this is wider.
Italy, France, Spain, Germany, United Kingdom and Greece.
Germany!
Traditional lady, she's always on the bottom.
And Greece, of course, just going completely insane.
You can see here, there's quite a lot of convergence.
The socialists get in power.
Government spending.
And remember, the Greeks had a choice between fiscal restraint and fiscal splurging.
They had a choice.
They have consistently had a choice between people promising them something for nothing and people offering them rational restraint.
And which way have they gone?
I think the graph shows you.
So in addition to swelling the ranks of public sector employment through the nationalization of key industries and the industrial reconstruction organization that drips vital blood to zombie organizations, tens of thousands of additional government jobs were created in state companies and then given to PASOX to have party members.
In the 1980s, the public sector increased in size.
Most of its posts were filled, of course, with party appointees.
So at the end, the public sector became basically an extension of the PASOC political party.
The party simply used massive amounts of deficit spending instead of considering necessary privatization or potential public sector layoffs.
Senior positions within universities and local councils became political appointees.
Public construction licenses were often awarded on the basis of political support.
With politicians lining their pockets through regular and expected kickbacks, Greece has been called one of the most corrupt countries, not just in the European Union, but in the world itself.
Corruption was rampant.
Those who wanted to get ahead had to kneel at the altar of state power.
If you basically want to know Greece, pick up a copy of Atlas Shrugged, flick through the pages, and you'll get it.
Like, brrr, done!
These employees' earnings were subject to wage indexation and took a massive toll on the future financial solvency of the country.
Not surprisingly, worker productivity remained incredibly low.
See, by wage indexation, that also desensitizes the workers to inflation.
Because they're like, ah, inflation is 15%, so my wages went up 15%.
percent that's all at the expense of the private sector and people who don't have this kind of benefit but it keeps people from getting upset you know in the same way that unemployment insurance keeps the unemployed from getting restless this stuff keeps people from complaining about inflation real hourly earnings fell by more than 13 percent between 1985 and 1992 to.
Basically, socialism is inflicting a grievous injury on your body and then hoping that the high of morphine makes up for it.
Hey, look, now we're addicted and our life changes completely.
So this is unemployment, 1980 to 1995, unemployment rates.
And Germany doing fairly well.
Portugal doing fairly well.
Spain, yay!
Worse than Greece.
And Greece remains relatively low, of course, because they're pouring all of this money into the public sector.
And they're forcing people to retire, which they don't count as unemployed, which opens up new opportunities for the young, sucks them into the public sector, where they vaporize like smoke in a whirlwind.
In terms of their economic productivity and potential to last in the private sector.
So there's artificial depression that occurs with this stuff.
Unemployment 1980 to 2012.
So as you can see here, late 80s, the EU takes hold.
1999, the euro is used in B2B, a business-to-business, and bank transfers.
By 2002, the euro is then used by the general population.
And as you can see, crushes everything down, as we saw in The Truth About the Euro, provides this artificial subsidy from more responsible to less responsible economies.
And then in the 08 crisis, we see, of course, again, this stuff goes through the roof.
And yay!
It just overtook Spain in 2013 and change.
It's all a mad illusion.
Per capita income.
Net inflation-adjusted GDP in 2015.
Sorry, this is not inflation-adjusted.
So this is...
Per capita income, as you can see, for its rising.
Now the military junta that was in place is, you know, from the late 60s to 1974, per capita income is growing.
And then the socialists get in power, and it seems like it rises, but it's all just nonsense, because the spike that goes on, you see, when they start taking on the euro in 2002, the per capita income goes up like crazy, and then now it's crashing down, and it's probably got further to go.
I mean, the amount of misallocation of resources has been going on for two generations, at least, in Greece, and that's going to take some time to unravel.
This is per capita income in inflation adjusted, real GDP in 2005 euros, right?
So it looks like money is, incomes are doing better, but when you adjust for inflation, you can see here in the late 60s to early 70s, there is a big growth in the economy under a military dictatorship.
And then the socialists get in power and all of the increase start to stagnate.
And this is just a huge mess.
And then, of course, there's this cocaine boost from the artificial lashing of Greece to the more responsible countries in the 2000s.
government spending and revenues as a percent of GDP.
So, you know, one of the marks of a not intelligent and responsible population is they want free stuff but don't want to pay their taxes.
I don't even know how to explain this.
If you want the government to give you stuff, you have to give the government stuff.
