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

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#221

Post by DoingIsLearning » Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 4:00 PM UTC

rumanator wrote: post #158

frandroid wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been 5 years, and the Eurogroup destroyed the Greek economy. I don't think it's unfair to now reveal the contents of these discussions. It's high time to see if it was corruption, or compromise, which happened.

> It's been 5 years, and the Eurogroup destroyed the Greek economy. Reality and the facts contrast heavily with this rhetoric. The eurogroup/IMF/european commission only stepped into the picture way after Greece bankrupted itself and digged a deep economic and social hole. Complaining about the organizations that mitigated Greece's pending collapse is like complaining about the cast and crutches you had to use after…

The 'austerity' prescription that the Eurogroup and the ECB enforced on sovereign nations has been ample proven to be counter productive and flat out damaging.

Much like the 'quantitive easing' ideas, they all had a theoretical basis that were vastly proven wrong. These countries only recovered when stimulous measures were applied.

Lagard herself admited that austerity was a mistake but never apologised for the suffering and deaths that it precipitated.

I remind you that elderly unable to afford medication and hospitals struggling to keep stock was a reality in Greece during this period.

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#222

Post by biztos » Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 5:05 PM UTC

tsimionescu wrote: post #166

olivierduval wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And even if it was the case... Maybe the logical reasoning is something like: EU need some worldclass banks to be independant, so we can't let a single country trash everything for all other EU countries. I can understand that Greek people would be angry to be "sacrified"... and that's why that kind of meeting is secret! Because to govern is not only to be elected but sometimes to have to take bad choices, when only…

If that were the case, the politician would have to be able to explain that to the electorate and convince them of it. If they can't, then that decision should not be taken. That's what democracy should mean - we don't elect representatives so that they can take decisions we don't want but that they think are good for us. We elect representatives because direct democracy doesn't scale.

And yet in 2020, with a little bit of tech know-how, why exactly should it not scale?

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#223

Post by the_why_of_y » Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 5:45 PM UTC

antr wrote: post #79

lucianoq wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People in private converse completely differently (more freely) than in public. They are deciding about life and death of people of a country (or many). They're not discussing about what's your favourite food and which sex position you like the most. Those conversation MUST be open and public, so people can judge the work of their delegates and decide to vote them again or not. If you don't want to be heard, don't…

It's the Greek politicians who put the country in a life or death situation. Greece has had +100% of debt to GDP for decades, spending that debt on god knows what. It's 2012-2015, Greece is about to default on that very debt, and asks responsible countries to guarantee Greek debt... and they want the Eurogroup to guarantee it because they want to issue more debt! Issue more debt! A country that is unable to repay it'…

His position as finance minister of Greece in 2015 was that Greece should not be forced take on more debt, as it is unable to repay the debt it already holds. The position of the Eurogroup was that Greece should take on more debt.

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/greece-debt-res...

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#224

Post by atmosx » Sat, Feb 22, 2020, 7:13 PM UTC

antientropic wrote: post #201

atmosx wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Greece was never allowed to default properly. The referendum George Papandreou alluded to at the time, is a prime example of what I'm saying: Greece defaulting might drive Italian bond prices through the roof at that point the monetary union would be destroyed overnight. Now that the debt has been turned from public to private, it might be easier to handle as a situation, but I doubt the EU is able to han…

Greece is a sovereign country. It could have defaulted if it really wanted to. Maybe it would have required an exit from the Euro, but that would have been its choice. That they considered this worse than the alternative was also their choice.

> Greece is a sovereign country.

:-)

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#225

Post by fifnir » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 8:54 AM UTC

antientropic wrote: post #201

atmosx wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Greece was never allowed to default properly. The referendum George Papandreou alluded to at the time, is a prime example of what I'm saying: Greece defaulting might drive Italian bond prices through the roof at that point the monetary union would be destroyed overnight. Now that the debt has been turned from public to private, it might be easier to handle as a situation, but I doubt the EU is able to han…

Greece is a sovereign country. It could have defaulted if it really wanted to. Maybe it would have required an exit from the Euro, but that would have been its choice. That they considered this worse than the alternative was also their choice.

"Well it's their choice to be uninsured, if they wanted medical insurance there's a lot of options in the market" guyputtingonclownmakeup.jpg

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#226

Post by olivierduval » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 10:16 AM UTC

tsimionescu wrote: post #166

olivierduval wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And even if it was the case... Maybe the logical reasoning is something like: EU need some worldclass banks to be independant, so we can't let a single country trash everything for all other EU countries. I can understand that Greek people would be angry to be "sacrified"... and that's why that kind of meeting is secret! Because to govern is not only to be elected but sometimes to have to take bad choices, when only…

If that were the case, the politician would have to be able to explain that to the electorate and convince them of it. If they can't, then that decision should not be taken. That's what democracy should mean - we don't elect representatives so that they can take decisions we don't want but that they think are good for us. We elect representatives because direct democracy doesn't scale.

