The never ending Bo-Gilly vs Dombo thread

[Bo-Gilly]

[quote]Apparently there are more Porsche Cayennes registered in Greece than there are people that are registered as earning more than 50,000 Euros a year

[Paul H]

So they are not paying their Road Tax either?

[Bo-Gilly]

Makes you wonder why banks from the wealthy Eurozone countries such as France and Germany were happy to lend them all that money, eh Paul ?

Such breathtaking incompetence is quite staggering.

[Paul H]

like our previous government

[Bo-Gilly]

Our previous government lent money to the Greeks ? !

No wonder we're in a mess

[Dombo]

[quote="Bo-Gilly"]Makes you wonder why banks from the wealthy Eurozone countries such as France and Germany were happy to lend them all that money, eh Paul ?

Such breathtaking incompetence is quite staggering.

[Dombo]

And now for something lighter:

An Italian village is twinned with one in Greece. One day the mayor of the Greek village visits his Italian counterpart and is amazed at the Italian's beautiful mayoral residence, sweeping drive, official Ferrari in the garage, ponies in the adjoining paddock.
"Vito!" the Greek exclaims, "Forgive me, but how do you, the mayor of a little village, afford such a beautiful home?"
"Look over there", the Italian explained, "do you see that little bridge?"
"Yes"
"Well, the EU gave us funding for a two lane bridge but instead we built a single lane one with traffic lights at both ends. With the difference we built this residence"
Some time later the Greek mayor invites the Italian to his village. The Italian is flabbergasted. The mayoral residence is a palace. Modelled on the Parthenon, only bigger. Marble walls and floors, gold bathroom fittings, a fleet of Mercedes in the underground garage and a 100 foot yacht bobbing in the bay flying the mayoral standard.
"Stavros!" gasps the Italian, "Such a beautiful palace! Tell me, how does your little village afford such a luxurious home for its mayor?"
The Greek leads him outside, "Look," he says, "you see that motorway?"
"No"

[Bo-Gilly]

[quote]A good point Bo-gilly, and one that goes to the heart of the nonsense that is the Eurozone.
The euro project is based on the same barking insanity as the comprehensive education system, namely that the lazy and stupid will somehow rise to the level of the best in class rather than being disruptive and dragging everybody down to the lowest common denominator.

[Dombo]

ok, let's be PC and change lazy and stupid to "differently abled". I too went to a comp, and then only a poly, so we're more alike than you'd like to imagine

To give some balance to the racism you seem to have discovered in my post, perhaps if the Germans returned to Greece the gold they pinched during the war then the Greeks wouldn't need a bail-out. About €90 billion in today's money at 3% interest since 1943. That's what left-leaning Greek politicians believe, and those who portray Angela Merkel as a jackboot-shod SS stormtrooper.

The initial roots of the German recovery were the Marshall Plan funded by the US after 1945, and the biggest non-ethnic German population in Germany is Turkish. Last time I looked they were not in the EU or even in the Eurozone, so not included in whatever schoolboy racism has offended your sensitivities.

Everything else in my post is simplified fact, but do feel free to disagree with my explanation of the workings of the international bond market.

[Paul H]

[img]http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/Images/Image2.gif[/img]

[MJ_1993]

IQs mean very little when push come to shove. There's a lot of smart people with low IQs and stupid people with high ones.

Bo's point regarding use of overseas labour in Germany is a valid one, just look at the gastarbeiter (sp?)

[Dombo]

[quote="Mo Jaffer"]

Bo's point regarding use of overseas labour in Germany is a valid one, just look at the gastarbeiter (sp?)

[quote="Dombo"][quote="Mo Jaffer"]

Bo's point regarding use of overseas labour in Germany is a valid one, just look at the gastarbeiter (sp?)

[MJ_1993]

Yeah but you can't really compare Germany with Greece be it on work ethic or whatever, one's problems generally lie with crowding out and deep rooted structural problems going back over 200 years whilst the other has always been a strong power or been important in some form since the beginning of the same period. Greece was in a state of continual default from 1800 till c.1945 and the influx of marshall aid to the country. Germany held a special place geopolitically post ww2 as the West saw to make it an advert for capitalism, Greece never really held such a place. Comparisons between the two are rather meaningless.

The point doesn't really lie with the bond yields, but what the government are doing with the money they're generating from those bond issues. If they're bloating the public sector in order to record superficial growth via making GDP rise through public spending then clearly there's an issue.

hmm i'm sure Riccardo would differ on the group point, but I see what you're trying to say.

[quote]He suggested the German economic miracle had been built upon the efforts of workers from the Club Med eurozone countries