Journalist Arrested In Greece For Publishing List of Possible Tax-Evaders 344
kyriacos writes "The Greek government is charging journalist Kostas Vaxevanis with violation of the data privacy law for publishing a list of about 2,000 Greeks who hold accounts with the HSBC bank in Switzerland. While more and more austerity measures are being taken against the people of Greece, there is still no investigation of tax evasion for the people on this list by the government. The list has been in the possession of the Greek government since 2010."
Re:Get out of Greece now. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes everybody pull your money out because that will make it better.
Re:Get out of Greece now. (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference between a Swiss bank and a bank in another European country is that Swiss banks don't share information about the account balance with the governments of their respective clients. So while having a Swiss bank account doesn't necessarily mean someone is evading taxes, the vast majority of the people evading taxes will use Swiss bank accounts.
Re:The same thing happened in the US (Score:3, Insightful)
So you expect us to take your word for it?
How ironic that you argue against opacity with an opaque claim you can't support.
Re:the real scandal (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not the real scandal, or should I say is part of it. The real scandal is that the list has been in the government's hands for a couple of years and it has done nothing about it
In other words, the second and third sentences in the summary:
"While more and more austerity measures are being taken against the people of Greece, there is still no investigation of tax evasion for the people on this list by the government. The list has been in the possession of the Greek government since 2010."
Re:Get out of Greece now. (Score:4, Insightful)
PS. The "good'ol days" part was added for comedic effect, I'm actually Greek and have been paying taxes since I got my first semi-real job at 17.
Re:Tax records (Score:4, Insightful)
The rich keep their money safely in banks. You want to rob criminals who don't pay taxes and hence don't keep their money in banks.
Re:Get out of Greece now. (Score:3, Insightful)
Shouldn't you be out occupying a Starbucks?
You are wrong on so many points it's absurd. Greece has had 30 years to get its finances in order, but corruption prevailed. Greece wants to stay in the Euro zone because leaving it would collapse the last of the international trade they do.
The best thing for Greece in the short term would be bankrupcy because that would clear the debt, but in the long term it wouldn't change anything about its abysmal economy and the endemic tax dodging and would mean leaving the Eurozone. Also its creditors won't get paid which shifts the economic burden onto the rest of the world. Also there is no need to move the cash out of Greece, because it was moved to Swizerland (which is not part of the European banking union by the way) long ago.
With such a lack of understanding of basic economics in the world, it's no wonder the whole house of cards is on the brink of collapse.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Get out of Greece now. (Score:5, Insightful)
The irony about gold is that the current high price is the result of an artificial bubble maintained by gold sellers pushing the staying power of gold. You didn't think those advertisements telling you to buy gold were for your own good, did you? No, they are to drive the price of gold high and keep it that way.
Control of information is power (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:the real scandal (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know if anybody on /. understands the principle of austerity, but it seems that most of the planet doesn't understand it.
Austerity is reduction of spending by government, reduction of size of government. The checks that governments sends are supposed to be reduced or completely cut, stopped. The government cannot afford payments, the people cannot afford the government.
That's what austerity is or should be.
Instead the politicians have convinced huge number of people that austerity is supposed to be the same government (or even bigger), and the people are supposed to be taxed to pay for it.
What is actually happening is not austerity, it's theft. The banks that made all sorts of loans to governments of Greece want their money back and the political elite of nations is cooperating in this endeavour, raising taxes and selling off various properties to pay the loans. This is done to maintain the fiction that government debt is 'risk free'. It was always fiction, government debt is at the minimum as risky as the rest of the economy, but it's actually worse, because governments never decrease their spending, even when they cannot actually be afforded by their people.
The people who have holdings in foreign companies and banks outside of their countries are obviously those with the most foresight and those who understand that you do not hold all of your eggs in one basket.
Of-course the fact that government is not pursuing people on that list can mean many different things, for example it can mean that there are many politically connected people on that list.
Also there is another angle to this: the money is outside of the country, who says that Greek government has any claim to it at all? This journalist thinks that these people aren't paying taxes in Greece by hiding money elsewhere, but Greece is not USA or Canada, who want to tax your foreign earnings. Most countries of the world don't engage in such practices, only the 'most free' do.
Of-course the reality is that people who are truly productive and make plenty of money are always a target for the proletariat and the class war, they should be ready to protect themselves under these circumstances (many should have left Greece some time ago and many did).
Re:Economic sense. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Get out of Greece now. (Score:5, Insightful)
The ads are to hold the price up long enough for the early purchasers to convert to dollars.
Re:Get out of Greece now. (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a legitimate point that inflation is what Greece, Spain, Italy and Portual need. Now ideally they would get there from a eurozone inflation of target of 4% and ease through this gradually (as the US generally has), but the other option will be for the Eurozone to break up, and they would likely be first to be kicked out (unless the germans leave first, which would help too).
Inflation devalues debt. Since one persons debt is anothers holding you can see the issue. But of course most people don't have a lot of money in cash assets. They have houses and stocks and so on.
