One year in over 60?

Austerity was caused by 60 years of borrowing money that was never ever intended of being repaid. The cause of the implosion to the GDP is the 60 years of borrowing. There would be no need for austerity if there was not prior, out of control, borrowing.

Everyone needs to pay their debt no matter who they are unless the debtor forgives. I don't know what your point to this last statement is. Why would the money go to Greece when it already went to Greece over the last 60 years. You want to eat your cake and have it too. Greece was forgiven 100 Billion. This money went to Greece. The rest went to pay the creditors. When I sell my house, the money that will be mine is what will be left after I pay off the bank. The bank didn't steal my money. I used theirs to purchase the house.

If I get behind property taxes I have more to worry than about electricity. Not only will I loose my electricity but I will also loose my home. I will loose any other asset if my home does not have enough equity to cover the taxes and the loan and I will be forced into bankruptcy. I will be out on the street.

For 60 or more years Greeks have borrowed (plundered) Greece and now Greeks expect someone to come and give them more so they can continue. Stop looking at the last 4 years and look at the last 60. How many surpluses have have you had in the last 60? How many of the deficits exceeded the cost of living? Greeks have borrowed from their children and now the children are forced to pay. You can't fix 60 years of indulgence in 4 years it's going to take a generation before things start improving to the point where you can start building wealth. If it were not for austerity people would be starving to death and Greece would probably need the Red Cross and charity.

Wake up! Nobody can fix this problem but the Greeks. Stop blaming others. Last I heard Greece was a democracy. The Greeks need to start getting involved. Start fixing the corruption. Start paying taxes. Nobody needs to lend Greece money and the Greeks should be grateful that someone has enough to help them. The Greeks haven't yet realized what would happen if nobody lent them any more money. They still believe that they are entitled.

It is very easy to talk but what is needed is action. The only plan of action that I heard which is to reign in Greece's spending in order for it to be able to come out of this is the European austerity package. The problem with the Greek economy is that the spending is beyond the income that Greece is capable of earning and most Greeks do not wish to contribute. I know first hand. Greece had since WWII to build wealth like Britain but in Greece it was not about building wealth but about greed. Many Greeks were forced out of Greece because of this greed and now are watching from the outside and can't believe the gaul that the Greeks in Greece have. Fix the greed. Fix the corruption. Roll up your sleeves and start working as a country and not as a few privileged individuals who are raping the rewards from the rest of the population.

Austerity hasn't failed it has awoken the Greeks to hopefully understand that an exit from Eurozone will result in a more drastic reduction in their earnings than the austerity measures currently imposed. The Greek problem is the Greeks themselves. Stop blaming others for your failings. Nobody has forced this path on you. This path was created by your actions and you should be thanking Europe that they are there to continue lending Greece money. If you can't see that, then you will never get out of this problem .

Now they can also prove that you were there when they emptied out your bank account. This is probably why they a refusing to provide any information on stingrays it goes way deeper than anyone thought.

I will assume that you are not a troll. The fault lies within the Greeks themselves. You cannot forever consume more than you produce. No matter who you are. Capitalist or socialist. Greece has borrowed to support their lifestyle since WWII, if not before. They are constantly running an operating deficit. Nobody wants to lend Greece money because Greece does not want to change their ways. They want to consume more than they produce. The Greeks would't lend themselves the money!

Austerity is not the problem, it's a solution. Did you Notice that Greece has not proposed one solution in which they pay back the debt? They only demand they are bringing to the table is that they can't be asked to reduce their spending. It's humiliating.

Now some will come forward and say that a recession is not the time to reduce spending. This is right when you are not always running a deficit and when the burden of your debt is manageable. Greece was forgiven 100 billion euros already. If the Greeks don't want the austerity measures let them propose a solution to the repayment of all the loans including the 100 billion which was forgiven on the condition of austerity.

I am more of a socialist than a capitalist. I honestly believe that the state needs to help even the field in order to produce more than is consumed which translates to building wealth. Yeah I agree with you the boogieman did it. It's just that the boogieman in this case it's the Greeks who think that they are entitled to live beyond their means.

The problem with Greece is not about a recession it's about too much debt. Who cares about the Nobel prize, they gave the Nobel "Peace" price to a president who was at war.

I like your idea but your math doesn't add up. You want a Guaranteed minimum but you will collect a fixed amount. What happens to the difference? What happens when there are more people collecting than there are people working (suppling)? If there is no reward(wages) for work why even bother working. Until we find a way to produce all the needs of society with volunteers then we would have more and more "poor" (Guaranteed Minimum earners) until the system would fail.

I believe the problem of the poor is in our governments, meaning we the people. Just look at the US constitution. It's become a useless piece of paper because it's citizens treat it like toilet paper. They display it for all the world to see but the flush it as soon they are told to. The US now has Kangaroo courts, secret lists, confiscation of property without a hearing, personal searches without cause and more. The land of the free where your house can be seized for profit. The right to profit exceeds the right to life and that is just plain wrong. Corporations are not citizens. The board of directors and/or the officers of a company should be imprisoned when they break the law and not forgiven and rewarded because they are too big to fail. There is no easy solution but it would start by the constitution becoming more than a piece of paper.

Then why didn't it work the last 60 years? Money is debt, and throwing more debt into the old equation will result in bankruptcy.

The UK used the debt to rebuild the wealth that was destroyed during the war. Greece spent the money in entitlement. Unfortunately the next generation will have to pay. Listen to the solutions offered by the new Greek PM it basically reinstate the old but this time they promise they will not steal. Fingers crossed.

Austerity is imposing honesty into the equation and it will take another 10-20 years to fix properly. Greeks need to pay taxes for the services their government offers. They need to work to create wealth and not just a night out on the town. Greece was the grasshopper and now they need to become more like the ant because winter has come. If Europe was not part of this equation, austerity, the earnings of the Greeks would have disappeared as their currency would have no value.

I agree somewhat to your statement "Austerity economics is madness" and that is when the society generates more wealth than they produce otherwise they are leaving their bills and their debt for their children to pay. History has also told us that trying to maintain an unbalanced situation will only result is a larger disaster later on as was seen in the great depression. We need to put aside some wealth so we can avoid austerity when times are tough.

You are with the carbon you exhale and the fertilizer that you poop and the ashes you will return to the earth.

I completely agree with your comments and also like to point out that FF is no longer the users browser. I have no idea where they are going. Forcing Yahoo onto users. If I wanted Yahoo as a search engine I would have selected Yahoo. Unable to save exceptions to self signed certificates. I only noticed when I had to reinstall due to a faulty disk. Please do not try to argue security on this.

My heading reads like the article. When looking back it's amazing what we can prove. Apple almost disappeared because of that mentality. Apple was the biggest PC maker when they lost the market. Apple was the biggest smartphone maker when it lost the market. The reason they were successful, as well as reason for their downfall is the same. Give the user what they want.

When Apple was leading in PC sales they produced an economical system which allowed the user to own a computer. IBM took that away because they continued on Apples lead and allowed the user to modify the system. With thousands (if not more) people scratching itches Apple could't compete. On one side you had IBM that was less restrictive stole the market and on the other you had Apple who was not permissive in modifications. Again we see the same with iOS and Android. If MS wants to take the phone market all it has to do is open Windows phone and remove all the restrictions, or at the least be less restrictive than Google. If MS would allow any app store it would take the lead. Or even less restrictive allow people to use and modify it as they see fit.

The example I presented was to show how a one supplier fits all solution in computers is the worst thing that can happen.

As to your iPhone example it's more like avoiding an iPhone because the phone is not yours even when you purchase it. You require Apple's approval in order to use it. Your require the carriers permission to change sims. You are not permitted to remove certain software. Your purchased phone is not yours to do with as you please.

Apple was in the lead in the personal computers with the Apple ][ and Apple ][e and lost the market because it wanted to control every aspect of the hardware. IBM published the schematics of its first PC and shipped it with the system. It created the diversity that we see today in computers because it opened the doors to all to innovate. HP, Dell and Gateway were clones.

Now I am not advocating another solution I'm just pointing out that you can't own an iPhone. I am also pointing out that Apple was once before the dominant player. Apple almost disappeared from the marketplace. Apple is no longer the dominant player in phones and it's following a similar path as it did with the PC. I am not saying Apple is going to disappear tomorrow but there are better solutions today than the iPhone and it has nothing to do with the floppy drive.

There were many word processing applications at the time but namely Wordperfect which held most of the market. It was far superior in many aspects than Word of today but I won't get in the details. MS started offering MSOffice for free at the time and since most small business just needed to type letters it was good enough for them. MS improved their product just enough to get to the market. There are issues with MS Office today that should not exist. So for large contracts and documents I would continue to use Wordperfect intsead of word.

Excel is terrible at math and rounding, sure it's fine for small tasks but if you try to amortize a 30 year mortgage you will be off compared to any financial institutions calculations. It was easier to write small programs than to use Excel, now I haven't used Excel in the last 3 years so MS may have improved the product but I never had issues with Lotus123.

Yes word is great for letters and Excel is great for expense accounts or just a quick calculator and the typical business would do just fine with Libreoffice.

The worst thing that ever happened in computers was that we had one monopoly, being Microsoft in the desktop market. Microsoft didn't even see the Internet coming when it was pushing MSN. If not for Trumpet I don't know how else you could connect. There was no native support. Still today I say the one think that is holding most companies back is Microsoft. Exchange and MS Office as two examples. Most people believe that these are the best of the best. but trying to have this discussion will just produce a flame war.

Firefox blocked self signed certs. It used to warn and allow an exception but no longer.

I don't need to spend time or money to tell me who I am. What is the problem of me signing my own certificate?