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What would it take to make you abandon your children? Not war? Not even disaster?
The answer coming out of parents in Greece right now might shock you. It's economic crisis. And it's tearing families apart.
Last week I met a Greek mum who has given all three of her children away. Kasiani lost her job as a cleaner last year and with one in five Greeks unemployed she couldn't find another one.
Then her benefits were cut. A lot. She claims that left her unable to afford rent as well as food. Faced with the choice of homelessness or hunger, she snapped. Kasiani told me she felt forced to break her own heart. She handed her two precious daughters and son into the care of a charity.
I went with Kasiani on a rare visit to her children. Her eldest daughter nearly knocked her over with a desperate hug hello. They screamed 'mama' from the top of the stairs as they ran to her with their arms outstretched. I've seen a lot of bad things happen to people all over the world. For some reason this scene made me cry.
It's hard to imagine how a mother could ever walk away from her kids. They seemed to me like a normal loving family. Kasiani wiped away tears as she tried to explain. "I don't feel human any more" she said. "I'm not alive."
Sadly Kasiani is not exactly an exception. In a country on the brink of collapse statistics of this kind are simply not being collected; but local papers tell of children found on doorsteps, and the numbers from a single international charity there tell their own story.
'SOS Children' usually operate in countries ravaged by war or disaster. They look after children whose parents cannot look after them.
In the last year in Greece they have been contacted by almost a thousand families. That's up two and a half times the number from the year before. Even more unusually, the vast majority of requests (97%) are coming from Greek families. It used to be mainly immigrants. Two thirds of those Greek families needed help because of financial crisis in the family.
I spent two days in a village the charity has built on the outskirts of Athens to house around two hundred children. Not all of them were there because of the crisis, but many were. I don't know why but one little girl in particular keeps coming into my mind. Six-year-old Athene was repeating in heartbreaking tones "I love you." Perhaps that was the only English she knew. Or possibly, having lost her parents she was simply desperate for affection.
She's too young to understand why many Greeks blame other countries, like my own, for her desperate situation. The cuts that have plunged a third of all Greeks below the poverty line were forced onto Greece: it was the price of the financial bail-out they got from the EU. That makes Athene an orphan of austerity and it makes people like you and me partially responsible.
Two special reports on the Greek debt crisis air on ITV1 Daybreak today, Wednesday 25April, and Thursday 26 April.
Follow Cordelia Kretzschmar on Twitter: www.twitter.com/cordeliaITV
Katerina Vrana: What the Greek Crisis Looks Like to Me
Mitch Feierstein: A Hundred Billion Here, a Hundred Billion There
Gemma Tumelty: Living Below the Line Day One
BBC News - Q&A: Greek debt crisis
Greece debt crisis: In depth news, comment and analysis of the ...
Greece News - Breaking World Greece News - The New York Times
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I'd like to see the bankers and those in finance in the USA and Europe, the low-tax paying wealthy of the West and the tax-avoiding Greek wealthier classes put above me on the list. Thanks.
Once upon a time, a few decades ago, orphans in homes were exported from the UK to Australia. To be placed in practical indentured servitude. Them as left this beached and rotting hulk, might now be deemed the lucky ones.
"I don't feel human any more" she said. "I'm not alive."
Souls sold into slavery. The purchase price of the EU bet noire.
"They look after children whose parents cannot look after them."
Those citizens abandoned by their State.
"the price of the financial bail-out"
A benevolent conglomerate handing out money like confetti. Then comes the reckoning. Pay these dubious dues, and borrow to do so. Even if borrowing more and more is the only way to meet payments. Its unsustainable usury. No wonder those channels reporting on this have been restricted. Perhaps France will come through for all.
Brazil, Russia, India, China, (BRIC) nations, plus Pakistan, South Korea, and the other industrialized manufacturing countries of the world have a POSITIVE NET FOREIGN TRADE BALANCE because those nations are NET CREATORS of NATIONAL WEALTH (and the associated manufacturing jobs) for their own nations.
