Have to be careful about blaming stuff on Germany. Last time europe did that, it didn't work out too good.

Yep its ridiculous. German tax payers paid several billion euros already to greece. while many german communities, including the city i live in, are bancrupt. I live in a 130000 people city that has debts of 750 million euros! the city had to sell every historic building years ago.

the people of those countries have to go for the corrupt politicians and their bloated administrations. many people here pay more than 40 % income taxes.

and how can you blame people for being innovative and productive? "hello, we are less innovative, pay less taxes, work less, give us your money!"? Portugese people should start being innovative, develope things that export themselves. capitalism can be ugly, but they wanted to participate in that, so now please dont cry and blame everybody else.

dont get me wrong, i am not a fan of capitalism. but if you want to play a certain game, then dont cry about the rules later.

how do other large areas with a single currency (i.e. the US) deal with internal trade deficits?

Quite simple. They print more money.

It is interesting to see how it is proven time and again that loaning money never makes friends.

@unnamednm: So I guess you think as part of an evil plan Germans forced southern European countries to overspend and take credits? Bizarre. Regarding Hitler, have a look at Godwin's Law.

It's really ridiculous to blame Germany for being too productive, but there are always two parties involved in a credit contract, and as much as I think the bankrupt countries deserve to default, the (individual/private and institutional) creditors who blindly loaned excessive amounts of money to those countries deserve to be reminded that there is a risk of not being paid back if your greed for interest earnings is bigger than your wits.

Anyone know who sponsored it?

I feel I have the need to say something here as being Portuguese and living in Portugal I'm feeling like a moving target for this Government.

I considered myself to be middle class (~2000€ gross wage) but I have to say that after the Government is done with taxes (Social security, IRS, VAT, home owner taxes, car taxes and municipality taxes) these days a lot less than 50% of my wage ends up in my pocket. The big chunk (~500€) of that remaining goes to the bank to pay my house which is the only thing I OWE. I do own 1 credit card which was imposed by the bank so I could have a 0.25% spread over Euribor on the interest rate. I never use it.

My biggest consumerist sin was buying an used GH2 for 600€ from an Englishman living in Spain last year, an Olympus 45mm F1.8 for around 260€ and a Samyang 7.5mm FE for 320€ this year. Those are the most expensive pieces of equipment I own if I don't count the body.

All this to say I've been conservative all my life about my spending and very cautious about my debts. I've nearly made a break even this year. Next year the Government budget it's going to be a lot harder on taxes to everyone. I'm lucky enough that I have some savings I can move, but the early economic signs are pointing so that this "good German student" road the Government is taking will worsen in 2014.

Every economy expert in Portugal (and most of them outside, including the IMF) sees and says that this Government austerity measures will kill the economy and soon we will follow Greece (even though we've been adamant about implementing the austerity measures so far). When 9% of the country's budget alone is being spent on paying interest rates on the debt, and while all this is happening, Portugal is paying 3.5% interest rate on the debt to the banks (most of them German) who finance themselves at 1% from the ECB, I believe we have to pass a message, which is:

"We want to pay! But we need more time to adjust and we need to pay less interest. Otherwise our Economy will be dead soon and then we can't pay at all."

This is the message that the Chanceler isn't receiving.

As @Mirrorkisser has put it I don't blame it on the Germans, I also believe we "have to go for the corrupt politicians and their bloated administrations" but: then... Ferrostaal president got indited (and I believe possibly convicted) in Germany for corruption of Portuguese authorities while shoving 2 german U-Boats up our asses, you know what happened here? We can't start a trial because the buying documentation was lost... And what happened to the Portuguese Defense Minister at the time? He's the leader of the smaller Party on the coalition that forms the current Government. Now he's the Minister of Foreign Affairs. How's that for irony? And how do people vote for him, you ask me? I don't ty to understand anymore, I just try to live responsibly in this place, but I figure he's a political zombie, every now and then everyone thinks he's dead (like when he regarded as suspect gay peadophile) but then he manages to come back from the dead with some cunning demagogy which he masters like no one else here. So how do we let them do it? In the end I believe (as I think @Vitaliy_Kiselev hinted) it all comes back to this: the BANKS control the Government who controls the pEOPLE.

Anyway I've attended every demonstration there was to attend (except for this last one against Merkel, which I believe is probably acting on pre-election mode and pro-Germany when she should be pro-Europe) as I feel it's not in her hands anymore but on the Kaput all, oh sorry, I meant Capital.

I also believe I should stop with politics right now and put up a related video shot with the GH3, Samyang 7.5mm FE, defished to Panini projection using Hugin, stabilized using After Effects and CCed using @shian Storm's ColorGHear TOOLKIT.

(I've been waiting for over a full day for the FHD version to be processed, so there's only this HD one so far)

I know, I know, the shadows are too noisy but I couldn't crush them anymore, the fucking Goverment has already done a bloody good job on these kids... :(

@duartix

In fact, all that we see now is transformation of independent central banks system into some non national, completely independent (even by the name) financial system.

I also have my own theory that timing is directly related with smartphones and data cellular networks propagation. As both this things are core to either dominance or destruction of current system.

@Vitaliy Ok, ohne Japan . . . ggf. mit Indien ;) - Ok, Excluding Japan, possibly with India - and a descendant of Gandhi should lead us

@Mirrorkisser

You are not fighting with top people only.
Fight will be with quite large number of people. Owners and managers of banks, medical corporations and institutions, many educational sites, owners of big land parts, plus big numbers of people who never did anything useful.

@unnamednm

What a strange comment, ever been to Germany in this century?