Actually, that's 2 different points of view on democracy: do we elect people to to do what we want now or to do what is best for us in the long run ? And who is "the people" ? The majority of the numbers (without any though for all minorities) ? The loudest minorities ?

At best, both would be same: elected people would explain to the people what is best for them and convince them, then people would want what is best for them in the long run.

But sadly, nobody like to be sacrified now for the long term better good of all. And politicians need to be reelected. So politicians have to hide and manipulate to some extend (for what they think is the greater good of most of the population)...

"Crowd wisdom" is nice for really specific matters... but not really for managing a population with diversities in the long run.

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#227

Post by Middleclass » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 11:23 AM UTC

drewbug wrote: post #110

Middleclass wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any difference between "secret compromises" and corruption if the compromises are against citizens' interests and will? A black box might work IF it can be ensured that all data considered will be bundled with the decision. But how can such a thing ever be ensured? We'll soon have source-included but secret-compiler software as a technical possibility, by means of zero-knowledge computational proofs. It seem…

> We'll soon have source-included but secret-compiler software as a technical possibility, by means of zero-knowledge computational proofs. could you elaborate on this?

Zero-knowledge proofs can prove that binary code conforms to a specification (e.g. source code) without revealing the process used to turn specification into binary code.

In the analogy, the specification is the information provided to government officials and binary code is planned governmental actions.

If both are known and the specification process for governmental action is proven it doesn't matter what biases the officials exhibit in the decision process - then the governmental action is proven-good according to the specs (e.g. system of laws) and the information provided (in which it would be relatively easy for citizens to have a say, e.g. "you MAY NOT ignore facts X, Y and Z").

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#228

Post by sykick » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 6:41 PM UTC

rumanator wrote: post #218

sykick wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 optimi…

Yes, Greek lenders were so forced but not German and French lenders. German and French banks were knowledgeable about the deplorable state of Greek accounting and the stupidity/corruption of the Greek government. They had responsibilities. It's a two party interaction and both the lender and borrower need to be held responsible.

Enough with this tale of how German and French banks are victims for repeatedly giving loans and looking the other way at the bad accounting!

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#229

Post by Bartweiss » Mon, Feb 24, 2020, 9:09 PM UTC

me_me_me wrote: post #9

tasubotadas wrote: post #4

That's a really shitty move. >a USB of the conversations he had secretly recorded while attending a Eurogroup discussion in Brussels People in private converse completely differently (more freely) than in public. Judging people on what they said there by a public standard (it's impossible that this will not happen) is extremely unfair. Especially since Varoufakis knew that he will be recorded, he has probably chosen…

I think same standards should be used when police records criminals, judging criminals on what they said in private by a public standard is extremely unfair to them. What about watergate was that unfair too? Sure if he was leaking offhand sexual preferences of people recorded he would be crossing a line, but somehow I doubt that's what will be leaked.

This is why the whole idea of "in the public interest" exists.

If a reporter received these same recordings in the mail, they would quite likely publish them. If they received a recording of a random person discussing their medical concerns, publishing that would be an outrageous breach of ethics.

(Hence the Gawker/Thiel debacle also. When Ted Haggard was caught having gay extramarital affairs, it was considered fit for publication because he was an evangelical preacher fighting against gay marriage. When a random private individual is outed, its not a public interest matter and can be libelous even when accurate. Thiel fell somewhere in between under both legal and journalistic rules, so we got a debate.)

I'm pretty baffled to see the parent comment imply that private discussions between politicians should inherently be kept secret. We could discuss specific news stories, reporters who violate attribution rules, and whether Varoufakis was bound by privacy laws or Eurogroup confidentiality rules. We could even argue the publication is in the public interest, and yet makes Varoufakis unfit to serve by destroying his ability to function with trust.

But just as you say, treating "that's a private discussion" as the end of matter would excuse Watergate also.

Re: Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings

#230

Post by rumanator » Tue, Feb 25, 2020, 9:37 AM UTC

sykick wrote: post #228

rumanator wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 optimi…

Yes, Greek lenders were so forced but not German and French lenders. German and French banks were knowledgeable about the deplorable state of Greek accounting and the stupidity/corruption of the Greek government. They had responsibilities. It's a two party interaction and both the lender and borrower need to be held responsible. Enough with this tale of how German and French banks are victims for repeatedly giving lo…

> Yes, Greek lenders were so forced but not German and French lenders.

Somehow you misread what I said. "Greek lenders" means those who lent money to the Greek state. Those were European private banks, including French and German. Those banks were forced to bear the loss of half of Greece's sovereign debt in Greece's famous 2011 debt hair cut.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-banks/europes-bank...

> Enough with this tale of how German and French banks are victims for repeatedly giving loans and looking the other way at the bad accounting!

It's too late to act that ignorant, sykick. The truth is out for almost a decade, and you simply cannot turn a blind eye to the facts. Go browse Wikipedia's article on the subject to get an idea of how Greek governments created their whole mess and how Europe's economy and the EU were forced to bear the brunt of the economic and financial and political problem Greece's ruling regime created for their country.