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Greeks Reject Bailout Terms

nytimes.com

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Re: Greeks Reject Bailout Terms

#291

Post by exceptione »

rihegher wrote: post #178
NotableAlamode wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your money went mainly to your Banks, via Greece. And if we send bread to feed the poor, you'd book that under "your money went mainly to your bakeries". It's just dishonest. Moreover, it's even factually false that the majority of the bailout money was used for bailing out banks. Only 1/3 of the credits were used for this purpose. The rest fuelled consumption in Greece, and/or was off-shored by the greek elites. you…

It's a long serie of mistakes that led us there. Maybe european leader should have stop postponing the crash and let greece default on all its debt to private creditor and let the impacted banks to go bankrupt like Credit Agricole for instance. But because in every major banks in europe, commercial banking and investment banking are not seperate activities, along with the banks bankruptcy a lot of people would have l…

It should be noted that Greece's economy was climbing again, but since Syriza got in power it all went downhill and al the growth has been destroyed. I'm not an economist, but to me it seems like the patient ran away during the operation.

Re: Greeks Reject Bailout Terms

#292

Post by 001sky »

tsunamifury wrote: post #78
colindean wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is interesting. I wonder how many other large government bodies meant to unify multiple different cultures have hit this at some point, and what percentage has failed. The US seems to be a notable success, but at the time of its establishment, the colonies were not /that/ different. It kinda makes me think of a chart showing which states benefit more from federal tax dollars than they pay in ( https://www.flickr…

California, Illinois and New York pay for the majority of America. These blue states luckily have values which protect the poor, socialist requiring red states. It's ironic that those states vote against their own interests, but we blue states sigh and pay out... Because no matter our race, economic class or education we are all Americans and we all make this place what it is.

This is too reductionist.

Eliminate NYC from new york state and what happens? Same Chicago and LA in their respective states. Likewise, many western states have huge flows of government spending for reasons that don't make sense on the surface. Those states, tend to have military installations, and huge allocations of national parks and national forest land.

In other words, that type of government spending is not social policy handouts. But rather is the US paying to keep up assets that it owns already (basically security and maintenance).

Rural appalachia is an exception (eg, west va = highly democratic; TN home of senator gore, etc) as these states were the target of many early government projects (like TVA and Food Stamps).

Lastly, huge amounts of governmnet spending are on healthcare

(& social security, which again have nothing to do with modern red state/blue state issues).

Re: Greeks Reject Bailout Terms

#293

Post by peterfirefly »

PythonicAlpha wrote: post #57

After 5 years of "rescuing" that did lead the country into ruins, no wonder! It is a widespread knowledge (at least the US has it), that forceful saving in a crisis, will deepen the crisis. As a German, I know that Germany got a dept-cut after the second World war, that the German nation could rise from misery. We should have allowed the Greek the same luxury. Instead, the governments cared only for the banks.

Greece already got a haircut. In fact, it was one of the biggest haircuts ever in history.

Re: Greeks Reject Bailout Terms

#294

Post by orbifold »

sktrdie wrote: post #26

I know I will be treated as an extreme futurist, but we live in this little tiny spec called Earth and we're all in this together. The idea that there are laws about environmental protection in one country and none in others, calls to the idea that we should just have a single unifying country called "world" and keep the current separation only for cultural reasons. The EU was a step in this direction but it seems th…

Personally I prefer the current situation, where a few countries provide a very good standard of living compared to most of the rest of the world, compared to what some parts of the population have to endure even in countries like the US. Globalization does only benefit the very rich in the short term, whereas strong nation states at least to some degree are able to stand up against large multinational coorporations.

Re: Greeks Reject Bailout Terms

#295

Post by tptacek »

alexandros wrote: post #286
tptacek wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would I concede that? 2015 Greece has begun privatization and should be feeling the impact of other reforms started in the preceding years. We're only talking about primary budgets, not debt service. Why would I think Greece in 2015 would have poorer intrinsics than in the preceding years?

