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Greeks Reject Bailout Terms

nytimes.com

221–230 of 412 posts

Re: Greeks Reject Bailout Terms

#221
post #163
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

War reparations are in no way related to repeatedly breaking the terms of bailouts.

There's no way any country in the world could keep up with troika's bailout terms given the damage these terms did to the economy. The IMF already noted that the "plan" was wrong. Every single forecast was out by a huge margin, what exactly more do we need to die? Stop breathing? WHat Varoufakis says is that we don't want money under terms the country can't honor, and the troika asks repeadetly for him to be removed.…

The funny thing is that now we will see whether that was true.

Re: Greeks Reject Bailout Terms

#223
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't down voted you because this has been on the tip of my tongue but I've held it back because it's such a low-ball response which achieves nothing. I think this whole "look at X" is why we're in this chaos. We can point fingers this way ad infinitum but it's only served to keep the EU in stalemate over this issue.

You're free to down-vote me, I don't care :-) I can assure no hard feelings about it... I had expressed many unpopular opinions on HN and had been downvoted many times, never held me back from expressing my views. What I'm saying is that solidarity towards Germany was key in 1945. Now it's time to make a Marshall plan for Greece that will bring 'justice' to the country, fix our tax-system, etc. Every Greek would welc…

Let's look at the facts!

The original Marshall plan was worth 5.2% of German GDP (of 1952). Greece has already received 185% of its GDP, in other words, other countries have given Greece already 36 Marshall plans!

Re: Greeks Reject Bailout Terms

#224
post #208
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that Greece imports about 50% of their food (and several other goods), so the consequences of drachma are going to go way above expensive iPhones - the food prices will surge, hurting the poorest the most.

Moreover, for Greece to be a viable destination for export markets, they will need to place significant penalties on importing anything for consumption at all. Of course, rising food cost is more alarming than high import duties but it seems that taxes on import for consumption are very likely. The rhetoric against austerity seems to be that we don't want to hurt the people (especially the economically disadvantaged)…

Wat? Why would they care to be "a viable destination for export markets"? Why would they care whether there are still some rich folks around who want to buy iPhones? Things like this make me wonder where people got their economics education. I hope I really misunderstanding something here.

Yes high food prices are a problem but without tyrannical corruption like we see in Egypt this problem fixes itself over time.

"Austerity" seems like a red herring to me. The Germans were only too happy about Greek entitlements when they were driving Greek borrowing. Now that they're shutting off the tap (and why now rather than five years ago?), the Greeks themselves will figure out how to distribute the food. I'm sure they'll come up with something, and that plan will have come from Athens rather than Brussels or Frankfurt.

Re: Greeks Reject Bailout Terms

#225
post #43

I am astouned by all the comments, who say that "Greeks were getting a shitty deal" or that the bailout terms were somewhat "unfair". Facts are: Greece had a spending deficit for several decades now. This spending deficit accumulated to such a big dept, that no investors were willing to lend greece any more money. 18 european countries transferred billions of euros in the last couple of years to greece, to help the c…

The fact that you are convinced that Germany acted in Greece's best interest is what sets us apart. Your money went mainly to your Banks, via Greece. Concluding, I'd rather go back to the Drachma and blow the Euro project than die starving becuase it suits your country's political class. ps. Even if Greece doesn't put the last nail on the coffin of the EU-project, I'm 100% sure that the UK will.

If you think Greece will do better without EU you are wrong. You will end up as Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria or Romania (last two will do probably better) so I don't think you will like it. Also your credibility will be destroyed because if you decided not you pay your depts nobody will borrow you any money in next years. You have problems with collecting taxes, you overspend money on public sector and social system and you have other problems too. Your country doesn't have strategic position so I don't see a reason why would anyone move manufacturing to Greece instead of Poland or Romania or similar countries where it is much cheaper.

You were quite lucky you were only non-communist country in that region 30 years ago and you joined EU. EU for last 30 years was sending you approximately 6 billions EUR every year.

At least you are popular tourist destination. Good luck, I wouldn't want to be a Greek.

PS: I am not a German.

Re: Greeks Reject Bailout Terms

#226
OK let me say this as clear as I can after reading most of the comments. Yes we have a dysfunctional economy. We have a lot of red tape and corruption going on in the public sector. We spend a lot of money in pensions and salaries, more than any EU country. We have an inefficient to say the least tax collecting mechanism. And many other problems.

