Dumb question of the day

I haven't been following the Greek crisis closely, now I'm lost. Can somebody explain to me in a nutshell what exactly is going on in that country and how the hell they got there?

and don't have any assets to back up their debt.

They are missing debt payments, and those notes are being called in by the lenders.

The IMF stepped in to loan them money, but in return they have certain conditions. Notably, they have to cut social services way back, raise taxes way high and the suggestion has been made to force them to sell certain government functions to the private sector. Classic shock doctrine.

For example - Right now, their citizens retire at 55 with 14 months of income annually at their 12 month rate. (As opposed to typical US pensions, which are 50% - 75% of final salary). This is one of the items on the chopping block.

People don't want to lose their govt funded benefits and they don't want to be taxed more, so they are all on strike and trying to burn the country down.

Europe is pissed because countries like Germany and France lived within their means and within the tax dollars they had coming in. They are now in the position of raising taxes on their citizens to help Greece. You can imagine how well that is going over.

The Euro is losing value at an alarming rate as no one wants to be in the middle of this.

The whole situation is simply a tinderbox.

Edit to add - there is no such thing as a dumb question!

Much obliged....

I wasn't paying much attention before last week - so just passing on what I have picked up since this got so messy!

I really hadn't realized exactly what was going on, and you really did sum it up. Many thanks!

aren't sure they want to pay Greeks' taxes for them.

Now that you mention it, I recall seeing something about hiding swimming pools where they aren't visible from the air because you may have to pay taxes on it, and the fact that most swimming pools in Greece were built under the table. The punch line was to buy stock in some CT tarp manufacturer.

They want their Medicare and SSI, but no taxes. Bunch of screaming toddlers spinning on the floor.

It also had something to do with Goldman Sachs selling Greece short of something like that, then doing things to help make them fail.

They were refinancing Greece, putting them in worse and worse positions. I'd bet my bottom dollar that their prop desk (trading solely for Goldman profits) was short the debt.

Merkel seems to think so

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hpLgh41LYfUaDO4oe7qg4NoMZOhQ

"First the banks failed, forcing states to carry out rescue operations. They plunged the global economy over the precipice and we had to initiate recovery packages. Because of these packages, we have become indebted and now, they are speculating against these debts -- that is really very treacherous," she said.