Talk:Economy of Greece

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Racial slur detected, asking for protection
"Eurostat revealed that the budgetary statistics on the basis of which Greece joined the eurozone had been under-reported by the conniving wops.[23]" Excuse me? I highly doubt that the Eurostat report used such a racial slur as "wop". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.103.70.41 (talk) 08:48, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Military Spending
hv jhmb v bg.j 'Bout a month ago, the article contained the figures for military spending. where did those figures go?

Project2501a 14:37, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * A-K-Y-R-O Project2501a 14:39, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Electricity generation
I believe that the vast majority of Greek electricity generation is from lignite, not hydro as reported in the statistics. Also, wind energy amounts to a few hundred megawatts and probably deserves a mention independently.

" In Greece today the mainer source for electricity generation is the lignite, representing roughly 59% of total production. The fuel oil that is used mainly in units of not connected system (islands) represent roughly 14%, the natural gas roughly 13%, the big hydroelectric roughly 6%. The production from RSE oscillates in roughly 2,5% and this is included the wind power plants, the micrometers hydroelectric work, the biomass and photovoltaic systems."

from http://www.argotrade.com/wind/

I read in a 1984 World Book that 25% of villagers did not have power, do they all have it now?

Outdated figures
The CIA Factbook has more recent figures (many from 2004) than this article.
 * The article doesn't mention at any detail the everyday reality concerning the HUGE problems of poverty, loaning and unemployment. Pictureuploader 10:05, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Q1 2011 growth is -5,5% not +0,8% — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.103.152.68 (talk) 16:56, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree with you on the omissions, but you are wrong on the GDP growth. The economy grew 0.8% in the past month, but -5.5% between 2010 and 2011. --Philly boy92 (talk) 17:48, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

neoliberal view
However there are two challenges for policymakers: a)to avoid an economic slump after the enthusiasm of the Games has gone and the EU farm subsidies get cut in 2006 and b) to proceed with stuctural economic reforms, especially in the areas of social insurance, welfare, and the labour market which will encourage further investments, lower the country's high unemployment and promote growth and economic stability. The first step was taken on the 30th June 2005 with substantial reforms of the insurance system for bank employees against fierce opposition from the unions and the main opposition partyPASOK with laws liberalising working hours in retail trade and employment and providing for public/private financing initiatives of public works and services to follow over the summer.

aint this just the neoliberal view / proposed solution?

there is no such thing as "neoliberal" its a mere attempt to accuse ND for beeing right-wing while in fact there is little connection between their policies and what constitutes "right-wing" economic policies world wide. By international standarts Even ND economic policies(the ones folowed today) are considered "socialist". 79.129.169.49 (talk) 23:02, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

male/female work force ratio
According to EU12 ratings, IIRC after italy or portugal, greece follows with less women working compared to men in EU12. This is a main characteristic of economy growth and it is especially mentioned in EU advisory papers for countries. It's true that strong and very high growing economies like Sweden's show an equal share or even more women working than men. I strongly believe all this should analysed somehow in such articles.

Financial problems
I repeat: this article doesn't mention anything about the HUGE financial problems of which Greece is suffering. The financial is the most permanent and prevailing problem the average Greek citizen is concerned about, Greece has the 3rd worst economy of the EU, goods' prices are augmenting about once per month, about half of the news is about the difficulty of the middleman to overcome his financial obligations, him having 2 jobs at once to live his family, finance it's the factor about which the Greeks are most pessimistic about and the TV commercials are mostly for bank loans. The only thing one gathers from this article is 'Greece is advancing and all goes well'. Pictureuploader 13:56, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
 * man, be my guest ;) you go ahead and fix that, with NPOV in mind, of course, and i'll edit yoru changes. I don't wanna be the first to touch anything Greek-related lately, cuz i get called a whiney bitch, who should stfu, since i'm living in the country ;) but i'll be glad to copy-edit and dos ome minor fixing ;) Project2501a 19:54, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
 * It's not that simple. Because I live with something, or that I hear it everytime in the news, doesn't mean I can source it or write it in an encyclopedic way. I am invocing anyone into economics to expand this section of the article. Pictureuploader 13:34, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I know, I keep running into the same problem with my other articles, that's why i mentioned the 'whiney bitch' bit ;) . Anyway. How about this: Let's set up a task list with the individual sectors. One thing we could easily insert and cite, would be unemployment, especially amongst young educated people. i bet there's like a bunch of links around the world on that subject. furthermore, we could really talk about how the small factories in Greece are moving across the border in favor of cheaper labor. hmm
 * Greece may have those problems but keep in mind that the economy is growing at the rate of 4% a year and the govenment issued more reforms at the beggining of 2006 that has helped since.vasman
 * The everyday and practical problems are equally, if not more, notable for the article, than theoretical numbers. Pictureuploader 10:21, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

you watch too much tv or havent been anywhere else lately... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.1.149.199 (talk) 00:08, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the guy above. (someone who actually lives abroad) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.130.239.173 (talk) 01:16, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

When I was living in the U.S. I kept hearing about "economic problems", "poverty" and "people suffering" in that country (the U.S. !). It is natural that people who have not been in truly poor countries have no idea of the relative meaning of those terms. Many people in Asia and Africa almost feel offended by Westerners talking about "poverty" with such strong terms. Economy and development of nations is a very complex matter and, certainly, our source of knowledge should not only be TV shows. Skartsis (talk) 14:44, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

This piece is heavily biassed towards a socialist/communist point of view of a free market economy (and any corporate activity) being the cause of all problems when in fact Greece's problems are caused by far too rigid government control in combination with massive government corruption and overspending.

Greek GDP 2007
Why is this so high? The revised GDP has not been verified by the EU as of yet, it is highly unlikely that it will. This is misleading. Greece has a long way of being on par with Spain's economy. I can't why somebody has the motivation to give a false image of reality in this manner. The real figure of Greece is nothing to be ashamed of! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 80.126.193.38 (talk) 06:48, 23 April 2007 (UTC).

It is high, because Greece's economy is strong with high rates of development. The per capita income is on par with that of Spain's and far above Portugal for instance. The IMF places it around $27,300 for 2007 while other respected organizations as the Economist place it even higher. Needless to say that the Eurostat has already approved the data since the last GDP per capita that published is around 22,000 Euros aprox the figure of the IMF. So that is the real figure and of course Greece is not ashamed of it!62.1.24.239 21:00, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

There has been a lot of talk about Greek numbers. Eurostat approved only a partial revision of Greek GDP in Oct 2007, while other organizations "accepted" a higher revision (this could change, based on the final Eurostat data published recently). There has been historically a big problem with proper evaluation of Greece's black economy, but one thing we should all try to do, is to avoid "empirical" assessments of economic performance. Skartsis 16:52, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

I am Greek, and I tried to put the correct value for GDP per capita in and it keeps getting changed to a ridiculously high and unrealistic value. There is no way these values are correct. According to article right now (Nov. 5, 2007), Greece has a higher GDP per capita than Germany. Are you kidding me? Come on people, let's correct this article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.229.59.23 (talk) 23:02, 5 November 2007 (UTC)


 * That is actually the IMF's latest PPP estimate for 2006, which you can find here. ·ΚέκρωΨ· 02:11, 6 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I have been watching economic data for decades and I have to admit that the current IMF version (which combines a PPP-index revision on top of the "full" originally planned Greek GDP revision - which was not finally approved) may be unrealistic. The same holds for the new IMF estimates for Israel and Cyprus (in all three cases IMF numbers differ significantly to those of other sources). On the other hand, Greece's black economy does create a lot of confusion. When estimating the true buying power of Greeks one should take everything into account (the "state's" wealth is another issue). Based on my experience, the most accurate estimate seems to be the current Eurostat value (released end Oct 07). Skartsis 16:22, 12 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I havent seen the Oct 07 value you refer to, but based on the April 07 value of Eurostat, Greece had a GDP per capita of 22,100 Euro. Now if you convert that to dollars its approx 33,000 $, in par with what the IMF says. So I dont see any difference between different organizations.77.83.28.16 11:51, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

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BetacommandBot (talk) 06:33, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Second most working people in the world
I changed it to : "Greeks are the second most working people between OECD countries" since the Forbes survey is between OECD countries not "the world" as previously mentioned. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Basiljabber (talk • contribs) 21:08, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Major reworking
Recent economic history

The per capita income (purchasing power terms) of Greece was 65% that of France in 1850, 56% in 1890, 62% in 1938 [2] [3], 75% in 1980 and 90% in 2007 [4]. Mistaken according to IMF  it was 84.79% in 1980 73.72% in 1990 71.66% in 2000 and finally 86.98% in 2007 IMF doesnt keep data before 1980.

In 1981, protective barriers were removed when Greece joined the European Community on January 1, 1981 and cohesion funds contributed considerably to the country's fast economic development in the 1980s. By 1989 Greece belonged to a group of 23 "advanced economies". Again according to the IMF i dont believe 0.7% average growth counts as "fast economic development in the '80's"

By 1989 Greece belonged to a group of 23 "advanced economies". IMF 1980 25th richest per capita 1990 30th richest per capita. Close to 23 but not quite.


 * The "historic" data are derived from the sources given. IMF is not used, as it made, in 2007, a "retroactive" correction of the newly revised Greek GDP applying it to all the years since 1980 (something that is mathematically wrong, since the Greek GDP, as that of many other countries, had been revised inbetween). Both IMF and Eurostat data are continuously changing/revised (just look at even two consecutive releases), and there is variation between data from different sources, so one has to be very careful. As far as the 23 "advanced" economies are concerned, they are obviously not derived by rank by income (Qatar is still not such an economy), but by definition of organizations like WB and IMF. For the 1980s growth, I agree, it was miserable, we all remember. Skartsis (talk) 10:24, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

One of the successes of recent Greek economic policy has been the reduction of inflation rates. For more than 20 years, inflation hovered in the double digits, it reached 23% in late 1990. But a combination of fiscal consolidation, wage restraint, and strong drachma policies resulted in lowered inflation. Inflation fell to 2.0% by mid-1999

IMF data again inflation rates surpassed 20% in 1980,1981,1982,1986,1990 while inflation for late '90s was less than 5% in average. I also think Greek economic policies influence is exagerated but if someone can source that Im ok with that.

Cost of living I already edited the "second most working people in the world" since the Forbes article clearly stated otherwise.

Household debt The explosion of borrowing and lending was that they emerged after the banking deregulation and the falling interest rates caused Greece to have among the highest lending growth rates in the EU. This is misleading since Ive only found sources about beeing the fifth out of EU15 which is somewhat average and not worth mentioning.

