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

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#211

Post by dntbnmpls » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 11:55 PM UTC

koolba wrote: post #11

phlipski wrote: post #8

Sunlight is the best disinfectant. All citizens deserve to know what their politicians are saying behind closed doors.

That type of blanket statement is a great example of theory vs. practice. In theory you’d want everything to be public in the interest of informing your populace. In practice that’s nonsense. There’s genuine national security concerns, forthright debate of alternatives by advisors, and discussions of limits on negotiating positions. Earring on the side of transparency is a good idea but there’s a whole lot in governm…

> but there’s a whole lot in government that should never, and will never, be public.

Such governments should be destroyed. Everything in government should be made public sooner or later. Everything in government is public property and belongs to the public.

There may be short term national security issues that may warrant secrecy, but even those in the long term needs to be released to the public.

It's so strange that people actually believe " there’s a whole lot in government that should never, and will never, be public." And this is why so many people distrust the EU and its supporters.

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#212

Post by petermcneeley » Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 1:02 AM UTC

rumanator wrote: post #204

petermcneeley wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If economic policy is not in the scope of government then you certainly have a very narrow concept of government power. Even the judiciary's only power is to discover inconsistantancy in law. However given that you described elected officials as Authoritarian I would imagine you are simply a libertarian.

> If economic policy OP stated monetary policy, not economic. Furthermore, Greece's problems were primarily caused by the way Greek governments systematically mismanaged the Greek state, having resorted to a perverse and continuous push for a combination of massive accounting fraud and overspending fueled by collosal levels of sovereign debt.

The original quote is economic policy not simply monetary policy. This is because Greece was facing an austerity crisis as a result of directives from the euro group.

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#213

Post by jnmandal » Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 3:45 AM UTC

tasubotadas wrote: post #38

jnmandal wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Na malaka

That's very mature of you.

Like your positive characterization of millions of peoples' economic misfortune wasnt cheap and childish? Reading your insensitive comment probably ruined a few Greeks' day. I think you can handle a little Hellenic criticism.

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#214

Post by petre » Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 5:08 AM UTC

odshoifsdhfs wrote: post #167

yellowstuff wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand your point and the importance of the issues you're raising, but ultimately I still think it's important for leaders to be able to have confidential discussions. While transparency is important, I think that if people know that their meetings will be public then the real decisions will be made in private, and the meetings will just be an opportunity for political messaging. You don't get the same outcome…

See, but you even say, the best possible outcome would be full transparency, but you know that wouldn't happen. And that is the problem. Ohhh Germany/France/Portugal/Greece or Lithuania (doesn't matter) doesn't want their voters to know what they are fighting for, so they will never be open about it. How is that democracy? How is it possible to vote for any party anywhere when they just tell the average joe 'yes, you…

I regularly listen to RFI. What the pro EU press tries to spin after brexit is that some questions should not be asked in a referendum, some decisions should not be left to the citizens. I am frequently asking myself the same question. How is this democracy? I'm quite certain that the next thing we'll hear from them is that democracy is not always good or something in that line of thinking.

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#215

Post by mpax » Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 5:13 AM UTC

jorvi wrote: post #191

odshoifsdhfs wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While what you say is true, the contents of these meetings should be public knowledge. A lot of citizens of a few countries had their lives almost destroyed by the decisions of these politicians, so is only fair they know what was discussed, who defended them, etc. Let us not forget the pressure the ECB (and other european institutions) put on some countries that have come to light after the fact. (Like only allowing…

Greece loaned too much, collected too little taxes (or rather, scamming the tax man was and is an integral part of daily life there) and had extremely generous pension plans and ages. They hired Goldman Sachs to hide all this by cooking the books so they could join the EU. I have zero sympathy for the Greek and 'destroying a country for the decisions made by the elite doesn't count when you vote for those castle-in-t…

You might do well reading up on the last couple of centuries of Greek history...

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#216

Post by petre » Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 5:40 AM UTC

lowdose wrote: post #193

CarelessExpert wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While what you say is true, the contents of these meetings should be public knowledge. I honestly don't think it's that simple. While decisions should always be public, in order to come to reasonable compromises on issues, it can be valuable for leaders to be able to have closed-door conversations outside of the spotlight, where they don't have to engage in political grandstanding; after all, it's that kind of comp…

The US and the UK are both polarized because of the two party system. In Europe even opinion from the outer fringe are heard and compromises have to be made to govern. People need to be heard. I sometimes also think that the European model of government offering a lot more local influence is a stabilizing factor. Yes it is not that efficient but all people are able to participate in the democracy and this prevents th…

I think the Dutch Parliament election process is a step in a right direction. Anyone capable in securing 1/seats percentage of votes gets at least a seat.

