How do you dupe 11 million people?*

You lie to them*. If you are a Greek politician.

Or withhold information from them. If you are Greek media.


It is not enough that Mr Tsipras, rep for Syriza, a party that won 17% in the May 2012 Greek elections, is much sought after by EU media & some US channels, as the clown of the day "to make our day"; back home the media let it be understood that the popularity is due to the man's scintillating wit (chaff would be more to the point)! Amazingly, no one in Greece seems to realise that people are laughing ΑΤ the man!

There is worse.
In a yet fresher case in the never ending spiral of Greece's abysmal plunge into the bottomless pit of unethical waste, it has come to light that the son of a Syriza political preacher is a criminal convicted of armed robbery and possession of explosives.

"I am not responsible for what my son does" you might say -- even though "you raised said son" I would say. However, the father of said son, said neither of the above. He, the father, and his wife, the mother, maintained that in some circles their son's armed robbery "could be construed as a revolutionary act, an act of defiance against....(whoever, whatever)".

How nice.Why don't we all unite to bail out people like this Mr Voutsis... so that they can proliferate and
perhaps teach our children why what are hitherto known as common criminals are in fact uncommon revolutionaries...

In another corruption sideline, aptly represented by the image of trash below, authorities unearthed large quantities of expensive medication, prescribed by a GP to fictitious patients charged to Social Security (named IKA in Greece) and purchased at said GP's spouse's pharmacy -- unsurprisingly, both GP & pharmacist are MP for PASOK, Greece's scandal-ridden Socialist party.



The matter was brought to the attention of various Ministers, including the then Health Minister, Loverdos and one of his cronies, a certain Koutroumanos (ex union dignitary and general purpose activist). Of course, the matter was promptly forgotten.


In the light of these never-ending cases that see the light of day only to be buried by their media, Greeks face a very difficult future.



So, why should we get together to bail out yet again a country where, confidence in its representatives is the last thing that comes to mind, the preceding words listed comprising beauties such as corruption, swindling, fraud, etc similar soft-core characterisations.

We shouldn't.


Not unless Greeks change their representatives in some magical way... Given the latest polls where the adolescent rantings of Syriza (we'll show 'em we don't owe anything to anyone") seem to be gaining ground, radical change seems unlikely.

Maybe Greece will get lucky and a political Maecenas will come forth and will be imposed upon the country --Imposed is the operative word because in Greece people who seem to favour common sense over bullshit only manage a paltry ~3% of the vote, testimony to contemporary Greeks' insistent addiction to the absurd.




* Paraphrasing the fascinating book by Mr A. Andrews "How do you kill 11 million people". {The answer being, "you lie to them" -- but that is only a small part of the whole answer. Read the book!}

Invest in Greece -- today

At the present time, Invest in Greece could be construed as synonymous to, "taking leave of your senses" and "going bonkers".
From a more hands on perspective, it is simply a bad joke, for employees and investors alike.

It is a bad joke for employees because the total income tax burden has risen to an aggregate of over 45% on average for all Greeks, wages have gone down, and the various extras to pay (social security, etc) costs another 18% and, worse of all, the Greek socialist governments often give in to urges imposing an extra, "retrospective", tax... as last year where a well-fed socialist finance minister imposed an extra 5% tax off the top, just as an afterthought!

All in all, if you are to live and work in Greece, it's best to be an EU, UN, or embassy employee (all are exempt from tax & other Hellenic burdens). Or you could opt for the black labour market, as have 33% of the workforce according to the national statistics org. -- you may make less, but what you get is yours. As an added bonus you are not subject to any bright additional taxation ideas, Greek politicians may come up with...

Investing in Greece: a (bad for the money) joke.

It's not that the country is devoid of any beauty, history, monuments, of natural resources, of beautiful landscape, of beautiful weather, of sunshine or of beautiful women and some good looking men.. and then some.
It is that none of these -- or anything else for that matter -- is available, or propitious to, conducting business. Given applicable legislation, custom, applicable rules and unclear regulations, Greece is clearly not open for business; business is just not how this country works --

• Yes, there is the sun, but getting the license to operate a photovoltaic site meant you had to wait 19 - forever for an license to operate, or pay up an easy 12% of the stated investment value;
• Yes there are 3000 islands, many of which are inhabited and all of which can be beautiful to cruise, but you may be barred by disembarking your cruise-ship passengers for any number of reasons, or any number of disgruntled activists, without prior notice (for example, "PAME", a vociferous group representing about 0.8% of the electorate).
• Yes you may build (or renovate) a house -- but the planning permission may take +38months (actual case in Mykonos) or cost a few thou in permission "acceleration" kick-backs.
• .....

All this stands UNLESS of course, you belong to one of a few dozen families that influence or control the Greek administration-governmental complex or you are yourself a politician. But in that case, Greece itself, the country, is your investment, i.e. your property in a sense of the word...

If you are not, here is what you are up against:
Cash-flow: it does not flow. And local banks are totally dry, they have been milked to near death by the Greek State. And so will you be milked...

VAT is payable immediately following the invoice date, regardless of whether said invoice is paid or not. VAT is never returned unless the local tax office contained members of your close family. In the old times, you could pay a kick-back of 5-10% and recoup the rest -- but back then there was some cash availability...

Social security contributions: usually payable 2 months following the salary month, now they are to be paid immediately, in the first days of the month following the employees salary disbursement. Also they have increased -- albeit by less than 1%.

Fiscal, tax: legislation usually changes every year. Lately, it has been changing with alarming regularity in mid fiscal year! Hardly the stuff to inspire investors.

