Tsipras defiant as banks shut, markets rocked

This third world thinking economy should never have been allowed to join the EU, let alone the Euro. People were right all along. They could not and cannot be trusted. They can remain defiant all they want. They have broken their promise and agreement to the creditors countless times and the creditors, despite showing good faith when kicked in the face, have had enough. It is now not the decision of the Greeks to make so I find their arrogance at holding a referendum to be ridiculous. Sadly the innocents, the many good people will suffer. Greece is a textbook example of socialism at is very worst. When you squander money, especially when it is not yours, you will pay a price. If 3 year olds can understand this, so can the Greeks. KICK THEM OUT!

Look, the Greek national finances went into default historically even when they were using the drachma as a national currency. They never learned their lesson even switching to the Euro and joining Eurozone.

As such, it's time to get the Greeks out of the Eurozone so they finally can learn to sink or swim (to use the English expression) when it comes to their national finances.

@Turbotsat

So when EU originally courted Greece for membership, what was their vision of the future? What made them think it wouldn't end badly?

It is simple. Greece lied. In the end Eurostat isn't any wiser than the official Greece financial papers and Greece just forged them. Goldman Sachs helped to do it legally using currency swaps, which were meant for international trade.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/greek-debt-crisis-how-goldman-sachs-helped-greece-to-mask-its-true-debt-a-676634.html

Tsipras is a loon.

“The greater the participation and the rejection of this deal, the greater the possibility will be to restart the negotiations to set a course of logic and sustainability.”

Yeah... but I think the Greek people will discover that it's nice to be able to use money freely before Tsipras has time or chances to do much more "negotiating". The Greeks will find the drachma is better than nothing.

The government also stressed the controls would not affect foreign tourists, who would have no limits on cash withdrawals with foreign bank cards.

I suspect tourists will avoid Greece, this summer. When I was there some years ago at the start of the crisis, my transport in / out of Athens was effected due to air controller strikes, and the risk of those will increase with the turmoil.

But this also shows it's always a good idea to have a foreign bank account out of the control of your local government, especially if it's a crappy one like in Greece. This is an important lesson for all of us in Japan. There's no harm in having an account overseas, but may come in use in situations like these.

Tsipras is evading his responsibilities, he was put in place to make the tough decisions himself, not farm them out via a referendum to the public who vote emotionally rather than rationally because of lack of knowledge of the issues. It's his job and he is not doing it.

Exactly the same with Cameron and a referendum on EU membership; the British public, like the Greek public, is largely ignorant of the real issues, PMs have an army of professional advisers and should take the tough decisions themselves.

So when EU originally courted Greece for membership, what was their vision of the future? What made them think it wouldn't end badly?

"You should not commit suicide because you are afraid of death"

Juncker equates a "no" vote with committing suicide, so a "yes" vote must mean death, albeit a slow, tortuous one as creditors pillage the country and steal pensions to pay French and German bankers.

Hi klausdorth thumbs up or down it important to voice your opinion, people agree or disagree, c'est la vie..

Oscar Wilde ..“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”

as creditors pillage the country and steal pensions to pay French and German bankers.

These French and German bankers have been paying Greek pensions for some years now. It is not the bankers who are stealing the pensions, but the Greece's pension system which has been stealing money from French and German taxpayers. And when we are talking about pensioners here, we are talking about the pensions of government workers.

It is Greece's responsibility to pay it's pensioners, and if they can't afford to pay then either they were paying them too much in the first place, or have squandered pension funds on unrelated projects. In either case, the pensioners need to take it up with their own government, not the EU, which has been paying them for the past two years.

Greece has long had one of the most generous pension systems in Europe, without the underlying economic strength to support it. Now it is collapsing, as one would naturally expect.

The Greek government was guilty of a whole range of 'sleight of hand' accounting, before and after joining the ERM/EMU, Auditors reported on numerous occasions of serious accounting malpractices....

How 'magic' made Greek debt disappear before it joined the euro

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-16834815

The Euro is now trading at 2006/7 levels against sterling, the average hit to global market is 2.7%, £33.6 billion to the Britain's FTSE 100 alone. Beware there has been no default yet!!

Then this statement from finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis. “The Greek government will make use of all our legal rights, we are taking advice and will certainly consider an injunction at the European Court of Justice, the EU treaties make no provision for euro exit and we refuse to accept it. our membership is not negotiable,“

Every then to cap it all come the insidious public threats for all the citizens of European Union to bear witness. Portuguese 10-year bonds starting to spike at one point reaching 3.12%, whilst German Bund calls fell to 0.80%. The utter fallibility of EMU glaringly obvious.

But still French President Hollande, Chancellor Merkel, EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to name but a few, Matteo Renzi, Italy’s Prime Minister acting as if he was off with the fairies, in a state of perpetual denial of the facts, one fact being that Greece can somehow be ejected from the single currency or the EU.

I have produced a working abstract for the daily technical huff puff, up all night kicking the numbers around that theoretically Greece could 'default' and remain in the Euro. I have more than a suspicion that key European Institutions do not fully process a final default cost analysis.

Merkel insists there is no longer any serious risk, (ESM) is in place, the ECB and will buy bonds of vulnerable states on a mass scale. The financial implications of that statement are horrendous to the stability of monetary union.

A Senior Finance Director colleague aghast, jaw bouncing up and down off various items of office furniture, as Juncker, and Martin Schulz President of the European Parliament set about blatantly intruding into elected Greek democratic government. both unelected, produce a ballot paper with either of their names on it ........

This scenario in Greece economy is in line with Vedic astrology writer's predictions by way of comments here ans elsewhere a number of times in the past. Further, its impact on global economy proves accuracy of this writer's prediction published last year on 2 June 2014 in monumental article - Stressful times ahead for world economy in 2015 and 2016 - online at Astrologyweekly.com. This writer thinks that sufficiently advance signal about the present scenario in global economy were provided to the world community in the aforesaid article.

@klaisdorth "Europe does NOT need Greece!"

Then it will be "Europe does NOT need Spain" and so on. This is beginning of the End of EU.

"dump Greece, let them learn how to swim on their own"

I think Russia will remove Greece from embargo list, quickly increasing trade relations.

Wolfgang Schaeuble, 'Greeks won't be able to destroy Europe'......

No Herr Schaeuble is doing a perfectly good job himself, there is no fool like a old fool..... It is clear beyond any reasonable doubt, Geece is similar to a small brick of lego, but perfect placed if forcibly removed, prised out by Schaeuble's nasty little penknife to reduce Lego-land EU to tumbledown ramshackle ruins.