Bananas

Hardly a surprise.

Can't remember, who was the poster from Alabama ?

As far as I'm concerned, everyone is at fault. Previous Greek governments mostly. The Greek people also for only caring about their own self interest and voting along certain lines regardless of looking at policy. Don't get me wrong, we could talk about the corruption and inefficiencies of lots of other countries indefinitely, but the fact remains that Greece took it to a ridiculous level. And now they are paying. The EU is also greatly at fault. How did they think loading up a nation that is already in the red, with lots more debt would work out ? Purely by austerity ? Please spare me. The experiment of "growth" via "deflation" hasn't really worked out. All the EU is doing and has been doing since 2008 is pushing the problem down the road. To Greece's credit they are saying enough is enough and we need a better way. The only viable solution is growth. If someone has a 100K debt and you cut his wage from 50K to 30K he's not exactly going to be in a position to pay it back easily. If instead you get him a job paying 70K all of a sudden everyone wins. This is what Greece needs. Unfortunately, this sort of mini Marshall Plan can't happen for political reasons. Basically, it comes down to whining and precedent. If the EU helps out Greece then everyone else will want similar help. If the EU helps out Greece then there is no incentive for Greece to get its s%$#! together. The EU must help Greece but the EU can't help Greece. This is why in essence the EU as an economic entity is dysfunctional and always will be. It can't do what is require to "fix" things when they're broken. It either doesn't have the mechanisms or doesn't have the will. Giving it the mechanisms brings up issues of sovereignty which is a whole new ball game again. Thinks will essentially stay as they are give or take a few tweaks. Maybe Tsipras might improve things here or there, but any gains by him or any government in the next 10 or so years will be small incremental gains. Better than nothing I suppose. The only long term fix is the EU voluntarily breaking apart. Germany definitely never wants this to happen as the value of the DM would sky rocket and smash their export industries as well as the lost of prestige. No one wants to admit that a project they've worked on for decades is a failure.

Good to see some more posters trickling in :D

Doing anything with Russia on a government or military level is never going to happen. The best we can hope for is getting some private Russian money to be invested in Greece to help with employment, or maybe some sort of increased trade. All the rest is hyperbole.

Regarding Klaus, his second half of the season has been extremely disappointing. Did his drop in form coincide with him signing his new contract ? ;) As for the article of him playing in the EPL, the reporter should at least try and make it somewhat believable! The best part about the article on sport24.gr were the user comments. Now that was entertaining.

Tzavellas has definitely dropped in level this season. He went from being borderline NT quality or at least a backup, to not even being GSL level. He should be worried about ever playing for the NT again given the drastic improvement in level and prospects of Stafylidis. Next season will be a make or break season for Tzavellas.

Nice avatar ;)

I had the same problem. pash needs to send an email to "[email protected]". Once I did this, Lazarus got back to me in a few hours. See #69 on this thread.

Nice post Athinaios. It's a reasonably realistic picture of what Greece would go through if they wanted Grexit. Still, I believe in the long run (I'm talking 2+ decades), it would be better because I think the basic structure of the Euro is fundamentally flawed. But who would sign up for that sort of pain ? I don't see it happening. That's why I keep saying a Grexit needs to be done with the consent of the EU. And this frankly, I can't ever see happening. Truly they are stuck. The best we can hope for is Varoufakis gets his way ie. loosens the conditions of the "austerity", and more importantly, can convince the EU to tie debt repayments to growth policies. Growth is what Greece needs, not austerity.

By the way, loving your new avatar.

Boston Thanatos, paokarag4, El Greco missing in action. Any others anyone else can think of ?

I half agree with Irlandos. The banking system in Greece is barely functional. The big problem however is how private debts are dealt with. It's all well and good for the Greek government to default, but what about existing business debts. Say you owe a supplier in Germany 20,000 Euros, that could triple in the new currency. It'd be a legal mess and no one would want to have dealings with greek companies unless they paid cash up front. Regardless, I still feel it's the political cost that is the bigger danger and why ultimately if Greece wants to leave the Euro, we need to do it with Germany's "permission".

So Kosmas closed the site down because of Attilio's actions ... which were what exactly ?

I kind of agree with you Irlandos, the reason being I don't see an out from the current conditions that Greece is experiencing. So given the choice of 20+ years of this compared to going back to our own currency, I'd prefer our own currency. But to do this the greek people need to understand the full consequences of such a drastic move and I don't know if they're prepared for it. They seem to want to stay in the Euro but not have austerity. Currently, that position is illogical. The bigger problem is the political cost. The remaining EU countries will be very pissed that Greece found an "out" and will want pay-back in some form. We would have no support from them in the future with issues regarding Skopje or Turkey. The only viable option is Greece leaving the EU with the EU's "permission" but this is still a long way off. Maybe that is what Greece really wants ? It might explain why they keep dragging their feet.

No idea. I can only assume they don't know about this site ? Would've been nice if Attilio had at least given people ample warning and the opportunity to migrate across. Maybe in his mind it was worth burning dozens of posters just so he could get some satisfaction. Applause all around.

Tell him to hurry. I even have an avatar ready for him to use.

So, does anyone have any idea what the hell happened in the last few days ? I could see Attilio was acting erratically from around the moment he started banning long time posters. I get that he may have been fed up or had his own reason for stopping the site, but why so suddenly ? It was basically a big f**k you to all the former gs community. Did he really have it in for everyone ? Did we wrong him so badly ? A simple "the site will be closing down soon so start preparing guys" would have sufficed. As for the selling of the former site, what does "serious offers only" mean ? A dollar ? A million dollars ? Is it even worth anything at all ? Maybe we'll find out one day (or not) what really happened to set him off but it sure was a stupid way to handle things.

And Blackhawk, Boston Thanatos, paokarag4 and the rest of the PAOK posters.

Tell the papara to get his arse here. pash Australian slang for a tongue kiss, like the English word snog.

Hopefully some of the other PAOK posters come across as well. If anyone knows how to get in touch with them, please do.

Yia sas paidia! It has been an interesting couple of days ...