{"id":2683,"date":"2010-02-11T08:56:55","date_gmt":"2010-02-11T12:56:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=2683"},"modified":"2010-02-11T10:44:23","modified_gmt":"2010-02-11T14:44:23","slug":"greeks-underground-economy-vlacha-means-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2010\/02\/11\/greeks-underground-economy-vlacha-means-stupid\/","title":{"rendered":"Greek underground economy: &#8220;Vlacha means stupid&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Greece has a thriving <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/programmes\/from_our_own_correspondent\/8509244.stm\" target=\"_blank\">economy<\/a> . . .  but it&#8217;s not the official, tax-paying one:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The Greek government is trying to recover billions of euros lost to tax evasion as part of its austerity programme, but as the BBC&#8217;s Malcolm Brabant finds, many Greeks see it as their right to keep as much black money as possible.<\/p>\n<p>A good friend of mine bent my ear with a vengeance on the day the Greek government cranked up its austerity programme another notch.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;My husband is thinking of writing the word vlacha on his forehead in very big letters,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>Vlacha means stupid.<\/p>\n<p>Her husband&#8217;s name is Stelios and he is anything but a stupid man.<\/p>\n<p>Stelios is a leading cancer specialist whose dedication to saving lives is such that he rarely takes time off, or holidays.<\/p>\n<p>But he has come to the conclusion that he is stupid because he has been honest. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Greece has a thriving economy . . . but it&#8217;s not the official, tax-paying one: The Greek government is trying to recover billions of euros lost to tax evasion as part of its austerity programme, but as the BBC&#8217;s Malcolm Brabant finds, many Greeks see it as their right to keep as much black money [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,62,1526],"tags":[71,118],"class_list":["post-2683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-europe","category-greece","tag-debt","tag-taxes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-Hh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2683"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2683\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2686,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2683\/revisions\/2686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}