Indicative of the 'trend' of over-loaning in recent years is the fact that the ratio exceeded deposits for lending in the first half of the 100 units, suggesting that the allocations are now more than deposits. This is also misleading since thats how its supposed to work not a solely "greek" phenomenon for more information check Federal Reserve System. Basiljabber (talk) 22:10, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Lower/middle/higher social class
It should be interesting to study this 3 groups, how they live and got their money, what are their daily troubles, etc. Yug (talk)  18:06, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

The way this article begins, I feel like I live in a different country. Is is over-optimistic regarding the quality of life, as in the recent years there are 20% Greeks who live a luxurious and good life, 20% struggling to get by and the rest completely forgotten in their misery. There may have been development and well-being during the last decades, but most of the wealth has been distributed to the 20% of the population and the rest try to racket their way to it. And regarding the official statistics the government publishes are overoptimistic, as in a recent euro-poll only 10% of the Greeks are optimistic about the economy (those who earn money in Greece and spend most of their time in Switzerland). --Dimorsitanos (talk) 02:29, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Only one who has lived on Greece can understand this weird self-pity, self-rejection syndrom that we learn starting from school! Read any Greek newspaper or hear the news on TV and then you are ready to commit suicide; to be pessimistic and talk about "catastrophe approaching" is one of the favorite local sports, and I remember hearing the same stuff as long as I live (such arguments ae used to exhibit the ... ingenuity and mind superiority of those who criticize the rest). And then the same people (reporters) go on making polls that "reveal" that Greeks are pessimistic. It would be worth saving and publishing a ...collection of garbage [usually involving economics] published in Greek media! Skartsis (talk) 12:11, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

High standards of living? Are you sure? (195.87.42.210 (talk) 14:43, 24 March 2016 (UTC))

ctitic:
I just wrote a ten page article about the development of greek economy for school. Now I can say that many of the facts in this wikipedia article, and especially many of the numbers are definitley wrong. (-> OECD, World Factbook) The article is not very good. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.124.242.42 (talk) 19:55, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

1980s
One error that has been left uncorrected for several months is the statement about "high economic growth in the 1980s". In reality the 1980s was pretty much a decade of miserable economic performance, often called "the lost decade", clearly connected with socialist experiments (including nationalization of major companies) - to include all arguments, though, I should mention that "unofficial" or "black" economy grew faster. Ironically, it is the same political party that is credited with a reversal of economic performance and high growth after 1994. I have reworded the sentence about the 1980s, hoping that it more accurately reflects the situation. Skartsis (talk) 06:41, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

To the IP for whom the article "is far too poor"
To the editor(s) doing, you need to have a real discussion here beyond "it is far too poor." There is no way I am going to accept that it's better to have a version where the top image is a deleted comment over a real image. That's a starting point. If this continues, I will semi-protect the page so we can move on. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 05:50, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

"Adventures" of this article
Articles about such general-interest subjects like this, are written and progressively enriched/perfected through cooperation of many contributors. All of a sudden I see that most of the article has been erased, including a lot of detailed data about the recent/current situation. Normally there should be a discussion about possible improvements, not such an "attack". As if this were not enough, somebody added the "written like an advertisement" label (as most of the material about the recent evolutions had been removed). I think such articles deserve better protection - if anything, massive deletions like the recent one should be undone, and a responsible editor should propose a revised version. Skartsis (talk) 14:40, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

The article does not include at all anything about Greece's huge financial problems, economic instability and etc. All other Economy articles, such as Economy of Italy say about their country's problems, but Greece doesn't. And let's face it, I know a lot about country's economies and Greece has a lot of corruption, low economic freedom, a recent poor economic performance and it is going through one of its worst recessions. Now, I'm not saying to erase the article and re-write it totally with a negative POV, however, some facts need to be added and there is nothing one can prove against it. This is fact, not opinion, and there are a lot of sources to prove this.--Theologiae (talk) 14:50, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

The problem with some articles about economic history is that they either reflect very recent conditions (experienced at the time somebody wrote the article) or do not put things in the right context - typical of garbage written in newspaper or heard in TV shows. For example writing about "huge economic problems and corruption" in Italy and Bangladesh are both technically accurate, but, especially in an encyclopedic article, one should put the information about the country in the right context. Before the "Economy of Greece" article was "attacked" it had somewhat of a balance, as in the last paragraphs it analyzed recent negative evolutions. I would suggest that a couple of paragraphs were added at the end, that reflect the negative factors (low competitiveness, corruption etc) and the negative current situation, but it should not fall in the usual traps mentioned above. Skartsis (talk) 15:52, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Where's the beef? All information on the current economic crises is missing.
Where is the encyclopedic information on the recent (current) economic crises in Greece? The failure of an article on the economy of Greece to have a decent summary of the current fiscal crises of the Greek government, issues with public sector jobs, protests, is remarkable. And it is not up to the ordinary standards of Wikipedia to avoid POV. Has there been some kind of political consensus among a few editors to avoid bad news in this article? Or what? N2e (talk) 11:18, 4 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Remember we're not writing the news. It's important to keep articles up to date on this sort of situation, but it's also important to show restraint. I agree with you that it could / should be covered more substantially, but I don't believe it's any sort of deliberate exclusion. If the current state of the Greek economy is notable enough, it may merit its own article, in which case it would be appropriate to have a line or two about it and a "for more information, see article blah". I'm not well versed in the subject so I'll leave that decision to someone else. 203.217.150.69 (talk) 08:01, 12 February 2010 (UTC)


 * According to this talk page lots of information was indeed removed last October.--Straw Cat (talk) 13:02, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

== [Relevant information to current crisis/sources inclusion] Hedge Funds betting against the Euro after private meeting on Feb 8 - US Department of Justice investigating legality - Orders them to keep transaction records for investigation ==

Reuters article on the meeting: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2515219020100226

BusinessWeek article on the DoJustice investigation: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-03/u-s-said-to-tell-hedge-funds-to-save-euro-records-update2-.html

Bloomberg article on the investigation: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aGwpiEXSgoxs&pos=3

Wall Street Journal article on the Hedge Funds' "ganging" of euro. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB40001424052748703795004575087741848074392.html

--AaThinker (talk) 06:16, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

The numbers just don't add up...
"The Greek economy is a developed economy with the public sector accounting for about 40% of GDP. The service sector contributes 75.7% of the total GDP, industry 20.6% and agriculture 3.7%. "

I might be reading this incorectly but isn't 40+75+20+3 = 148% ? 82.21.25.153 (talk) 17:09, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
 * public sector is full off services? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Athinker (talk • contribs) 23:09, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Public vs private is different that service vs industry. Pirate Argh!!1!  02:12, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Public services --Leladax (talk) 19:22, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

CIA as principal source
for a country that it helped create a military Dictatorship in the 60s admittedly by Bill Clinton. This is insulting. --Leladax (talk) 23:13, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Construction industry in period 1995 to 2007 and Asset prices
No mention is made of the affect of the Construction industry in period 1995 to 2007 and Asset prices (perhaps a bubble). Somebody should add something in this direction and the effect on GDP. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.64.151.108 (talk) 12:48, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

I also believe that mention needs to be made of the economy between 1950 and 1965, between 1965 and 75 and between 1975 and 90. Also need to discuss war and pre-war economy at least to 1900 with a paragraph for the period 1821 to 1900. Note that the greek nation has been bankrupt a number of times in its history. Focus on national debt is essential in this topic.

See also https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/gr.html The Economy Overview "Greece is a major beneficiary of EU aid, equal to about 3.3% of annual GDP. The Greek economy grew by nearly 4.0% per year between 2003 and 2007, due partly to infrastructural spending related to the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, and in part to an increased availability of credit, which has sustained record levels of consumer spending. But growth dropped to 2% in 2008. The economy went into recession in 2009 and contracted by 2%, as a result of the world financial crisis, tightening credit conditions, and Athens' failure to address a growing budget deficit, which was triggered by falling state revenues, and increased government expenditures." and other details. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.64.151.108 (talk) 12:58, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

New GDP data for 2010
Greece's Gross Domestic Product - GDP	US$ 305.005 billion (2010 estimate) GDP (Purchasing Power Parity)- 322.555 billion US$ (2010 estimate ) 

I think I found out a source showing why Greece is pushed to default.
http://nowandfutures.com/d2/Top50_CDS_Gross_notional20081031.htm

Turkey holds most of the CDS assets in the world. Do the math. --Athinker (talk) 13:47, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Budget deficit negative number
If the budget deficit is listed as -$34.5 billion, doesn't that mean they have a budget surplus of +$34.5 billion? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.49.215.193 (talk) 23:21, 4 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Its written as it appears on the Eurostat statistics table. --Philly boy92 (talk) 23:41, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Chart of Greek GDP,(two kinds of) Debt and Goverment Deficit.
I've just uploaded this chart that I've just created.GDP and Debt timeseries start at 1970;Deficit at 2000. Should I add it in somewhere (in example after the "History of government debt and deficit (1999-present" table) or are there any objections?? Thanatos|talk 00:36, 9 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Since no one expressed any objections, I went on and added the chart.Thanatos|talk 18:47, 9 July 2011 (UTC)
 * New chart created and uploaded.It's the same with the one above but for the current euros.Are there any objections to adding it after the last one???Thanatos|talk 04:37, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Again,since noone objected, I went on and added the new chart.Thanatos|talk 19:34, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

The reliability of the article is questoned
The reliability of this article is questioned because some references are not reliable (for example are from sites and newspapers) and also some data are not updated, for example the deficit today is - 6.9 and not - 9.5 that the article predicts for 2011--- — Preceding unsigned comment added by 688dim (talk • contribs) 23:35, 18 August 2011 (UTC)


