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Greece

interfluidity.com

91–100 of 209 posts

Re: Greece

#91
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we just ignore the fact that the Greek government misrepresented their economic state, failed to implement the necessary changes and then puts up a completely bogus referendum?

The creditors ( banks ) are part of "moral" game here too. If the Euro cannot handle Greek ( and Spanish , Italian, Portuguese , Irish ) default then members of the Euro must share the imbalance. As an american tax payer it hurt to watch bank bailouts here. In europe I keep hearing countries names, but this is a bank bailout fundamentally. Sticking the debt on national governments while also forcing austerity ( defac…

The EU was never to be a transfer union, this setup was required to get the large economic countries to accept the weaker countries being admitted. National pride would mean political suicide for any leaders who suggest sending money out in the form of welfare.

While I am quite willing to lambast the banks in the states for the mess they got into I am not so willing to do so with regards to their lending to Greece. Someone would have stepped forward regardless because state actors are supposed to function properly with fiscal restraint when its apparent their economy cannot sustain their spending.

The real fault here is the past and current Greek administrations which decided to pass the buck to the point we have a new government which is effectively trying to blackmail the EU.

The IMF is pulling back because they were overly generous giving the Greek government far more support that rules generally permitted. Under normal conditions the rule is 200% of a countries quota which is based on each countries contribution to the IMF with a 600% cumulative total. In 2010 Greece got a 3208% (three thousand two hundred an eight) percent infusion.

Greece has the highest military spending vs GDP of any NATO nation second to the US. What the IMF and EU lenders and such have done is force Greece to raise taxes to the point its near impossible to do business. Forcing many out of the legal economy if not out of Greece itself. This is the fault that can be assigned to IMF and others.

Basically the businesses and people of Greece are paying a tax load so high that profit and therefor growth is nearly impossible.

Re: Greece

#92
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reforms are the only long term solution. They're reforms like, maybe Greeks should retire at the same age that other people in Europe do. Maybe hairdressing should not be considered a 'dangerous profession', thus unlocking various benefits. Maybe Greek train drivers should not be paid $130,000 a year to drive near-empty trains. Maybe Greece should be able to grow its own food instead of importing more than half o…

> The reforms are the only long term solution. They're reforms like, maybe Greeks should retire at the same age that other people in Europe do. What's the retirement age of the other people in Europe, excuse me? 62 like in Germany? 67+ like in Italy? > Greece is hosed because, as the article points out, it is an incredibly screwed up and corrupt country. Japan is often ranked as the most corrupted country in the worl…

I think you're looking at corruption in a one dimensional way. Corruption generally acts as a tax on the economy, a drag factor. Most countries experience corruption, but mitigate it with dynamic economies, productive work forces, abundant natural resources or whatever. Greece hasn't really mitigated corruption, and has compounded it with a range of other problems. Corruption is prt of the Greek problem, not the sum of it.

Re: Greece

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, pretty much. The author's argument is that everybody knew that their economic state was misrepresented, so the banks should have never lend them money in the first place. The mismanagement leading up to the financial crises was of course the fault of the Greek government. However, the reforms that the EU has proposed/enforced since then seem to have been more about punishing the Greeks than about actually buildi…

The reforms are the only long term solution. They're reforms like, maybe Greeks should retire at the same age that other people in Europe do. Maybe hairdressing should not be considered a 'dangerous profession', thus unlocking various benefits. Maybe Greek train drivers should not be paid $130,000 a year to drive near-empty trains. Maybe Greece should be able to grow its own food instead of importing more than half o…

Greeks have one of the higher average retirement ages in Europe:

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/world-affairs/2012/05/expl...

61.7 for Greece, 60.9 is the EU average.

Re: Greece

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That same report says that failure of the economy to recover is caused by the failure of the government to implement the necessary changes, worsened by the current government during the past 5 months.

Well, IMF has to explain why it threw billions of dollars to an unsustainable debt. But there are deeper issues too. What the creditors really want is to micromanage Greece while they do not understand our economy and culture. They want to change everything in a couple of years. Change takes time, you can't turn a Greek into a German or an American in 3 or 5 years. In order to do this and protect their interests, the…

Just for the record I have to say that as a fellow Greek I totally disagree with that line of thinking, which is popular amongst many Greeks. Neither IMF nor EU did anything to cover our corruptive politicians. But they can’t substitute our constitution or our courts. Neither is their duty to govern Greece. Their duty is to set goals and check whether we implement agreeable reforms. Everything else is just conspiracy theories or pure speculations. They don’t have executive jurisdiction to enforce implementation of this or that policy.

You mentioned the Siemens scandal for example, by the way your numbers are off by an order of magnitude. This is a typical example of a cover-up from our part. We let the key witness escape to Germany where he is protected from extradition. It’s not their fault, we shouldn’t have let him leave in the first place. Taking responsibility for our mistakes would be a first step in overcoming our inefficiencies. And the previous government was anything but obedient, as a matter of fact all three governments that were called to implement reforms resisted as much as they could.

So please, let’s just stop the speculation about EU wanting to rule Greece through puppet governments. I’m sure they have better things to do.

