Greece

See? This is why financial systems need to be regulated.

After a decade of prosperity, the Greek financial system has collapsed. Their parliament passed an austerity package with huge spending cuts, aimed at stopping their economy from further implosion. It was pretty harsh, and a lot of wages and pensions were cut from the nation's workers. They didn't like that.








It was initially peaceful, but just like every other European protest in the 21st century, it was highjacked by the anarchists and it turned violent. At least three people have been killed so far, when the protesters set a bank on fire. Not a very proud time for the birthplace of democracy.

Right now they're really depending on other European nations to help bail them out, specifically Germany. They're trying to blame everyone but themselves. Greece's most famous composer Mikis Theodorakis said "the crisis was probably a plot by dark forces in the United States and other capitalist centres to subdue proud, independent nations." (Not a literal quote, that was the article paraphrasing.) Greece still has a Communist Party, and it won 8% of the vote in the last election. The nation is extremely paranoid about outside influence.

The truth is, the entire Greek culture is pretty corrupt, and this crisis should not at all come as a surprise. The amount of tax evasion among Greece's citizens is astronomical, and the country loses as much as $30 billion dollars every year because of it. And nobody cared. The government bears even more of the responsibility. For a decade, they just kept spending and spending and spending, without any means to make it all back (Reaganomics works!). Additionally, Greece has just become extremely lazy. They have short workweeks, retire early, and have lots of vacation time. Their government programs have switched from being a safety net, to being a crutch. They really brought a lot of this on themselves. AND IT'S ALL OBAMA'S FAULT!!!

The stocks have been crazy today. The DOW plummeted about a thousand points, and then recovered about half of it again.


The media's shitting itself right now, blaming this all on Greece. And I don't really know if it's Greece's fault. I don't know dick about economics, and I'm not going to pretend to. I just think it's really funny, because I saw no less than two pundits today making plugs for gold. "GOLD IS STILL HIGH, PEOPLE ALWAYS INVEST IN GOLD IN THESE TIMES BECAUSE IT'S ALWAYS GOOD!!" The gold industry often pays people on TV to say these things, and it's more than obvious that they manipulate the markets and count on crashes like these. AMERICA'S financial institutions shouldn't be regulated though, financial reform is obviously a power grab by the libruls! They started the financial crisis, after all!