Rightly, what he's complaining about is that reducing the value of a currency can make your labour worth less. This is true, and tied in concept to something in economics called nominal wage rigidity. Basically no one wants to take a face value pay cut. So to make your economy more competitive (more exports, more tourists, less imports, less of your people touring elsewhere) you want to reduce your own costs, and one way to do that is inflation.
Greece is essentially a balance of payments problem, all of the euro area is, combined with a monetary but not a fiscal union. If it wasn't for defence, medicare and medicaid and social security being *federal* in the US a lot of states would be in deep trouble right now. But because relatively rich areas keep sending money to poorer areas (especially areas that are poor because of the housing bubble and the now market bubble). What the greeks need is to decrease their costs relative to germany to attract investment, or get direct payments from germany. Either would work. The first, when in the Euro, is a mess, the Euro area could aim for a larger inflation target, essentially they'd decrease costs against everyone else at least, Greece might not be more competitive against germany but it would at least be more competitive against the US and Japan and China. The latter, which is essentially what the germans are talking about, European Federalism, seems to be a non starter politically.
So sure, he's shilling gold, and gold isn't a hedge against anything, it's just a metal that varies wildly in price, in part based on fears about inflation. Small persistent inflation (fiat currencies trend down) is a feature, not a defect of the system. But there's a kernel of truth to the fact that a lot of people in europe are looking at greece and figuring they want to having their money somewhere else, because if the Euro area starts kicking people out rather than actually solving problems a lot of people are going to get really fucked in the short term, and there they really might be better with bars of metal than cash. Incidentally, as other people have pointed out, this reality is why the barter system is picked back up, and is preventing major investment, so between that and austerity greece is only going to get worse unless there's some serious credible move towards an actual european solution, and given that, bars of any metal, even iron might be better than Greece Euros.
Re:Get out of Greece now. (Score:4, Insightful)
True - if it were up to capitalism the government would not be int the state they are in. A lot of citizens might be homeless, underfed, and sick, and Greeks rioting in the streets, but the government wouldn't be broke.
Then again, apparently Greeks will riot in the streets either way, so in the end it may not have made much of a difference.
Re:Get out of Greece now. (Score:4, Insightful)
The euro isn't threatened by Greece staying or going, they're too small to actually matter much. The Euro is threatened by what caused Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain to be in serious messes, which is the same problem that will eventually chip away at all of the countries that aren't germany - germany is the strongest economy in the Euro area, and the biggest, so they will be dragged down by everyone else eventually, but Euro policy rests on german exports.
The Euro was constructed with the idea that they would get a currency and settle the political and fiscal (EU budget powers basically) issues later. Because the Uk wasn't going along with one provision or another, other people wanted their own deals, no one really wanted to transfer power to Brussels, because, as you rightfully point out, they're not apparently doing a very good job.
Unfortunately, that system isn't sustainable, it happened to hit Greece, and Ireland and Spain and Portugal first, but the problem is fundamental to the EU and Euro area, and is not going to go away if greece is gone. Greece leaving the Euro area would be good for greece ultimately, though obviously the transition would be... unpleasant.
Re:Tax records (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Tax records (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, it doesn't work like that over here.
The police don't get any special bonus for harassing wealthy individuals (the fines go to the state treasury and the police report to the Ministry of the Interior), and only a handful of people in the whole country are wealthy enough to actually hire servants.
In the U.S., on the other hand, you have posters threatening a "$1000 fine for littering." That fine could literally make some children starve while the rich people couldn't care less.
Re:Get out of Greece now. (Score:4, Insightful)
For business, local currencies are a nightmare. The exchange rate risk becomes extreme, and eventually everyone just adds on an extra markup to make up for the risk. The result is that every consumer and business in the entire area just pays more money. This was what was happening in the Eurozone.
Imagine America, with every state having its own fiscal policy. Major transactions would be done in either New York, Texas or California dollars, and anyone that received a California dollar would immediately trade it for a New York dollar. If you went from Alibama to South Carolina, businesses wouldn't know how to exchange your currency. You would need to carry New York dollars for some exchanges, and Texas dollars for other exchanges. In this imaginary world, interstate trade would be a convoluted mess of foreign exchange transactions, and every middlemen would demand a cut.
That scenario was what was happening in Europe. As such, many countries developed a common monetary system around the Euro. The remaining two internationally easily convertable currencies for Europe are the British Pound and the Euro. For the most part, the British Pound is used for foreign transactions. EU businesses convert everything to Euros, as the Euro is the defacto liquid currency. For example: a Danish business will use Danish Krones and Euros, and a Hugarian business will use Hungarian Forints and Euros. To trade, the transaction will be priced in Euros, because both businesses use Euros.
The US has a huge commercial advantage with its federal reserve system, large size, and single common currency. Europe is trying to catch up. In the future, China's and India's currencies will be more important, as those countries grow in affluence and formalize their business practices. However, for the moment, it is difficult to explain to a US citizen what an incredible achievement the US economy is.