It's not the intrinsics. It's the whole list of special one-off factors at play. By the way, Greece started privatization in the 90's, not in 2015. When there's no external assistance and the government pays loans out of its budget, it means it's not paying something else internally, usually some business it owes money to. If you feel that that is a non-factor in economic destruction and therefore tax receipts, then…

Whatever privatization they started in the 90s, there was a newsworthy spike in it after the troika negotiations started; here's the Reuters piece I was thinking of when I mentioned privatization earlier:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/28/us-greece-politics...

Re: Greeks Reject Bailout Terms

#296

Post by twobits »

paskster wrote: post #59
atmosx wrote: 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…

You are not paying for greece. You (and all european tax payers) are paying for Deutsche Bank.

Private debts were made public. You should ask Mrs. Merkel and Mr. Schauble, why you should pay for debts that were private.

Re: Greeks Reject Bailout Terms

#297

Post by coldtea »

nhaehnle wrote: post #10
jdimov9 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might have been the cover story, but is VERY far from the actual reason the "EU project" exists. As with all similar noble initiatives, the EU has much less to do with fairness and much more with power concentration (as is becoming exceedingly obvious).

Calm the hyperbole :) GP is right that the EU is the result of a long process that started with the goal of preventing another big European war. You are also right in that a large part of what is happening is a result of power politics.

>Calm the hyperbole :)

Hyperbole? The E.U. is a project spearheaded by the same 3-4 nations that had the biggest colonies on earth, enslaving over 2 billion people in horrendous conditions (including mass executions when they misbehaved). And that was going on, not in the middle ages, but until the sixties (and in a different form today).

Betweem them, the country that had the less colonies, started 2 world wars in order to expand. EU was created, among other things, to contain that country (and you can find that as an explicit goal from prominent French politicians advocating for its creation)...

Powerful empire-building nations are not about fun and love...

Re: Greeks Reject Bailout Terms

#299

Post by peterfirefly »

scrollaway wrote: post #273
peterfirefly wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't really any better, is it?

It has very different implications. In english speaking countries, "terrorism" / "terrorists" have become a placeholder for "really really bad guys who can't be reasoned with who want to steal our freedom and kill our children", thanks to US propaganda. The word "terrorism" in its more original form is ruling by fear and it can mean many things, such as being given power because the population is afraid of what you m…

I can assure you that the word terrorism in English hasn't changed its meaning substantially in the last 20 years or due to US propaganda. It had the same meaning 30+ years ago when I started learning the language.

I know bloody well what the original meaning of "terror" was (you translate lots of sentences about terror and tyrants when you start studying Latin). The shift in meaning in English from the Latin meaning to the current meaning happened a long time ago.

I can also inform you that I just tried googling "tromokratia" (which google and/or chromium helpfully offered to transliterate into proper Greek). I got all the expected hits for the current English/German/etc meaning. The Wikipedia page lists all the usual greatest hits: Lockerbie, Timothy McVeigh, 9/11, London, Madrid. There is no hint what so ever that the usual or even just non-obscure meaning would be "fear-monger", as MaysonL suggested.

I think Varoufakis /meant/ terrorism and some people are backpedaling for him...

Re: Greeks Reject Bailout Terms

#300

Post by carrotleads »

colindean wrote: post #35
yc1010 wrote: post #3

Fairplay to them, the whole point of the EU project was to make us all "Europeans" and to prevent constant disastrous fighting between states and people of the continent. Sometime in the last 10 years many people and the media in the "core" countries got all smug and uppity towards those lazy "peripherals" and so on forgetting exactly why the project was started, overnight we stopped being "Europeans" and became "und…

This is interesting. I wonder how many other large government bodies meant to unify multiple different cultures have hit this at some point, and what percentage has failed. The US seems to be a notable success, but at the time of its establishment, the colonies were not /that/ different. It kinda makes me think of a chart showing which states benefit more from federal tax dollars than they pay in ( https://www.flickr…

>> I wonder how many other large government bodies meant to unify multiple different cultures have hit this at some point, and what percentage has failed.

Same happens in India, states with separate rules, completely different culture and still functions under one federal umberalla..

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