GAAP: it is a patchwork of 17,598 pages (in A4 official size pages), containing numerous contradictory items and many unclear regulations. GAAP in Greece were once guestimated by PWC to add 1.5% to hidden costs. Most importantly, the governing principle behind Greek GAAP is that business is suspect.

Controlling agencies and fines: in Greece, a visit from a controlling agency (usually two-three persons casually clad, often unshaven and sometimes unwashed ) means, a fine. The fine is served in a friendly spirit whereby "you can take us to court, and I'm sure the judge will absolve you". Meanwhile, in order to contest you have to pay 50% of the fine up front. There is no intermediate recourse in most cases!
The governing concept here is not enmity but suspicion. "You are guilty of something, no doubt. Even I can't tell what it is, you know what it is. If it is, the judge will sort it out."

 And that, as saying goes, is that.

So, we are all welcome in Greece -- to throw money at it, best do it in cartloads.

As to investments & business...this is the time to repeat, business and investment is just not how this country works now!

The Peoples' Socialist Republic of Greece

It is not a good time for Greece. Really. It seems an everlasting reality that a few vociferous and disgruntled - adolescent sounding voices, always get the upper hand in Greece -- and send the whole country down the drain. 

 The two major parties are no longer major and many of the politicos are out of a billet. So far so good.

Unfortunately however, Greece's newly reshuffled parliament offers little else to write good things home about, as, what the majors lost the neo nationalists of Golden Dawn and the soft-core soviets, Syriza, won.

The good thing about the former is their investment in accompanying little old ladies across the street and to the bank & back, so no harm comes to them. So far so good. It's when they start banging emigrants & left wing extremists on the head that things get out of hand. And as this happens quite often things are out of hand already. As they themselves content, "if I have to choose between democracy and my country, I will choose my country."

On the other hand, Syriza, led by Mr Tsipras was asked to form a government -- whereupon Mr Tsipras promptly went public to announce that the new government (should any arise) will abolish planned public sector cuts, reign in controls on "the bankers", check them out for having received Euro 200m (in which country?), return certain taxes, provide support to SMEs (what else is new), preserve the public sector payroll, and turn its back to all austerity plans...

Put differently, Mr Tsipras is heralding the Peoples Socialist Democratic Republic of Greece, in other words, he is promising to uphold and protect all of what Greeks apparently voted against! Ineffective, arrogant, and inefficient Public Sector, the authoritarian Administration -- the kick-backs as well perhaps?
It is interesting that

Of course what he really wants is elections again -- and throws the bait to civil servants who are presently unsure of themselves as there is a major assessment centre scheduled to appraise all Greek Civil Service employees.

It is sad that no-one took any time to pay more than lip service to what Mr Tsipras said, as if it was all a song and journalists just hummed along. No one challenged what he said, and the bullshit went down beautifully. Maybe the hot weather helped numb people's wit. 


Similarly, Greece's media, hardly Europe's finest by any stretch of the imagination, seem to have hummed along as well -- or maybe they take bullshit for granted coming from politicians.


Or is it that there is difficulty sorting wheat from the chaff any more in Greece?

Elections in Greece this week-end. So, what else is new?

Parliamentary elections were held in Greece, on Sunday, 6th May 2012. They were also held in France -- but there, the results indicate, indeed, a change.
Back to Greece. Among a lot of hooh-hah of justly disappointed voters, disillusioned with their politicians' inefficiency, incapacity, and rampant incompetency to deal with the country's pressing issues, the results in the polls was, ultimately, nothing...

Nothing happened.

Abstinence was the winner with 40%. For the remainder, there was a reshuffle to the detriment of the two leading parties, Nea Dimokratia and the Socialist Pasok -- although the former is still the minority leader. People did their best to demonstrate their disgust with the two leading parties, voting for whatever was left.

However, for all the voters' efforts in Greece's May 2012 elections, it is still the same pack of incompetent, self-righteous and self-centred personsvying for popular attention who will enter Greece's famed & historically named Boule come their first working day. (Whenever that may be, work not being Greece's politicians' forte.)

An example of Henry Ford's car colouring scheme: "you are free to choose whatever colour you like as long as it's black". Greece's voters had some colours available -- but, bar a few exceptions, it is the colours of yore. So Greek voters -- those who actually did vote -- opted for the left-over parties, mostly of the left wing.

And "left" picked up, a "left wing" party came in 2nd, for the first time.

The left wing parties in Greece have always sounded like thwarted adolescents, defining themselves by negation and fairy-tales rather than proposing anything concrete. Like many adolescents, they sound like they are looking for their place and calling in this life -- but, unlike most adolescents, the still haven't found their calling, many decades down the line.
Indeed, the charming leader the best performing party, SYRIZA, named Tsipras has the added advantage of looking like an adolescent as well as sounding like one!

There may, however, be hope for this country, beset by corruption and Soviet-ism, both: there is a small movement of concerned persons, non politicians, who may save the day. These are small parties or start-ups, most prominent of which seems to be Dimiourghia Xana ("rebirth", a lofty title if there was one and probably necessary!) that comprises executives, small business owners, professionals and technicians, and as such, has no funding whatsoever, relying on the internet and word of mouth to fuel its campaign. Dimourghia Xana promises to bring (back) "common sense" into Greece's political, administrative, everyday life...

It is to be hoped that they -- or any other similarly inclined party -- win elections some time in the near future of this country because by all accounts it seems that competency and common sense are what are most missing in Greece ruling & political ranks.

Until such time as that happens, it will still take 6-12 months to obtain a license to operate in Greece and, whatever you do and however you do it, some inspection or other can pop over and hand out to you a hefty fine -- promising that "it's OK, things will be straightened out in court". In the meantime, you have to disburse 50% of the fine to bring the matter to court...

Let's hope the Greeks who voted for common sense do not lose hope!