Rick Steves' Greece: Athens & the Peloponnese amazon.com
Bust: Greece, the Euro and the Sovereign Debt Crisis - By Matthew Lynn amazon.com
Greece's 'Odious' Debt: The Looting of the Hellenic Republic by the Euro, the Political Elite and the Investment Community - By Jason Manolopoulos amazon.com
Understanding the Crisis in Greece: From Boom to Bust - By Theodore Pelagidis amazon.com
The Imminent Crisis: Greek Debt and the Collapse of the European Monetary Union amazon.com
Eyewitness Greece - Athens and the Mainland - 352 Pages
Financial markets and economic growth in Greece, 1986-1999 [An article from: Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions & Money]
Athens Demographics:
The population count for Athens was 10,964,020 in 2001. According to eurostat, in 2008 Greece had a total estimated population of 11,262,000. Of this, some 695,979 are estimated to be non-Greek.
July 2, 2010
More strikes set for July 8
Associated Press at Bloomberg on the next coming wave of trouble:
"A union representing Greek public servants says it will join a protest planned by other unions on July 8 -- the sixth general strike this year against economic austerity measures.
The latest strike was prompted by plans by the Socialist government to overhaul the country's pension system and labor rules as part of an effort to heal public finances.
The public servants' ADEDI union called the strike Friday, accusing the government of using the financial crisis as a "pretext to dismantle the welfare state."
Protest marches held during previous strikes have frequently been marred by violence."
The matter is far from decided, regardless of the IMF/eurozone deal, about the implementation of the full austerity program. If forced to bow to union pressure, the Greek government would then be pushed into unknown waters and most likely collapse and then go straight to sovereign default on debt. Released to print drachmas again, the resulting situation would be a disaster, but the unions would retain their power hold, and probably all of the old salary, pension and bonus deals, et al, would be back in force. And the exchange-rate depreciation on the new drachmas might help, or could plunge Greece back to pre-junta days of instability and poverty. It would all depend on what Greece did immediately following default.
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