Greece's Golden Dawn isn't a political party – it's more like a criminal gang

Are you sure Sir?
I can fetch you some a little more aged if you like.

The Greek far-right party Golden Dawn has been flirting with an "outlaw" rhetoric lately. Appealing to a disgruntled electorate, its MPs constantly try to point out that the Golden Dawn is unlike any other political party in Greece. They are right in this respect. In fact, they are not a party at all: they are acting like a gang of criminal thugs, and it should not be beyond the pale to declare their organisation as such.


"We feel disgusted in the parliament," said their leader, Nikos Mihaloliakos, in a speech to his followers on 25 August. "If they want us to, we can abandon it at any given moment and take to the streets. There, they shall see what the Golden Dawn is really about, they will see what battle means, they will see what struggle means, they will see what bayonets sharpened every night mean". Holding torches, they shouted "blood, honour, Golden Dawn" – a direct translation from the German "Blut und Ehre", the motto once carried by the Nazi SA. "It's you who are our Storm Detachments (Sturmabteilung). Let them come after you!" he continued, in his usual Nazi-inspired terms. Singing their official hymn "Raise the flags high" – again, a direct translation of the Nazi stormtroopers hymn "Die fachne hoch" – young men and women call for open, violent conflict both with the state and with any opponents on the ground.


An organisation with explicit ties to neo-nazism, advocating violence and attacking immigrants and anti-racist marches in the street: does this sound like a legitimate democratic party?


It's not unusual for far-right parties to use populist rhetoric to persuade their followers, and for very specific reasons

Thousands of Greeks protest against new round of austerity cuts

Take heed world,
If you must.....Then
Protest peacefully.

Thousands of Greeks marched at an annual fair in Greece's second-biggest city on Saturday to protest against a new round of wage and pension cuts demanded by international lenders in exchange for aid to stave off bankruptcy.

The demonstration by about 15,000 trade unionists and leftists was the first major protest against a nearly 12-billion-euro austerity package being readied by Prime Minister Antonis Samaras to appease EU and IMF inspectors who arrived in Athens on Friday to review Greece's reform progress.

A few protesters burned European Union flags while others threw watermelons and peaches in support of struggling farmers, but the largely peaceful protests otherwise passed off without incident as 3,500 policemen looked on.

Greece is struggling through its worst post-war economic crisis that has left

Jobless Greeks Clean Toilets in Sweden for Work

A job is a job, and one must be grateful in this day and age just to have one. America whose toilet will you clean? While Mexico now enjoys the status of having a "Middle class", they also have a policy that says, you have "no rights" to work there. Are "We" to become the nation of "illegal
immigrants" now, sneaking across the border to clean Mexico's toilets and cut their grass?
Juss saying..... and pointing to the obvious
Think about it.

As a pharmaceutical salesman in Greece for 17 years, Tilemachos Karachalios wore a suit, drove a company car and had an expense account. He now mops schools in Sweden, forced from his home by Greece’s economic crisis.

“It was a very good job,” said Karachalios, 40, of his former life. “Now I clean Swedish s---.”

Karachalios, who left behind his 6-year-old daughter to be raised by his parents, is one of thousands fleeing Greece’s record 24 percent unemployment and austerity measures that threaten to undermine growth. The number of Greeks seeking permission to settle in Sweden, where there are more jobs and a stable economy, almost doubled to 1,093 last year from 2010, and is on pace to increase again this year.

“I’m trying to survive,”

In Greece, It's The Police Vs The Riot Police

As unemployment (broad and youth) goes from the sublime to the ridiculous in the troubled nation, Reuters is reporting that tensions are rising - even among the Police themselves. "They make us fight our own brothers," one riot-policeman urged with regard the Greek police protesting austerity cuts and preventing riot-police from leaving to secure other demonstrations this weekend.

The government plans to slash police pay in a new round of spending cuts worth nearly EUR12bn over the next two years, which the police, firefghter, and coast guards will be prtesting later today in Athens. How soon before TROIKA demands 8 days a week and 99% taxation - as the hair-trigger on the gun they are holding to their own head becomes more and more sensitive.