Re: Greece

#95
post #84
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you're lending out billions of dollars , you don't take the debtor's statements at face value. You do very thorough due diligence, and employ very capable people to do it for you. There is no excuse for Deutsche Bank, et al , not to have known exactly how tenuous the strength and solvency of the Greek economy were. The notion that no-one knew the Greek government was lying about the state of their economy until…

Just a heads-up that the concept that the creditors must accept risk is a very anglo-saxon perspective. The German view is that debts are to be paid back, period. If you don't pay them back you're a morally deficient scoundrel. If you're ever bankrupt then the legal system will permanently brand you. German economics is a mix of Austrian school economics and strict morals. It doesn't excuse the largely international…

just like germany paid off its debts post ww1 and ww2?

Re: Greece

#96
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, it's neither. The debtors in this case are the people of Greece, yet the ones who got them indebted are politicians, who misled the population into believing that the expenses the government had were sustainable. Even more important is that the politicians were not voted in by 100% of people, which simply means that many people who lost their money didn't agree with the policy that led to them losing t…

Reasonable points about democracy but as Churchill said: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." > This is what's going to happen sooner or later to every other country which has a substantial debt. Actually where the country controls its currency the effects are totally different and if the ECB could certainly step in for tiny Greece if th…

> Actually where the country controls its currency the effects are totally different and if the ECB could certainly step in for tiny Greece if there was a will.

It's the same thing. If you don't have enough money in the bank to make creditors whole, you print more (thus devaluing what everybody has). If you can't print, you cut their deposits. Either way, creditors are robbed. There is no magical solution here. Mathematics cannot be amended at will of any government.

If you spend more than you earn, someone somewhere someday is paying for it. And the longer you conceal that truth, the harder it is going to hit.

Re: Greece

#97
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, it's neither. The debtors in this case are the people of Greece, yet the ones who got them indebted are politicians, who misled the population into believing that the expenses the government had were sustainable. Even more important is that the politicians were not voted in by 100% of people, which simply means that many people who lost their money didn't agree with the policy that led to them losing t…

half the population ... oblige the other half I'd love to see an experiment where democracy was modified. People should get multiple votes, proportional not to their income or their wealth, but to the amount of taxes they paid the previous year. There would need to be some sort of limit. E.g. nobody gets less than 1 vote nor more than 10. But something like that would create what some call "skin in the game". Those p…

Now, let's extend your idea. Everyone can vote with their dollars for what they want to have in their lives! That way, no one is forced to use products or services someone else imposes on them. Now wouldn't that be the fairest system of all?

Re: Greece

#98
I really don't know that much of the details of this particular situation, I've grown tired of hearing about this sort of thing. I RTFA and it was interesting, but then it's always interesting, isn't it.

I was surprised that a CTRL+F "Icelend" in this thread turned up nothing. While I'm sure there were many differences in their situation, I bet there were a lot more similarities. My crude analysis of this situation is, it is yet another example of "men behaving badly while playing with other people's money". And when I say men, I'm not using it in the gender agnostic sense.

When this sort of thing happened to Iceland, they had the choice of "doing the right thing" (aka do what they were told by the international banking industry), or go it on their own. After some "public discussions", it was decided they would go it on their own. And a key learning that came out of that public discussion was to ensure females were involved in the process:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/feb/22/iceland-women

And by most accounts, Iceland is now doing generally "ok".

By the way, I have no idea if that article is at all authoritative on the topic of Iceland or females role in its recovery, I did a 5 second google search. My point is, as the author of the article (that is the topic of this post) clearly pointed out, the original deal with Greece was built on a fair amount of lies, that everyone knew were lies. I particularly liked the reference to this term: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=IBGYBG

And my experience (as a man), dealing with other men for many decades now is: a certain subset of men have absolutely no moral qualms about lying in the pursuit of power; other men of the same personality type, even if seemingly enemies, are happy to go along, and the collusion between these opposing actors who share the same mindset often results in them all rising into positions of extreme power, and they eventually blow the whole place up. It's probably always been this way in a sense - in the good old days, it resulted in war - nowadays, it results in financial markets blowing up.

I know there are all sorts of holes in my "theory of the world", and I don't even care, because this same shit will continue to happen indefinitely, and it will always be men running the show, but there's no way to prove causation because it will always be men running the show.

Re: Greece

#99
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's working for everyone but the Greek. Blame them all you want, but we need a solution that works for everyone.

Why? They should have never been in the Euro. Any econ major knows that you can't have monetary union without either fiscal union or prudent governments. Check this prescient article from 18 years ago by one of the best macro minds of recent years (Rudi Dornbusch): https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/europe/1996-09-01/eu... He talks about excluding Italy, Portugal, Greece, Spain, etc. So what happened? Standards…

I always ask myself: "who accepted them?" and then I simply respond to myself the EU accepted them along with all the other PIGS.

Like they did with the EMS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Monetary_System

It didn't work at the time, they now wanted to make it forcibly work (again). Something is not right.

Re: Greece

#100
post #27

The basic idea: BMW wants to sell more cars to greeks. Greeks don't have enough money so they can't buy. Deutsche Bank (DB) gives "free money" in loans. (And of course DB knows that greece isn't exactly "strong" economically.) We are talking about a greek population that never ever had a loan before, while the prime minister talks about the "powerful (economically) greece". They also thought that the world "stock mar…

The ECB is like payday loan companies minus the required common sense?
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