The de-industrialized USA (plus Greece, France and most other European PIIGS nations) with a negative net trade balance are NET CONSUMERS and/or destroyers of our own existing NATIONAL WEALTH and also DESTROYERS of our own associated manufacturing jobs, who live “high on the hog” by continuously borrowing wealth US Dollars back from the industrialized countries using title to US located farms, land, businesses, hotels, factories, breweries, etc. as mortgage collateral for the loans (Sovereign Treasury Bond Sales) and also as mortgage equity for our freshly printed paper US Treasury Bonds.
If those limits are exceeded, then the USA's economy will self destruct and the USA will evolve into something resembling Greece, then Mexico, and then Somalia!
Instead of Russian and Communist Chinese Armies conquering the USA, Russian and Communist Chinese individuals and/or businesses are using the US Dollars, that we paid them for making the consumer products that we imported from them and consumed, to purchase title to (corporations that own) privately owned businesses, factories, casinos, hotels, farms, land, ports, refineries, forests, ports, breweries, distilleries, and other privately owned NATIONAL WEALTH and other assets located in the USA that were created by previous US generations prior to de-industrialization overseas instead of redeeming the US Dollars and the freshly printed paper US Treasury Bonds that they earned by making and selling things to US consumers.
These purchases are made instead of redeeming these freshly printed paper US Treasury Bonds (and electronic US Dollar credits) with gold from Ft. Knox.
Foreigners will then immigrate to the USA and eventually become the major (or maybe the only) source of employment for US citizens after they redeem their US Treasury bonds and US Dollar (electronic) credits for title to and control of all of the businesses located in the USA
The US population will then become employees; possibly indentured servants; or maybe even beg to become slaves or indentured servants owned by the foreign countries and/or foreign individuals that will own everything of value in the USA in the very near future if the US government continues to destroy the US economy and the purchasing power of the US dollar with deficit federal government spending.
The US International Trade Deficit must be corrected by any means possible (RE_INDUSTRIALIZATION) in order to generate more NATIONAL WEALTH in the USA instead of continuing the flow of title to US located assets (privately owned businesses, factories, casinos, hotels, farms, land, ports, refineries, forests, ports, breweries, distilleries, and other NATIONAL WEALTH) leaving the USA to pay for the things that we import from foreign manufacturers, and also to pay for increasing government expenses, such as stimulus for infrastructure expenses that destroys a nation’s NATIONAL WEALTH and does not increase or create any new NATIONAL WEALTH that can be subjected to taxation to pay government expenses.
The International Trade Deficit is the basic structural economic foundation problem that will destroy the US economic miracle because title to US located assets are rapidly leaving the USA to pay for the things that we import in addition to paying for increasing US government activities that do not increase or create any new NATIONAL WEALTH that would be subject to taxation.
1. plant, grow and/or harvest something of commercial value from the earth;
2. extract something of commercial value from the earth;
3. manufacture something of commercial value that is consumable
4. construct a building that is permanently useful for rental income;
5. provide professional services (medical, legal, dental, engineering, architecture, land surveying, technology, accounting, etc.);
6. collect payment for patent and copyright uses;
and if they then trade, sell, lease or rent these items and/or services to parties outside of their family, in return for a net transfer of gold, currency or commodities from other parties outside of their family into their own family, then that family is enriched.
Can we also understand NATIONAL WEALTH needs to be created by industrious private businessmen (and the Corporations) in any nation because that is almost the ONLY WEALTH AVAILABLE to be CONFISCATED in the form of TAXATION by various levels of government in order to create funds to pay for schools, streets, water and sewer systems, national debts, pork barrel projects, green projects, infrastructure projects, wars, streets, bridges, highways, welfare, unemployment, police, courts, prisons, fire fighters, social security and other WEALTH CONSUMING government provided bureaucratic activities for that family, tribe, city, state, or nation, EXCEPT for borrowing money and obligating future tax collections from future generations to repay those loans (Treasury Bonds).