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Greece In The Grips of Economic Depression
By: Ryan Matthew Dernick
The suicide rate in Greece jumped 40% year-on-year in first five months of 2011. Dually the number of young people without a job outnumbered those with one.
This past Wednesday a 77-year-old man took his own life in the busy Syntagma Square in central Athens, the scene of several violent clashes between anti-austerity protesters and the police in recent months. Nearly one thousand people gathered for another rally Thursday in Syntagma Square, which was largely peaceful apart from a few scuffles between small groups of protesters, Athens police said.
Retired pharmacist Dimitris Christoulas shot himself with a handgun amid the morning rush hour, in what was apparently a protest over the financial crisis gripping the nation.

Apostolos Polyzonis 55 businessman set himself on fire outside his bank last year after falling into financial woes.
This is not just regional to Greece but Geo-economically systemic as many other European Countries own Greek Debt like Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom. Elsewhere in the world Australia, Canada, Chile, India, Japan, United States, Chinese Taipei, Singapore also own Greeks toxic debts sold through derivatives or credit default swaps by the IMF World Bank along with JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs.
With ever-growing unemployment, scarcer and fewer jobs available an Economic Depression has now thoroughly entrenched the Grecian people.
Economist Max Keiser of the “Keiser Report” met with Steve Forbes of Forbes Magazine last June 2011 in an International Chamber of Commerce meeting while in Greece. Steve Forbes reportedly said to Keiser, “this is an amazing opportunity we are going to buy the airport and other properties for pennies on dollar.”
Greece’s economy is estimated to have shrunk by a about a fifth since 2008, when it plunged into its deepest and longest post-war recession. About 600,000 jobs, more than one in ten, have been destroyed in the process. A record 1,033,507 people were without work in December, 41 percent more than in the same month last year. The number in work dropped to a record low of 3,899,319, down 7.9 percent year-on-year.
“Despite some emergency government measures to boost employment in early 2012, it is hard to see how the upward unemployment trend can be stabilized in the first half of the year,” said Nikos Magginas, an economist at National Bank of Greece.
Pressured by its international backers under the terms of a planned European Union/International Monetary Fund bailout, the country’s second since 2010, Greece last month slashed its minimum monthly wage by about a fifth to about 580 euros ($760), gross, to encourage job growth.
Congress asks Jon Corzine “Show me the Money”
By: Ryan Matthew Dernick
Last Thursday under the order of one of three Congressional Subpoena’s filed against former MF Global CEO Jon Corzine he came to sit before the U.S. House Agriculture Committee in Washington D.C. for questioning on the whereabouts of the over 1 billion dollars in vanished funds.

Corzine is trailed by reporters after testifying about the MF Global bankruptcy during a hearing before the U.S. House Agriculture Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington
A primary goal of the this first round of inquisitions were to reveal where the misplaced customers segregated accounts went. The amount missing is purported to be anywhere from 1.2 billion to almost 3 billion dollars in holdings which disappeared from the investment banking firm that was MF Global.
When Jon Corzine was asked as to where the missing funds in question may be he replied,”I simply do not know where the money is, or why the accounts have not been reconciled to date,” he told the House Agriculture Committee, adding that he was “stunned” when he heard of the missing funds. United States Lawmakers were not digesting any of his clueless replies in regards to where the money had gone.
Rep. David Scott, D-Ga., said “it was the height of disbelief to think that Corzine a former senator, a former governor and the former head of Goldman Sachs knew nothing about the $1.2 billion.”
“We’ve got to get better answers from you because you were the CEO,” he said.
Rep. Tim Johnson, R-Ill., said that “people who live in the real world have “suffered dramatically from MF Global’s downfall” and he asked Corzine “whether he’d be willing to pay back those people with his own personal fortune.” Jon Corzine evasively steered away from the question saying, ” The funds will eventually be found.”
Jon Corzine said “he couldn’t account for the missing 1.2 billion in individual accounts.” “There are… many transactions that occurred in those last chaotic days,” Corzine said. “I am not aware of all those, nor do I have all the information to be able to look at all those transactions. As a consequence, it would be very hard for me to speculate as to where or why that shortfall in customer accounts took place.”
Lawmakers continually hounded Corzine as to whether or not he authorized the use of customer funds for proprietary investments. Corzine said again and again, “I had no intention of moving customer money to proprietary accounts.” “There is no intention, under any context that I can think of, that I was authorizing tapping into segregated funds,” he said.
James Kobak, a lawyer representing the trustee for the liquidation of MF Global said “The MF Global records are a mess.”
Commodities Futures Trading Commission commissioner Jill Sommers added, “I think that we can’t over-emphasize the size of the books and records of MF Global…The amount of accounts and transactions are enormous.”