Greece Is on Fire: Is America Headed Down the Same Road?

Last Friday, riotous protesters descended on the Greek capital of Athens -- and Glenn Beck thinks we are hurtling down the same path.

“Violence has broken out again, with hooded youths throwing stones and police firing grenades in Syntagma square,” Business Insider’s Simone Foxman reported.

Violence erupts in Athens (via the Guardian):

Greek police union officials, enraged that their jobs were being threatened, called for the arrest of EU and International Monetary Fund officials, according to a letter obtained by Reuters.

The protests – unsurprisingly – were organized by labor unions unhappy with the announcement that some 15,000public sector jobs were going to be cut. Yet, despite massive and violent pushback, Greek parliament managed to pass the austerity measures, thereby qualifying the small Mediterranean country for a second EU bailout package.

Naturally, this enraged the already violent protesters (via Fox Nation):

The situation is bleak. As already mentioned on The Blaze, if the eurozone is brought down by a Greek collapse, the repercussions for the U.S. economy could be severe.

Is the U.S. taking notes?

During a GBTV segment on Greece’s precarious and frightening situation, Glenn Beck had a “told ya’ so” moment. Back in 2009, he actually predicted that Greece would be “set on fire” because of its deteriorating economic conditions.

“106 officers needed medical care, 74 were arrested -- the cops are in real trouble because now people are saying, ‘The cops! The cops are part of the problem!’” Beck said. “Yeah, because they’re stopping people from burning things to the ground.”

“150 shops, 48 buildings were looted and then set on fire. Dozens of shops, from camping equipment stores to cell phone providers to cafes – it didn’t matter, they were all destroyed. Crews cleaned up forty tons of broken marble and rocks from the streets. They are erasing history…everything has been damaged,” Beck said.

The riots were so bad that even an historic cinema that managed to survive the destruction of two world wars was burned to the ground.

“I saw some of this stuff and I thought, ‘how, exactly, are these actions going to help the economy?’” Beck asked. “Oh! Oh, wait a minute! They don’t!”

“Who is responsible?” Beck asked. “The protest was organized by labor unions this weekend. Faced with a decision between take the bailout deal and accept the conditions or default…Greece passed the bill [by a] 199-74 margin.”

However, as Beck explains, the Greek problem isn’t an isolated issue. Many of the factors that have led up to Greece’s current socio-economic crisis can also be seen in the United States.

“Greece has an unemployment number of 20.9 percent,” Beck said, “that is up 7 percent in one year…Spain, also near collapse and also the ‘green economy’ Obama wants to model, is at 22.8 percent. Now our [the U.S.] official number is I think 8.3 [percent], but even the CBO says the real rate is closer to 10 percent because they’re now playing new games. But if you calculate it the way we did before the 1980’s, the actual rate of our unemployment is actually 16 percent.”

This, of course, means that the current U.S. unemployment rate, calculated using the pre-1980’s method, is actually higher than Greece’s unemployment rate just one year ago -- and now look at Greece. And even if one doesn't employ the pre-1980’s method, and instead relies on the CBO’s numbers, the current U.S. unemployment rate is still only 3 points behind what Greece’s was one year ago.

Again, how has that worked out for Greece?

“So, what does that tell you America?” Beck asked. “It tells you that we are headed down the exactly same path. And the same people are taking us there. George Soros lashed out at Germany’s Angela Merkel because Germany took the lead in forcing Greece to agree to those ‘harsh’ austerity measures as condition for accepting the $170 billion bailout. Soros says, ‘spending cuts will lead to a repeat of the Great Depression and the EU,’ if they keep cutting, quote: ‘We will repeat the mistakes that plunged America into the Great Depression in 1929. That’s what Angela Merkel doesn’t understand.’”

Beck was not pleased with Soros’ analysis.

“You know, George,” Beck said, “I wish I could say you don’t understand, but you do. You know exactly what you’re doing. What Soros and the central banks are doing, it didn’t lead to the great Depression, it led to totalitarianism. It’s what led to the Weimar Republic. And we are headed to the same place. Except this time, it’s not just the crashing of a currency in one country; it’s currencies on a global scale.”

Is the U.S. taking notes?

Watch Beck analyze the Greek fiasco via GBTV: