Children ‘dumped in streets by Greek parents who can’t afford to look after them any more…

• Youngsters abandoned as parents struggle
• 4-year-old found clutching note: ‘I can’t afford her’
• Country also running out of medicine
• Aspirin stocks low as austerity measures bite

By Lee Moran

Children are being abandoned on Greece’s streets by their poverty-stricken families who cannot afford to look after them any more.

Youngsters are being dumped by their parents who are struggling to make ends meet in what is fast becoming the most tragic human consequence of the Euro crisis.

It comes as pharmacists revealed the country had almost run out of aspirin, as multi-billion euro austerity measures filter their way through society.

Abandoned: Children are being dumped on Greece’s streets by their poverty-stricken families who cannot afford to look after them any more (file picture)

Athens’ Ark of the World youth centre said four children, including a newborn baby, had been left on its doorstep in recent months.

One mother, it said, ran away after handing over her two-year-old daughter Natasha.

Four-year-old Anna was found by a teacher clutching a note that read: ‘I will not be coming to pick up Anna today because I cannot afford to look after her. Please take good care of her. Sorry.’

And another desperate mother, Maria, was forced to give up her eight-year-old daughter Anastasia after losing her job.

She looked for work for more than a  year, having to leave her child at home for hours at a time, and lived off food handouts from the local church.

She said: ‘Every night I cry alone at home, but what can I do? It hurt my heart, but I didn’t have a choice.’ She now works in a cafe but only make £16 per day and so cannot afford to take her daughter back.

Sold out: Greece is quickly running out of medicines as austerity measures start to filter through society

Centre founder Fr Antonios Papanikolaou told the Mirror: ‘Over the last year we’ve had hundreds of parents who want to leave their children with us. They know us and trust us.

‘Over the last year we’ve had hundreds of parents who want to leave their children with us. They know us and trust us.’

– Fr Antonios Papanikolaou

‘They say they do not have any money or shelter or food for their kids, so they hope we might be able to provide them with what they need.’

Further evidence of Greeks feeling the pinch of austerity measures is the lack of aspirin and other medicines now available in the country.

Pharmacists are struggling to stock their shelves as the Greek government, which sets the prices for drugs, keeps them artificially low.

This means that firms are turning to sell the drugs outside of the country for a higher price – leading to stock depletion for Greeks.

Mina Mavrou, who runs one of the country’s 12,000 pharmacies, said she spent hours each day pleading with drug makers, wholesalers and colleagues to hunt down medicines for clients.

And she said that even when drugs were available, pharmacists often must foot the bill up front, or patients simply do without.

Meanwhile, talks about private sector creditors paying for part of a second Greek bailout are going badly, senior European bankers said tonight.

That raises the prospect that euro zone governments will have to increase their contribution to the aid package.

‘Governments are mulling an increase of their share of the burden,’ said one banker, while another said ‘Nothing is decided yet, but the bigger the imposed haircut the less appetite there is for voluntary conversion.’

A third senior banker told Associated Press: ‘Private sector involvement is going badly.’

There are suggestions in euro zone government circles that ministers are coming to the realisation they may need to bolster Greece’s planned second bailout worth 130 billion euros if the voluntary bond swap scheme, which is a key part of the overall package, falls short of expectations.

Stumping up yet more money would be politically difficult in Germany and other countries in the northern part of the currency bloc.

Consequences of Collapse: Access to Critical Medicines Is Disappearing in Greece

By Mac Slavo

SHTFPlan.com

When a nation goes into economic crisis the paradigm to which its people have become accustomed begins to deteriorate. Access to critical supplies becomes difficult, sometimes immediately. In the case of Greece, which has been dealing with a loss of confidence in its debt instruments and economic policy, the collapse of life as Greeks know it has taken place over the last several years.

