Yes, yes dears, of course it was all the fault of those evil bankers (especially the American ones).
I mean, they forced didn't they, just forced the Greek government to lavish absurdly generous salaries and conditions upon a bloated public service, along with pensions and other government entitlements offered to a citizenry more than willing to accept them without a thought about where the money was coming from.
They forced your government to provide rivers of free money to you didn't they? It's all the fault of the banks that the government borrowed so much money, (while hiding the fact because this breached its obligations under the European common currency), it now owes more than what the entire Greek economy is worth.
Yup, it is all so convenient to get out onto the streets and shout slogans and play the aggrieved victim because you're blaming everybody's favourite modern scapegoat for the fact that you lived beyond your means in a social democratic fools paradise for too long.
For Christ's sake, grow up and take some responsibility for your own actions.
WORRIES of a contagion in European government bond markets swelled overnight after Standard & Poor's ratings agency downgraded both Portugal and Greece, the latter to junk-bond status.
The 16-nation currency fell to a low of $US1.3277 against the US dollar in London trading hours, according to trading system EBS, and its later recovery was hampered by the S&P call.
Bond investors fled to safer ground, with German government bonds, or bunds, soaring and yields on bonds of peripheral eurozone economies such as Greece and Portugal pushing higher.
"The downgrade of both Greek and Portuguese government debt by S&P is another indication that the eurozone's fiscal crisis is continuing to deepen ," Ben May, an economist with Capital Economics in London, said.
"In all, a stark warning that a Greek rescue package, if and when it finally appears, will not be the end of the crisis."
Portugal appears to be next, followed by Spain and Ireland.
Of course, had they listened to the hated "Anglo-Saxon" neo-liberals, none of them would be in this mess and they wouldn't be threatening to pull down the Euro Zone (if not the global economy).
Christopher Hitchens points out his own prescience:
SOMETIMES sheer immodesty compels me to ask, of my long record of prescience, what did I know, and when and how did I know it? In the summer of 2005, Foreign Policy magazine asked its contributors to name one taken-for-granted thing they thought was overrated or would not last. After a brief interval of reflection, I chose the euro.
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