They're not some rich uncle who made money asteroid mining for unicorn tears and gold.
They have no money.
The government has no money.
Everything they give you, they have to take from someone.
If you don't want to pay your taxes, you have to stop asking for stuff.
But maybe that's asking for people to be a bit more case-selected than are selected.
Check out So they spend money that they're not willing to raise their taxes.
And here you get these ridiculous situations where a significant portion of people on one island in Greece claim that they're blind, including a bird hunter and a cab driver.
They claim to be blind, and then they send reporters out there, and they see all these blind people playing tennis and driving cars, maybe with echolocation.
I don't know.
Maybe they're half bad.
And you get when the government says, oh, you got to prove now that you're disabled, like 35 or 36,000 people just don't show up, right?
Because they're all just scamming the whole system.
And this is just monstrous.
Just monstrous.
This gap is well known in Greece.
Everybody says, oh, would you like a receipt or no?
We can do cash, right?
I mean, it's all nonsense.
Total tax revenue is percent of GDP. So here again, we look at Greece.
So the spending has gone through the roof.
The tax revenues remain at the bottom of the EU pack.
France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and the UK. And Germany, of course, again, there's that stable stuff which we talked about in The Truth About the Euro.
In 2010, about 40% of Greeks did not pay any tax, and about 95% of tax returns were for less than €30,000 a year.
Massive tax evasion cost the state budget 20 to 30 billion euros a year, which is two-thirds of the deficit for 2009.
So there's an example of swimming pools in Athens.
So So a swimming pool is an indication of wealth if you're Greek, of course, and the Greek revenue uses them to try and figure out whether you're being honest about your taxes.
So in 2009, only 364 people said that they had pools at home.
Satellite photos revealed that there were almost 17,000.
Wait, 364, 17,000.
Yeah, I think that's higher.
So only 2.1% of the people living in Athens who owned pools submitted honest tax forms.
And, I mean, want free stuff, won't pay your taxes, and then you're going to whine about the bankers?
Are you kidding me?
Whine about the bankers?
It's not the bankers, people!
Look in the mirror if you want to know why Greece is in trouble.
Greece's debt-to-GDP ratio, what can I tell you, right?
So, from the 90s, it was also ahead of time.
If people knew they were going to get into the euro, then they lent them advantageously, knowing that they were going to basically have a lender of last resort who was going to prop up Greece when Greece couldn't pay its bills, which is, of course, exactly what has happened, so they bet correctly.
Currencies versus gold, 1980 to 1999.
Now here, again, close one eye, squint through your eyelashes, and see if you can tell me where the socialists got in power in Greece.
Yes, that's right, in the early 1980s, and here you can see this massive jump.
The Deutschmark, again, ladylike, thinking of the future, on the bottom, they are, you get the socialists in, and you can see this madness that occurs.
Greek National Health System, introduced in 1983, aimed to make free healthcare available to all citizens.
Non-contributory and completely state-financed.
So, private practices could remain, but fee-based restrictions forced many out of business very quickly.
To make sure that enough physicians participated in the government systems, doctors were prohibited from dividing their time between public and private facilities.
New training programs were established to increase the supply of nurses.
In the mid-80s, the healthcare expenditures increased from the government to 5% of GDP. The patient-to-doctor ratio of the public system was very high and generally provided poor service with long...
Wait times.
It quickly became common for patients in the, quote, free public system to make informal payments to doctors.
I love the phrase, informal payments, to bribe doctors for better treatment.
Such informal bribes made up an estimated 51% of Greece's total health expenditures by 1984.
Nothing is more costly than free.
Abortion on demand at state expense was legalized in 1986 because socialism is nothing if friendly to the unborn.
Dead abortion.
And expanded the previously much more restrictive abortion laws.
In 1987, Greece had one of the highest rates of abortion in Europe and a very low prevalence of contraceptive use apart from withdrawal and condoms.
And, um...
It's another thing.
Ladies, let me clue you into something.
If you want massive retirement benefits when you get old, you need to squeeze out a few pups when you're fertile.
You cannot expect there to be massive retirement benefits available for you if you're not willing to have children.
Just 101 of economics.
Delegates at a conference on contraception said that only 6% of the 1.6 million fertile Greek women use any form of contraception.
They said that regular abortions had caused sterility in 35% of Greek women.
I mean, 35% of Greek women infertile as a result of repeated and regular abortions.
