The Press wrongly just focus on one issue at a time. Other problems become side-notes or explicitly ignored.

Any solution to the current focus problem is paraded as a global solution.

But when the long ignored problems finally burst, the Press simply say 'the problem resurfaced' as if it had gone away somehow.

Relating to Austria, their banks were all wiped out lending to Hungary (more than 80% of loans to Hungary were Austrian)

There will be no mention of these zombie Austrian banks until one goes under. (Like Dexia)

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from 2008:

http://www.economist.com/node/12564042?story_id=12564042

http://www.moneyweek.com/investments/stock-markets/the-plagu...

http://www.moneyweek.com/personal-finance/credit-default-swa...

I think the anger was from Greeks "paying themselves" more than they can afford, and getting into astonishing amounts of debt.

If you can afford to pay 14 months a year it's simply equivalent to an increase in your monthly salary with 12 months, which no one would have a problem with.

I don't know if it's still the case, but bankers used to receive 16 salaries in Austria. The 4 bonus months presumably taxed at the low rate.

That said, it's irrelevant if you get paid 14 salaries or 12 salaries that are 1/6th higher and correspondingly adjusted tax/social security rates. It's just a trick to make the "common man" feel better, just like the employer's share of tax & social security. Employees would be outraged if it all came off their (correspondingly higher) paycheck.

I guess the workers and officials were getting "bonuses" payed by the state in a bankrupt country.

The developers are payed by companies, they don't get money from your pockets while also working against you.

It is a similar situation in Portugal with one extra month paid in the summer and one at Christmas. It seems an eminently practical idea so that lower paid people would have ready cash for holidays and Christmas. However given the furore over the apparently profligate peoples of the Mediterranean the government is currently in the process of phasing it out completely.