Discussion on:

How the iPad is helping save Greece

It helped to get Greece in trouble in the 1st place.The rest of the world too, for that matter.

"Super-friendly machine that any of the bankers involved could figure out how to use"... ungh... well... considering the reputation bankers have these days, that's not exactly something Apple could brag about.

In Iceland, Ireland, the UK, Spain, and the US, the state bailed out the banks. In Greece this write down, a lot of that is held by Greek banks. The Greek banks just bailed out the STATE. So, while generating BS "financial tools" is destroying the world, in Greece's case, they were generated by the Greek STATE, and the banks need more advanced physical tools to cut through the BS.

I've been writing apps for that for the last 15 years. And as far as I can tell, complicating finances so that nobody else understands what's going on is how financial industry makes its living. Producing complexity to obscure things, so to speak.

Sorry, but what an utter waste of an article, not to mention my time.
And if I were some anti-globalisation protestor I would find it deeply ironic too. (Maybe I should explain that comment to the bankers as they are apparently very stupid).

Ironic and iconic.

... much less understand what the article was even about.

"Somebody used technology to facilitate negotiations that took place in many places at once". On top of that is draped an Apple marketing spiel, and then the whole thing was ballooned to fifty times the size of its substance.

Soufflé

Perhaps more good would come out of arguing about my point than my spelling.
Perhaps you can explain the use of the article though, if not as a puff piece for Apple.

"Greece was able to save $140 billion in debt with the help of the Apple iPad"


...This is fanciful, uncorroborated Marketing bollocks. Same sort of nonsense that helped the UK Parliment vote through iPad for MP's to save paper, where they could save the same money by reading stuff on their existing laptops and not printing it in the first place.

If Greece wanted to reduce it's debts, not retiring at 53, having efficient public services, not lying their arses off about public finances and people paying their ****** texes would be top of my lists.

I agree with the first paragraph. On the second one, I would say you're a bit missing the point. Yes, there's a lot of tax evasion, but coming about lying about public finances, the Greek government just preached to the congregation. Nobody wanted to really ear about the truth, specially not the German government that now is acting as the injured party. How about for example if Greece returned the submarines that we're bought to a German company in what is known to be a crooked deal? And how about Germany paying the war reparations that weren't paid? Or how about the UK pay for the sculptures stolen from the Parthenon?

You don't see a problem with the idea that you can enjoy a first-world standard of living for a lifespan of roughly 80 years on a working career that lasts less than half that? No amount of flashy tech toys can solve that problem.

It used to be that people only lived to 60 or so until recently, so a younger retirement age made perfect sense. They just never bothered to change it since it still worked for them--until now.

...for the last 100 years. It doesn't take a masters in finance to understand that actuarial tables that are based upon average mortality at 60 that are not consistently adjusted will fail.

Either way, you hurt yourself in responding and yet failing to explain how it's possible for a society to live a first-world standard of living when a working life isn't even half of overall life expectancy.

No, Greece is a living example of what happens in social democracies where people will always selfishly vote for their own goodies without regard for the health of the system as a whole. All of Europe, and eventually the US as well is heading down this fiscal black hole. This is just the beginning.

as apposed to the US democracy where people selfishly vote for there own goodies without regard for the health of the system as a whole. "heck no.. we don't want better healthcare or education that would improve living standards and benefit the country as a whole.. it might mean I have to pay more of my money in taxes!!" (besides, smarter and healthier voters are not beneficial to governments maintaining and expanding control)

If more social democracy leads to selfish voters and catastrophe, why are your northern neibours not on the curb beside Greece with hats held out?

I don't believe the selfish voting choices are a result of the form of democracy. I'd also suggest that other factors where involved in leading Greece into this.

...then perhaps we'd be more confident of entrusting it to run the more complicated ones. As it is, our government is fundamentally bankrupt and the dollar is only being kept afloat by the Chinese Communists, of all people. Do tell me more about how the people responsible for this state of affairs is also capable of running an omni-trillion dollar health care scheme. Seriously.

But we digress. If you'd bother to read the news from outside America, you'd see that the "democracies" of the "social democracies" are throwing temper tantrums at being told that their economies are not viable, and they're going to have to change. Again, will someone explain how working less than half of ones life and expecting all the goodies of the first world is the least bit viable?

...we can also quickly agree that they're all incompetents who need to be replaced with something more worthwhile, like, say, the residents of any random home for the hopelessly senile.

they're as adept at obfuscating their schemes as the bankers (noted elsewhere, above). The craft of ripping off constituents relies in large part on misdirecting the victims' attention to cynically-managed 'social hot-button' issues such as gay marraige and abortion. Like their bedfellows in banking, U.S. legislators keep the rules complicated and ever-changing--while directing constituents' attention elsewhere; this displays their competence at long-term deception of populations (rather than INcompetence at the public 'service' for which they campaigned).

...then why would any sane person want them to be responsible for their health care as well? I want the government to be responsible for as little as possible.

Since my comment was on a lot of self-serving profiteering that gets excused as 'incompetence', how did you manage to infer that I would advocate giving *crooks*---who I differentiated from 'incompetents'---responsibility over even MORE of citizens' affairs?! You appear to be asking me to defend something I just came out AGAINST.
C- for comprehension, John; Ansu had just called U.S. politicians 'incompetents', and I supplied a more cynical motive than he did (greed) to explain our 'representatives'' failure to do much of anything save enrich themselves. That strikes me as 'successful avarice', not 'incompetent public service'...so I give up; why WOULD I want the U.S. government 'managing our healthcare'?

Incompetent, or self-serving, the outcome is about the same. Either way, allowing these people any power over our lives is a tragic mistake. Sorry if I offended.

As a disabled vet, I'm already a long-term 'customer'/victim of gov't-run health *care*....Like Leonard Cohen said, "I have seen the future; it is murder."

You obviously have no clue. Have you no idea that 40% will get Alzheimers over the age of 60. Probably the super rich Madam Lagarde already has got Alzheimers.

Greeks on average work longer years than most workers in the EU and they also work on average longer hours. The EU forced the Greeks to buy Eurofighters at twice the price instead of Block C F16's, they sold submarines using bribes which were unseaworthy, they carried out numerous IT projects that either do not work or do not cooperate with each other, they push the entire problem of illegal immigration on the Greeks and the Spanish, they provide little or no help for checking the entire border of Greece and do not support Greece when the Turks overfly (in direct violation of internation law) Greek territories as far as Crete. The EU was asleep and used Greece to boost their own economies while there was no recession. I would like to remind you that 60% of my wife's family died of starvation in the war and that Greece suffered 23% damage compared to 11% in Germany. After the war the UK ran away and left Greece to the USA who supported corrupt goverments between the war and the end of the Junta in 1974. Greece received no Martial plan. (Its much more complicated than anyone on this thread has any idea about.) The sculptures was just the start of the interference. In fact, most of the Greek political families were helped by the foreign powers to the detriment of Greece.

Germany actually paid ALL its reparations from World War I, albeit slowly and with several defaults along the way, completing it in October of 2010. (http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2023140,00.html). Deals with a private company in Germany don't affect the debt owed to the German government by Greece, so your implication that the German government is greedy and playing both ends is foolish. Germany forgave a huge chunk of Greece's debt and Greeks respond by burning Merkel in effigy. If that isn't the action of spoiled children, I don't know what is. It all boils down to corruption, socialism, and a sense of entitlement.

...within the next year or so as German citizens start to question why they're working over 40-hours a week until over 65 to bail out a nation that gets to retire at around 50 and is demonstrating little willingness to change.

The Tea Party is a scam to distract people while the Republicans try to steal some more pie... not that the Democrats are any better, mind you, I just don't think there's a need to let one evil justify another.
If the Germans do decide to change their step, they have grass roots movements of their own, and don't need to copy the American faux one.