God, I mean, so much scar tissue up there.
It must be like having sex with a pencil sharpener.
There are some women who have had 30 abortions.
said Dr.
Paniotis Efstathidias, director of the Ministry of Health's Health Promotion Department.
Quote, said Dr.
George Kintis, whose parents really favored my tongue by giving him that name, president of the Greece Family Planning Association.
Every year, about one in every ten Greek women has an abortion, compared to about one in every 100 women in the rest of Europe and North America.
Just shocking.
Just absolutely appalling.
And this is not about whether abortion is right or wrong.
I think we can all pretty much get on board that abortion should not really be used as a form of birth control.
Along with the usual leftist-feminist-Marxist convergence, new laws legalizing civil marriage that eased the process for obtaining a divorce and decriminalized adultery, It upset the Church of Greece, Greek Orthodox, of course, conservative members, but too bad the Greek state, in its usual Marxist fashion, also appropriated real estate properties previously owned by the Church.
Massive amounts of divorces, destabilization, and all that kind of stuff.
The PASOK government also exerted extensive control over the press and news media, the Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation, or ERT, literally Greek radio television, state-owned public radio and television broadcaster for Greece, entirely independent of politics, of course.
During the PASOK tenure of the countless news division directors, direct generals and presidents of the various broadcast properties, the administrators are appointed by the ruling party, not necessarily on the basis of expertise in the field, but because of their position and standing within the party.
You know, it's like that member of Obama's election team who got in charge of a bunch of government data, which then was given away to Chinese hackers.
According to an industry insider, quote, the director general is the scapegoat of the organization, coming under permanent press criticism on one hand and the wrath of the government on the other.
Quote, in Greece we do not have independent private stations, we have state television, whose responsibility belongs to the elected government.
That's why those appointed in administration must comply with the policies of the government, not their own.
Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou...
In 1988, in the midst of a political corruption scandal, ERT journalists reported being handed scripts filled with superlatives about Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou.
The journalists involved refused to read the scripts, not because they were not used to reading prepared scripts, but because this particular script was ridiculously partisan.
The journalists were subsequently terminated.
I will leave that phrase ambiguous.
Does it involve robots from the future or simply getting fired?
I will leave that to your research abilities.
As economic problems continue to mount within the country, due to the unsustainable nature of debt-financed government spending, Papandreou was up for re-election, with the vote set to take place on June 2nd, 1985.
Papandreou's highly intellectual slogan promised even better days, because more muchly goodness was taken.
In an economic program over 200 pages long, PASAC promised further socialization of the means of production.
Theft!
A substantial increase of pensions.
Theft!
General improvement of welfare provisions.
Theft!
And a promise to combat inflation.
Lies!
I don't know if this came with a free wand with which you could attempt to get your children enrolled in Hogwarts so they would learn the necessary magical abilities to square the circle of socialist economics.
We will find out.
Papandreou was re-elected for a second term, and PASOK maintained control of the parliament, which allowed them to pursue their policies unhindered by opposition, math, or reality.
There was a clear connection between income level and occupation and voting patterns in the 85 elections.
They were reproduced pretty much around the world.
Business people, managers, and legal and medical professionals voted for the conservative New Democracy Party that was trying to restrain government spending.
And people of low to medium income who benefited from the wage price indexation policies, price controls, and worker protection from layoffs voted for Papandreou's party.
They made up the voting majority.
See, it's illegal to bribe unless you're a politician, in which case you must bribe.
And people don't vote based upon any ideology.
Ideology is just a cover for wanting to steal or not be stolen from.
During the election, the New Democracy Party consistently referred to the country's dependence on foreign loans to continue government spending.
We're going to lose our sovereignty, they said.
If we keep borrowing from other people, if you keep borrowing from the mafia, the mafia ends up owning you.
It's not that complicated.
Want to work for Visa?
Run up your bills!
In response to this criticism, PASOK introduced a stabilization program, which basically means that everything that they weren't doing that was that way inclined was destabilizing.
In October 85, included additional funding from the EEC, another 15% devaluation of the drachma, wage freezes, and a temporary reduction in borrowing.
Due to the new policy, real wages dropped sharply in 86 and 87, while business profitability rose for the first time in years!
You see?
So wages of the parasite working class dropped sharply, the profits rose, in other words, things were returning to some base normalcy.
What happened?
