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MICHAEL NOONAN WASN’T exactly feta-ed (sorry) for his comments about Greece yesterday.
The Finance Minister told a conference in Dublin that most Irish people don’t have a lot of connections with Greece and the country is very far from Ireland. ”If you go into the shops here, apart from feta cheese, how many Greek items do you put in your basket?” he asked.
Oh, how wrong you were, Minister Noonan. Feta cheese aside, Ireland and the rest of the world has a lot to thank Greece for…
Democracy: The worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried, democracy may just be Greece’s biggest legacy to the world – which is kind of grimly ironic given that it had to rule out a technocratic government this week. But still: DEMOCRACY! YAY!
(Photo: PA Wire)
The Olympics: Faster, higher, stronger – or in Ireland’s case, not quite as fast, high, or strong as other countries, most of the time. But for something that first started in Greece almost 3000 years ago, we haven’t done too badly.
(Photo: EMPICS/EMPICS Sport)
Georgia Salpa: Probably the single most valuable Greek export to the Irish economy. Behind feta cheese, of course.
(Photo: Mark Stedman/Photocall Ireland)
The Oedipus Complex: Coined by Freud to describe the possibly insane psychoanalytic idea that men secretly love their mothers and want to destroy their fathers. Poor ol’ Oedipus managed to do exactly that around 430 BC in Greece. Oops.
Shirley Valentine: Ok, technically she was English, not Greek (and er, also fictional) but she made going to Greece for a holiday look a really, really good idea.
Things we couldn’t fit in but are still great: Big fat weddings, plate smashing, olive oil, nude wresling, Elia Kazan, Aesop’s Fables, Jennifer Aniston, plaits that wrap around your head, the Illiad and the Odyssey, tzatziki, moussaka, yoghurt, Socrates, Aristotle, Plato and baklava. Anything we’ve forgotten?
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Won’t happen. Too much invested in the EU already by all parties. Nobody will leave and nobody will push for the dissolution of the EU no matter how much pain it causes to the average joe.
Don’t be silly, of course the EU/Euro policies are working.
The bond holders still have all their money and they are happily making more and more money speculating on the ups and downs of currencies and shares in these topsy turvy economic times.
The rich are still getting rich, the plan is working.
Yes, failing miserably (except for the rich elites, as already pointed out).
But there should be no surprise whatever.
Apply ‘austerity’ policies, which means removing money/spending from the aggregate economy, which means GDP falls & unemployment grows, which means our debt position either stagnates or even becomes worse. Precisely as happening.
It’s not rocket science, just ‘macro’ economics, tho’ it seems most mainstream economists struggle with it, but then who mostly pays +them+? (Back to our rich elites & bankers I think.)
Debt sustainability, employment etc comes from economic growth, not contraction by ‘austerity’.
And the good news is that even we in the Eurozone have an entity that can fund the stimulus spending required at no cost whatever to anyone – the ECB, if properly mandated to do so (under proper democratic control).
Learn about MMT economics & find out why. For serious students, a new textbook is due out later this year.
Two women dead and two children injured following collision in Cork
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