EU Says Greeks Should Work 6-Day Week: Report

That's real white of the the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund to leave the the 2 week vacation in. So because the Greek government went hog wild spending (it ain't like the people did it) all it's citizens should be enslaved to work 6 days a week for 13 hours a day.
Did the central bank need an injection? My guess is, yes. And I know the IMF has hit the US up, so seriously who the hell do they think they are?
How long do you think you could keep running on that type of schedule?
2 weeks to a month maximum is all I could do. A body nor a mind runs well without rest.
Greece just needs to default. The money they would get pretty much only goes to pay interest.

Greeks should operate a six-day working week for all sectors, international creditors said in a letter to the Greek government, a measure which forms part of a wider set of demands in return for aid to the country.

The paper printed the following extract from the letter: "Increase the number of maximum workdays to six days per week for all sectors. Increase flexibility of work schedules; set the minimum daily rest to 11 hours; delink the working hours of employees from the opening hours of the establishment; eliminate restrictions on minimum/maximum time between morning and afternoon shifts; allow the consecutive two-week leave to be taken anytime during the year in seasonal sectors."

Greece has had to agree to an austerity package and stringent labor market reforms in order to continue receiving payments from its creditors.

Laurie Penny: It's not rhetoric to draw parallels with Nazism

History seems to be repeating itself, except this time they have replaced immigrants, as the Jews.
The difference only being in the class status, of the "employed occupation".
Immigrants take jobs from a country's people, Jews took the financial industry of every country they immigrated to, by an intentionally designed plan.
Don't believe me?
I will show you later on this evening, why that statement is undeniable true.

"After the immigrants, you're next." That's what was written on flyers that appeared this week in the gay clubbing district of Athens. As violence against immigrants and ethnic minorities escalates across Greece, supporters of the ultra-right Golden Dawn party have also begun to promote hate attacks on homosexuals and people with disabilities. These fascists march with black shirts and flares through Athens, terrorising ethnic and sexual minorities, waving an insignia which looks like nothing but an unravelled swastika, and declaring disdain for the political process. And yet, across Europe, they continue to be treated as a mere symptom of Greece's economic crisis.

Not only are crimes against immigrants in Greece considered low priority, much of Golden Dawn's support base comes from police ranks. Exit polls in the May 2012 elections suggested that in some urban districts up to 50 per cent of Greek police voted for the racist group, which now holds 7 per cent of the seats in parliament.

The stabbings, beatings and motorbike attacks have become so routine that in many parts of the capital, immigrants are afraid to go out alone. While Greece has long had a large migrant population – 80 per cent of refugees to the European Union arrive in Greek ports – families who came to the country seeking safety are now afraid for their children. A recent Human Rights Watch report, Hate on the Streets, found that "national authorities – as well as the EU and the international community at large – have largely turned a blind eye" to xenophobic violence in Greece.

Turning a blind eye would be bad enough. But now the Minister for Public Order, Nikos Dendias, has pledged to crack down on immigration, which he described as an "invasion" and "a bomb at the foundations of society". Tellingly, Dendias also described the presence of foreigners in Greece as a more significant threat than the economic crisis

Clarke and Dawe ask the million dollar questions

http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2010/05/20/2905304.htm


John Clarke and Bryan Dawe calculate the cost of the European debt crisis

You wanna bet Germany already got wind of these facts?
And you thought you were the only one thinking about how they were going to pay the bailout back.

Keeping Pace With the Global Economy

http://www.minyanville.com/businessmarkets/articles/todd-harrison-random-thoughts-bkx-global/5/25/2010/id/28467

Congress blocks indiscriminate IMF aid for Europe

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance...id-for-europe/


Europe may have to clean up its own mess after all. The US Senate has voted 94:0 to block use of taxpayers’ money for IMF rescues that make no economic sense or bail-outs for countries like Greece that far are beyond the point of no return.

“This amendment will help prevent American taxpayer dollars from underwriting dysfunctional governments abroad,” said Texas Senator John Cornyn, the chief sponsor. “American taxpayers have seen more bailouts than they can stomach, and the last thing they should have to worry about are their hard-earned tax dollars being used to rescue a foreign government. Greece is not by any stretch of the imagination too big to fail.”

Co-sponsor David Vitter from Louisiana said America had run out of money. “Our country already owes trillions of dollars in debt. We simply can’t afford to take on other countries’ debt in addition to our own.”

It is unclear where this leaves the EU’s $1 trillion “shock and uh” package. Urlich Leuchtmann from Commerzbank said the IMF share of $320bn was the only genuine money on the table, the rest being largely euro smoke and mirrors, or plain bluff.