Prominent Greek journalist Pavlos Tsimas noted, quote, When PASOK took over, Greece was not a European state.
It had no public services to speak of.
PASOK installed the national health system and free education.
So it was a shock to its voters when the party of the welfare state suddenly said it was cutting pensions, salaries and jobs.
Of course, that's never going to happen again when the Marxists come in.
In 86, Papandreou changed the constitution to greatly limit the president's powers, aiming to ensure that any future president would have difficulties dismantling the socialist government and its policies.
Under significant pressure and sensing his popularity with the electorate was on the decline.
Papandreou abandoned the unpopular stabilization program in 87 and fired the Minister of National Economy who was the originator of the policy.
See?
Greeks get a taste of reality unclouded by the fine jet spray of eye-dissolving fiat currency and they have become allergic to math, allergic to reality and they run back into the...
Coke-addled party of something-for-nothing.
Rejecting any further financial discipline and distancing himself from the austerity, Papins Rayo declared that the people are superior to institutions.
Tomorrow is a better day.
I like chocolate.
Kittens are pretty.
Vote for me!
Since then, having to choose between the pains of austerity and the prospect of a loss at the voting booth, most Greek politicians knew which side to pick.
Want to bring reality to the people?
Bring your suitcase to the office, because you're moving out, baby!
In 1989, Papandreou and many PASOK party members were indicted by the Hellenic Parliament on charges of embezzlement and corruption in what was known as the Koskotos scandal.
Over US $200 million was missing, and Papandreou was accused of ordering state corporations to transfer their holdings to the Bank of Crete, where the interest was allegedly skimmed off to benefit PASOK and its highest functionaries.
The former owner of the Bank of Crete, George Koskotos, Koskotas reported that for three years, state-managed corporations, including the Post Office, the Organization of Urban Transportation, and the State Pharmaceutical Company, transferred large bank deposits of the country's money into the Bank of Crete.
The interest earned on the deposits was then allegedly delivered to various politicians in blue briefcases, stuffed with 5,000 drachma bills, or what in American dollars would be the change you find behind your couch.
Cascottos testified as to delivering funds to a Papandreou confident who then delivered the funds to Papandreou himself.
Pickups supposedly occurred weekly and amounted to over three billion drachmas.
Fifty different national audits of the Bank of Crete that might have uncovered the scheme were squelched over the years by PASOC officials and twice by direct calls from Papandreou, claimed Cascottos.
Papandreou refused to testify before investigators, denying involvement in what he called a conspiracy, aiming to hurt Greece.
George Koskotus also alleged that Papandreou wanted to squelch a critical memoir written by his first wife, And through various book agents, Koskotus directed $90,000 to be spent with plans to tie up the rights of the book.
And Tsipras, the current Marxist who's in charge, his wife has threatened to leave him if he gives in to the demands of the Troika for austerity.
Tsipras informed me, claimed the president of France, quote, that if he gave in to too many of the Troika's demands, he risked not only losing his party, but also his partner, who is a militant, and is much further to the left of him.
So...
If you wish to raise the futures of the people you're in charge of, you risk your massive poontang futures going into the toilet.
Papandreou came to assume that left-leaning national magazines and newspapers really served him.
Individuals favorable to the prime minister were specifically hired as editors and, quote, were instructed never to criticize the prime minister personally, not even a single cartoon.
Koskodas also owned several national magazine newspapers and was urged by Papandreou to neutralize hostile newspapers by buying them.
In early 87, Papandreou allegedly instructed Koskotas to buy Cathy Marini, the country's most respected paper, and the banker made the purchase using Bank of Creed funds.
Another weekly newspaper, Evdomi, kept finding nude photos of Papandreou's young girlfriend.
He was, of course, the 70-year-old cryptkeeper at this time.
After a direct complaint from the Prime Minister, Koskotas bought the paper and shut it down.
Another scheme involved Koskodas purchasing a local football team and building it up, so that just before the 89 election, the government could make the popular announcement that they would be building the team a new stadium, because new stadiums are built on the tiny graves of the economic opportunities of the unborn.
Koskodas laid out 4 billion drachmas for the plan.
Private banks in Greece typically had to wait for over a year for authorization to open a single branch.
To show how connected Koskotas was, the Bank of Crete opened approximately 50 branches in four years and had been granted licenses for 20 more.
So that's a little bit of the foot on the gas of the truck of corruption.