 * We do our best to keep the article as up to date as possible, however the problem is that some statistics are not easy to find as Eurostat and ELSTAT may not publish all their results. If you have found something from a reliable statistical source, please feel free to contribute to the article. However, I do not understand what you mean when you say that sources are not reliable because they are from newspapers and news websites - they are all reliable sources; they are some of the most widely-circulated newspapers and news websites in the world and (for the Greek ones) in Greece. If you have spotted something in particular please say so here so that it can be corrected ASAP. --Philly boy92 (talk) 23:46, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
 * The 6.9%GDP number for the deficit is meaningless and/or misleading(where did you get it from???);We're not through 2011 yet...;-) Also, estimates-predictions are just guesswork(sometimes educated,sometimes totally wishful thinking).In example if from this(deficit for the 7 first months of 2011=15.5bil€) we extrapolate linearly for the whole 2011 we get 2011-deficit =15.5*12/7=26.571bil€.Now since a.26,571>24,193 (2010 deficit,see here) and b.GDP of 2011 is most probably gonna contract with respect to the one of 2010 (latest estimates say by more than 4.5%)then according to this estimate-extrapolation-prediction, the 2011 deficit is gonna be far greater then the one of 2010(10.5%GDP)...By these numbers and simple calculations it's gonna be at least 12,07% of GDP.... Again,this is only an estimatation-prediction-guesswork;we'll have to wait for the real numbers-data...Of course things look hardly great;these calculations (and many others) reflect this...Thanatos|talk 23:57, 19 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, of course it is very difficult to predict what the country's deficit will be, for example, in 2011 (calculated as the average of all quarters) since we are in the middle of the year, and even harder to predict for 2012. However this is why the table says predictions. Where exactly does it say 6.9% for the deficit? Its the GDP growth which is -6.9%, and this is based on data from Q2 2010 and Q2 2011 (current) according to ELSTAT. --Philly boy92 (talk) 00:12, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
 * a.Quoting you 688dim,emphasis mine :"The reliability of this article is questioned because some references are not reliable (for example are from sites and newspapers) and also some data are not updated, for example the deficit today is - 6.9 and not - 9.5 that the article predicts for 2011".Gdp growth != deficit...
 * b.The -9.5% of GDP figure presented in this article is a prediction of 2011 deficit, not growth.GDP growth up until recently and as in this article, was predicted to be -3.5% for 2011.Now it's been revised to at least -4.5%.
 * c.Also the -6.9% GDP growth that you're citing is not directly comparable to data here.It's not seasonally adjusted,again it's also not for the whole 2011 and it's not growth with respect to the quarter before(1st of 2011) but to the same(second) quarter of 2010...
 * P.S.Oops;My comments have been written as a critique to 688dim's inital comment,not yours.Though I must admit that being in a hurry,I had to edit this last one cause I had been under the impression,that 688dim was replying back to me...:)Thanatos|talk 06:21, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

More neutral sources, please!
I believe the people working on the article are doing a generally acceptable job, but I don't like the excessive use of skai.gr as a source. This website, and the newspaper Kathimerini (both controlled by the Alafouzos family of shipowners) may be serious-looking, but they can't be considered objective, as they support an extreme and fundamentalist Thatcherist-Reaganite-neoliberal agenda, and their articles are full of bias towards everything having to do with government and civil servants; basically, if something is state-owned, it's horribly inefficient, they say. So, I recommend stopping the use of this website as a source, or trying to counter-balance it by providing more diversified sources, sympathetic to more progresive/socialist positions, in order for the reader to hear the other side of the story. Also, the claims made by Jason Manolopoulos can't be taken as a gospel. I am particularly disappointed with the section based on Manolopoulos' book, full of gems like "the reality of economics" or "dynastic dysfunctional politics", and it should be removed Ανδρέας Κρυστάλλης (talk) 16:40, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I beg to differ. Although I agree that we should not make overly use of Skai, it is far more objective than the other TV channels in Greece such as Mega and Ant1 and -obviously- ERT. In particular, would you be willing to point out the sections in the article that require attention? Although I personally use skai.gr, enet.gr and tanea.gr a lot, I try to use them only for background information and not the statistics themselves. --Philly boy92 (talk) 16:55, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Although I hardly watch TV,the few times I did and of these times the times that it was Skai that I was watching, yes it wasn't objective or anyway it didn't seem to me.It's just like kathimerini.gr(that I read a lot (among other news-sites)) being the flagship of pro-Mnemonion people.Having said that I don't think there is any objective channel in Greece whatever the political views...But more citing "info" by other conglomerates also would be very welcome(although they're also not objective in my view;note-question:who is objective???? ;-) )...
 * Now as far as Manolopoulos is concerned, imo his book is good but not great;and it's good only because very few people write about Greek stuff seriously.It's imo shallow;it's aspiring-promising in the beginning of its reading but then turns only a little better than trivial and at times simply wrong or at least ideological;just like,imo, Aristos Doxiades' stuff.They're simply focusing on mainly their preferred model of historical reality(and preferred ideological way to go in the future) oversimplifying things. Having said that, political dynasties reigning in Greece is a reality;I don't think we can argue with that...And anyway no I don't think Manolopoulos' book citations should be removed just like I don't think skai-kathimerini citations should be removed... P.S.I don't like (read hate) the pro Troika neoliberals (in the european sense) versus against Troika socialists/progressives false dichotomy...It's like the Mnemonion vs Doom false dichotomy...;-)Thanatos|talk 21:41, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Extend x axis of graph? Seems a bit unclear at current state.
Would anyone be able to extend or increase the x axis of this graph so the years can be seen more clearly? . At the current state, it is a bit hard to look at analytically (especially the eurozone period) due to there being over 50 years. In comparison, this graph looks a lot clearer since it goes over only 11 years:. Kind regards. Calaka (talk) 05:21, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

The double standard is obvious
The double standard is obvious. When one of the "superior" countries has a problem, it's the "bankers". When a south european country has it, it's the "lazy pigs". That's some nazi shit right there. --195.74.250.209 (talk) 01:53, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, when a country like the United States, Britain, Australia, Japan, or Germany has a problem, it probably most likely "IS" the bankers and the regulations they are allowed to have and follow. When a country like Greece has a problem, well.., their banks never ranked high in the world so it probably is the workers or the citizens of that country. That's not Nazism, or hatred toward Greece, it may just be a fact, that's all. -And on another subject, Greece's current economy is in shambles but this article, entitled "Economy of Greece", doesn't seem to touch on that as much as I would have expected it to. That section on its current economy was no longer than the other sections. And the section about "Maritime Industry" doesn't belong here. That belongs under the article of Greece itself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.251.112.134 (talk) 20:13, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

2010-2011 Greek Debt Crisis >> make new article?
It seems to me that the content on this page regarding Greece's 2010-2011 debt crisis is very extensive, and deserves its own article. I think it creates the wrong impression of Greece's economy, as it dominates the page. I have tried to introduce a number of new sections to the article (agriculture, telecommunications, shipping, tourism etc) and plan to add more (banking, construction industry, mining, and others), but I think that the debt section is far too long. Would anyone else agree that we should split it into its own article? --Philly boy92 (talk) 12:40, 23 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I thought it already had its own article.  · ΘΕΟΔΩΡΟΣ ·   17:47, 23 October 2011 (UTC)


 * I think it deserves its own article, its a very extensive topic by itself. I also don't think there is any need for 40% of the page to be on Greece's current debt problems, its recentism. If other people don't think that a separate article on the Greek debt crisis is needed, I suggest most of the information on this be moved to the European sovereign debt crisis page, where it is more suited. --Philly boy92 (talk) 21:22, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

The debt is not 144%
Half of it has been wrote off, in part of it. --194.219.30.55 (talk) 22:51, 27 October 2011 (UTC)
 * It has not been yet written off;it's a plan for eventual writing off of (part of) it,nothing is final yet...Think of the last plan( July 21st).. ;-)
 * By the way I've edited the last relevant part.
 * It now reads:
 * "In the early hours of 27 October 2011, Eurozone leaders and the IMF came to an agreement with banks to accept a 50% write-off of (some part of) Greek debt,[79][80][81] the equivalent of €100 billion.[79] The aim of the haircut is to reduce Greece's debt to 120% of GDP by 2020.[79]"
 * Before my two edits the text could be easily (if not literally and clearly) (mis-)understood as stating that:
 * a.It's a plan for a 50% haircut of the total Greek Debt;it's not.Troika loans and Greek Bonds held by institutional lenders(think ECB) are excluded.
 * b.The plan is supposed to prevent till 2020 Greek debt from climbing to 120% of GDP and then get it reduced;it's not.The plan is supposed to reduce Greek debt to 120% of GDP by 2020 and after that, I guess, who knows.
 * P.S. "The Private Sector Involvement (PSI) has a vital role in establishing the sustainability of the Greek debt. Therefore we :welcome :the current discussion between Greece and its private investors to find a solution for a deeper PSI. Together with an :ambitious :reform programme for the Greek economy, the PSI should secure the decline of the Greek debt to GDP ratio with
 * an objective of reaching 120% by 2020. To this end we invite Greece, private investors and all parties concerned to develop a :voluntary bond exchange with a nominal discount of 50% on notional Greek debt held by private investors. The Euro zone Member :States would contribute to the PSI package up to 30 bn euro. On that basis, the official sector stands ready to provide additional programme financing of up to 100 bn euro until 2014, including the required recapitalisation of Greek banks. The new :programme should be agreed by the end of 2011 and the exchange of bonds should be implemented at the beginning of 2012. We call on
 * the IMF to continue to contribute to the financing of the new Greek programme."
 * Euro Summit Statement. See also Main Results of Euro Summit.
 * P.P.S.Have added both links above to the article as references.
 * Thanatos|talk 23:33, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Claims about Italy
This edit "This led to claims that italy had not actually met all five accession criteria"(emphasis mine) by 98.142.192.4 was of course not appropriate when taken as is. So it had been reverted to this "This led to claims that Greece had not actually met all five accession criteria" by Tgeairn as being factually erroneous. Well,I've made a "synthesis" of edits, having added references.Now it reads "This led to claims that Greece (as well as claims about other European countries like Italy[47]) had not actually met all five accession criteria".Btw it has already been mentioned elsewere in the article(2010–2011 debt crisis section).So it's anything but wrong and also I don't think it's wrong covering it more and providing more references... P.S.Country M=Italy,at least that's what's most people say... ;-) Thanatos|talk 09:53, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I've changed again the wording a bit to "This led to claims that Greece (similar claims have been made about other European countries like Italy[47]) had not actually met all five accession criteria".Thanatos|talk 10:07, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Edit -ENERGY??
Burgas–Alexandroupoli pipeline, which will transport oil from Russia to Bulgaria, Greece and then Europe and North America,[103] is an €800 million investment of which 23.5% comes from Greek companies[103] and another 1% by the Greek state.

