Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings • Hacker News Board

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#181

Post by SuoDuanDao » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 7:38 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #173

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that was true once upon a time, but the politicians seem as caught up in the partisanship as the voters these days. I also think an awful lot of confidentiality is abused or, in less extreme cases, simply reduces public engagement. I'd like to see the sausage-making being a lot more open, and the public becoming more tolerant of imperfections in our elected officials. Naive as that may seem, it actually seems…

> the politicians seem as caught up in the partisanship as the voters these days. In public, yes. That's the point. One could hope that in private, there's more sanity and less theater. I fear that it's just the same in private as in public, but one can hope.

I could see two possible positive outcomes to making a private conversation of that nature public. One, we find some impure but pragmatic horse trading, and the voters breath a sigh of relief at the revelation that the politicians aren't as caught up in partisanship as we'd feared. Two, we find out the reason they aren't caught up in partisanship is that the partisanship is less a disagreement over how to serve voters' interests and more distraction from how they serve their own interests.

Making a private conversation public is an extreme measure, but it also seems very appropriate in extreme circumstances.

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#182

Post by lottin » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 7:39 PM UTC

xfs wrote: post #129

xkemp wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would have been impossible for Greece's GDP to drop by that amount (in absolute terms) before it joined the EU. Because it quadrupled after joining. Here, check out this graph, which rather obviously shows the benefit of joining the EU in 1981: https://www.google.com/search?q=greece+gdp&oq=greece+gdp&aqs...

It quadrupled after joining because it borrowed money from Germany and other countries to buy German cars and other goods, not unlike the early stage of Bretton Woods. It had the lowest debt level before joining, like a fat cat to be squeezed by EU bankers, which was also why it was fast-tracked in joining the EU when it clearly didn't meet many clauses of the Copenhagen Criteria. But when push came to shove in 2008,…

GDP stands for gross domestic product. As its name indicates, GDP measures the production of final goods and services. Borrowing foreign money to buy foreign goods has no effect whatever on a country's level of production and therefore it cannot have any effect on the country's GDP either.

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#183

Post by dimig » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 7:48 PM UTC

If we wanted to release them, he would have already. Clearly he won’t, cause this could backfire at him. Most probably it will be evident that he was not really participating in the negotiations about the future of his own country and he was literally just a listener (and eves dropper) responding with politically correct generalities. I really want him to publish them, in order to bust the image he is trying to build (that of some type of savior). He never will, unfortunately. He “threatened” to do it to get attention, such as the one he gets in this thread, because he can sense that he has become irrelevant. Please people, stop taking him so seriously.

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#184

Post by lottin » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 7:49 PM UTC

lucianoq wrote: post #108

pavlov wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greece voluntarily joined a larger currency zone and reaped the benefits for a decade. Should state elections in Mississippi drive US Fed policy?

Benefits? Which benefits? Eurozone is the lowest-growing area of the world. It destroyed more GDP than the II World War comparing with trends before Euro and with other countries at the same time. > Should state elections in Mississippi drive US Fed policy? EU is not a Federal Country, not a State and most of all not a Nation. It's just a common table where each country fights for their interests and the biggest stat…

> It destroyed more GDP than the II World War comparing with trends before Euro and with other countries at the same time.

What??

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#185

Post by rumanator » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 7:53 PM UTC

xfs wrote: post #92

pavlov wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greece voluntarily joined a larger currency zone and reaped the benefits for a decade. Should state elections in Mississippi drive US Fed policy?

Reaped the benefits? Greece's GDP dropped 30% since 2008 it and was forced into austerity by the Troika to move debts from the left pockets of Deutsche Bank to the right pockets, with the interests paid for by Greek tax payers.

> Reaped the benefits? Greece's GDP dropped 30% since 2008

Most of it was due to the fact that Greece had forged their nation accounting to falsify their actual state and hide sovereign debt, and once they faced bankruptcy they had no alternative than to come clean and straighten their accounting.

Another important fact that is oddly left out by proponents of the "austerity is a conspiracy" rhetoric is the fact that EU's national accounting reform kicked into effect in 2014, and included anti-accounting engineering measures which were highly abused to artificially inflate GDP and mask sovereign debt.