So long as I am here.
Koskotus, says Papandreou, told him, you'll never have to worry.
I am the lord of math.
I can reverse physics and economics.
Do not apply to me, because magic and ancient penis.
A special tribunal of 13 judges appointed by the Greek parliament had difficulty in reaching its decision, but ultimately they voted 7 to 6 to acquit Papandreou of embezzlement charges in 92.
However, two of his former cabinet ministers were found guilty of related charges.
In the wake of the scandal, Papandreou and PASOK lost out to the New Democracy Party in the 89 elections, ending their eight-year rule, and the policies of the Greek economic destruction.
After taking office, the New Democracy government removed wage indexation and froze public sector salaries and pensions, causing wages to fall by 13% between 1990 and 1993.
See, this was early enough that it could have been turned around without blood in the streets that is currently happening now.
The Industrial Reconstruction Organization was shut down and nationalized companies were either sold or liquidated.
Government spending was cut across the board.
Labor unions protested strongly, of course.
Strikes were a regular occurrence, and the already lax Greek productivity slowed to a crawl.
We had a choice, Stephanos Manos, Greek minister of the national economy, explained.
We could raise taxes or we could cut investment, as the socialists did in 1987.
We did the former.
And raising taxes is easier than cutting spending.
Because raising taxes is supposed to hit a broad section of people.
Cutting spending hits a very concentrated, very vocal people.
Despite praise from the international community for taking necessary steps to curb government spending, local Greek observers were less positive.
Elections are not typically won by restoring painful financial discipline or through collecting foreign praise.
Resentment against the government's austerity measures made PASOK's revival possible, which would have seemed completely inconceivable in the years prior.
Andreas Papandreou promised voters that if elected he would bring back the good old days of the 80s.
Ah, so, Greek voters.
Given the choice between economic reality and a recognition of the rational limits of borrowing, spending, imports, and exports, will they restrain themselves?
Ooh, the future of Greece hangs in the balance.
What might happen?
Guy's offering them something for nothing.
Another guy is offering them some taste of reality.
Where do they go?
On October 10th, 1993, the people of Greece voted against mathematics, reason, reality, and simple common sense.
Papandreou and PASOK returned to power.
Papandreou was in poor health.
Apparently evil erodes you.
And because of international pressure, he was unable to fulfill his promise of immediately restoring the socialist utopia.
The aged figure of greed, hedonism, and corruption served to be more of a symbol of a dying country than any kind of modern revolutionary.
While on the surface PASO restrained spending compared to expectations, there was a long con in mind.
Follow the guidelines recommended by the Maastricht Treaty, get into the European Monetary Union, and be approved to participate in the single European currency.
For a country which had historically prospered through international welfare, the euro was the next gravy train to hop onto.
PASOK's founding member, Sifis Valagrakis, said, Andreas Papandreou was a genius.
PASOK was a love affair.
It was about the dream of freedom, democracy, and about the future.
But I feel a little disappointed because the dream was not realized as we expected.
We have a country bankrupt, corrupt, and not functioning as it should.
Like, you know, the lifelong alcoholic is complaining that his liver is not functioning as it should.
Actually, the liver is functioning exactly as it should if you're a lifelong drinker.
The party has been misrepresented, said Greek citizen Panagiotis Alamaras.
Any government would have had to cut wages and pensions.
Everyone is trying to accuse PASOK of all the mistakes Greece made in the past 40 years.
The Papandreos family are beloved here, Greek citizen Maria Leventi told the reporter.
Because they gave us a better life when we were poor.
They gave us the money to buy food and clothes.
We could buy four televisions for one house, four cars for one family, she noted with a smile.
Andreas Papandreou retired from public office January 16, 1996, due to rapidly declining health.
On June 23, 1996, he died.
He was 77.
Years old.
Greece was allowed into the Euro on January the 1st, 2001.
The giant tsunami of free money flowed into the country.
For the 2004 Olympics, they spent between $10 and $15 billion for a population of $10 to $11 million, $13, $1400 per person, built 23 facilities and stadiums, of which only 22 are currently unused.
Massive public pensions, retiring with 97% of your income and free health care for life, the youngest retirement age in the world, outside of Whoville and the Smurf Paradise.
Massive amounts of government corruption, nobody paying their taxes, a complete rejection of reality.
But guess what, people?
Reality always comes back.
You can think you can fly and jump off a cliff and...
