{"id":10111,"date":"2015-07-11T02:27:14","date_gmt":"2015-07-11T02:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=10111"},"modified":"2015-07-11T02:27:14","modified_gmt":"2015-07-11T02:27:14","slug":"what-was-greek-referendum-all-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=10111","title":{"rendered":"What was Greek referendum all about?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Those nutty Greeks are driving me nuts.<\/p>\n

They spend themselves into near oblivion. The European Union has bailed them out more times than I can remember. They run out of money, default on their debt payment, close the banks and then call for a referendum.<\/p>\n

Greeks vote overwhelmingly to reject further austerity plans and, in effect, endorse the principle of pulling out of the EU.<\/p>\n

Then the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, goes to the EU, offers a compromise package that includes — yes, indeed — more austerity in exchange for more bailout money.<\/p>\n

Now the Greek Parliament has approved the deal and is awaiting word from the EU whether it will accept it.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.msn.com\/en-us\/news\/world\/greek-parliament-backs-government-bailout-proposals\/ar-AAcPiCc<\/p>\n

All of this forces me to ask: What was the referendum all about?<\/p>\n

I’ve been to the country three times. It’s a beautiful place, with lovely people, priceless antiquities, breathtaking landscapes, great food and — in Athens, at least — legendary traffic jams.<\/p>\n

They threw over their currency, the drachma, to join the EU, adopting the euro as its currency. It staged a fabulous Olympics in the summer of 2004 — and went bankrupt in the process.<\/p>\n

I do not want Greece to relegate itself to becoming an outlier nation in Europe. Its history is too rich, vivid and important to the development of the rest of the continent.<\/p>\n

However, I’m tellin’ ya, they’re driving this Greek-American insane watching this drama unfold.<\/p>\n

If a bit more austerity is what it takes to pull the Greeks’ chestnuts out of the fire, then the socialists who run the place need to suck it up just a little while longer.<\/p>\n\n

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Those nutty Greeks are driving me nuts. They spend themselves into near oblivion. The European Union has bailed them out more times than I can remember. They run out of money, default on their debt payment, close the banks and then call for a referendum. Greeks vote overwhelmingly to reject further austerity plans and, in … Continue reading What was Greek referendum all about?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[252,1639,1642,1996,1999],"class_list":["post-10111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-news","tag-alexis-tsipras","tag-eu","tag-euro","tag-greece","tag-greek-parliament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10111\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}