It’s the Economy, Dummkopf!
vanityfair.com
vanityfair.com
What stuck out was "Shit, crap, anal, Hitler, Hitler, anal, excrement, Greek people are lazy and dumb, good that they don't have Jews anymore, Hitler, Nazi, Holocaust, "Deutschland unter alles" a reference to the (now illegal) part of the 'Deutschlandlied' originally called 'Deutschland ueber alles' (think Nazi hymn).
I stop reading now. This is the most disgusting thing I've read for a long time, and goatse would probably feel like a relief now.
Stavros, what's your take on the Greek stereotypes..?
And to add insult to - erm - insult:
Page 9: “Why should you pay $20 million to a 32-year-old trader? He uses the office space, the I.T., the business card with a first-class name on it. If I take the business card away from that guy he would probably sell hot dogs.” He is the German equivalent of the head of Bank of America, or Citigroup, and he is actively hostile to the idea that bankers should make huge sums of money.
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He in this case is Klaus-Peter Müller. Please check the first hit I found searching for his name and 'Einkommen'/income. It's German and outdated, but Google Translate should help or just scroll down to see amounts listed next to his name. You see what he got 2007 and (oh, poor guy took a hit) what he got in 2008 up until the 15.05. Yes it's not 20 million. But 'hostile to the idea that bankers should make huge sums of money'? > 2 million / year? What exactly is the author smoking?
http://www.focus.de/finanzen/boerse/aktien/vorstandsgehaelte...
Technically, it is not illegal. It's not part of the official anthem, however.
I didn't manage to read the entire article (it's 17 pages), but I'll comment on the parts I did manage to read. First of all, I've never heard of anyone in Greece making 70k, as the article says. 40k is considered a really high salary, although I think that might be 55k before taxes (I'm not sure about the calculation). At any rate, the median is much, much lower, as most of my friends get around 1k a month, which is about enough for one person to live on. We're hardly a rich country.
About the 13th and 14th salaries, those are Easter/Christmas bonuses, and are (used to be) given to everyone, including people who make 800-1000 Euros/month. I've never heard of them being an accounting trick, but I can't be sure.
Generally, the stereotype Greeks have for themselves is one of the enterprising, law-defying Greek who will try to get by doing the minimum amount of work possible. It's true in many areas, e.g. the public sector, where services are dysfunctional and only open to the public for 4-5 hours a day. A Greek joke has three children (French, English and Greek) comparing their mass transit times, saying "my father gets off work at 4 and he's home at 4:30", "my father is home at 4:15", and the Greek kid says "mine's a civil servant, he gets off work at 4 and he's home at 2".
To make matters worse, civil servants can't be fired, this was a measure instituted years ago to avoid politicians hiring and firing their people every four years to get votes, I don't think this has changed since then.
The problem with Greece is that societal values are pretty much "every man for himself", which is why we're having so much trouble with everything public. There's no regard for public spaces, no regard for a well-run society, even politicians are only trying to embezzle as much as they can while doing the minimum amount of work to get reelected.
It's odd, this systemic laziness is both contrasting and complementing the fact that most of my friends today are either out of work and desperately looking for anything, or working 10-12 hour days for 700-800 euros a month, no paid overtime, and no security. You wouldn't call people who work this hard "lazy", of course, but the moment someone could get a job in the public sector, they'd work much less, simply because that is the norm there. There's no incentive for anyone to work hard, and there's no penalty for not working hard in the public sector.
Given these (dis)incentives and the mindset in the workplace, I think that anyone would do the same. It's clear that we need public services to be more meritocratic, but that doesn't align with the politicians' incentives.
Sorry about the stream-of-consciousness post, but most of the things came to me as I wrote them. I'll be happy to answer any questions anyone has.
If I know my Griswold correctly, Christmas bonuses don’t seem to be too uncommon in the US as well.
Ouch.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Germany#...
Really? Fecal humo(u)r on HN? Ignoring the stereotypes and you repeating the 'German obession with shit' line as a sort of fact, that's just low.
It didn't explain exactly why German banks were so blind to risk. And the claim that German banking is behind the times, is also just plain wrong. I can't find the Economist article, but there is one bemoaning how backward and inefficient American banks are compared to German banks. But the Economist might have referred more to retail banking, this seems to be more about investment banking.
In any case, long article, interesting read, but does not answer much unless you buy into the author's weakly supported thesis that Germans are anal-retentive to the point of being cripplingly oblivious to any kind of deceit.