The trouble with the EU model of governance is that it's quite a bit too overreaching. Germany has 80M citizens and Greece has 11M. The ods against Greece are 8 to 1. If N. Macedonia would join the EU those ods would be more like 40 to 1. Greece along with Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria should at least make a group like the Visegrad V4 and stick tougether, but sadly it's hard to imagine Greece and N. Macedonia in the same group.

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#217

Post by anovikov » Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 9:05 AM UTC

RobertoG wrote: post #124

anovikov wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is, it's GDP exploded for now underlying economic reasons in the previous decade... and they all consumed the absolutely unearned wealth produced by nothing but cooking the books. The real "fair" solution would be: to auction off their sovereign territory to the highest bidder, and paying off debt with that cash. If they try to object, confiscate their merchant fleet and block ports with aerial minelaying.

Assuming that you don't care about the Greek people (and obviously you don't) and assuming that the narrative of "we the European people" is false (that obviously it's), what about the public debt? Because all the actions that took place "to fix" Greece was in order to fix the problem of the public debt. So, I suppose that now, after all the "hard medicine" the problem is solved. Well, it's not and it's not predicted…

This is exactly why i think the approach taken has been wrong. Austerity was an obvious mistake, it didn't work. What could work was just immediate debt repayment with whatever assets available. Either voluntary like: cutting them off with naval and aerial blockade and making pay for anything including critical imports, only after the debt is repayed, and only in cash, or involuntary say by taking some Mediterranean islands with airborne or sea invasion and selling the land off, deporting the population (obviously compensating the said population at market prices, meaning private entities or persons shouldn't suffer, point is taking sovereign i.e. government land).

I think this isn't going to get fixed until the debt between nations will not be given against some specific collaterial with understood and universally accepted means of taking it regardless of sovereignty. I.e. don't give money to those stronger than you, and be ready to take it back at gunpoint.

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#218

Post by rumanator » Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 11:59 AM UTC

sykick wrote: post #128

xkemp wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an extremely one-sided point-of-view. The net effect of the whole saga was Greece getting to spend a lot of money in the 90s and 2000s, and the stronger countries of the Eurogroup ending up paying for (at least part) of that. Focussing on these countries' motivation is somewhat useless speculation, and arguably unfair if you manage to twist it so far around the people paying end up as the bad guys, and the peo…

My intention was to point out that lending is a two party relationship and both parties have responsibilities. The tendency in my experience in these discussions is to put too much blame on the borrower and too often put very little blame on the lender. The motivation of the German and French governments was that German and French banks not suffer. And of course the leaders of those countries cared more about their p…

> My intention was to point out that lending is a two party relationship and both parties have responsibilities.

Greek lenders were forced to pardon half it's debt, which ultimately caused some banks to bankrupt. Enough with this tale of how Greek governments are victims for repeatedly requesting loans, and then falsify their accounting to keep requesting loans, and then hiring professional accounting teams to optimize their accounting forgery to keep receiving loans.

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#219

Post by spiderfarmer » Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 12:59 PM UTC

xfs wrote: post #197

rumanator wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Look, I'm no Greek, and you're entitled to your opinion. The problem is this is exactly the same kind of finger pointing and the Greeks (the Spaniards, the Italians, etc) are the spoiled brats rhetorics that are creating toxic politics in Europe and causing the rise of far right populists. I wouldn't imagine a rhetoric where evicted homeowners are blamed for causing 2008 crisis with irresponsible borrowing instead of…

He was merely stating facts and your analogy is wrong.

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#220

Post by the_why_of_y » Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 2:48 PM UTC

rumanator wrote: post #203

xfs wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> he didn't pay attention to the reality of the situation Or he paid too much attention to the reality of the situation. According to him, as a professional economist, the Euro is structurally unsustainable and is going to implode in the next 2008 because of the way the EU is set up politically creating a situation of a central bank without a country and countries without central banks. What angered him is the way Eu…

> Or he paid too much attention to the reality of the situation. That assumption doesn't hold to scrutiny. If he was half as attentive as you portray him or if he actually cared about reality of the situation or how to fix Greece's economic problem, Varoufakis wouldn't have repeatedly pinned Nazi comparisons on Germany's government has he did, not to mention the Russia stunts. In fact, Varoufakis' erratic political b…

> Varoufakis wouldn't have repeatedly pinned Nazi comparisons on Germany's government

Citation please? A quick search finds that he did exactly the opposite:

"Germany must be proud of the fact that Nazism has been eradicated here," he said in a press conference with his German counterpart.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31170591