Who's the smartest?

Some time ago, I looked into schools in, "Schools in Athens, district of Attica".

In an article published a week ago Macleans, the Canadian magazine, reproduces a study conducted by the Bertelsmann Foundation on the quality of education and life-long learning.

Greece is a country known for political platitude and soviet-style political propagandists. All its politicians agree, education is crucial to the future and, in support of this belief it would seem the country's present socialist government renamed its ministry of education to "...education, life-long learning and....".

So how does the country fare in this study? Not very well, despite the politicos' concern.

Not surprisingly, Greece is at the bottom of the list.
I.e. education in Greece sucks. Let alone life-long learning: we don't do that here. We drink freddo and smoke ciggies instead.

For those who still insist on wasting time learning, that leaves two alternatives -- apart from moving out of the country, that is:
* private education (maybe)
* self-education

In actual terms, the educational level of Greeks is surpisingly "normal". The educational level of many Greeks is in sharp contrast with the abysmal level of the Greek educational system (called a "system" in extremis).

Drawing an elementary conclusion, it would seem that Greeks are champions of self-education!

(DIS) Invest in Greece...

Why?

Because the government and administration of this country, do not want you to operate in Greece. They tell you so, but you aren't taking the hint!

You ARE however invited to consider the country, so do come and visit us and join us; we will throw a huge party for the event. We like parties...

We like parties, and you are a most welcome justification for a few extra do's...


Back to (dis)investing. In case you have not got the message, this is the way it goes: this man, Geoffrey "Yiorgos" Papandreou, currently Prime Minister of Greece, invites you to

invest in Greece. You are welcome and you can qualify for incentives (poor) if you do invest undefined, "large", sums of money.

On the other hand, THIS man, Something Chrisohoidis, now minister of commerce etc, tells you that certain multinationals' way of operating in Greece and their high pricing tactics, will not be tolerated.

"I.e., we'll raid them and fine them a few pennies each time"! Carrefour, a french hyper market chain, was fined Euro: 13.5 mill for having identical pricing in its outlets...!!! Accordingly, Fnac, the french non-food chain and Aldi, a German, packed their bags.

So: Which man's advice do you go for?

Geoff 's or Something's?

Your call!

(Bulgaria has 10% standard tax rate for investors. Cyprus 7%. Greece 33%)

Beware of Greeks bearing bonds...

...is the title of an article in "Vanity Fair" by Michael Lewis, an american writer and financial columnist. It is 7 pages long and an interest and often humourous read. The three outtakes below indicate an unusual understanding of the present day Greece status quo and (no surprise) say it all.


"(4) Oddly enough, the financiers in Greece remain more or less beyond reproach. They never ceased to be anything but sleepy old commercial bankers.
Virtually alone among Europe’s bankers, they did not buy U.S. subprime-backed bonds, or leverage themselves to the hilt, or pay themselves huge sums of money. The biggest problem the banks had was that they had lent roughly 30 billion euros to the Greek government—where it was stolen or squandered. In Greece the banks didn’t sink the country. The country sank the banks.

(p. 7) In Athens, I several times had a feeling new to me as a journalist: a complete lack of interest in what was obviously shocking material. I’d sit down with someone who knew the inner workings of the Greek government: a big-time banker, a tax collector, a deputy finance minister, a former M.P. I’d take out my notepad and start writing down the stories that spilled out of them. Scandal after scandal poured forth. Twenty minutes into it I’d lose interest. There were simply too many: they could fill libraries, never mind a magazine article.

(p. 8) No success of any kind is regarded without suspicion. Everyone is pretty sure everyone [else] is cheating on his taxes, or bribing politicians, or taking bribes, or lying about the value of his real estate. And this total absence of faith in one another is self-reinforcing. The epidemic of lying and cheating and stealing makes any sort of civic life impossible; the collapse of civic life only encourages more lying, cheating, and stealing. Lacking faith in one another, they fall back on themselves and their families. The structure of the Greek economy is collectivist, but the country, in spirit, is the opposite of a collective. Its real structure is every man for himself. Into this system investors had poured hundreds of billions of dollars. And the credit boom had pushed the country over the edge, into total moral collapse."






Need we say much / any / ... more?

Get Greece back...

...dot com.

Not that Greece had been lost -- or, if it has or had, that happened long ago. But Greeks woke up to that fact recently.

Now, a few people got together and set up a network on social media, hoping to wake the others from soporific government propaganda and deep apathy.

Unsurprisingly, the site is called "getgreeceback dot com"; so is the facebook.

The proposal is to get out on the street; no shouting, no noise, no nothing except in the words of the visionary: "get (our) country back, ... no IMF, ...no people we did not vote for..."

I would immediately add, get rid f the people you voted for, keep the IMF people. They're better than your politicians, more efficient, much cheaper.