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Comment by riffraff | Hacker News Reader

the choice was to not accept a specific bailout package, so he's following up on his mandate to negotiate another one.

Numerous news articles, including this one, state that the new bailout package is harsher and more severe than the one proposed before the referendum. It makes no sense. The Greek government appears to have completely capitulated to the demands of the creditors.

Who wants to be a cheerleader for the EU after all this? This crisis has cast a pall over the whole European project. It's shown that the odious, un-caring, self-centred politics we all despise in our national politics is just as rampant and alive in the heart of European Union politics.

Here, me, i'll be the cheerleader. EU is great. Back in the days the next zoo was 20km but in another country, so we had to go through border control and afterwards exchange money. And this was a border you could pass, back then there was a great wall splitting Europe. Since then a lot has changed, I worked in Germany, Spain, Sweden, Italy and currently in Austria without an issues. Europe and the EU is for me and a lot of my generation something we are used to and don't want to give up easily for some "odious, un-caring, self-centred politics"

That's very cool. Next time you cross the border, give a moment's thought that the price of that 5 minute savings was to reduce average pensions of hundreds of thousands of people from 550 to under 400, and now again to under 270.

You may want to consider your own pension. If you are about to say that it's with a private bank and thus safe, you may want to look up Cyprus and what happened there.

Make no mistake : the price of your convenience now is being destitute and even hungry if you don't own a house when you lose your job above age 50 or so. Nobody's hiring >50s anywhere after all. That's somewhere between 10 and 30 YEARS you'll spend as a beggar, once you're not capable of working anymore.

Still sound like a bargain ?

> It's shown that the odious, un-caring, self-centred politics we all despise in our national politics is just as rampant and alive in the heart of European Union politics.

And less accountable.

Sure but from what I've read (which may be wrong) the accepted package today is more austere than the the package rejected a week ago by the public.

And the reform package put forward by Greece after the referendum was exactly the package that the populace rejected in the referendum.

It's almost comical.

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