New York Times:
"Throughout months of acrimonious haggling with creditors, Greece’s left-wing government has cast itself as the victim of an elitist financial and political order beholden to Europe’s stingy rich, notably Germans. . . .

"“We are much poorer than the Greeks, but we have performed reforms,” Rosen Plevneliev, the president of Bulgaria, a northern neighbor of Greece, said in an interview. “When you have a problem, you have to address it and not shift it to Brussels or onto somebody else,” he said, deriding Syriza’s complaints that Europe had let Greece down. . . .

"When Greece’s finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, in an early round of negotiations in Brussels, complained that Greek pensions could not be cut any further, he was reminded bluntly by his colleague from Lithuania that pensioners there have survived on far less. Lithuania, according to the most recent figures issued by Eurostat, the European statistics agency, spends 472 euros, about $598, per capita on pensions, less than a third of the 1,625 euros spent by Greece. Bulgaria spends just 257 euros. This data refers to 2012 and Greek pensions have since been cut, but they still remain higher than those in Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia, Croatia and nearly all other states in eastern, central and southeastern Europe. . . .

" “Greece is not seen as suffering so much,” said Ognyan Georgiev, an editor at Kapital, a Bulgarian business newspaper. “They have the sea, they have big pensions and they have a life that looks better than what we have.” . . .

Spokespeople in the Baltic states, Spain & Poland have also been critical of the attitude of the Greek government and people.

This will, however, not stop the Europhiles of Germany, France and others of pushing ahed with plans to pour more money into the bottomless pit that is Greece, just to keep the 60 year-old European dream alive.

thats what I have been saying on the other thread.....

other countries are at least making the effort... not laughing in other taxpayers faces... and saying stuff you...just give us what you promised so we can keep living our lifestyle as we WANT...

would we like it if we had lent them billions.... just to have it thrown in our face...

This may be a bit left field, but I have been wondering for quite a while now how much effect centuries of Ottoman (for which read muslim) rule have had on the Greek psyche.
Have the middle east corrupt societal values corroded their work ethic etc?
Of course the same could be said for Spain & Southern Italy . . . or is it just the hot sun?

I reckon Australia is in the early stages of becomming Asia's Greece.  We are losing self sufficiency.  We now make almost nothing.  We dig holes in the ground and hope someone wants to buy the dirt, and they do.  We borrow money on the basis that people will want our dirt.

One day, they won't.  Maybe they'll want some of it like uranium, but we have no monopoly on that.

Australia needs to reboot.  We used to make just about everything, and imports were few.  We exported wool....riding on the sheeps' back....for foreign exchange.  Gradually, but catastrophically, we now make almost nothing.  No more cars, washing machines, radios, anything 'electronic', not even clothing or what was called 'manchester.'  While I have not conducted an exhaustive audit, the only thing I can readily find in the Home which was made in Australia is a towel my parents bought at least 55 years ago which I took to the pool each day.

We now grow meat and other food.  What are we doing with it?  We export it, and we are selling to overseas States our food growing capacity.

Nah.  We are in strife.  Only one way out, and this is for Greece as well.  You have to become self sufficient and have zero reliance on anything any other Country wants to flog us.

But, silly me.  Totally out of touch.  Instead, let's have as many FTAs as we can muster.

Bah.

Terrific, and, as usual, irrelevant rant, cods.  Pretend, because that is all we can do.

Remember how you reckon Hayseed had Zillions in credit?  Billions to spend?

That was the time to strike, and spend all those zilions into making Australia self sufficient, like America is.

Did he?

No.

Cods, what do we actually make here that we need for a moderate life style?

I doubt we even make one weapon of our own here in Australia.