--- The Burgas–Alexandroupoli pipeline On 7 December 2011, Bulgarian government officially decided to terminate its participation in the project and proposed to the tripartite inter-governmental agreement to be terminated at mutual consent http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=134623

Remove that project is dead. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.253.247.219 (talk) 19:30, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I have deleted the relevant passage.Thanatos|talk 17:34, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Possible vandalism of page rating
I have noticed that for over a month now the article's rating has received 1 box for each of the categories, i.e. rating it as extremely POV and untrustworthy. I hardly think that the article in its present form deserves such a low rating, especially since it presents a much more spherical view of the Greek economy than it did a year ago. Is there any way we can see if there is any vandalism going on? If its not vandalism, would those people care to point out what is wrong in the article so it can be fixed? --Philly boy92 (talk) 15:50, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Good article nomination
The page's rating at the bottom of the page is 5 stars across all five categories, should we nominate the page as a "good article"? It's come a long way since last year, and I believe it portrays a holistic view of the Greek economy; something that most economy pages don't do. It certainly does not deserve either a "start" or "c class" rating in my opinion. Thoughts? --Philly boy92 (talk) 23:42, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Foreign trade table
I don't understand the table in the section "Trade and investment". The caption says, imports and exports in 2008 are compared to 2011. Yet the table only seems to show 2011 figures. Also the numbers aren't consistent with the info box at the top right of the whole article. The box states, Greece's main export partners are "Germany 11.11%, Italy 11.05%, Cyprus 7.28%, Bulgaria 6.74%, US 4.95%, UK 4.4%, Turkey 4.23%". The table otoh says, main export partner is Denmark with a value that's about 9% of the total. 77.186.72.148 (talk) 19:48, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

If you Heptor (or anyone else) want to delete the aforementioned sentence please, kindly explain to us to why it's irrelevant and content-free;with references please. Greece has severe endemic-local economic problems but this doesn't mean that these problems are totally irrelevant to or isolated from the world outside Her. As an example of the global crisis hitting Greece hard, see drastic decline of exports of goods (www.tradingeconomics.com/greece/exports) or tourism revenues-receipts (www.tradingeconomics.com/greece/international-tourism-receipts-us-dollar-wb-data.html) during the discussed period. P.S.I have just discovered that for some strange and unknown reason, tradingeconomics.com is in wikipedia's blacklist-spamlist, therefore I had to delete the http part and so on not being able to create (real external) links;that's why the internet addresses are in the above form. Thanatos|talk 16:38, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

The debt is right now 103% (after the PSI)
Source: http://www.presidency.gr/wp-content/uploads/SuskepshPolitikwnArxhgwn15.5.12.pdf (Prime Minister of Greece at the time of the PSI) --193.92.225.229 (talk) 00:41, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
 * It would be nice if we could have Venizelos here giving us references on what he was claiming in front of the President of the Republic! ;-)
 * Sorry but this claim is wrong.The latest Deltion Demosiou Chreous (Public Debt Bulletin for the anglophones out there) available is that of 12/2011 wherein one can read that total governement debt = 367.978bil€.Let's subtract from this number the debt relief (due to the bond swap) cited in this article, id est 106.5bil€:
 * we get 261.478bil€.According to this wikipedia article, the Greek GDP in 2011 was 215.088bil€.
 * 261.478bil€/215.088bil€=121.568% of GDP.Note that this result is a mininum value first approximation of Greek Public Debt because Greek GDP has since fallen even more, because we may have had a haircut but we have also borrowed more since the end of 2011, because we're going to borrow more(for example for the planned bank recapitalisation;in fact I think we've already borrowed the funds for this) and so on and so forth;read the 2012 section of the Greek government-debt crisis article for more details;in essence Venizelos is imo lying and we're just gonna have to wait for the offical statistical-economic sources to present the official data on the official Greek Debt size.Until then we have the last official data and the various estimates to rely on...Thanatos|talk 20:48, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
 * For any present or future reference the March Deltion Demosiou Chreous(in english here) has been published;whence Central Government Debt=280.29244bil€... ;-) Thanatos|talk 18:30, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Edit!! Fitch Doesn't Have Outlook For Greece
Fitch Ratings-London-17 May 2012: Fitch Ratings has downgraded Greece's Long-term foreign and local currency Issuer Default Ratings (IDRs) to 'CCC' from 'B-'. The Short-term foreign currency IDR has also been downgraded to 'C' from 'B'.

http://www.fitchratings.com/creditdesk/press_releases/detail.cfm?pr_id=750064&cm_sp=homepage-_-FeaturedContentLink-_-Learn%20More — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.253.33.182 (talk) 00:02, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Greece has an economy anymore?
I'm surprised Greece still has a notable economy. I thought it was going to leave the euro or something? 192.12.88.41 (talk) 07:01, 19 May 2012 (UTC)


 * In view of the several past years, and the official outlook for the next couple of years, this article desperately needs updating, so I put the UPDATE tag. It is nonsense to glorify the Greek economy in this article. Crnorizec (talk) 23:37, 3 June 2012 (UTC)


 * What exactly needs to be updated? Precise information is always appreciated over vague generalization of the sort of "the Greek economy is being glorified". As a major contributor to the article I can tell you that the latest data is used, mostly from 2011-2012, but sometimes from 2009 (for some Eurostat data). --Philly boy92 (talk) 15:08, 5 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Most of the quoted data and rankings in the article is from 2009 and it's fake (according to official reports and admissions of several subsequent Greek governments since 2009). Crnorizec (talk) 21:28, 7 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Nonsense. This is one of the most rigorously up-to-date economy articles on Wikipedia. Unlike your sources, which are almost three years old. It is obvious that you are here to push a particular ethnic agenda.  · ΘΕΟΔΩΡΟΣ ·   23:00, 7 June 2012 (UTC)


 * The numbers quoted in the article are from 2009. My sources about the inaccuracy of those numbers are credible, and dated from the time when this fraud was discovered and publicly admitted by the Greek government. The only nonsense is your statement, and the "ethnic agenda" is in your head. Crnorizec (talk) 23:34, 7 June 2012 (UTC)


 * Is it? Your sources refer specifically to the controversial 2009 debt and deficit statistics. The article discusses the controversy in considerable detail, including the revised figures, but also cites the latest ELSTAT and Eurostat data which are not in dispute. Therefore, your contention that "the numbers quoted in the article are from 2009" is deliberately misleading and factually incorrect.  · ΘΕΟΔΩΡΟΣ ·   00:21, 8 June 2012 (UTC)


 * The state of denial will take you nowhere. The article starts with outdated information about the ranking by GDP, and goes on in this manner. The article should start with the current situation, and the negative prospects. The economy of Greece is creating further social and political crisis, so the fact that it was 32nd in 2009 is irrelevant, and also by admission of the local politicians, inaccurate. Do I need to quote sources for each year when Greece cheated on economic data to make my point? Crnorizec (talk) 09:36, 8 June 2012 (UTC)


 * The GDP ranking is the latest provided by the World Bank, and it is for 2010. The statistics are updated in July of each year, and we will be using the new figures as soon as they are available. If you cannot bring yourself to stomach the data, perhaps you could contact the World Bank and let them know how upset you feel. Unless you can provide evidence to the contrary, the 2009 controversy concerns the deficit-to-GDP ratio and not the overall size of Greece's GDP. "Greece cheated" may constitute a convincing argument for German tabloid readers, but not here. It certainly does not justify the rejection of statistics published by major international organizations. As for your insistence that the article should start with the current situation—no, it shouldn't. WP:RECENT may be a good place for you to begin your reading.  · ΘΕΟΔΩΡΟΣ ·   11:10, 8 June 2012 (UTC)
 * The IMF (sister organization of WB) has a more recent ranking, from 2011: List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal). And also, a 5-year old crisis is not exactly recent, so WP:RECENT doesn't apply. It seems that New York Times is also reading the German tabloids? I will revisit this article and this conversation in a year or two, and have a good laugh. Meanwhile, I wish you to become less offensive and less obsessed with the greatness of the Greek economy. Crnorizec (talk) 13:57, 16 June 2012 (UTC)


 * It is unfortunate that you feel offended, but my point stands. You can laugh all you like, but we will continue to cite the relevant sources rather than the personal opinions of individual editors from neighboring countries who think they know better. For what it's worth, the most recent World Bank and IMF rankings are almost identical, at 34th and 35th respectively. Not so far off from the "irrelevant" 2009 data, as it turns out.  · ΘΕΟΔΩΡΟΣ ·   15:07, 20 July 2012 (UTC)


 * This article is a total illusion. Some of the data are changed if they are better than the previous ones, the other data are not changed if they are worse than the previous ones. The writer seems to be kidding about the smartness of the readers. It is incredible for Wikipedia to allow this behaviour. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.102.65.254 (talk) 19:21, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

Latest Public Debt data, June 2012 and Infobox
a.I've deleted the older pre PSI data from the Infobox;they are imo no more relevant,they have no place being inside the infobox.Outside the infobox and inside the article of course no argue that they are very significant. b.I've also updated to latest debt data,id est of June 2012 (referenced using official Hellenic Republic's Public Debt Bulletin) but I've left the older %GDP estimates unchanged since there is no relevant reference-estimate based on the former that I know of.This creates a minor problem regarding references format; I've seperated them and placed them inside parantheses and small tag so that it's clear that they differ,that they refer to different numbers. Does anyone object to the former (deletion of pre PSI data inside infobox) or the latter(format of references,id est being small,inside parentheses and in different places for Public Debt(absolute) and Public Debt(%GDP))? P.S. On the latter I propose leaving, for the sake of clarity, the format as it is now until we have a newer more relevant %GDP estimate&reference but I wouldn't seriously object to changing back to normal format (normal size,outside parantheses,packed together) for the sake of homogeneity of appearance if other editors don't like my change. P.P.S. I also propose updating the Public Debt Bulletin latest reference I've now created, every time a new one gets published (about every three months). P.P.P.S. I've also now changed the average gross and net salaries inside the infobox.Their references now point to "serious" sources(OECD and Eurostat) but no longer to pdfs;instead they link to dynamic tables that have to be set manually in order to show the data on Greece and relevant variables.Note also that 1.elsewhere on OECD I've read that the 2011 data on Greece are to be revised,so the gross number may have perhaps to be considered as provisional and 2. as they are from different sources and about different years etc (OECD and Eurostat(from EU-SILC), 2011 and 2010 respectively) there might be a significant gap between the two cited values greater(I think) than the "real" social contributions etc. Thanatos|talk 14:45, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Edit-warring about massive changes in economic data
I have reverted edits by an unresponsive single-purpose account (SPA) due to the massive changes in economic data and the removal of reliable sources and their replacement with unadjusted estimates from primary sources. The currency has also changed from euro to dollars. I find these changes unacceptable. Δρ.Κ. λόγοςπράξις  19:12, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Someone, now that has Aishylos has been blocked for 24h, should revert his edit.I'm not doing it since I shouldn't formally do it (3-revert rule). P.S.To Aischylos if you're reading this:after the 24h ban please come back here at the talk page, discuss and contribute... ;-) Thanatos|talk 01:04, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Regarding this edit summary, I fail to see the parallel. User:Αισχυλος was clearly a Turkish sockpuppet with a bone to pick, probably motivated by my edits over at Economy of Turkey. The reason I prefer the US dollar figures is because they are used across all such articles, with the notable exception of this one. · ΘΕΟΔΩΡΟΣ ·  15:06, 17 April 2013 (UTC)


