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Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

greece.greekreporter.com

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Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#121

Post by champagneben »

lucianoq wrote: post #71
tasubotadas wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? "Like many EU countries, the general retirement age in Greece is 65, although the actual average is about 61. However, the deeply fragmented system also provides for early retirement – as early as 55 for men and 50 for women – in many professions classified as unhealthy." 55 and 50! https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/greece-to-ca...

Average in 2011 was 61,9 yo for Greece and 61,5 yo for Germany. This is an average between all the jobs, classified unhealthy and not. But although it was less than Germany, let's say 60 or 59 or even 55: 1) lenders knew it, so it's also their fault on not weighting the risk well or not asking for an higher interest rate or avoiding giving them money at all. To check is their responsibility. 2) IMF decisions brought…

> 2) IMF decisions brought an increase in suicide rate and children mortality rate. Are the lenders allowed to bring death to the borrowers? Is this illegal for the mafia but allowed for IMF/ECB/EC?

How does one make this claim? What would the alternative have looked like? It's not like the IMF just decided to tank a healthy economy.

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#122

Post by lucianoq »

smallnamespace wrote: post #62
lucianoq wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People in private converse completely differently (more freely) than in public. They are deciding about life and death of people of a country (or many). They're not discussing about what's your favourite food and which sex position you like the most. Those conversation MUST be open and public, so people can judge the work of their delegates and decide to vote them again or not. If you don't want to be heard, don't…

On the other hand, organizations that are able to keep their internal deliberations private have a strong advantage over ones who must ‘think’ openly. Imagine negotiating with an employer, except your inner monologue is always spoken aloud. One unintended (?) consequence of extreme transparency for governments, is that it makes government ineffective and easily subverted or outmaneuvered by opaque organizations, like…

States and Organizations/Corporations are NOT at the same level.

States create and enforce the laws, they can do whatever they want. Their only limit is the people willingness expressed via elections.

Corporations can never be above a State if they play in a game where the State decides the rules.

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#123

Post by toyg »

raverbashing wrote: post #5

I think the essence of those conversation have already published by Varoufakis in a book he wrote.

That's true, but until now it's basically been "he said / she said". Having a recording that shows the outright callousness of certain elements of those meetings, is another thing. At the very least, it would set the historical record straight.

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#124

Post by RobertoG »

anovikov wrote: post #105
xfs wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reaped the benefits? Greece's GDP dropped 30% since 2008 it and was forced into austerity by the Troika to move debts from the left pockets of Deutsche Bank to the right pockets, with the interests paid for by Greek tax payers.

Thing is, it's GDP exploded for now underlying economic reasons in the previous decade... and they all consumed the absolutely unearned wealth produced by nothing but cooking the books. The real "fair" solution would be: to auction off their sovereign territory to the highest bidder, and paying off debt with that cash. If they try to object, confiscate their merchant fleet and block ports with aerial minelaying.

Assuming that you don't care about the Greek people (and obviously you don't) and assuming that the narrative of "we the European people" is false (that obviously it's), what about the public debt?

Because all the actions that took place "to fix" Greece was in order to fix the problem of the public debt. So, I suppose that now, after all the "hard medicine" the problem is solved. Well, it's not and it's not predicted to be in the future.

So, what was all this about?

None of the predictions made at the time by all those hardliners in Germany and company have become a reality. Of course, the guilt is going to be again on the Greeks. Then they will complain when the people turn anti-European and rationalistic.

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#125

Post by toyg »

matteuan wrote: post #89
petermcneeley wrote: post #76

This is about "elections cannot be allowed to change economic policy" It reflects the anti democratic perspective of the Eurogroup and is one of the most fundamental political issues of our times. https://www.google.com/amp/s/markcarrigan.net/2017/05/08/ele...

Schäuble was only 1/17 of the Eurogroup.

He was hardly alone in thinking and supporting that line. Jeroen Dijsselbloem in particular behaved quite disgracefully at the time.

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#126

Post by dependenttypes »

MagnumOpus wrote: post #60
hardlianotion wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just an insult.