But. You expect us to change all that in just five years. This is fucking impossible guys. Please, get a grip of reality. Countries don’t just change in five years. And then you get disappointed and become nihilists arguing that we haven’t implemented any reforms. All the effort Greece has done in the last five years, moving from a 14% deficit to 1% surplus doesn’t get enough credit. All we get is been constantly hammered for our failures. No wonder the NO vote took 60%. People here are so fucking tired. Six years of recession and we have the Troika constantly down on our throats without cutting us any slack. If EU leaders had shown some flexibility things would have turned up a lot better for everyone. We could extend the maturity of some loans, achieve a sustainable surplus and start repaying. Instead we’re facing the nuclear option of defaulting on most of our debt. How does that help anyone?

And if you think Tsipras is radical wait until Le Pen wins the French presidency. She has an open agenda of exiting the euro. Then we can talk what compromises Germans are willing to do.

Re: Greeks Reject Bailout Terms

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what the EU expected. How is this morally different from the fact that most of the other 49 US states pay for the debts of Mississippi? If we hadn't been doing it on a long-term continual basis, and MS ran its own economy, we'd be talking about "bailing them out". But life support to MS is the long-term normal in the US economy.

Greece effectively lied its way into the EU. It doesn't exactly leave much place for any moral appeals. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Financial_Audit,_2004

"lied". The rest of Europe knew very well that Greek books were cooked. They went along because the Euro is an ideology. It's destined to fail and it's going to fail. Like every attempts at a common currency. It doesn't work and Europeans are going to pay the price of that insanity. That's why I decided to leave the EU. That thing is so doomed.

Re: Greeks Reject Bailout Terms

#228
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that you are convinced that Germany acted in Greece's best interest is what sets us apart. Your money went mainly to your Banks, via Greece. Concluding, I'd rather go back to the Drachma and blow the Euro project than die starving becuase it suits your country's political class. ps. Even if Greece doesn't put the last nail on the coffin of the EU-project, I'm 100% sure that the UK will.

I am very pro Euro. But I don't like the fact that a single country in Europe feels that 18 other countries have to pay their debt. These bailouts in the past were signed from the greece government in the best interest of its people. A lot of people make it seem that we (non-greece european) somewhat forced theses agreements onto greece. In fact these bailouts where were unpopular in Germany, because it cost us a lot…

> In fact these bailouts where were unpopular in Germany, because it cost us a lot of our money, we could have spent on infrastructure, education, etc.

You should have. It would have been better for Greece if the former Greek government had not been strongarmed into being the fall-guy for a rescue programme for French and German banks.

Re: Greeks Reject Bailout Terms

#229

The real problem is that banks lent to Greece without doing their due diligence evaluating risk. Instead the bankers collected their fat fees for making the loans. Usually when banks make bad loans they have to write them off but when in 2010 the Troika (Euro Community, IMF, ECB) took over the Greek debt they paid 100% instead of insisting on the banks taking a "haircut" of say 50%. In truth some of the smaller membe…

Your information, wherever you are getting it from, is faulty or at best years out of date: The Troika indeed has made private creditors take much more than a "say 50%" haircut, in their second bailout package from the 21st of February 2012, the "Second Economic Adjustment Programme for Greece". The private creditors took a 53% cut in principal payments, a massive extension of the term and a reduction in interest rat…

From July 3, 2015:

http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/greeces-debt-burd...

'As long ago as 2010, when Greece was first bailed out, many knowledgeable observers, including some members of the I.M.F.’s board of directors, worried that Greece would never be able to pay back all of its debts—its total debt burden is about a hundred and seventy five per cent of the country’s G.D.P.—and advocated imposing a haircut on its creditors. Rather than doing this, the European Union, the European Central Bank, and the I.M.F. loaned the Greek government money to pay its creditors, which were mostly European banks, at a hundred cents on the dollar. In the now-famous words of Karl Otto Pöhl, a former head of the Bundesbank, the bailout “was about protecting German banks, but especially the French banks, from debt write-offs.”'

It's true that later in 2012 there was a "haircut" (as the article states) but that should have been done as part of the 2010 agreement. The funds paying off the banks in 2010 became part of government and government agency debt not covered by the haircut of 2012. They should have made the banks take the haircut in 2010 and thus the taxpayers would have been held accountable for far less debt.

Re: Greeks Reject Bailout Terms

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the term "sovereign nation" mean anything to you? Do you feel an obligation to pay for the debts of Greece? No? Then why would a German, or me as a Dutchman feel such an obligation?

No, but then my country is not part of a decades-long effort to unify the continent it resides on under a single financial and regulatory regime; we finished doing that roughly 150 years ago. As a result, we don't have to "bail out" Mississippi so much as continually pay for its mismanagement. And so, again, isn't "paying for mismanagement" part of what you sign up for when you try to unify Europe?

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