Greece debt crisis: ECB 'to end' bank emergency lending • Hacker News Board

Re: Greece debt crisis: ECB 'to end' bank emergency lending

#101

Post by celticninja » Sun, Jun 28, 2015, 6:28 PM UTC

dghughes wrote: post #85

elmar wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not imposing capital restrictions is suicide, i don't know if Yanis varoufakis is an economical genius a madman or simply amateurish.

Alexis Tsipras is genius the referendum means he doesn't have to do his job. He can just say "See you all decided not me."

To be fair his mandate on election was to reduce the impact of austerity. He has pushed for that but now the choice is austerity cuts or exit the Euro, neither of which he has an elected mandate for. Many other leaders would make the decision regardless but he had put it to the Greek people because ultimately it will be them that have to live with the decision and he knows that most don't want to leave he EU. So now they have to decide what is more important EU membership or no more austerity cuts.

However in reality it is no decision because without EU membership there is no money anyway so austerity is happening to Greece one way or another.

Re: Greece debt crisis: ECB 'to end' bank emergency lending

#102

Post by celticninja » Sun, Jun 28, 2015, 6:39 PM UTC

quonn wrote: post #42

radicalbyte wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They retired at 61, whilst in Northern Europe we've just had to raise the age to 67. They - like the Italians - don't like paying their taxes. http://www.economist.com/blogs/charlemagne/2010/02/greeces_g... We should bail them out, but they should also retire at 67, the (existing) final salary pensions should be cut back and they should start paying their taxes.

This claim has been debunked here: http://blog.zeit.de/herdentrieb/2015/06/18/die-griechische-r... EU data: Greece 64.4 years, Germany: 65.1. OECD data: Greece 61.9 years vs. Germany 62.1 So it is actually the same.

They are retiring earlier, maybe just by a small margin, but earlier regardless. I think that if you also compare the average tax contribution of those retired people you would see that the level of contributions paid by germans would exceed those paid by Greeks. So a direct age comparison won't give a true picture of fairness.

Re: Greece debt crisis: ECB 'to end' bank emergency lending

#103

Post by xkarga00 » Sun, Jun 28, 2015, 6:58 PM UTC

makeitsuckless wrote: post #99

jedmeyers wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's his actual job - to represent and follow the opinion of the people. It's called democracy. And if the opinion of the majority is wrong, then, in this case, so be it.

He's not a representative, he's an administrator. Representing the people is the job of parliament, his job is to lead . He cannot just switch sides whenever it suits him. We have all of these safeguards in place to ensure our leaders neither go off the rails completely, nor simply follow the popular opinion du jour with the predictable disastrous consequences. If we would do that in the rest of Europe, aid to Greece…

Well, it should have stopped a long time ago... Or to be more accurate, financial help should never happen in the first place. But that's another long story.

Re: Greece debt crisis: ECB 'to end' bank emergency lending

#104

Post by pjc50 » Sun, Jun 28, 2015, 7:09 PM UTC

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #97

pjc50 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cyprus imposed capital controls while remaining in the Euro. Restrictions on bank transfers and cash crossing the border.

interesting. Now how is the economy supposed to function with limitations on bank transfer? Wouldn't that make it difficult to repay debt?

Lots of paperwork, I think. Every non-trivial transfer requires approval. Here's how it used to work in the UK until 1979: http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/archive/Documents/historicpub...

Edit: yes, this makes commerce difficult. A finance correspondent I follow on twitter says to expect petrol rationing.

Re: Greece debt crisis: ECB 'to end' bank emergency lending

#105

Post by Scarblac » Sun, Jun 28, 2015, 7:45 PM UTC

celticninja wrote: post #101

dghughes wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alexis Tsipras is genius the referendum means he doesn't have to do his job. He can just say "See you all decided not me."

To be fair his mandate on election was to reduce the impact of austerity. He has pushed for that but now the choice is austerity cuts or exit the Euro, neither of which he has an elected mandate for. Many other leaders would make the decision regardless but he had put it to the Greek people because ultimately it will be them that have to live with the decision and he knows that most don't want to leave he EU. So now…

And anyway, he new all those things before saturday. If he thinks a referendum is needed, he could have held it weeks ago.

Re: Greece debt crisis: ECB 'to end' bank emergency lending

#106

Post by lifeisstillgood » Sun, Jun 28, 2015, 9:46 PM UTC

drited wrote: post #96

harywilke wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative is to start investing in Greece. To build up it's economy so we can end the Greek Depression. As it stands now the austerity packages have cut 30% off of the economy and increased the unemployment rates to nearly 30%, 50% of the youth. Those are Great Depression size numbers. Hard to collect taxes when people are not working. All these bailouts are basically just the Troika hand wringing about giving…

I asked what the alternative for the ECB was and you suggested the alternative was to invest in Greece. Are you suggesting that the ECB should invest in Greece to build up its economy or are you conflating my question regarding what the alternative for the ECB was with a question which I did not ask regarding what European institutions in general should do?

To roughly answer the above questions - the ECB and IMF need to stop. This is above their pay grade.

This is a problem caused by a fixed exchange rate (single currency) at the wrong rate for Greece and co. Without a mechanism to adjust prices for differences in cost and productivity Euros looked really cheap to borrow from germane but olive oil looked really expensive to buy in. (Germany presses and bottles and exports more olive oil from Greek olives than Greece does)

The only way to solve the problem long term is to move the money from richer (urban) parts of Europe to poorer rural parts. Stupid ideas like the CAP don't really help. Redistributive taxation across Europe (ie Federal taxes and Federal government) are the next step. But that is waaaaay out of the ECBs remit.

Syriza is basically saying - fine break my legs, but only if you can promise a European wide discussion on how we got into this mess and what a federal Europe will look like

Re: Greece debt crisis: ECB 'to end' bank emergency lending

#107

Post by TazeTSchnitzel » Mon, Jun 29, 2015, 1:50 PM UTC

celticninja wrote: post #15

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How come a poor slovakia should fund the lifestyle of lazy greeks? The Greeks are not lazy. Suffering is not lazy.

He may not be correct in what he is saying, but the underlying message is that Greece and the Greeks were enjoying the benefits of the EU on the never never, their attitude to taxation was part of the problem and now Greece expects to be taken care of by the rest of the EU taxpayers who actually pay their taxes. They don't want to affect their pensioners but it is many of those pensioners who benefitted the most from…

Greece does not want to affect their pensioners? What? Greece has already made massive cuts across the board on Government services, including pensions.