 * 1.Nevermind what Aisxhylos is or isn't.You did the same thing he did.Most of the article and subarticles e.g. are in €.How could we we compare?Why did you change €το $(even if more recent)? E.g. if we want to convert to €s (so that we can can have a more clear picture) which day's or month's currency exchange prices should we use(...currency flactutation)? 2.Scroll down the picture just a bit.A new battle took place in the meantime...P.S. To give you an example, I use the GDP figure at the infobox(whereat I can browse very fast) in this article whenever I 've heard some new crazy-prediction, multiply it by a set of fiscal multipliers etc... If in dollars then the uncertainty and predictive eroor gets even higher...
 * Anyway I propose to let both currency-date-data coexist for now (how can you not see GDP and GDPpc being in two currencies?) as they are until we have the official 2012 data in € or... drachmas...Thanatos|talk 16:10, 17 April 2013 (UTC)


 * If I may interrupt your finger-waving for just a moment, let me remind you that the GDP figures had always been in dollars up until about a year ago. I don't know why the currency was changed, but the US dollar is the internationally accepted standard. I'm fine with keeping both, though.  · ΘΕΟΔΩΡΟΣ ·   17:36, 17 April 2013 (UTC)
 * So what? ;-) Thanatos|talk 12:51, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

On Greek Shipping but also on CIA Factbook and facts generally (a humorous note in order to prevent any continuation or reemergence of edit battles or wars.Note:see recent edit history)
Mainly to user Farolif (but also to Aischylos (CIA Factbook specific)): You know that the CIA Factbook isn't equivalent to reality, right? Both in what in includes and in what it doesn't. It's not, you know, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or Encyclopaedia Galactica. Not mentioning shipping in an article about the Greek economy because the CIA Factbook for some reason doesn't mention it (generally or in its latest version), is hardly rational.I'd dare say that including shipping in this case is a priori tested, verified and not falsified... ;-) Perhaps you should read something like this??? To all: O tempora, o mores! CIA and Fact(s) (-book) in the same sentence, the CIA as the ultimate harbinger of truth and facts!! The End is really nigh! :D Thanatos|talk 07:16, 14 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Aside from the humour, it's far easier to make nonsensical changes to an article than Google and find the information. Although the facts in this case are so obvious a Google search is really an unnecessarily bureaucratic requirement. Regardless I have added seven new citations making this rather obvious fact one of the most cited facts on Wikipedia. It's bizarre but here we are. One thing I would like to ask however is this: Given that the shipping industry of Greece is huge where could it go from one edition of the CIA factbook to the other? Did the CIA put it up on a UFO and send it to outer space? Δρ.Κ. λόγοςπράξις   10:50, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Humour aside I could also cite very serious and valid reasons over the imo real and really, really big overestimation (at least of the positive side, of benefits) of shipping in the Greek economy, e.g. most overseas shipping Greek crews having been replaced starting decades ago with much cheaper crews of "third" world ethnicities, practically non existing taxation on shipping constitutionally mandated (article 107) a very dark residue of older times when shipping had really been a source of real wealth for many Greeks and Greece and not just magnates, ships listed under non-Greek flags, ships no longer being built in Greece but elsewhere, later generation members of magnate families living abroad and becoming non-Greeks(a recent famous example thereof the Onassis' Skorpios Island sale-leasing, a much older one the now USAmerican Negreponte family) etc; but even after considering and weighting in all of these (and more) reasons, facts and factors, totally erasing shipping from an encyclopaedical article on the Economy of Greece -since it's no longer(?) listed in the country profile of Greece at the CIA Factbook- is still highly non-sensical and a good sign of total ignorance of the Greek economy and more generally of Greece.Which brings me to this: Dear Farolif, if you're reading this, may I ask where you're from? ;-) Thanatos|talk 11:12, 14 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Dr.K., using the internet archive,the way-back-machine, I now see that as far as I can tell going randomly through dates through the oldest available cached copy, shipping has never been listed in the CIA Factbook Greece country profile (at least under industries and economy and at least based on my sampling).WOW!!!That's indeed a really great book about facts... lol Thanatos|talk 11:26, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Sounds about right. The new version of the CIA factbook has "shipping" under "transportation". This shouldn't matter however because shipping is recognised by most reliable sources, if not all, (save for the CIA factbook of course), as an industry not merely as transportation. Δρ.Κ. λόγοςπράξις  16:36, 14 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I was never disputing the idea that shipping is (or at least, -was-) a major component of the Greek economy, I was accounting for the source data. You will notice that I haven't attempted to remove "shipping" from the factbox since Dr. K added the numerous citations to support its inclusion. At this point, the conflict is over the validity - specifically, the recency - of the new sources. Farolif (talk) 21:38, 14 April 2013 (UTC)
 * But that is the crux of the problem. You said: I was never disputing the idea that shipping is (or at least, -was-) a major component of the Greek economy,... Your statement reveals that you still think that the shipping industry may have been a thing of the past. What's worse you seem to think that we have to supply citations every year to verify the fact that the shipping industry is still an industry in Greece. Things don't work this way in this case. The shipping industry is indisputably the largest in the world. It does not disappear from one year to the other just because the CIA factbook chose to classify it under "transportation" and not under "industry". This is why I supplied industrial-strength Google book citations with quotations establishing the fact that the the shipping industry is a giant not only in Greece but worldwide.
 * You also removed a book about the Greek shipping industry itself:
 * Before you removed it, did you bother to read its title? Maritime Transport: The Greek Paradigm Here we have a recent book (2007) analysing the World maritime transport in terms of methods employed in the Greek shipping industry, clearly establishing the global importance and continuing relevance of the shipping industry of Greece and you just click it out of existence. And you are edit-warring to do so. Past 5RR I might add.
 * I contest your edit-summary: Which is my point exactly - it's *historical*. The factbox should only reflect current data. These other items would be better suited for the body of the article. There is nothing *historical* about a high-quality reference from 2007 which analyses Global maritime transport in terms of the giant Greek shipping industry. And they do reflect current data. They reflect the very current data that the Greek shipping industry is a huge concern and a global leader. Ironically such citations for an obvious fact such as this would not have been necessary had you not chosen to edit-war to remove the shipping industry of Greece from the infobox. Now that I supplied the citations to support this obvious fact you are edit-warring to remove some of them which are of key importance. You were wrong to edit-war to remove the shipping industry from this article simply because the CIA factbook did not reflect it any longer, while the rest of the Google universe disagreed with your removal. You made things worse by edit-warring to remove some of my reliable sources. It is time you stopped your disruptive editing.
 * In addition, these citations are not something that we have to renew year by year, except if a major catastrophe happens and gets reported that Greece lost its shipping industry.You seem to believe however that if the CIA factbook does not include it then we must supply every year new citations to support "shipping" as an industry in Greece. This is absurd. These high-quality citations are evidence of the size and importance of the Greek shipping industry since the founding of the Greek state. Removing them from the article by edit-warring is disruptive, just to use a mild term. Furthermore you could have been constructive and searched Google to find citations to support these facts. Instead you chose to edit-war and remove the hard work of other editors who looked hard to find these citations. This is unacceptable. Δρ.Κ. λόγοςπράξις  01:51, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Like I said before, all I was doing was reading from the World Factbook, which until yesterday was the only cited source for the industry data in the infobox. It is not my responsibility to find other sources in order retain old data. "Things don't work this way in this case." Why not? It sounds like you're assuming that everyone who visits this article already knows about the Greek shipping industry. That is not how Wikipedia works. If the cited source - CIA, IMF, UNESCO, it doesn't matter who as long as it's reliable - doesn't give the information as you believe it should be, then yes, additional citations need to be added and regularly renewed.
 * As for the new citations - I'm not sure what the purpose was for the overabundance of them that you felt the need to add in the past day. One or two trusted sources is plenty. As for the hard work you or other editors have put in for these citation - I have little sympathy because research is part of being a Wikipedia editor. I have experienced it as well. As for the recentness of a couple of the sources - a lot can happen to a national economy in 5-6 years, especially given the global economic changes since 2007. Again, it is wrong to assume that a visitor to this article knows there hasn't been a major catastrophe to affect the state of the Greek economy. As for the "continuing relevance" you mentioned - I fail to understand how a book can predict the future with irrefutable accuracy. It sounds like you're being the absurd one in that regard.
 * And just for the record, the argument that the World Factbook does not consider "shipping" to be an industry is invalid; it is listed as such for | Hong Kong, | Sri Lanka, and | Maldives. Farolif (talk) 02:52, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I contest your edit-summary: Which is my point exactly - it's *historical*. The factbox should only reflect current data. These other items would be better suited for the body of the article. There is nothing *historical* about a high-quality reference from 2007 which analyses Global maritime transport in terms of the giant Greek shipping industry. And they do reflect current data. They reflect the very current data that the Greek shipping industry is a huge concern and a global leader. Ironically such citations for an obvious fact such as this would not have been necessary had you not chosen to edit-war to remove the shipping industry of Greece from the infobox. Now that I supplied the citations to support this obvious fact you are edit-warring to remove some of them which are of key importance. You were wrong to edit-war to remove the shipping industry from this article simply because the CIA factbook did not reflect it any longer, while the rest of the Google universe disagreed with your removal. You made things worse by edit-warring to remove some of my reliable sources. It is time you stopped your disruptive editing.
 * In addition, these citations are not something that we have to renew year by year, except if a major catastrophe happens and gets reported that Greece lost its shipping industry.You seem to believe however that if the CIA factbook does not include it then we must supply every year new citations to support "shipping" as an industry in Greece. This is absurd. These high-quality citations are evidence of the size and importance of the Greek shipping industry since the founding of the Greek state. Removing them from the article by edit-warring is disruptive, just to use a mild term. Furthermore you could have been constructive and searched Google to find citations to support these facts. Instead you chose to edit-war and remove the hard work of other editors who looked hard to find these citations. This is unacceptable. Δρ.Κ. λόγοςπράξις  01:51, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Like I said before, all I was doing was reading from the World Factbook, which until yesterday was the only cited source for the industry data in the infobox. It is not my responsibility to find other sources in order retain old data. "Things don't work this way in this case." Why not? It sounds like you're assuming that everyone who visits this article already knows about the Greek shipping industry. That is not how Wikipedia works. If the cited source - CIA, IMF, UNESCO, it doesn't matter who as long as it's reliable - doesn't give the information as you believe it should be, then yes, additional citations need to be added and regularly renewed.
 * As for the new citations - I'm not sure what the purpose was for the overabundance of them that you felt the need to add in the past day. One or two trusted sources is plenty. As for the hard work you or other editors have put in for these citation - I have little sympathy because research is part of being a Wikipedia editor. I have experienced it as well. As for the recentness of a couple of the sources - a lot can happen to a national economy in 5-6 years, especially given the global economic changes since 2007. Again, it is wrong to assume that a visitor to this article knows there hasn't been a major catastrophe to affect the state of the Greek economy. As for the "continuing relevance" you mentioned - I fail to understand how a book can predict the future with irrefutable accuracy. It sounds like you're being the absurd one in that regard.
 * And just for the record, the argument that the World Factbook does not consider "shipping" to be an industry is invalid; it is listed as such for | Hong Kong, | Sri Lanka, and | Maldives. Farolif (talk) 02:52, 15 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I have little sympathy because research is part of being a Wikipedia editor..., I agree, except in this case, it was I who was doing the research and you were doing the edit-warring and the removals. So far you have not shown any research skills, at least in this article; just edit-warring and reference removal skills. a lot can happen to a national economy in 5-6 years, especially given the global economic changes since 2007. Sure, but if the giant Greek shipping industry disappeared you would have known about it. Decades-long global leaders don't disappear without any news being reported about the catastrophy. I fail to understand how a book can predict the future with irrefutable accuracy. Don't put words in my mouth. I never claimed that a book can predict the future with irrefutable accuracy. I said that all references point to the fact that the Greek shipping industry is a giant and thus it is quite logical to expect that it cannot disappear overnight, as you attempted to do by removing it from the infobox. Finally, the context of the conversation in this thread is the removal of the Greek shipping industry from the industries of Greece in the CIA factbook. So when you claim that I said that the World Factbook does not consider "shipping" to be an industry you did not understand the context of my statement. I have said repeatedly that the CIA factbook does not include the shipping industry of Greece as one of the Greek industries. There was no reason for me to claim anything more global and you should look at the context of the conversation which is the Greek shipping industry not the one of the Maldives or of Sri-Lanka. Was that not the reason you removed it from the infobox in the first place? So your links to Sri Lanka, Maldives etc. are completely unnecessary. Δρ.Κ. λόγοςπράξις  03:15, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
