Anyway. I walked in the door and was greeted by "You won't believe this!"
"This" is a declaration that all Greek citizens have to report all of their "under the mattress" assets to the government by January 1, 2016. There's a fifty-six page form on which they have to itemize their jewelry, gemstones, cash not sitting in a bank, gold, silver, anything that is of monetary value. It has to be filed by January 1.
Wow! That's shocking! And scary for many reasons.
First, private matters wouldn't be private. If you happen to have inherited grandpa's gold coin collection, it would have to be reported - even if you have no intent of selling it or using it to purchase goods or services. If, on your wedding day, your parents or inlaws or someone gave you a sterling silver tea set worth tens of thousands, you would have to report it.
Second, that kind of demand smacks of government's intent to seize those assets - at any cost - to use them to pay down the nation's debt. Perhaps it would require that you turn them in for 'safe-keeping' or face criminal penalties. Perhaps even, if you filed the form and didn't turn everything listed in, they would storm your house, turn it upside down in a search and seize those items and anything else with some intrinsic value.
Third, and in its own way, more frightening is that Greece is the civilization on which our Founders in the U.S. relied most heavily for formulating our Bill of Rights and Constitution. If Greece, the bastion of freedom that it once was has devolved to stealing its citizen's assets, where does that leave the rest of us?
It was fascinating on so many levels that I went searching for more information. Using trusty old Google I tried for more than two hours - entering various search criteria, checking Web and News, refining the timeline to "past month". After all, since this just surfaced yesterday I figured "past month" would capture something.
All that came up was a blogger's website on which the article was posted. I read it there and it was shocking. So I went back to Googling. Nothing, nothing, nothing... then! I found the precise same blog using the precise same language on another blogger's site.
Hmm. So someone threw this inflammatory and, as far as I can tell, false narrative onto the interweb. It got picked up and replayed. Tens of thousands of readers have seen it and are talking about it (including hubby), but it doesn't seem that anyone else has questioned it. Why not?
When I make claims here, I back them up with citations - and not just, "Gee, I read this and..." I go out, find the link and post the text plus the link here so if you want to more reading you can.
After last night, I think I've learned a valuable lesson. I'll add it to my list:
1) Don't take at face value anything you see on the interweb. The world is full of cheats and liars and con wo/men
2) Pay attention to the link - what's the source? If you deem the source slanted, unreliable, or blatantly biased, either dismiss it or do some further research to see if you can substantiate or balance the slant or bias.
3) Do your own research. If it's important enough to catch your attention, find out about it. And don't rely on one or two sources for the background. One or two sources, particularly if they're linked in some way, can be biased. Spreading the burden wider means the data will be more reliable.
4) If you are posting something - on a blog, on Facebook, LinkedIn (Facebook for grups) or any other site - post the citation(s), too. It adds credibility and allows a reader to find for themselves more information that you might not have included.
Now, have I been guilty of lazy research? You betcha. I try hard not to fall into that hammock, but I admit that I do sometimes. But if I think I want to post something, perhaps something exciting or inflammatory, I do research it and if I don't find something to support what I want to say, I don't say it.
So, after all of this I went back to make sure that if you do Google "under the mattress cash" the site I am referring to would come up. It does. It also came up with a news story by CNBC.
My first instinct was that someone at CNBC had read that same blog that got me started on this, and told someone about it, or started their own article. After all, if it was news, why wasn't it reported in the Economist, the Financial Times, or Investor's Business Daily? What about Bloomberg or in the Wall Street Journal yesterday? How about the New York Times or Washington Post? What about the Guardian or Telegraph in Britain? Nothing. Not one word about it except on the blogger's site yesterday, and CNBC this morning.
The CNBC article is pretty much the same language, rehashed to avoid plagiarism, but there is a link to a website. Unfortunately, because I cannot read Greek I cannot verify it's "real", but CNBC says it is (although I do have a VERY healthy suspicion of anything NBC reports because of past research laziness on their part). However, that said, here's the link to the CNBC story and below that is the link to the reporting form - which CNBC and the other site that started me down this path, declare is real.
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/12/02/greeks-tax-mattress-gold-jewelry-greece.html
http://cdn.enikonomia.gr/data/files/c1ab0d4578de77608daa89fb2fd40ead.pdf
Although a fifty-six page declaration form is not that likely to be completed by anyone but a civil servant or policy wonk who gets his rocks off filling out forms.
And why have they targeted just these segments of the population? Granted, of all the workers in Greece, a majority work for the government, so by targeting them, it's probable that they'll capture the majority of the loot. But why journalists? That's a head scratcher, isn't it?
Hmmm. Another dose of healthy skepticism and the plot thickens.
I just went to Wikipedia and searched for enikonomia - the site referenced in the CNBC article. There's no such thing. This is the result that I got:
Search results
The page "Enikonomia" does not exist. You can ask for it to be created.
There were no results matching the query.
Now, doesn't that strike you as strange?
If it's a department of the Greek government - the equivalent of the IRS or something - wouldn't it have a citation?
If it's a tax agency or part of the financial sector - wouldn't it have a citation? Heck, just for grins and chuckles I put H & R Block into Wiki and came up with a list (try it).
If it's a financial publication - like the Financial Times or Wall Street Journal - wouldn't it have a citation?
It just strikes me as more than a little odd. And makes me wonder about the depth of research being done before declarations like "we're all gonna die" or "we're all gonna be robbed" are made. Doesn't seem to me there's much, because I can't do more than turn up a questionable blog post that seems to be spreading through a lack of basic research on the part of the copycats (Bitcoin has just jumped on this bandwagon, too - I found a post / article associated with their site).
Me? I'm gonna go stuff my mattress. Have a lovely day.
Best~
Philippa
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PhilippaStories
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