The measure is an amendment to the US financial overhaul law. Backed by both parties, it can hardly be ignored by the Obama administration whatever Tim Geithner may or may not want to do. The bill has to go to Conference for reconciliation with the House, but the point is made.

It instructs the US representative at the IMF to determine whether a country with a public debt above 100 per cent of GDP can be expected to repay IMF loans. If this cannot be certified, the US must oppose the rescue package.

Taxpayer ripoffs

http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/2303-See,-The-Gun-Is-Loaded!.html

So basically all the bailout for the piigs did was to give even more money to the banks, just in a roundabout way.
Yes America those are your tax dollars(you help fund the IMF)being once again just flushed down the toilet,


Let's see if I can figure out what's happened here.

1.Banks shorted the Euro, (correctly) surmising that Greece, Portugal, Spain and others can't possibly cover their debts.


2.The ECB freaks out as the Euro heads toward PAR and calls "emergency meetings" (forgetting, I might add, that the Euro traded under PAR not that long ago.)


3.The ECB and Eurozone decides to "defend" the Euro with €1t in "defensive measures", including buying bonds of bankrupt sovereigns (gee, that's nice - monetization by another name.) Since the ECB and EuroZone cognescenti is of course connected to the large banks in Europe (including France, where Sarkozy is located) these banks know to back off on Friday (notice the nice little uptick?) to lock in their bonuses from these insanely-profitable trades against their own currency.


4.The very same banks, including the ones in Sarkozy's back yard, see the very nice spike and short the Euro even harder, (correctly) surmising that they have successfully stuck the gun up the nose of the ECB!
Rinse and repeat until you have all the money.

Naw, it wouldn't be that simple, would it? Why of course it would.

See, lending someone money when they're bankrupt can't possibly make them not-bankrupt. It can only make them more-bankrupt. As a consequence the ECB's action is self-destructive and doomed to fail, and as a consequence there is no reason for these banks to back off at all! Indeed, quite to the contrary - they have (correctly) deduced that they can make billion in bonuses by shorting their own currency to destruction, forcing ever-larger "interventions" by the ECB!

The Greek spirit of resistance turns its guns on the IMF

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/09/greece-debt-crisis-euro-imf




"This has gone beyond economic matters to a battle for national independence," says Manolis Glezos, the leftist who shot to fame snatching the swastika from the Acropolis shortly after Hitler's forces streamed into Athens in 1941.

"Papandreou himself has admitted we had no say in the economic measures thrust upon us. They were decided by the EU and IMF. We are now under foreign supervision and that raises questions about our economic, military and political independence."

Fight the Derivatives Cancer with a Wall Street Sales Tax, Plus Bans on Hedge Funds, Credit Default Swaps, and Synthetic CDOs

http://tarpley.net/2010/04/25/fight-the-derivatives-cancer-with-a-wall-street-sales-tax-plus-bans-on-hedge-funds-credit-default-swaps-and-synthetic-cdos/

As a country that wishes to maintain our sovereignty we can no longer afford to overlook our own downfall, because it's plainly staring us in the face.
The games of speculation that the rich play behind the curtain place no value on human life. It's all only about the numbers in dollar signs and they create those numbers anyway they can and use our lives to do with as well as to bail them out when they fail. They only live because "WE" let them.
It's time to end this game before it ends all of us. As "the world's people", "WE" owe it to our selves.


The urgent problem raised by all this is the $1.5 quadrillion derivatives bubble. The financial crisis which struck the United States and the world in September and October 2008 was in fact a world a derivatives panic. This panic marked the first phase of a world economic depression caused by derivatives speculation. The second phase of this depression, which is now beginning, can also be attributed in large part to derivatives, since derivatives are the main tool being used in the speculative attacks on Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, and other nations, building up towards a chaotic collapse of the euro.

Derivatives are the Cause of the World Depression of Our Time
Far from being some arcane or marginal activity, financial derivatives have come to represent the principal business of the financier oligarchy in Wall Street, the City of London, Frankfurt, and other money centers. A concerted effort has been made by politicians and the news media to hide and camouflage the central role played by derivative speculation in the economic disasters of recent years. Journalists and public relations types have done everything possible to avoid even mentioning derivatives, coining phrases like “toxic assets,” “exotic instruments,” and – most notably – “troubled assets,” as in Troubled Assets Relief Program or TARP, aka the monstrous $800 billion bailout of Wall Street speculators which was enacted in October 2008 with the support of Bush, Henry Paulson, John McCain, Sarah Palin, and the Obama Democrats.

