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>>Exactly the same is true for ex YU. If there was no 1948 (triple-agent {g}) Tito changing sides and hopping up the same money train, our fathers (and consecutively our generations) would have had much harder time ever becoming anything close to middle class.
>>More or less the same economic model we had back then, was operating in East Germany or Czehoslovakia for instance, resulting in quiet different living standards back in 'golden' 70ies. And you know very well how good we had it back then :)
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>In a way all of the countries close to the iron curtain have benefited from it, being the shop window to show to the other side. From time to time I remember the arguments my western friends used to bring up when defending capitalism as not as cruel and dog-eat-dog as it was depicted in the eastern bloc. Most of those were about workers' rights, social safety networks and other things which are currently anywhere between being scheduled to be dismantled and long forgotten.
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>BTW, my wife has downloaded the text of the agreement between Cyprus and IMF/banxters, and it's pretty much all your base are belong to us. Tax everything, sell or privatize the main infrastructures, double the excise on tobacco and beer, add two more years before retirement, cut retirements bit by bit here and there, and don't forget to report to the ECB which EU citizens hold their money in your banks, we want to tax them at home as well. Of course, the usual IMF stuff about cutting health services and education was in there somewhere. Um... the agreement is supposed to be secret, which is funny because its effects will become public really soon. I guess the task of publishing a sugarcoated version of it was delegated to your government.

After gas reserves were discovered in Cyprus some 7-8 years back I was actually fearing for lot worse!
Like war of some sort. Fortunately we did not get hit this hard. Disaster did strike but in a more contemporary form.
Debt slave is not in a very good negotiating position to get best deal on its family gold when it goes to loan shark
even if loan sharks are his supposed 'friends'. Very hard times ahead indeed.

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>>Now is the payback time. And we all know how good we all have it.
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>Pay off your house ASAP.

In about 3 years time I will be at 0 debt. Hope things will hold until then at least.
Luckily my company is not local. We do not have any business locally, so except for minor cash flow problems
we are not affected at all. On a long run we will see. Maybe I come shopping in your neighborhood.
But close to one of the rivers. Still debating between Tamis and Tisa :)