Re:Get out of Greece now. (Score:3, Insightful)
You are confusing capitalism with economic liberalism. Capitalism works very well with socialist policies, including the so called social democracy ideology. If you have any trouble letting that sink in, just know this: the free market and invisible hand stuff do work, but understand that the government can also be an economic actor just like any other corporation or private individual. So, just because the government shelters the homeless, feeds teh hungry and heals the sick, it doesn't mean it can't do it in a capitalist economy.
Re:Tax records (Score:3, Insightful)
That was utter bullshit, so why would you expect him to understand it? That law does not discriminate. Everyone convicted of the same crime pays the same percentage. Now if, instead, certain people had a special tag next to their name, like, say Duke, or Count, or Earl, and that meant they paid a smaller percentage fine than anyone who didn't have that special tag, then THAT would be discrimination.
You fail at logic so hard you should stop typing.
Re:Tax records (Score:4, Insightful)
I am talking about the Rule of Law, where government in all its actions is supposed to be bound by rules that are fixed and announced beforehand, so that based on this knowledge individuals can rely to plan their personal affairs
And if the "rule of law" fixes the fine to 2% of annual income (as measured by an average of the highest 2 of the last 3 year's tax returns), what is wrong with that fixed and announced rule?
Re:Get out of Greece now. (Score:1, Insightful)
You say Germans should give them money, but I really understand Germans looking at the problem and just thinking its better to kick Greeks out of Euro. This are people who take pride in avoiding taxes but now want another country that actually pay taxes to bail them out. How fair is that? That its German taxes that will save a country that despite being in a fucked situation can not at least start pretending to be serious with tax?
People need to learn that taxes are unavoidable in life. I just fucking hate people who think taxes are evil. And its why I think Greece deceive the situation it currently is in. If anybody think taxes are bad for business, look at Sweden? Greece dont deserve to be bailed out
Re:Get out of Greece now. (Score:4, Insightful)
but I really understand Germans looking at the problem and just thinking its better to kick Greeks out of Euro
Half of germany have buried their heads in the sand and believe it's some moral failure of the greeks in not paying their debts which has nothing to do with reality, the other half are living in a fantasy land of using this as leverage to force federalism "we'll give you money if you give power to brussels" so to speak. Germans of course, being descended from a federation of independent kingdoms doesn't have the same problem with federalism as everyone else in the euro area.
How fair is that? That its German taxes that will save a country that despite being in a fucked situation can not at least start pretending to be serious with tax?
And this puts you in the crowd of wanting to believe this is some great moral failure of the greeks. Their taxes as a % of gdp and spending as a % of GDP were not radically different from the rest of the euro area for the last decade, you're just buying rhetoric that wants people to feel good about forcing more and more austerity on them, and trying to destroy their country from the outside.
People need to learn that taxes are unavoidable in life.
People need to learn that every tax that can be avoided will be. Part of constructing a good tax code (that properly distributes tax burdens, properly defined however you want) is making sure you plan for loopholes. Europe has always had a problem with switzerland and the city states being tax havens, it's not like germans haven't been hiding their money in Switzerland and Lichtenstein for the the last 2 centuries after all, but they've learned to cope with it as best they can.
Re:Get out of Greece now. (Score:5, Insightful)
... and believe it's some moral failure of the greeks in not paying their debts which has nothing to do with reality
not that i am a fan of further unification; care to elaborate how it's not a failure of the greeks? Who took those massive debts and spent everything on hookers and blow? Martians? Oh, those evul bureaucrats in government who schemed with foreign bankers and cheated the honest uncorrupted greek society... but who voted for them? Santa Claus?
Did they expect to load on debt ad infinitum to fund lavish welfare programs without any consequences?
Their taxes as a % of gdp and spending as a % of GDP were not radically different from the rest of the euro area for the last decade
so i guess you missed the fact they had no problem with lying their way into the monetary union, cooking the books every single year, marking everything to fantasy and doing that shady credit default swap business with GS to move shitton of expenses off the balance sheet. Yup, everything would be rainbows and ponies if only zee germans left them alone.
Re:Get out of Greece now. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Inflation DOES NOT devalue debt (Score:4, Insightful)
Aside from the fact that british did that for 250 year and are still doing it and their country hasn't imploded
Not sure that's the best example. On that timescale, I think you may find that Britain has collapsed quite a bit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_empire#Decolonisation_and_decline_.281945.E2.80.931997.29 [wikipedia.org]
Except this (Score:3, Insightful)
When the Germans got a list of tax-evaders, they prosecuted them. When the Greeks got a list of tax-evaders, they prosecuted the publisher of the list.
The Greeks have since they joined the EU never contributed a single dime, they have ALWAYS been a drain and now they want even more money. They should NEVER have been let into the EU, in fact the EU should have stopped north of France. The Benelux and maybe Germany and the Scandinavian countries, they share a common culture, the protestant work ethic. It is no surprise that the problems are with ALL the southern EU nations and the red headed catholics, the Irish.
There is a gigantic difference in culture you just can't cross with ideals.