Greece defaults

The ratings agencies have said that arm-twisting bondholders to accept new bonds with less favourable conditions amounts to a default.

I promise to pay you $100 tomorrow. I then tell you you'll get your money in 30 years and at a much lower interest rate. That's breaking the original promise, even though I haven't actually 'not paid you back'.

But Chailatte is right, the hyperbole goes in the direction it's needed. Greece has defaulted. It's either principal with interest, or it's a default. The reason for the wishy-washy phrasing is to avoid insurance claims.

Also, we're in a Depression (although not the Great Depression) and the media never uses that term (and then happily declares the "recession" to be over) to avoid self-fulfilling prophesy behavior. But make no mistake, we're in a depression and the media swings its hyperbole in the direction it's needed.

There's nothing irrational about wondering how deep the iceberg goes.

I'm always amused when people blaim the market for pointing out failed assets, as if the process of price discovery itself is more responsible for intrinsic value than the nature of the asset itself.

So far, so good: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14246787

What I can still not understand: how could this have happened at all and how come just like with the financial crisis following the housing bubble, it is nobody's fault really, nobody gets the blame and has to answer and step down and get locked up for it... and ultimately banks or the countries just get their bail-out and that's it. Few months from now life will just continue as usual as if nothing ever happened, just like it did on Wall Street. They went right back at it.

The funniest thing, a few weeks ago it was a very popular opinion in the media in Greece (even in respectable papers) that Germany should absolutely have to pay since they got allegedly SOOO rich and happy on all those imports Greece bought from Germany. Which in reality were an absolutely ridiculous amount of like 1 or 2% of all of Greece's imports but it shows how quickly a scape goat was conjured up in the media to direct people's attention and hate away from their own politicians.

Seriously, how can you not blame the politicians in that country and blame whoever was responsible for accepting Greece into the monetary union in the first place when they downright faked their economic statistics and obviously noone did any due-diligence?

There is a constant decline in voters and a general sense of "disenchantment with politics" here; people just care less and less and I can really see why... it doesn't really matter who you vote for anyway, they all get away with whatever they want and the biggest crises of the last 10, 20, 30 years just get brushed off like nothing happened. Insane amounts of bailouts are paid out on the backs of the working citizens and then that's it. It is never anybody's fault so certainly this does not scare off ANYONE to refrain from careless, negligent conduct.

I am not trying to troll, I just really honestly do not understand it... in my own understanding by all that is right, a few people who were actually responsible or in charge and did not do anything to prevent it should be hanging from trees or burning on stakes by now, figuratively speaking (but I would not mind having it literally).

In any company a CEO conducting business like these countries are doing on a daily basis would have been locked up a hundred times over looong time ago for a multitude of very grave misconducts, evasion, falsification of accounts etc etc etc.

When you rob a bank for petty cash, you get locked up; when you "steal a movie" you get locked up even longer. When you frakk over the whole world or the whole EU, then most everyone was joining in anyway so "shit happens", "tough luck", let's write a check and shake hands for the media.

Can someone with more political understanding than I have put all this clusterfuck-shitstorm into perspective for me, please?