Canadian tourists disappointed in lack of cheap Greek holiday packages

Every cloud must have a silver lining, and according to this story at CBC, there's oodles of eager would-be tourists in Canada just salivating for a chance at a cheap holiday in someone elses misery.

Why would you give a shit about the suffering of the Greek people in this cataclysmic economic melt-down, when you might be able to score a deeply discounted week at a Greek resort?

As we've said before, tourism is bullshit.

Has the global economy calmed the Hellenic crisis, or is this the calm before the storm?

Those fuckin' Greeks, eh?

They want dignity?

They have the audacity to want dignity after their banker betters mortgaged the nation for the next 300 years?

Well, I say the EU/IMF/ECB/World Bank crew should do all they can do to withhold that dignity.

After all, debts must be repaid... or the whole system is gonna go down the shitter.

Unless of course you are a major bank too big to fail.

Here's the thing. Our way of seeing things is at a crossroads.

Here's another way of seeing things.

I remember the late fifties-early sixties era when my fresh-off-the-boat father worked in a factory.

Back in the day, fresh-off-the-boat DPs of all stripes could get a factory job and buy a house and a car and believe in the good life. On one household income.

Fifty years later, productivity of the working class has gone up exponentially, but working people are either not working or they've become the working poor.

But it's been a great fifty years for hedge funds and bankers and all the other pillars of the Rumpelstiltskin economy.

Good for Tsipras and Varoufakis for saying "nein danke" and refusing, on behalf of the people of Greece, to take it up the ass anymore.

I think capitalism is great. It can motivate people to do great things. But it needs to be strictly regulated. Otherwise your're going to end up with a half dozen hedgie shit-bags running the whole show.

It's time to re-organize the global economy for the benefit of humanity.

Greeks vote NO, sky not falling

Bourse numbers around the world were down a tad today, but not by much.

The Dow Jones was down a quarter of a percent.

Standard and Poors down .4%. Toronto down .6%.

In Europe the Footsie was down almost point eight, while the main German exchange, where you'd expect the major fallout from a Greek NO, was down a mere point and a half.

That's the major stock exchanges of the world telling you that whatever happens in Greece doesn't really matter.

That's a good thing!

What that tells me is that the markets and the people who make them are way smarter than the folks who have been hyperventilating up and down the main-stream media about how a NO vote is going to send the world economy down the shitter.

Some thoughts about Greece

The sky-is-falling crowd pretty much sees a Greek default as being the end of the world as we know it.

Bullshit!

I'm with the American Nobel laureates Krugman and Stiglitz; go ahead and pull the plug. Borrowing more from the EU just gets you in deeper.

Don Pittis and Laura Wright at CBC have postulated that Greece borrowed too much money and spent it stupidly. There is some truth to that.

Greece is one of only four NATO nations that spends two percent of GDP on defence, a charter requirement for members of the NATO gang.

If and when Russia or China offers a bailout package the NATO romance will be over anyway.

For far too long it has been a point of pride among the ruling class in Greece, the oligarchs if you will, to brazenly boast of the fact that they don't pay taxes. That's an attitude that filtered through to the middle classes and even the working class.

We're Greeks. We don't pay tax. Let's borrow a few billion more euros...

Not hard to see where that was going to end.

Another dead end was making tourism a pillar of the economy. The tourism industry is a mugs game, predicated on prostrating yourself before the drunken louts of the Continent looking for a cheap holiday. Mass tourism humiliated Greece long before the "troika" did.

Defaulting on the national debt will not be the end of the world. Greece is revered as the cradle of democratic norms of governance. Stepping away from the toxic trap of troika hegemony is the first step on the road to making Greece whole again.

Greeks will leave Euro, end of world nigh

It's all over the news, except they're still mostly sliding in the modifier "might".

Ain't no "might" about it.

The people have had enough of the austerity enema.

According to the mainstream scare-mongers, once Greece says goodbye to the Euro and welcome back to the drachma, all hell will break loose.

And I'm quite sure the "global capital markets" will do some serious heavy breathing.

Not to worry.

Underneath that Rumpelstiltskin economy that thrives by passing paper around a daisy chain of insiders, there is still a real economy where real people make real stuff and provide services that really matter.

In the short term, global capital markets will indeed have a shudder.

In the long run, the people who can do real stuff and provide meaningful services will be fine.

But a lot of straw-spinners will be out of work.

International partners warn Greeks; austerity or hell

Which comes as a bit of a shock to your average Greek on the street who thought he was already there.

But the Euro-bullies are turning the screws.

The various fringe Left parties are scrambling to put together a coalition government. I don't know why they bother. Anything put together by fringe Left parties isn't going to get the stamp of approval from the Euro-bullies no matter what they do.

Frau Merkel and the banksters won't be happy till the Greeks are saddled with a thousand years of penury.

So I'm thinking, what have those folks got to lose?

Kiss the "troika" goodbye and carry on being Greek.

At least you'll carry on being!