Greeks protest (once more) and burn German/Nazi flags

[batmacumba]

So, you trick them into a ponzi scheme, they get ed up, complain, and they are the bad ones, pointing their fingers to your faces, the angelic beings that were feeding them with money that didn't exist. Poor Germany.

This is so similar to what had been done to us in the 70's, that I get sick. Poor IMF.
At least, this time, the interest rates weren't stratospherically raised, in order to destroy their economy for the next 30 years.

[batmacumba]

Greek minimum wage is probably holding them. Holding an even worse fall.

And Tender, please. This rich works more, poor works less speech - added with a hardworking grandparents that passed me values - is so petty-bourgeois. My family history would fit on this, yet there were no wasteland here (and the preferred excuse thus being the immigrant ethos) but I know a lot of families with the same, or even higher, income levels that doesn't fit at all. And a lot of poor people that works a lot.
Actually, I've known few poors that don't stand up at 5AM, keep standing inside the bus for at least 1 hour, works all day through, hold their heads down when their employers or chiefs humiliate them, then more bus, a lame meal and sleep. Yet, I can tell you, a rich, well educated, but lazy and slightly obnoxious kid will usually do a more effective job.
It's a matter of culture, yes, but not based on effort. It's based on the time and the approach that community had on the industrial society's issues. This creates behaviors and postures that leads to a better relation with the economical-technological environment they are immerse.
Look at how easily East Asia absorbed the industrial society culture. Their merchant/proto-industrial leanings were strong enough, over agricultural organizations, to make an easy and fast transition. On China, I dare state this was a result of Mao's crazy 'go to the country' policies. It wasn't madness; just plain pragmatism.
Now, here in Latin America (and I guess the Southern Asian case would be very similar) our almost medieval agricultural societies, thrown suddenly at the new social-economical organisation, evolved to a situation in what urban populations got easily onto modern world, but rural populations kept living on ancient mentality. When the stupid economical policies of the 70's provoked a heavy rural flight, and sudden disappeared with the opportunities, we got stuck with a population whose culture didn't fit that environment.
This is only being solved now, after the second or third generation of inland immigrants is getting on productive age. And It's most because Lula's policies provided them better opportunities than being janitors.

So, the problem with southern Europe is way more complicated. Because It mixes this civilizational gaps (yet in a extremely minor level) with geopolitics and economical international relations. Is it fair to blame Greek, Portuguese, Irish and Spanish governments? Yes, it is. They accepted the EU arrangements blindly, didn't made any effort to use this to improve their societies, lacked any kind of national project; just followed their richer neighbours bovinely.
Is it fair to western Europe to complain about their southern neighbours? No, it isn't. The whole plan was elaborated by the EEU, those countries did nothing that wasn't approved and stimulated by the Paris-London-Berlin axis.