Naturally, the Germans will have their own grass-roots movement, just as the Tea Party was. But the basis of both will be the same; the productive citizens are tired of being made slaves to the unproductive.

And that the Tea Party being a GOP scam is simply absurd. Most of the GOP has fought the Tea Party from the beginning, which is why there's a Tea Party in the first place.

are why there's a 'Tea Party in the first place', and they ARE a subset of the GOP.....

Some republican candidates, who were a bit out of tune with the tea party populist agenda, probably did frown on them, but the Republican party has owned that movement, if not from day one, then from day two. Look around, where do you see anti-tea party flak guns now? If any Republican today is against the co-opted tea party, it is only because the tea party is also being used in power struggles internal to the republicans.

Disgust for incompetent, self-serving big government and a GOP that is fundamentally little different from the Democrats transcends the left's current bugaboo straw-men, "The Koch Brothers".

They're being used by the same neocon idiots who were with DeLay, driving the same agenda: More extreme republicans, with less concern for a viable policy.

Well, just last week they took out Richard Lugar; he was as establishment GOP as there is.

The Neoconservatives are just rooting out the conservatives.
Business as usual on the path to a more extreme republican party.

The Tea Party to support Democrats?

in the end, they find that they can't quite wrap their flag around more than a few *individual liberties* at a time. The 'Tea Party Movement' is a carefully-managed neo-populist pressure group wholly within the GOP, as was intended. 'Tea Party Republican' is a phrase heard every day; 'Tea Party Democrat' is an oxymoron....

Germany paid nothing from the WWII. Also Greece was forced to be excluded from any reparations that might be paid. Probably because Greece suffered more damage that ANY of the countries (including Poland) and they couldn't affort it in their entire life-time.

They were merely transported for safekeeping.

Right. Greeks have pulled $75 billion out of personally held accounts and hid it in their mattresses. If Greeks REALLY had ANY confidence in their ability to govern themselves, they'd bail their own country out. Instead, they're hoarding and begging for a Euro bailout.

Meanwhile, Greece didn't foot the bill for the iPads. The guys trying to minimize losses while getting the maximum reduction in Greek debt did.

Which Greeks are you talking about? We have 23% unemployment now. Perhaps we are talking about the politicians who don't even want to raise that question? Greeks do not have the confidence at the moment that ANYONE will help. It's one thing read about it and another to experience it.

Look back at some of the excellent write ups on Greece, and how they are uncovering stuff buried, so Greece could lie it's way into the Euro, and stuff bured ever since. The prosecutions in Greek Courts of some of the EU bean-counters sent in to investigate is disgraceful. Greece needs a dose of German Tax inspectors through it.

How about it Greece returns some of the money/resources robbed and countries destroyed by the mulitary expansionist actions of Alexanbder the Great.

Or is their a statute of limitations on this sort of thing, and that does not count any more - LOL.

Do you remember in the first days of the Monetary Stability Pact?
Who fell short? The big guys. Who decided that the sanctions already agreed on NEED NOT APPLY, there by setting the trend that nothing is done to verify compliance? That's right, the big guys.

Now they can pay for their stupid pointless pride, through the nose or through the other end if need be.

So you're saying it serves the rest of them right that Greece screwed the whole thing up (among others)?
Wow, that's some argument.

The Euro had sound measures for checking and sanctioning, but when Germany and France decided that the sanctions shouldn't be working, because Germany and France stood to get a smack on the touche, they also screwed up the checking: Who would bother checking something that can't have consequences? Who measures the water level in a tank that will never be used?

They screwed us over, simple as that.

Greeks asked for the German tax inspectors to come over here but the Germans refused. They said they fear for their safety but most people think that they didn't know their job. Its easy to say to someone to do it but harder to actually do what you say.

Actually Lord Elgin PAID for stolen goods. In law that means the true owner should be returned his goods and Lord Elgin convicted for handling stolen goods regardless of if they caught the criminal.

I move that the US buy IPads.... They must be Freakin Magic.......