Athens is burning through the night.

EU is forcing 22 percent reduction in minimum wage.  

20 percent of government jobs to be cut over three years.  

Large reductions in retirement pensions.

And German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble’s assurances of more to come…

International lenders… that’s who is causing Greece to burn… they demand the people endure pain and more pain before they will release funds so that Greece can make bond payments to… International lenders.  These new austerity measures come on top of two years of harshly imposed income losses and tax hikes.  Headline unemployment is now over 20 percent.  And the deep recession in Greece is only deepening.  That’s all it can do.

The only thing I can think of that could make things measurably worse in a hurry would be to accept the EU’s sadistic conditions and reduce minimum wage by 22 percent and cut 15,000 government jobs.  That should just about guarantee that the situation deteriorates into something straight out of Dante’s Inferno.  Do what German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble is demanding and the economy in Greece will be in absolutely no danger of recovering… ever.

At least 100,000 of Greece’s citizens descended on the capitol in an attempt to stop the country’s lawmakers from bending over for the bankers once again..  Reports coming out of Athens say that the riots raged on for hours as police fired tear gas and stun grenades into the huge crowds.  In response, black-masked protesters using gasoline bombs created a wall of fire, and more than 45 buildings in the city of Athens were burned overnight.  As the lawmakers voted once again to accept the EU demands that harsh punishment be imposed upon the people, in exchange for more bailout funds, which can then be used to repay some of the same the bankers that are demanding the country be punished.

For God’s sake stop the madness.  Tell Germany to go f#@k themselves.  Leave the EU now.  Default on the ridiculous debt and return to the Dracma.  The world will survive, and it will become clear that they want Greece to remain in their death grip… not only do they want their precious bond payments, but should Greece default then we’d all get to see just who exactly is holding which Credit Default Swaps on what.  And wouldn’t that be interesting at the very least?

The violence isn’t isolated to Athens anymore either.  Six other Greek cities are reporting riots overnight, the worst in Volos where Reuters is reporting that the town hall and tax office have been badly damaged by fire.

And if this were the end of the austerity measures, that would beb one thing, but they are not… not even close.  Greece has been surviving, if you can call it that, since May 2010, because of a €110 billion ($145 billion) bailout from EU’s central bank and the International Monetary Fund. Everyone knew the last bailout was a short-term band aid and here we are again with a new rescue-Greece-loan-package, this time worth €130 billion ($171 billion).  How do you say “only slightly bigger band aid,” in Greek anyway?

In an interview published Sunday in Welt am Sonntag newspaper Schaeuble, quite obnoxiously said: “The promises from Greece aren’t enough for us anymore.”  Yeah, I can see how Germany gets away with making comments like that.  After all, they’ve hardly caused the world any problems over the last century or so.  And I’m not interested in hearing about how long ago that was… it could have been yesterday to some of the survivors of the Holocaust with whom I’ve had the privilege of speaking.

Oh, hell… doesn’t everyone see what’s happened to our world over the last thirty some years?  We’ve lost all compassion for our fellow man, and have become a world run by global finance ministers to whom being unable to pay a bond payment is a crime tantamount to treason.  In the U.S. we’ve allowed financial services to become 40 percent of our GDP… and we wonder why Main Street doesn’t think the recession has ended?  Forty percent of the United States of America shouldn’t be derived from any single source, how about that for a starting place kind of idea.

Dear Greece… The Dracma will be fine and so will the people, but not if you wait too long, or if you continue with a prime minister who is an ex-central banker.  Toss him out, re-shuffle the deck and find someone who understands more than money.   You have a breathtakingly beautiful country and we will all vacation there as soon as things calm down.

Mandelman out.

P.S. Watch the videos below… and pray for the people of Greece.  I wonder what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will force the American people to undergo before we default on our debt to them.  You see the parallel, don’t you?  Fannie and Freddie refusing to do principal reductions even in light of half the country being underwater and much of it severely so, and yet… their answer is NO.  We’ll remain in debt as they want it and we’ll get nothing more… NO SOUP FOR YOU.  And for those of you that are thinking that Greece, an 11-hour plane ride away, has nothing to do with here… Hahahahahahaha… wrong.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy