[nicolasehrhardt]

You are not wrong, Greece is a deadbeet right now. They already are living on life support from the EU-IMF, and have been for more than a year. What's wrong is that, we gave them money and forced them to do reforms (reforms that France and Germany [mostly] designed). A year and a half later, Greece is still on life support (on our money) but the reforms we forced them to do made the situation worse. Greece has a giant problem with corruption, I don't think they have a really modern state, neither can they be really productive (I mean, look at all of these small islands). But the issue is now political. I think we (France and Germany) should be ashamed of what we forced them to do, not even because we mothered them (if it had them then maybe...), but because we made their situation worse. We should find a way to losen our requirements and let them breath a little because clearly, we failed to help them so far. It's the same old problem, either the EU becomes a real political union and we can start thinking about helping each other as neighbor states, not as economic partners, to maintain the stability of the union, either we keep thinking about the money we don't have, and nothing really improves.

PS: the day that the US collapses because of its giant debts, I hope you will think again about this: "shouldn't the government and people be accountable for it?".

[cperciva]

we (France and Germany) should be ashamed of what we forced them to do

When did France and Germany force Greece to do anything? I was under the impression that the Greek government negotiated the terms of the bailout which they're now talking about repudiating.

[6t6t6]

You can see it that way: the main goal of the agreements that have been signed until now between Greece and the Troika was to protect the interest of the big fortunes even if that mean misery for the citizens.

Lets be clear, big mistakes have been made and someone will have to pay. The opinion if Syriza is that is not the poor who have to assume the consequences.

[speeder]

Forced on the population.

Greek protests were the population pointing out that the deals would fuck them over.

The rulers of Greece ignored the population, and took the deal anyway, and France and Germany KNEW they would take the deal, because it would be profitable for them (Greek rulers then had lots of some bizarre derivatives in Switzerland that would appreciate if they had taken the bailout, thus a "legal" way to steal public money)

[cperciva]

The "rulers of Greece", as you put it, were democratically elected. They had no less ability to speak for and negotiate on behalf of the Greek people than any future government will have; repudiating the agreements they made announces to the international community that Greece can not be trusted to pay any debts or comply with any treaties.

[speeder]

I dunno, elected like Dilma Roussef in Brazil?

Brazil situation is so hopeless that people are just outright leaving (permanently), having given up on the fake democracy that we have here (or at least we HOPE is fake democracy, if it is real democracy some genocide is needed urgently).

Brazillian homes value outside Brazil doubled in value since 2008, and I doubt most of it is inflation.

The only reason I didn't leave myself, is because I don't figured how.

Brazil for example the same party is in de-facto power ever since the military dictatorship ended, despite (or because?) this party is extremely corrupt, and is involved in ALL corruption scandals since they took power.

Currently our election process rely on an electronic urn and some other electronic systems, that we are NOT allowed to see the source, or do penetration testing and whatnot.

There is no proof (or counter-proof) if the system really works properly, or not.

We DO have some testing done in machines made by the same manufacturer, those tests proved that cheating elections is extremely easy, and in our case if the cheating used the previously mentioned exploits, there are no way to find out (our elecronic ballots just give you the final result, there is no way to individually count the votes, so the machine can count the votes in whatever way it wants, without anyone knowing, beside the programmer of the method).