Europe's bruised economies search for way forward

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Europes-bruised-economies-apf-509572434.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=6&asset=&ccode=

People all over the world are asking this question.
Isn't it a coincidence they're all asking it at the same time?
And what do all of them have in common to have to make them ask such a question?
"The Banks"

After the boom, where does growth come from now?


The wreckage of Spain's economic growth model stands neatly aligned on the roads leading out of Madrid -- row after row of unsold houses, windows dark, for-sale signs out front.

Spain and other countries on Europe's financially stricken fringe are groping for a new basis from economic growth to put people to work and pay down crushing deficits and debts. In Spain's case, something to start generating jobs for 4 million unemployed people amid the rubble of an unsustainable construction and housing boom.

The question is especially urgent in countries with the eurozone's messiest public finances: Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and Greece.

Merkel calls for end to speculators who bet against Greece

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article7052224.ece

Now here is "A Leader" that actually deserves the title.

Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, lashed out at speculators and called for curbs on the derivatives markets, which she said were being used to profit from the financial distress of Greece.

The German Chancellor said that Europe must ensure that speculators were prevented from damaging Greece or other countries and said that she would discuss regulation of the credit defaults swaps (CDS) market with the United States. “We must succeed at putting a stop to the speculator’s game with sovereign states,” Mrs Merkel said. The Chancellor was speaking after a meeting with George Papandreou, the Prime Minister of Greece.

The Chancellor said that there was no need for a bailout of Greece by fellow eurozone members and she rounded on speculators for betting against Greece. Hedge funds were excluded from participation in a €5 billion bond sale this week by the Greek Government.

“Credit-default swaps, where you insure your neighbour’s house just to destroy it and make money from it, that’s exactly what we have to curb,” she said, adding that the issue was a global one and that action needed to be taken with the US.

Greek debt crisis: why the ECB is in no position to give lessons on transparency

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jeremywarner/100004157/how-the-ecb-has-contributed-to-the-greek-debt-crisis/

Inquiring minds want to know,
The big question is: What will they do about it, when they find out that "The Profiteers" (The Banks) once again rigged the bet to ensure the fall.


Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic have announced they are investigating trades in the euro and the market in sovereign credit default swaps (CDS), while on a flying visit to London, Michel Barnier, the European internal markets commissioner, has this week promised a regulatory crackdown on the CDS market.

At the very least M. Barnier wants to know who’s buying and for what purpose. He then wants the supposed speculators publicly to account for their actions. European Commission officials are meeting with bankers today (Thursday, 4 March) to decide what shape this crack down should take. If they are going to bail-out Greece, they want to know who stands to benefit and who to lose.

The first principle of regulatory interference in markets must be that there is evidence of public interest damage. In my view, the CDS market passes this test, and indeed always has done, only as with so much else, regulators were so busy with the trivia that they failed to notice the really important stuff. A CDS is a form of insurance, in that it insures against the risk of default, and yet it disobeys two of the most fundamental rules governing insurance.

The first is that the insured must own the assets being underwritten, this for the obvious reason that if he doesn’t the existence of the insurance provides an incentive to induce a loss

Greece should sell islands to keep bankruptcy at bay, say German MPs

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/04/greece-sell-islands-german-mps

Can you even imagine this occurring? I can't, but it is within the reasoning of what could possibly occur.
This is one of the after effects of what hidden banking loans have brought to the table.
No one will bailout Greece in the manner that "The Banks" were offered, and yet they fed and fattened themselves time after time, while hiding their presence at the table, until Greece could provide them no more. Then they moved on.
The question is, to whose table did they move to next and at what cost to their host?

Fire sale of Greek islands, Acropolis and Parthenon suggested
• Greek public reacts with outrage and boycotts German goods

Greece must consider a fire sale of land, historic buildings and art works to cut its debts, two rightwing German politicians said today in a newspaper interview that is bound to exacerbate tensions between Athens and Berlin.

Alongside austerity measures such as cuts to public sector pay and a freeze on state pensions, why not sell a few uninhabited islands or ancient artefacts, asked Josef Schlarmann, a senior member of Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, and Frank Schaeffler, a finance policy expert in the Free Democrats.