 * So far you have not shown any research skills, at least in this article Really? How carefully have you looked? if the giant Greek shipping industry disappeared you would have known about it I can tell I'm not going to get you out of your assumption-based reasoning habits anytime soon. Why, exactly, would I automatically know about such a disappearance of a national industry? establishing the global importance andcontinuing relevanceof the shipping industry of Greece What do you call that, if not a prediction? when you claim that I said that the World Factbook... Actually, I never did make such a claim. shipping is recognised by most reliable sources, if not all, (save for the CIA factbook of course), as an industry not merely as transportation Though it seems you most certainly did make such a statement. Was that not the reason you removed it from the infobox in the first place? Now, it seems, you're starting to understand the core issue here.
 * Incidentally, looking back at that first edit of mine, I realize that I also removed "industrial products" from Greece's industries, but nobody is raising a fuss about that. I wonder why that is. Farolif (talk) 03:41, 15 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Though it seems you most certainly did make such a statement. Do you understand what context means? Did you bother to read my reply just above?
 * Do you understand now? Was that not the reason you removed it from the infobox in the first place? Now, it seems, you're starting to understand the core issue here. You misunderstood my question again. My question referred to your unquestioning removal of the Greek shipping industry from the infobox on the basis that the CIA factbook no longer includes it in the industries of Greece. This constant repetition is getting ridiculous. As far as your research skills I measured them in terms of the immediate conflict regarding the removal of the shipping from the infobox, not in terms of your other edits. As far as your removal of "industrial products", I didn't notice it. I guess I have more research to do on that one too now that you mentioned it. Δρ.Κ. λόγοςπράξις  04:04, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree, it is getting ridiculous, because you won't address my points. Instead, you accuse me of edit-warring, of removing the "shipping" item from Greece's industries (which I haven't done since you added your first of many citations to warrant its inclusion), and insist on the validity of your outdated sources for what should be current data. I can't help it that the original cited source (World Factbook) no longer listed "shipping" as a main industry in Greece (if it ever listed it all, per Thanatos' comments above). This whole issue would have stayed settled yesterday after I removed two of your four sources for sound reasons, leaving the other two plus the "shipping" mention, only to have you follow-up with five more today. Overcompensating for something, are we? Farolif (talk) 04:24, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes. I want to make this information as foolproof as possible. Δρ.Κ. λόγοςπράξις  04:30, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
 * "Incidentally, looking back at that first edit of mine, I realize that I also removed "industrial products" from Greece's industries, but nobody is raising a fuss about that. I wonder why that is." Because it's apples and oranges when compared to shipping(think Onassis).Greece is simply world renown for its shipping while not for industrial products (a fact that btw brings me no joy or sense of national pride at all... ;-)).But still I would like to bring the latter also back (or anyway some sort of similar product category) along with other stuff.I'm working on it.A bit(see below).
 * Anyway people please relax and try to be constructive :).This is supposed to be humorous.And the humour is meant to bring constructive dialogue and work.So OK here's some interesting and possibly useful links-sources for us all: 1(seems VERY useful and interesting,all (WTO) countries, matrices-data can be sorted by country, imports, exports, goods, services, %, etc), 2 (unfortunatelly the latter seems to only include OECD members and has fewer possible sorting capabilities). P.S.Whence:WOW!!! Turkey n.1 importer of Greek goods in 2012?!?!?! Am I reading the data correctly?? P.P.S.EDIT-ADDENDUM: OK I think that the WTO-ITC link is a gem!I think that in many cases we can now kiss the CIA Factbook goodbye! I.e. that we can move from using the clandestine, official, right hand of the US Government (i.e. the CIA) to using the unofficial clandestinely right hand of the US Government (i.e. the WTO) ... ;-) :D P.P.P.S.1.Since I'm now seeing that strangely the link I've provided doesn't get one directly to the data(if one isn't already there browsing), to get to the data matrix application when browsing the linked to page, hover your cursor over NEW Trade Map now covers more than 85% of 2012 world trade reported by 82 countries on a monthly basis. and click... 2.Btw under Services one can also find shipping(I think): Transportation-> Sea transport The biggest one therein being Supporting, auxiliary and other sea transport services... Thanatos|talk 08:05, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Anyway people please relax and try to be constructive :).This is supposed to be humorous.And the humour is meant to bring constructive dialogue and work.So OK here's some interesting and possibly useful links-sources for us all: 1(seems VERY useful and interesting,all (WTO) countries, matrices-data can be sorted by country, imports, exports, goods, services, %, etc), 2 (unfortunatelly the latter seems to only include OECD members and has fewer possible sorting capabilities). P.S.Whence:WOW!!! Turkey n.1 importer of Greek goods in 2012?!?!?! Am I reading the data correctly?? P.P.S.EDIT-ADDENDUM: OK I think that the WTO-ITC link is a gem!I think that in many cases we can now kiss the CIA Factbook goodbye! I.e. that we can move from using the clandestine, official, right hand of the US Government (i.e. the CIA) to using the unofficial clandestinely right hand of the US Government (i.e. the WTO) ... ;-) :D P.P.P.S.1.Since I'm now seeing that strangely the link I've provided doesn't get one directly to the data(if one isn't already there browsing), to get to the data matrix application when browsing the linked to page, hover your cursor over NEW Trade Map now covers more than 85% of 2012 world trade reported by 82 countries on a monthly basis. and click... 2.Btw under Services one can also find shipping(I think): Transportation-> Sea transport The biggest one therein being Supporting, auxiliary and other sea transport services... Thanatos|talk 08:05, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Citation overkill in infobox
Since my attempts to explain my recent edits in their corresponding summaries have fallen on deaf ears, I shall try bringing the subject up here. The number of citations for the inclusion of "shipping" as a "main industry" for Greece constitues citation overkill, and the subsequent attempt by Thanatos666 to merge the seven different citations into a single reference point does not seem to meet the requirement for a "good reason to keep multiple citations" as prescribed in WP:Citemerge. As it is, due to the persistent reversions by Thanatos666 & Dr.K., the reference list is too cluttered at the listing for "shipping". Farolif (talk) 00:17, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
 * "Citation overkill" is an essay and does not apply here. Every one of the supplied citations covers a distinct aspect of the shipping industry of Greece; its size, history and its existence which you challenged in the first place and your challenge was the reason I added the references in the article. You cannot have it both ways. You cannot remove facts and ask for references and when the references are added to want to remove them based on spurious reasons such as essays which do not apply in this case. Δρ.Κ. <sup style="position:relative">λόγος<span style="position:relative;bottom:-2.0ex;left:-5.2ex;*left:-5.5ex">πράξις  00:47, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
 * You cannot have it both ways. What exactly do you imagine that I'm paradoxically asking for? I haven't attempted to remove "shipping" since the first citations towards its inclusion were added by you. And the essays are accepted pieces of advice that you apparently have little regard for - not to mention the extreme rarity on Wikipedia of seeing seven sources for the inclusion of one item in a list. Can you find me a precedent for this? Farolif (talk) 01:03, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Before you throw any more tripe at me such as: And the essays are accepted pieces of advice that you apparently have little regard for I suggest you read the top of the essay you quoted from:
 * As far as precedent, you removed the shipping industry from the article and you asked for references to support that shipping is an industry in Greece. I provided them to you. Now you don't want them. You cannot have it both ways. And as I explained to you above each reference supports a different facet of the importance of the shipping industry of Greece. So all of them are useful and should be kept. Which begs the question: Don't you have something better to do on Wikipedia than edit-warring over weeks and months to remove references from articles? Δρ.Κ. <sup style="position:relative">λόγος<span style="position:relative;bottom:-2.0ex;left:-5.2ex;*left:-5.5ex">πράξις  01:24, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I am well aware of the caveat at the top of essays. I am greatly inclined to believe that the 'widespread norms' part applies to "citation overkill". If you frequented any pages besides the ones having to do with Greece, you might realize this as well. Hence my challenge of there being a precedent, which has nothing to do with the extrapolation regarding my edits which you made about it.
 * You seem to be falling for a fallacy of false alternatives: {If A, then not B} does not automatically mean {If not A, then B}. In your case, the idea that I don't want seven sources does not mean that I don't want any sources at all! I just don't feel the need for there to be any extraneous sources, which most of them seem to be in the "shiping" (sic) reference. It is not necessary that there be sources to support many different facets of the shipping industry in order to include it in the infobox, just that the shipping industry is (not was) important.
 * In this article's case, the infobox should be a reflection of the current state of the Greek economy. You do understand the concept of the passage of time, right? Sources that go into the history (per one of your points) of the economy, or are otherwise outdated, do not belong there. By this standard, I think the sources from before '08 should be removed (Haggett, Dubois/Skoura/Gratsaniti, & Pallis).
 * I also don't see a need to keep the Frangos quote as it says much the same thing as the Ibpus quote, and is three years older than Ibpus. Additionally, the rest of the quote from the source gives figures from 2006 or earlier, in which case, see the preceding point.
 * Finally, the Antapasēs/Athanassiou/Røsæg source is most confusing due to your quote selection from it regarding tax policy. How does that explain the significance of the shipping industry?
 * (P.S. - Speaking of logical fallacies, I think you need to revisit the definition of begging the question as famously prescribed by a great historical Greek, because I don't think the expression means what you think it means.) Farolif (talk) 01:31, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
 * You would well to cease the personal attacks such as: If you frequented any pages besides the ones having to do with Greece, you might realize this as well. because you apparently have no idea about the pages I frequent and it is ignorant and presumptuous of you to speak about my contributions without knowing what they are and which are none of your business anyway. Also passive-aggressive personal attacks such as You do understand the concept of the passage of time, right? just demonstrate your proven and dangerous ignorance about the shipping industry of Greece. Remember: You were the one who removed the shipping industry of Greece, remember: a World Giant, from the infobox. Also remember that you edit-warred against two editors, repeatedly removing this gigantic industry, and asking for sources. Your actions betrayed a huge and, what's worse, persistent ignorance about Greece. By adding these sources I tried to make any future removals of the shipping industry of Greece from the infobox impossible even by the most ignorant of people. So I repeat a similar point I made in April: The references I provided prove that the the shipping industry of Greece is a world giant and connected to Greek history and society since the foundation of the Greek State. That means that a reference from 2006 demonstrating that the industry is a giant, or how deeply ingrained it is to Greek History and Greek society, is still relevant. Long-standing world-class industries don't disappear in seven years without any news announcing their demise. If you think the shipping industry of Greece has disappeared the burden is upon you to find sources that say it disappeared; but until then you will not remove the shipping industry of Greece from the infobox. The current sources will remain in the article until they get overruled by newer sources because they still support valid information. The typo about the word "shipping" to which you added [sic] for emphasis just demonstrates small-minded nitpickiness which fails to impress me. As far as lecturing me about what "begging the question" means, you are playing with semantics to avoid answering the question I posed. Which is you have made a large campaign edit-warring longterm to erase valid references from this article. So I ask you again: Please go find something more constructive to do than edit-warring and wasting other editors' time trying to remove sources from articles which you asked for in the first place. Δρ.Κ. <sup style="position:relative">λόγος<span style="position:relative;bottom:-2.0ex;left:-5.2ex;*left:-5.5ex">πράξις   04:02, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
 * "World Giant"? You mean, like the Titans? Where'd you take that comparison from? (You might want to share your source, because it's much better than a few of the citations in the article right now...)
 * I find your ultimate question amusing, since I just spent the bulk of my previous response explaining why I found most of your references to be invalid. Why must the burden fall on me to prove that an economy has or has not undergone a major change in 5 years? Why can't you find more recent references to support your own initial assertion? Or maybe the Greek shipping industry is, in fact, no longer the major player that it used to be, and you and many others are in critical denial about it? (Though that might explain your insistence on me moving on to another diversion somewhere...)
 * And I couldn't help but notice that you ignored my concern about the glaringly irrelevant quote about "tax policy" in favor of lecturing me on my attention to detail, which you derisively called "nitpickiness". Maybe if you practiced some of the same so-called "nitpickiness" to begin with, we wouldn't be stuck with a reference list cluttered with outdated & extraneous citations. Farolif (talk) 04:57, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
 * If after all the sources which are in the infobox you have the gall to ask me
 * your editing has reached new levels of denial. I will not waste any more time with you. As for your passive-aggressive tripe (Though that might explain your insistence on me moving on to another diversion somewhere...) go read WP:AGF. Δρ.Κ. <sup style="position:relative">λόγος<span style="position:relative;bottom:-2.0ex;left:-5.2ex;*left:-5.5ex">πράξις  05:07, 21 May 2013 (UTC)


