Greek Melo-Drachma: Greece's Parliament Approves Unpopular Austerity Measures to Secure €130 Billion Bailout As Rioters Torch Downtown Athens

As police clashed with rioters and arsonists in Athens on Monday, Greek lawmakers voted to approve an unpopular austerity bill that was deemed necessary to secure another €130 Billion in bailout money from the European Union.

Lawmakers voted to approve the measures by a 199-74 margin with 37 lawmakers from opposition parties either voting against it, present or abstaining from voting altogether. The provisions include a 22% reduction in the minimum wage, some €300 billion in pension cuts and slashing some 150,000 public sector jobs by 2015.



Outside Parliament, police in Athens clashed with thousands of rioters as they hurled chunks of marble and firebombs at officers in riot gear.

Police said 150 shops were looted in the capital and 48 buildings set ablaze. Some 100 people - including 68 police - were wounded and 130 detained, a police official said on Monday.

There was also violence in cities across the country, including Greece's second-largest city Thessaloniki and the islands of Corfu and Crete, said the official, who declined to be named.

Greeks were shocked at the burnt buildings that included the neo-classical home to the Attikon cinema dating from 1870.

Firefighters reportedly had to be escorted by police to some of the fires as protesters would not allow them access. Roving gangs also smashed windows and looted downtown shops and cafeterias.

Stock Exchanges in Asia and Autralia reacted positively to the Greek Parliment's vote, with the All Ordinaries, Hang Seng, Nikkei and Staits Times up slightly. The trend is expected to continue once markets in Europe and North America open for trading.

Greece's EU creditors had blamed a bloated public sector with generous penions, early retirement and rife with fraud, abuse and incompetence for exacerbating an already perilous economy that had been sent reeling by the 2008 global financial crisis and having a foreign debt 144% higher than their total GDP.

The civil unrest and uncertainty of future bailout packages to Greece has begun fuelling speculation from Athens to Brussels to Berlin that Greece could wind up leaving the Eurozone in the next few years and going back to the Drachma, their official currency before the 2002 introduction of the Euro.

Even the European Central Bank is now entertaining the thought of a Greek exit publicly. Governing Council member Ewald Nowotny said he ``can't be sure'' that Greece will be able to carry out the necessary measures to remain in the currency union. Hardly words of encouragement from the one institution that has held steady in its defense of euro-zone membership.

I can say without too much exaggeration or hyperbole that this seems to be the road the United States is heading down, even though the Greeks have provided a very stark and painful object lesson on the end result of government and public sector union largess for the world to see. So far, the Obama Administration's answer to this problem is not to reduce government spending in any meaningful way- except for the military- but to lobby for tax increases on what he considers the wealthiest Americans [and if you remember back to his 2008 Presidential campaign, he had a very malleable definition of "wealthy"- NANESB!].

Even if the sight of the Monopoly Guy [aka Rich Uncle Pennybags] sends you into a near-homicidal frenzy, you gotta stop and ask yourself if an administration that has screwed the pooch as bad as this one has [i.e. the stimulus, cash for clunkers, Obamacare, the numerous subsidized 'green energy' failures to name a few- NANESB] should go ahead and reward itself by helping itself to more and more taxpayer money.