Political crisis in Greece

[Landslide Lyndon]

I like Papandreou, but as I recall PASOK did the exact same thing to ND about 5 years ago. It's just that things had not gone as badly yet.

No, you don't know what you're talking about. In 2004 there was a regular election, not a snap one. And the economy back then was in more than decent shape.

It was the disastrous governing of Karamanlis and his lackeys that doubled our debt and took our deficit to 15%, causing the current crisis.

[Landslide Lyndon]

I like Papandreou, but as I recall PASOK did the exact same thing to ND about 5 years ago. It's just that things had not gone as badly yet.

No, you don't know what you're talking about. In 2004 there was a regular election, not a snap one. And the economy back then was in more than decent shape.

It was the disastrous governing of Karamanlis and his lackeys that doubled our debt and took our deficit to 15%, causing the current crisis.

I wasn't really referring to those aspects, but I recall PASOK cheated on the statistics as well. Greece has been fudging figures at least since they were allowed into the euro, so it doesn't seem to be a specific Karamanlis problem but a more general institutional problem.

I read a rather prophetic paper on the issue from like 2005 about how more oversight of Greece's statistics was required.

We have talked about this before. All the countries, even Germany, cooked their books to meet the criteria and enter the Eurozone. Karamanlis and his government took that to the extremes, probably with the tacit approval of Baroso and Almunia.
Everyone here suspected that something was amiss but nobody ever imagined the magnitude of the scam ran by the conservatives.