> it and was forced into austerity by the Troika

This conspiracy theory is absurd, as it weirdly imits the fact that member-states that underwent bailout processes had already exhausted their own access to sovereign debt markets resulted from their own financial and economic colapse, and the ECB/EU/IMF trio were quite literally the last people in the whole world willing to lend emergency funds that helped them soften the blow of the problem these countries' governments created to themselves over the years.

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#186

Post by kriberg » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 8:05 PM UTC

odshoifsdhfs wrote: post #171

kriberg wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should the population of other countries be held accountable for Greeks disinterest in their own democracy?

No, but the banks that had no problem lending the money and collecting the interest, yes. That is the whole purpose of interest. Or you are telling me that the banks that lent billions, knew even less than the greek citizens?

No doubt, both lenders and borrowers must share blame.

This is a sovereign nation though, it should be expected to operate with sound fiscal policies and banks shouldn't base lending on political programs. Lest we let banks regulate policy through their willingness to lend money. That's the situation we did get in the end though, with austerity through blackmail. Greeks are now furious at the German government for protecting their financial institutions from collapse. While it might be more apt to be furious at those whom voted for policies not fiscally sound.

So what is the way forward? Certainly not what the IMF suggested at the time, as they as much have admitted to. But is Varoufakis pointlessly relegislating that decision or is he trying to sell a book?

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#187

Post by rumanator » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 8:07 PM UTC

xfs wrote: post #134

mrtksn wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, he could have not capitulated and let the electorate face the music of their decision. It was a referendum among the Greek people about what their government should do. You can't hold a referendum about what other people should give them. The UK got a Brexit referendum and they got out. Nobody would have cared if they held "EU gives as market access but we do not allow Europeans coming over and work referendum"…

He could. He was committed to a Grexit, which he calculated to be substantially better for Greece than what it has now. Then he got immense political pressure and death threats to his family.

> He was committed to a Grexit,

That was his personal political goal but not Greece's collective goal or will, and he did nothing more than to run political manoevers to try to manipulate Greeks to assume there was a ridiculous conspiracy by the whole world against them.

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#188

Post by rumanator » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 8:25 PM UTC

m0zg wrote: post #152

It's as though Farage was right, and there's a lot of unsavory undemocratic backroom dealing going on, cigar smoke and all.

> there's a lot of unsavory undemocratic backroom dealing

That's an extremely loaded word for negotiating consensus. It's as if populist parties are manned by opportunists who have no qualms to throw everyone under the bus if that gives them any advantage.

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#189

Post by knbknb » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 8:29 PM UTC

buboard wrote: post #178

Whatever is in these recordings, is probably meaningless. We know EU is a bureaucratic organization, we deal with it all the time in business, in research funding, in financial filing, etc etc. We also know that people argue a lot, thats why there isn't a central government, and the rules are based on consensus, not majorities. At best he should give them to an interested journalist, who could report on whatever is i…

I agree with you. He likes to give long speeches, but doesn't have anything to say.

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#190

Post by everybodyknows » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 8:45 PM UTC

nutjob2 wrote: post #149

odshoifsdhfs wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When these discussions impact so many people (various countries affected) I don't believe they should be kept secret. Lets (just for example, I am not saying it happened), during that meeting, the German/French Finance minister said: 'I don't care about the Greek people, we can't let German/French banks fall, so do what you must if you ever want the ECB to lend you money'. Wouldn't the greek people deserve to know an…

If you choose to make discussion public, at least in a timely fashion, then you will lower the effectiveness of these discussions and the quality of the decisions. Quite often, especially with difficult issues, people have to take risks or make painful compromises or at least suggest them, even if the final result is nothing like them. Sometime people bluff, lie and distort in order to improve their position. There i…

> in a timely fashion

This is the crux of it: All involved (except Varoufakis) apparently thought their words would remain secret forever. This is bad for democracy, because it nurtures conspiracy theories. Prompt publication is likewise bad, because it hardens negotiating positions at a distance far apart, and makes participants fearful of speaking uncomfortable truths.

The US Federal Reserve publishes its minutes, but only some time well after the participants go home. Live-tweets on their hourly progress -- say, from Mar-a-Lago -- are not a concern.