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Greece defaults

blogs.reuters.com

11–20 of 151 posts

Re: Greece defaults

#11
FYI there is no such thing as a "kind of" or "selective" default. It's binary. You either pay back creditors what they are owed or you dont. It's rare that a company or country defaults on ALL obligations all at once. As a member of Wall Street, I appreciate the WSJ's noble attempt to sugar coat this (article below) but that doesnt change the facts.

Ditto watchandwait below.., glad it finally happened.

http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405311190355490...

Re: Greece defaults

#12
The EU sort of rescued Greece, now Greece sort of defaults. Portugal, Spain, and Italy are not that far behind. The biggest problem, aside from Greece's fiscal mess, is that Germany can't muster up enough political support to clean up after their mess more decisively despite the fact that they are now in the same monetary union. The catch 22 of these financial crises is that inaction will result in financial meltdown, decisive rescues political suicide.

Re: Greece defaults

#14

FYI there is no such thing as a "kind of" or "selective" default. It's binary. You either pay back creditors what they are owed or you dont. It's rare that a company or country defaults on ALL obligations all at once. As a member of Wall Street, I appreciate the WSJ's noble attempt to sugar coat this (article below) but that doesnt change the facts. Ditto watchandwait below.., glad it finally happened. http://profess…

So you're making a semantic argument, which is, you know, great, but surely there's a difference between the relatively modest haircut that's going on here and the kind of classical default in which little or none of the debt gets repaid?

The author of the piece writes as if Greece is getting off scot-free here. Is not aware of the manner in which mobs have been rioting there for the past month? This is not a pleasant situation for anybody.

Re: Greece defaults

#15
I've gone through the News channel in topchan.tv, which has multiple sources. Out of 180 of news clips for today, only four are related to the Greek bailout. AlJazeera has more details and it mentioned partial default, in the sense that the lenders would take a loss.

france24: Fresh multi-billion euro bailout expected for Greece http://www.topchan.tv/show/public1/1/News/2011-07-21.06.h/58

france24: Sarkozy and Merkel strike deal ahead of Greece talks http://www.topchan.tv/show/public1/1/News/2011-07-21.06.h/59

Euronews: Nervous Greeks await their economic fate http://www.topchan.tv/show/public1/1/News/2011-07-21.18.h/7

AlJazeeraEnglish: Greece's second bailout http://www.topchan.tv/show/public1/1/News/2011-07-21.18.h/11

Re: Greece defaults

#16

FYI there is no such thing as a "kind of" or "selective" default. It's binary. You either pay back creditors what they are owed or you dont. It's rare that a company or country defaults on ALL obligations all at once. As a member of Wall Street, I appreciate the WSJ's noble attempt to sugar coat this (article below) but that doesnt change the facts. Ditto watchandwait below.., glad it finally happened. http://profess…

The question you have to ask yourself is “What does it mean?” Will readers understand what “Greece Defaults” entails? If not, then it’s the journalists job to write something else.

A semantic argument won’t help you there. If it were my job to write articles about the situation I certainly wouldn’t pick “Greece Defaults” as a headline. I would mention the default in the body and explain what that actually means. Context. Not all defaults are created equal. And that’s actually kinda sorta important.

Re: Greece defaults

#17
post #12

The EU sort of rescued Greece, now Greece sort of defaults. Portugal, Spain, and Italy are not that far behind. The biggest problem, aside from Greece's fiscal mess, is that Germany can't muster up enough political support to clean up after their mess more decisively despite the fact that they are now in the same monetary union. The catch 22 of these financial crises is that inaction will result in financial meltdown…

82 Million Soon To Be Very Angry Germans, Or How Euro Bailout #2 Could Cost Up To 56% Of German GDP

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/fatal-flaw-europes-second-b...

Re: Greece defaults

#19
post #12

The EU sort of rescued Greece, now Greece sort of defaults. Portugal, Spain, and Italy are not that far behind. The biggest problem, aside from Greece's fiscal mess, is that Germany can't muster up enough political support to clean up after their mess more decisively despite the fact that they are now in the same monetary union. The catch 22 of these financial crises is that inaction will result in financial meltdown…

Delayed action though leads to speculation and uncertainty as was shown in the past few weeks. Nothing changed in the Italian economic policy since friday last week, but monday and tuesday brought deep losses and the Italian BTP bonds reached the highest spread against the Bund in recent history. Today, 3 days later, Italy is back to a less crazy spread (still pretty high) and _nothing_ changed in its policy, 100 base points less over 300 in 3 days is pretty crazy.

The problem is not an economic problem but a political one. The cost of Greece bailout is a rounding error in Europe's total budget, the test ahead is about how the EU can start unifying the economic policy and grow more cohesively.

Lots of countries gave up monetary control power but without a unifying economic government body it's absolutely impossible for the weakest links to survive with all their issues without some help.

Lack of real unification is the problem, not economy per se. I think this is your point somewhat, am I right?

Re: Greece defaults

#20
post #6
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It mentions that they are sort of forcing bond holders to accept a lesser payment. That seems like a kind of default.

Whether they defaulted or not is actually quite key. You see, all the CDS (Credit default swap) holders get to demand the full face value of the Greek debt they hold from the CDS seller if Greece has defaulted. The CDS writers are going to take a huge bath if this happens. This is what took down AIG, except in that case it was subprime MBS (Mortgage backed securities) CDSs that did it.

This is an excellent question--I'm also curious to see how CDSes are affected. Logic dictates the EU would structure this bailout so that, no, CDSes cannot be redeemed, lest we see a bunch of insurers go under as well.
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