 * This discussion is pretty surreal, Are we seriously discussing whether or not shipping is a major component of the Greek economy?  That it isn't is a highly unusual claim, which means it requires very strong sourcing.  Farolif, can you provide sources to back your claim?  If yes, please show them, otherwise stop filibustering and disrupting. Thank you. Athenean (talk) 06:52, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
 * {| border="1"


 * + Greece, Exports, Sea Transport Total as a percent of Greek GDP
 * Year||2000||2001||2002||2003||2004||2005||2006||2007||2008||2009||2010
 * %GDP||6.05||5.81||5.13||5.23||6.74||6.71||12.60||7.05||14.98||5.30||6.29
 * }
 * Included in-under Sea Transport total are 1.Freight, 2.Support-Auxiliary-other and 3.Passenger.
 * Sources: a.Export data from here (something I've linked to in the past and emphasised to all; b.GDP data from here (one can find the primary sources cited therein); I was very bored to go to search at Eurostat and get (latest) data therefrom so I used instead used this shorter path.
 * So, is this good enough for you Farolif???? Will it suffice?? Or do you demand we present the May 21st 2013 Greek shipping data??? ;-)
 * Notes:
 * 1.I don't know, not sure, but I certainly doubt these data include ships under foreign flags; anyway WTO-ITC says (if I understand this correctly, it's EBOPS, i.e. Extended Balance of Payments Services; again don't know whether the data and hence this table includes service "exports" by ships that have been parked at tax-regulation-free-heavens...
 * 2.Does anybody know what happened starting from 2006?!?! Noticed the double the normal figure in that year?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? If you navigate to the relevant WTO-ITC page (sorry no direct link; the site does not provide such a functinality; very stupidly imo, such wasted possibilities for such a great database), i.e. 205-Transportation and read the data in detail, you'll notice that up to 2005 almost all 206-Sea Transport was under 208-Freight; then suddenly in 2006, there was a doubling of the Sea Transport total, about half of it under Freight (no change), the other half under 209-Support-Auxiliary-other (from virtually nothing); then in 2007 the Sea Transport total gets halfed again (or equivalently returns to pre 2006 norms) while Freight disappears having been replaced by Support-Auxiliary-Other that gains the total primacy.Then a reverse sudden doubling jump happens in 2008 and disappears again from 2009 onwards; henceforth in essence no Freight any more... Thanatos|talk 10:57, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
 * ADDENDUM: People when you'll visit this article again, you may notice some minor changes at the infobox including a-the explicitly stated 2012 global ranking of Greece in shipping (cf. next section below)... ;-) :D Thanatos|talk 16:02, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you Thanatos. Great work. Δρ.Κ. <sup style="position:relative">λόγος<span style="position:relative;bottom:-2.0ex;left:-5.2ex;*left:-5.5ex">πράξις  16:11, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanx. This has to be the best updated, referenced and best in general economy infobox (let alone article and broken away, spawned off crisis articles) of at least the English Wikipedia!! Cheers to all of us!! :D
 * 1.I've now added a short passage about ranking and a table at the relevant section. For the table here above I had calculated the %GDP values adding by myself the 3 aforementioned subcategories of ship transport; at the table I've produced for the article, I've used instead the total data from the general Sea Transport category-indicator, I didn't do a manual sum of subsections. So one might notice the difference: the Sea Transport timeseries is broken in the 2006-2008 period; contrary to that, total data on 2011 are available when the weren't present on the (2 of) subcategories, hence the stop above at 2010. Go figure...
 * 2.This is almost certainly connected to the strange doubling jumps I've highlighted here above but still I can't understand how, what happened... Thanatos|talk 22:43, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Not about infobox but still useful, let's say a note for any future reference and to whom it may concern: I had written at the relevant article section that Greece ranked 4th in 2009,2010,2011. Have now corrected this error(ranked 4th only in 2011) and added ranking to the matrix I had added. Reason of this involuntary mistake? You have to click on each and every year (column header) to get the relevant data and ranking when doing diachronic comparisons; reading the matrix as a whole based on a single year selectiondoes not suffice; the ITC site-app works in a mysterious way, for some reason it doesn't or may not show data on all countries in all other co-presented years. E.g. when (by default) 2011 is selected, Japan is missing from the whole matrix, i.e. from every year; clicking on 2010 makes inter alia Japan appear inside it. Moreover, I've now added accessdate to the reference cause missing-unreported country data might be added thereto later causing retrospective ranking changes, i.e. I don't want people to think I-we had lied about this... ;-) Thanatos|talk 16:34, 22 May 2013 (UTC)
 * 2.This is almost certainly connected to the strange doubling jumps I've highlighted here above but still I can't understand how, what happened... Thanatos|talk 22:43, 21 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Not about infobox but still useful, let's say a note for any future reference and to whom it may concern: I had written at the relevant article section that Greece ranked 4th in 2009,2010,2011. Have now corrected this error(ranked 4th only in 2011) and added ranking to the matrix I had added. Reason of this involuntary mistake? You have to click on each and every year (column header) to get the relevant data and ranking when doing diachronic comparisons; reading the matrix as a whole based on a single year selectiondoes not suffice; the ITC site-app works in a mysterious way, for some reason it doesn't or may not show data on all countries in all other co-presented years. E.g. when (by default) 2011 is selected, Japan is missing from the whole matrix, i.e. from every year; clicking on 2010 makes inter alia Japan appear inside it. Moreover, I've now added accessdate to the reference cause missing-unreported country data might be added thereto later causing retrospective ranking changes, i.e. I don't want people to think I-we had lied about this... ;-) Thanatos|talk 16:34, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Proposition to remove from the Infobox the passage-field claiming the CIA FactBook to be the main source used in this article/infobox
Thanatos|talk 02:43, 20 May 2013 (UTC) ADDENDUM: Both changes are now possible as far as infobox-coding is concerned. In fact I've already done one of them: I've removed from the bottom of the infobox the statement that the US$ is the stated-presented currency (unless otherwise explicitly stated).It's up to us or you now, to make the second change possible, if that is aggreeable, desirable to you, that is... ;-) Thanatos|talk 08:31, 20 May 2013 (UTC)
 * 1.There are presently 170 references in total in this article, cited in total 343 times.Of these 4 references refer to the CIA FactBook, 3 cited once and 1 cited 17 times, i.e 20 uses of them inside the article out of 343 in total.
 * 2.Inside the infobox as far as I can tell only 1.Currency, 2.Fiscal year, 3.Main industries, 4.Trade organisations, 5.Labour, force, by occupation, 6.Main industries (excluding shipping), 6.Export goods, 7.Main export partners, 8.Import goods, 9.FDI stock, may be referring to the CIA Factbook out of 32 fields and god knows how many entries and subfields in total. In comparison, inside the infobox e.g. Eurostat references are being explicitly cited 11 times and ELSTAT references 13 times.
 * 3.The predomintantly used currency inside both the article and infobox (excluding the references section) is the euro in the order of magnitude of the following page search results: € 117 hits, euro 12 hits; $ 16 hits, dollar 2 hits (once inside the passage claiming that CIA Factbook is the mainsource and the currency is the US dollar itself, and once at the legend of 1 of the graphs (Geary-Khamis dollars). OK this comparison of these numbers may be a bit skewed (e.g. there are matrices wherein in every cell there is a € symbol, while matrices using $ have it only at the top); but in terms of order of magnitude, herein the € beats easily the $.
 * 4.Therefore I think we may safely, in fact we must, remove the phrase from the bottom of the infobox, replacing it instead with in situ references.The way to do this is by removing this code  from the infobox. I wish we could also remove this text  from inside the infobox, i.e. remove the whole bottom box, but as I understand it, it is unfortunately encoded in such a way at the template page itself that it cannot be removed; i.e. for it to be removed the template coding per se must be changed(I may try to have this changed if possible; I may have a talk in due time with people at the template's talk page;but this seems to probably be proven very hard to do, as this template is being used at many wiki-articles, so a coding change would need a lot of subsequent page-edits).
 * P.S. In fact, some or many uses of the CIA Fact Book can be removed or replaced; I've already provided what I think is a much better source (see above at the talkpage), the WTO-ITC database.
 * Went ahead and did it myself...
 * No more CIA source primacy, no more US$ primacy (not that I have any affection for the euro...)... ;-)
 * The only minor or "minor" problems were that
 * 1.There is no direct link to the various-specific ITC Trade Map data-series; one has to go through the database on one's own in order to see-check-verify.
 * 2.I had to rename or shorten some goods categories in order for them to make more sense here; e.g. I changed the name of Iron and steel ITC category to iron and steel products ; similarly Machinery, nuclear reactors, boilers, etc was renamed (by me) machinery, etc; superset, top goods category (27-)Mineral fuels, oils, distillation products, etc was renamed crude petroleum oils, etc using the (2709-)Crude petroleum oils subcategory name that -regarding Greece in 2012- had the greatest share in the former (I've written once here the category numbers (prefixed) so that others would be able to replicate, to check and understand what I've done); Vehicles other than railway, tramway was renamed cars, car parts, motorcycles, etc using 3 subcategories of the former, i.e. 1.Cars (incl. station wagon), 2.Parts & access of motor vehicles and 3.Motorcycles, side-cars; and so on and so forth...
 * Thanatos|talk 15:57, 21 May 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm fine with those changes. By the way, I think the infobox is way too overcrowded - can we just keep the values in Euros? If we keep both Euros and Dollars then there is way too much information in the infobox... --Philly boy92 (talk) 23:53, 27 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the delay; your comment must have slipped through being noticed somehow, perhaps under the radar. OK though I personally have no problem with the infobox neing overcrowded (in fact I think both value sets are valuable, each in its own way), it was not I who added the US$: 03:58, 17 April 2013‎ ΘΕΟΔΩΡΟΣ. I was instead the one who brought back the €; oh, the irony!!... I'd say you ask Theodoros and perhaps others; But even if you don't I personally won't be very troubled not having the $ values included... Thanatos|talk 18:04, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

Without intermediaries movement
Can an article and link to the Without intermediaries movement be made ? See also According to Tomáš Sedláček, Greece is recovering from the economic crisis and is introducing this new way of commerce into the economy. In addition, they also seem to embrace barter networks like TEM (currency), .... KVDP (talk) 13:33, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
 * http://p2pfoundation.net/No_Middlemen_Cost_Cutting_Networks_in_Greece
 * http://p2pfoundation.net/Informal_Citizen_Networks_in_Greece and
 * http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17369989

Article out of date
Much of this article is based on data that goes back as far as 2008\9 or even before. In a few weeks time, some sections of this article will be based on 10 year-old data (2004 derived). This article is therefore no longer current and its heading needs to change to reflect that it is a reflection on historical economic circumstances, not current ones. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.84.162.85 (talk) 05:08, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Feel free to contribute towards a more up to date article.
 * Feel free to point us to an Economy of country X article on the English Wikipedia that gets more up to date work.
 * Next time you want to add new topic, please press New Section (top right) so that a new section sorted chronologically gets added; I've moved the section to the bottom...Thanatos|talk|contributions 06:09, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

External link to tariff data
Hello everyone, I am working for the International Trade Centre (ITC), a UN/WTO agency that aims to promote sustainable economic development through trade promotion. I would like to propose the addition of an external link (http://www.macmap.org/QuickSearch/FindTariff/FindTariff.aspx?subsite=open_access&country=SCC300%7cGreece&source=1|ITC) that leads directly to our online database of customs tariffs applied by Greece. Visitors can easily look up market access information for Greece by selecting the product and partner of their interest. I would like you to consider this link under the WP:ELYES #3 prescriptions. Moreover, the reliability and the pertinence of this link can be supported by the following facts 1) ITC is part of the United Nations, and aims to share trade and market access data on by country and product as a global public good 2) No registration is required to access this information 3) Market access data (Tariffs and non-tariff measures) are regularly updated

Thank you, Divoc (talk) 15:42, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Link to Greek Tragedy
Should link this page to Greek Tragedy ... or perhaps Greek comedy ? ;-) 66.155.23.67 (talk)  — Preceding undated comment added 11:56, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

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Infomato (talk) 17:52, 26 August 2017 (UTC)== Tax Avoidance - Unattributed claim ==

The following under the Tax Avoidance section has no supporting references and therefore is an opinion only. References should be added or the text removed. "Actually the above mentioned study is the only of its kind. Greek businessmen doubt the myth of extra widespread tax evasion in Greece as it is known that all Greek business activity is heavily taxed with the excuse of tax evasion.Actually tax evaders in Greece are only parasitic occupations." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.104.142.212 (talk) 17:48, 26 August 2017 (UTC)


 * I updated the tax evasion section with fully cited information from sources such as the New York Times and Bloomberg.

A mid-2017 report indicated Greeks have been "taxed to the hilt" and many believed that the risk of penalties for tax evasion were less serious than the risk of bankruptcy. One method of evasion is the so-called black market, grey economy or shadow economy: work is done for cash payment which is not declared as income; as well, VAT is not collected and remitted.[197] A January 2017 report[198] by the DiaNEOsis think-tank indicated that unpaid taxes in Greece at the time totaled approximately 95 billion euros, up from 76 billion euros in 2015, much of it was expected to be uncollectable. Another early 2017 study estimated that the loss to the government as a result of tax evasion was between 6% and 9% of the country's GDP, or roughly between 11 billion and 16 billion euros per annum.[199]

The shortfall in the collection of VAT (sales tax) is also significant. In 2014, the government collected 28% less than was owed to it, about double the average for the EU; the amount of the shortfall that year was about 4.9 billion euros.[200] The DiaNEOsis study completed estimated that 3.5% of GDP is lost due to VAT fraud, while losses due to smuggling of alcohol, tobacco and petrol amounted to approximately another 0.5% of the country's GDP.[201] Peter K Burian (talk) 17:54, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Tax evasion and VAT fraud
See the article Tax evasion and corruption in Greece, which provides citations to numerous sources. Peter K Burian (talk) 02:26, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

From that article: Tax evasion and corruption is a problem in Greece (guardian.co.uk Inman, Phillip (9 September 2012) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/09/greece-tax-evasion-professional-classes?CMP=twt_gu)

Primary Greek tax evaders are the professional classes (The Guardian. name="Ethnos Forodiafygi") (url=http://www.ethnos.gr/article.asp?catid=22770&subid=2&pubid=29345 |script-title=el:Πτώση της φοροδιαφυγής στο 41,6% από 49% το τελευταίο εξάμηνο |year=2006 |publisher=Ethnos |accessdate=12 October 2011)

Tax evasion has been described by Greek politicians as "a national sport"—with up to €30 billion per year going uncollected. ( url=http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21565657-greek-tax-dodgers-are-being-outed-national-sport-no-more |work=The Economist |title=A national sport no more |date=3 November 2012)  Peter K Burian (talk) 02:32, 27 August 2017 (UTC)


 * AND VAT tax fraud is a huge problem too; https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-23/if-poland-can-fix-tax-fraud-so-can-greece


 * Also see https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/18/world/europe/greece-bailout-black-market.html


 * And The Greek Financial Crisis (2009–2016) https://www.econcrises.org/2017/07/20/the-greek-financial-crisis-2009-2016/   ... massive tax evasion.  Peter K Burian (talk) 03:05, 27 August 2017 (UTC)


 * AND http://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2017/03/23/tax-evasion-in-greece-between-e11bn-e16bn-annually/ March 2017: Tax evasion in Greece is estimated to be between 11billion euros and 16 billion euros annually, a study has found. The study prepared by EY and commissioned by the DiaNEOsis think-tank was presented during an event hosted by the institute and the Federation of Hellenic Enterprises (SEV), Greece’s largest employers’ group. .... 35.1% acknowledge that they would readily evade their taxes if the opportunity arose, because ‘everyone does it. ...


 * ''According to the studies:

•Revenue lost due to personal income tax evasion ranges from 1.9% to 4.7% of annual GDP. •An additional 3.5% of GDP is estimated to be lost due to Value-Added Tax (VAT) fraud. •Losses from alcohol, tobacco and fuel smuggling amount to about 0.5% of GDP. •For legal entities, revenue lost from tax evasion and tax avoidance is estimated at around 0.15% of GDP.


 * Consequently, the scale of tax evasion in Greece can be relatively safely estimated at somewhere between 6% and 9% of GDP, which amounts to something between €11 and €16 billion a year.'' Peter K Burian (talk) 03:09, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

I updated the article with recent information from reliable sources such as Bloomberg and the New York Times:

A mid-2017 report indicated Greeks have been "taxed to the hilt" and many believed that the risk of penalties for tax evasion were less serious than the risk of bankruptcy. One method of evasion is the so-called black market, grey economy or shadow economy: work is done for cash payment which is not declared as income; as well, VAT is not collected and remitted. A January 2017 report[197] by the DiaNEOsis think-tank indicated that unpaid taxes in Greece at the time totaled approximately 95 billion euros, up from 76 billion euros in 2015, much of it was expected to be uncollectable. Another early 2017 study estimated that the loss to the government as a result of tax evasion was between 6% and 9% of the country's GDP, or roughly between 11 billion and 16 billion euros per annum.[198]

The shortfall in the collection of VAT (sales tax) is also significant. In 2014, the government collected 28% less than was owed to it, about double the average for the EU; the amount of the shortfall that year was about 4.9 billion euros.[199] The DiaNEOsis study completed estimated that 3.5% of GDP is lost due to VAT fraud, while losses due to smuggling of alcohol, tobacco and petrol amounted to approximately another 0.5% of the country's GDP.[200]Peter K Burian (talk) 17:48, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

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Economy of Greece
The section Trade mentions Denmark as number 1 Export destination in 2008. It must be Germany.--Bornsommer (talk) 18:48, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

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Figures for 2020
Yesterday it was announced that the recession this year was at 8.2%, instead of 10-11%. It should be updated Gr19 (talk) 13:37, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: IPE Money and Finance IMF WB
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