The Acropolis and the Parthenon could also fall under the hammer, along with temptingly idyllic Aegean islands still under state ownership, in a rush to keep bankruptcy at bay.

"Those in insolvency have to sell everything they have to pay their creditors," Schlarmann told Bild newspaper. "Greece owns buildings, companies and uninhabited islands, which could all be used for debt redemption."

Goldman-Greek Deal "Completely Scandalous" ... and Legal

http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/goldman-greek-deal-%22completely-scandalous%22-...-and-legal-432750.html?tickers=GS,JPM,XLF,FAZ,SKF,FAS,C&sec=topStories&pos=9&asset=&ccode=


At Goldman Sachs these days, it must seem like you can't sneeze without causing a scandal. The latest controversy centers around currency swaps Goldman brokered for Greece back in 2002.
U.S. and EU regulators are probing the transactions, which critics say helped Greece hide the size of its deficits. Bloomberg reports Goldman made $1 billion underwriting Greek debt after the 2002 swap, which often wasn't disclosed to potential investors.

Regulators are further investigating whether Goldman also sought to take advantage of its knowledge of Greece's true financial status by betting on credit default swaps, which have risen in value amid concerns about Greece's ability to pay its debts. Congress will hold hearings on the matter, House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank has declared.

The reality is "Goldman didn't break the law," says Martin Wolf, chief economics correspondent at The Financial Times. "People knew what they were doing and it wasn't a big deal...it was allowed." (EU regulators have claimed they only just learned of the swaps although it was profiled by Risk Magazine in 2003.)

What is "completely scandalous" is that the Goldman-Greece currency swap was legit under the rules of the day, Wolf says. "It's another indication of ways in which governments connived with the financial sector all over the world to do things they really shouldn't have allowed to happen

A debate could be made that governments just do what they are conditioned to do by "the banks". .

Fed to look into insurance contracts on Greek debt

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Fed-to...70230.html?x=0

What a joke. The FED rather than the FBI is going to "look into" what Sachs and the others have pulled.



Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told lawmakers Thursday that the central bank is looking into Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms' use of a sophisticated investment instrument to make bets that Greece will default on its debt.

Bernanke said the Fed is looking into companies' use of credit default swaps, a form of insurance against bond defaults. Bernanke made the comments at the start of a Senate Banking Committee hearing, where the Fed chief delivered his twice-a-year economic report to Congress.

"Obviously, using these instruments in a way that intentionally destabilizes a company or a country is counterproductive, " Bernanke said, adding that the Securities and Exchange Commission probably will be looking into this matter as well.

Head Of Greek Debt Office Replaced By Former Goldman Investment Banker

Head Of Greek Debt Office Replaced By Former Goldman Investment Banker

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/hea...estment-banker

Goldman's government seems to be growing
Perhaps this is the new world order.
A one world government headed by Goldman Sachs

And so the tragicomic becomes surreal. Yesterday's news about the departure of the head of the debt management agency, Spyros Papanicolaou, was somewhat of a yawner, until we realized that his replacement would be none other than Petros Christodoulou, who until today was head of Private Banking and Group Treasury at the National Bank of Greece (reporting directly to the CEO of the NBG Tamvakakis), as can be seen on the org chart below. Yet was is oddest, is that Mr. Christodoulou worked not only as head of derivatives at JP Morgan but also held comparable posts at Credit Suisse, and... wait for it, Goldman Sachs... Uh, say what?

Merkel hits out at banks over Greek deals

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8481e594-1c00-11df-a5e1-00144feab49a.html

I don't know Angela, Criminal come to my mind.

The German chancellor has sharply criticised global investment banks that may have helped a number of Greek governments to disguise mounting budgetary problems over the years.

“It would be a disgrace if it turned out to be true that banks that already pushed us to the edge of the abyss were also party to falsifying Greek statistics,” Angela Merkel said during a speech in north-eastern Germany

Greece: Bomb explodes at JPMorgan branch

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Greece-Bomb-explodes-at-apf-1278864848.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=4&asset=&ccode=



Police in the Greek capital say a bomb has exploded at the offices of American financial services firm JPMorgan Chase & Co., causing no injuries.

The blast occurred early evening Tuesday in an upscale area of central Athens, following a warning telephone call to an Athens newspaper.

The extent of the damage was not immediately clear.