While we have been fortunate enough to avoid as severe a calamity here in the United States, many of the forecasts put forth by ourselves and others regarding the effects of an economic collapse are already taking place in Europe, namely Greece. In the midst of the Greek panic in 2010, for example, as Greece’s meltdown was in full swing and the people scrambled to get out of paper currencies, the price of gold, which was trading for around $1100 an ounce in the global commodity exchange marketplace, soared to over $1700 an ounce on the streets of Greece. In recent months, as Greece implements austerity measures and the unemployment rate sky rockets, its people have lost the ability to engage in traditional commerce because, simply put, they have no tangible income or money to do so. As a result, we’ve begun seeing a barter society emerge  all over the country, making it possible for some people to directly exchange labor for consumptive goods and service.

When things get bad – and they will – the most essential items necessary for survival will disappear first. As currencies collapse, financial market destabilize and economies come to a standstill, critical supplies like food and medicine will become difficult to acquire at any price. This is exactly what is now taking place in Greece, where access to life-saving drugs and even common over-the-counter medicines like aspirin is becoming a tragedy where the losses will be measured not in Dollars or Euros, but lives.

For patients and pharmacists in financially stricken Greece, even finding aspirin has turned into a headache.

Mina Mavrou, who runs a pharmacy in a middle-class Athens suburb, spends hours each day pleading with drugmakers, wholesalers and colleagues to hunt down medicines for clients. Life-saving drugs such as Sanofi (SAN)’s blood-thinner Clexane and GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK)’s asthma inhaler Flixotide often appear as lines of crimson data on pharmacists’ computer screens, meaning the products aren’t in stock or that pharmacists can’t order as many units as they need.

“When we see red, we want to cry,” Mavrou said. “The situation is worsening day by day.”

The 12,000 pharmacies that dot almost every street corner in Greek cities are the damaged capillaries of a complex system for getting treatment to patients. The Panhellenic Association of Pharmacists reports shortages of almost half the country’s 500 most-used medicines.

…

“It would be unrealistic to deny that there are many difficulties regarding all public services due to the financial crisis,” Nicolaos Polyzos, secretary general of the Ministry of Health, wrote in a response to McKee’s article posted on the ministry’s website.

The reasons for the shortages are complex. One major cause is the Greek government, which sets prices for medicines. As part of an effort to cut its own costs, Greece has mandated lower drug prices in the past year. That has fed a secondary market, drug manufacturers contend, as wholesalers sell their shipments outside the country at higher prices than they can get within Greece.

Strained government finances only make matters worse. Wholesalers and pharmacists say the system suffers from a lack of liquidity, as public insurers delay payments to pharmacies, which in turn can’t pay suppliers on time.

Source: Bloomberg

This is what happens when a country’s economy falls apart.  In a report from 2010, economist John Williams warned that a hyperinflationary environment in the US would not only cause food disruptions, but also disrupt the regular flow of commerce. And, while Greece may not specifically be experiencing a hyperinflationary environment (yet), an economic collapse resulting from a debt crisis has similar consequences as evidenced above.

But such a thing couldn’t happen in the United States, right? As we approach yet another debt ceiling this month, requiring some $1 trillion dollars just to keep the system from seizing up like an engine that has run out of oil, our elected officials and leading economic decision makers will ensure we avoid such an outcome.

Or will they?

How willing are you to trust the health of your family to the very individuals and corporations who are responsible for causing the crisis in the first place?

Like Greece, we will see a continued deterioration of basic services here at home. We may be able to print trillions upon trillions of dollars, but eventually those dollars will become worthless and no one will accept them as a trusted currency. This means that all of the food we import from other countries, the drugs we buy from pharmaceutical companies, and the oil we buy from the middle east, will become difficult, if not impossible, to acquire.