No, that's Hanlon's Razor. Either the population was ignorant of living beyond their means and adopting bad economic policies -- or they are deadbeats who willfully took out credit they had no intention of repaying.

The population is not the one who adopts the economic policies. The government is.

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#127

Post by RobertoG »

twistedpairs wrote: post #82
frandroid wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been 5 years, and the Eurogroup destroyed the Greek economy. I don't think it's unfair to now reveal the contents of these discussions. It's high time to see if it was corruption, or compromise, which happened.

> It's been 5 years, and the Eurogroup destroyed the Greek economy That's not true. Greed which benefited Greeks at the time destroyed the Greek economy.

Many commenters here are missing the point. All the measures that were taken against Greece (for its own good, of course), were, theoretically, about improving the competitive of Greece and solve the problem of the public debt.

Nothing of that have happened. The public debt problem has not being solved and the Greek economy is a disaster. So who is responsible for those mistakes? They failed in their predictions and their failed in their goal (if what they say in public about their goal is the truth, of course).

It seems to me that if we leave all those politicians that decide to be "hard" on the Greeks without punishment we will have a clear case of moral hazard.

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#128

Post by sykick »

xkemp wrote: post #97
sykick wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding of the situation is that German and French banks flooded Greece with easy credit. And as it always happens under such circumstances people/corporations/governments borrowed heavily and when the crisis hit in 2009 they couldn’t repay. All of the so called bailouts have been aimed at making sure French and German banks didn’t suffer and the ones who did suffer have been the Greek people with the except…

That's an extremely one-sided point-of-view. The net effect of the whole saga was Greece getting to spend a lot of money in the 90s and 2000s, and the stronger countries of the Eurogroup ending up paying for (at least part) of that. Focussing on these countries' motivation is somewhat useless speculation, and arguably unfair if you manage to twist it so far around the people paying end up as the bad guys, and the peo…

My intention was to point out that lending is a two party relationship and both parties have responsibilities. The tendency in my experience in these discussions is to put too much blame on the borrower and too often put very little blame on the lender.

The motivation of the German and French governments was that German and French banks not suffer. And of course the leaders of those countries cared more about their people than the people of Greece. This is natural and part of the psychology of being part of a nation. We ended up with things like:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eurozone-greece-warships-...

At any rate, both parties are at fault and both parties ought to have suffered. From my perspective only one party suffered.

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#129

Post by xfs »

xkemp wrote: post #113
xfs wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reaped the benefits? Greece's GDP dropped 30% since 2008 it and was forced into austerity by the Troika to move debts from the left pockets of Deutsche Bank to the right pockets, with the interests paid for by Greek tax payers.

It would have been impossible for Greece's GDP to drop by that amount (in absolute terms) before it joined the EU. Because it quadrupled after joining. Here, check out this graph, which rather obviously shows the benefit of joining the EU in 1981: https://www.google.com/search?q=greece+gdp&oq=greece+gdp&aqs...

It quadrupled after joining because it borrowed money from Germany and other countries to buy German cars and other goods, not unlike the early stage of Bretton Woods. It had the lowest debt level before joining, like a fat cat to be squeezed by EU bankers, which was also why it was fast-tracked in joining the EU when it clearly didn't meet many clauses of the Copenhagen Criteria.

But when push came to shove in 2008, the debts were exploding not in Germany, but in Greece.

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#130

Post by occamrazor »

tsimionescu wrote: post #77
mrtksn wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you argue that it is O.K. to game the bank and live a lavish life destroying your own way of living and if the bank catches up and wants you to take measures so you can pay back, the right thing to do would be to jail the people who were gamed or conspired with the people who gamed the bank and simply continue the lavish life and let the people who dod not manage to game the bank(some richer and some poorer than y…

No. The point you are missing is that it is also not ok for the lender to lend everyone a billion dollars, wait for people to default, and then go ask the government to give them a billion dollars back because otherwise they will go bankrupt. If the supply of money has essentially been exhausted, then both borrowers and lenders have been doing something wrong, and it should be BOTH that suffer, so that both are incen…

The lenders actually suffered approximately a 30% haircut on long-term Greek bonds.
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