Now is the time to get prepared. Food, of course, is one of the first essential preparedness items to stockpile. But how many have given thought to life saving medications? If you have someone with a medical condition in your family, how will you gain access to that medicine when it’s no longer available at your local pharmacy. We recommend taking steps immediately to secure at least a 3 – 6 month supply of the drugs you or your family members need to survive (and to consider proper off-grid storage methods for those requiring refrigeration). Additionally, we strongly encourage you to consider adding Antibiotics for SHTF Planning to your stockpiles, because if things get so bad that you are unable to find medicines like penicillin or cipro at a local pharmacy, you can be assured that no one on the street will be willing to sell them – at any price.

Evacuation plan for Brits in Spain amid warning Euro Collapse could leave them stranded…

by James Lyons, Daily Mirror

Marbella, Andalusia, Spain (pic: Getty)

EMERGENCY evacuation plans for Brits living in Spain and Portugal are being drawn up amid fears of the euro collapsing.

The drastic proposals emerged as a former Security Minister warned expats could be left stranded and destitute by the break-up of the single currency.

Brits who invested their savings in their adopted countries may not be able to withdraw cash and could even lose their homes if banks call in loans, worried ministers are warning.

The Foreign Office is preparing to bring them back from Spain and Portugal if the two countries are forced out of the euro, triggering a banking collapse.

A million Brits live in Spain and 50,000 in neighbouring Portugal – plus a million in the other eurozone countries.

And Baroness Neville-Jones, who only stepped down as a minister in May, called the situation “very, very worrying”.

The Tory peer – who once chaired the Joint Intelligence Committee for MI5, MI6 and other security agencies – said: “Spain is clearly a vulnerable area. If that happens, one of the things that will happen in a crash of that kind, is that the banks would close their doors. You would find that there are people there, including our own citizens, a lot of them, who couldn’t get money out to live on. So you would have a destitution problem.”

British planes, ships and coaches could be sent to pluck our citizens from debt-ridden Spain and Portugal

Commenting on the evacuation plans, she added: “I think they are right to be doing that. I think this is a real contingency that they need to plan against – very, very worrying.”

Officials are braced for a nightmare scenario where thousands end up penniless and sleeping at airports with no means of getting home. Planes, ships and coaches could be sent, with some expats being brought out through Gibraltar.

The Foreign Office could offer small loans while piling pressure on the banks to give Brits access to their funds.

Spanish and Portuguese banks guarantee the first 100,000 euros deposited by savers but many put limits on withdrawals in a crisis.

A powerful credit rating agency downgraded 10 Spanish banks last week, while another warned over the weekend the debt crisis was threatening to spiral out of control.

Boris Johnson

Top Tory Boris Johnson yesterday became the first senior politician to predict the eurozone will break up.

The bungling London Mayor even joked about Greece being forced out, which would threaten a credit crunch.

“Ouzo will be substantially cheaper,” he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show.

He claimed letting the single currency collapse might be the best thing for Europe – but Deputy PM Nick Clegg warned it would end up hurting Britain.

Nick Clegg

The Lib Dem leader said: “I hear a lot of people sort of breezily predicting almost with a sense of glee that the eurozone is going to fall apart. I don’t think witnessing the break-up of the currency block in our European backyard would do us any good at all.”

Expat Doreen Peplow keeps most of her money in a British bank account

Doreen Peplow, 68, who lives between Marbella and Fuengirola, says: “I am worldly wise enough to have made sure I have kept most of my money in my British bank account.

“Until now I have been getting my pension paid directly into a Spanish account. I might change that now.

“I cannot imagine there will be an evacuation; people retired to Spain and Portugal before Britain entered the Common Market and they managed.

“I have lived here 15 years. I don’t want to go back to Britain as the weather is dismal and it is overcrowded.

“But if it comes to it I am prepared to sell up and buy myself a retirement property near my son in Dorset.

Governments Request “Contingency Planning for Extreme Scenarios Including Rioting and Social Unrest”

Mac Slavo
SHTFplan.com

The writing is on the wall. If you can’t read it, then you’re going to have a problem – very soon. It was in early 2009 that we first warned our readers of the coming wave of riots and social unrest that would envelop the globe. Nearly three years on we’re seeing a progressive increase in tension among those affected by deteriorating economic conditions and the trend towards social unrest seems to be accelerating. Absolutely nothing has been resolved in terms of the economic and financial woes facing the world, despite the literally trillions of dollars of wealth in the form of credit and monetary easing that has been committed to the crisis.

As the economic paradigm shifts and hundreds of millions of citizens from the world’s advanced economies are thrown into poverty (including 100 million from the U.S. alone), the situation is getting critical. So much so that what once existed only in the realm of conspiracy theory and alternative news web sites – that governments, especially in the U.S., are planning for large-scale economic meltdown and social unrest –  is now a foregone conclusion in political circles.

Europe, as we discussed in 2009, is now coming unhinged and we have the real possibility of not just a collapse in the sovereign debt of a single nation, but the entire European Union and their beloved currency. This is not just some far-out possibility. The collapse of Europe now seems more likely than ever, and governments and regulatory agencies all over the continent are calling for immediate preparations, planning and strategies to deal with the imminent collapse of sovereign debt of individual countries, European banks, and the Euro monetary system that is the glue holding it all together.

“It’s in our interests that they keep playing for time because that gives us more time to prepare,” the minister told the Daily Telegraph.

Recent Foreign and Commonwealth Office instructions to embassies and consulates request contingency planning for extreme scenarios including rioting and social unrest.

Greece has seen several outbreaks of civil disorder as its government struggles with its huge debts. British officials think similar scenes cannot be ruled out in other nations if the euro collapses.

Diplomats have also been told to prepare to help tens of thousands of British citizens in eurozone countries with the consequences of a financial collapse that would leave them unable to access bank accounts or even withdraw cash.

…

The EU treaties that created the euro and set its membership rules contain no provision for members to leave, meaning any break-up would be disorderly and potentially chaotic.

If eurozone governments defaulted on their debts, the European banks that hold many of their bonds would risk collapse.

Some analysts say the shock waves of such an event would risk the collapse of the entire financial system, leaving banks unable to return money to retail depositors and destroying companies dependent on bank credit.

The Financial Services Authority this week issued a public warning to British banks to bolster their contingency plans for the break-up of the single currency.

Some economists believe that at worst, the outright collapse of the euro could reduce GDP in its member-states by up to half and trigger mass unemployment.

…

“When the unemployment consequences are factored in, it is virtually impossible to consider a break-up scenario without some serious social consequences,” UBS said.

Source: Telegraph

Underestimate this events at your peril. Similar events played out in Europe in the early 1930′s, and we experienced a decade’s long depression here in the United States, followed by five years of world war – and that’s when we were a creditor nation without hundreds of trillions in debt and liabilities.

The collapse of Europe, as we have argued for several years, is imminent. If it so happens that Europe does collapse as we forecast, and capital flees to the safety of the US dollar (thus boosting the dollar’s strength and causing a stock market meltdown) than we urge readers to consider the repercussions that will be felt in America. Within a period of a few months to a few years a similar scenario will play out with our own sovereign debt and currency. And, when the world’s reserve currency goes into meltdown mode, all bets are off.

There’s a reason governments the world over are preparing contingency plans. They know it’s coming, and they know it will be pandemonium. There is, as we noted two years ago, No Way to Avoid Financial Armageddon.

Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst –

• collapse of purchasing power due to hyperinflation
• interruptions to the normal flow of commerce
• disruptions to food supplies
• political upheaval
• increased violence
• riots
• the militarization of Main Street
• and the potential for failure of our domestic utility grid.

We realize these are extreme potentialities and many might suggest we take off the tin foil hat, but the same was true when we and others forecast a collapse of Europe, civil unrest and government contingency planning three years ago. That has now been actualized.

The next leg of this crisis will take hold in the United States in due time. Don’t wait until it’s too late. Start thinking about money during a collapse, bartering items, post-collapse trade skills, and creating a solid preparedness foundation.

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