Croatia just canceled the debts of its poorest citizens • Hacker News Board

Re: Croatia just canceled the debts of its poorest citizens

#221

Post by BSousa » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 12:42 AM UTC

galfarragem wrote: post #219

BSousa wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, let me go point by point a) you are right. I was only referring to the pre-euro accounting. Sorry if I didn't make myself clear. b+c) I don't know the exact figure, but if I remember correctly, private loses were about 20% only. "One estimate is that Greece actually subscribed to €156bn worth of new debt in order to get €206bn worth of old debt to be written off, meaning the trumpeted write-down of €110bn by the…

Would you be happy if the your country lend them your taxes money, knowing that they decide the loan terms, not knowing when and if they will pay you back? I wouldnt.

But it did didn't it? It's close to 1am here so too tired for sources, but if I'm not mistaken, every country in the Eurozone contributed to the bailout in a certain proportion. Not sure how the IMF works, but I would assume something like that?

Again, no sources, but if I'm not mistaken, Germany is making a profit on these loans, as they can borrow at a very reduced (even negative) rate and lend that money to Greece.

Re: Croatia just canceled the debts of its poorest citizens

#222

Post by deciplex » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 12:55 AM UTC

bjt wrote: post #220

ricardobeat wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These exact same words could come out of a Brazilian. Word by word. I don't know about Croatia, but in that case they are only half-truths. The idea that there are 'people who pay for everything' is usually misguided. There are the exploited, and the less exploited. Both pay in one way or another, and only a very small elite group is actually well off. You say "the situation is complicated" and "this is not fair", bu…

The obvious possible failure is that these people may find it hard to get credit in the future, as described in the last paragraph: > Some economists, among them Baker, are skeptical whether the scheme will succeed: "I am not sure that this is the best way to help low-income people. If lenders think this can happen again they will charge very high interest rates to low-income borrowers," Baker said. If you were a ban…

> If you were a bank that had just been pressured into forgiving a bunch of loans, how likely would you be to make new loans to the same class of people?

Considering that many of those loans are predatory in nature, that may not be a bad thing.

Re: Croatia just canceled the debts of its poorest citizens

#223

Post by nickthemagicman » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 1:22 AM UTC

gaius wrote: post #200

sigzero wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that is actually part of the "Cycle of Democracy" by Dr. Alexander Tytler.

Any quote I don't know the origin of, I've taken to attributing to Taylor Swift. It works pretty well.

"Never trust what you read on the internet" -Abraham Lincoln

Re: Croatia just canceled the debts of its poorest citizens

#224

Post by hueving » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 1:53 AM UTC

deciplex wrote: post #222

bjt wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obvious possible failure is that these people may find it hard to get credit in the future, as described in the last paragraph: > Some economists, among them Baker, are skeptical whether the scheme will succeed: "I am not sure that this is the best way to help low-income people. If lenders think this can happen again they will charge very high interest rates to low-income borrowers," Baker said. If you were a ban…

> If you were a bank that had just been pressured into forgiving a bunch of loans, how likely would you be to make new loans to the same class of people? Considering that many of those loans are predatory in nature, that may not be a bad thing.

Any proof of that? Or are you just assuming that it is similar to payday loans in the US?

Re: Croatia just canceled the debts of its poorest citizens

#225

Post by nickthemagicman » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 1:55 AM UTC

michael2l wrote: post #142

nickthemagicman wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term, bribery, is extremely subjective in this context. It's the same ephemerality as saying someone is a hater of "Freedom". It makes an easy soundbite but what does that even mean?

I think most people use the concept of being for or against "Freedom" to refer to the opposite sides of the bottom-up versus top-down modes of economic development and governance. Certainly, it's an over-generalization, and the word freedom is used specifically to evoke an emotional response, but I don't think it's devoid of meaning. An unfortunate side-effect of having a democracy with 300 million plus people in it,…

Overgeneralizations? You mean "propoganda"?

Coalition? You mean "fear fueled mob"?

Not sure what you mean by a bottom up government but the buzzwords are flowing I'm assuming it involves something along the lines of privatizating everything.

Re: Croatia just canceled the debts of its poorest citizens

#226

Post by swatow » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 1:59 AM UTC

JamisonM wrote: post #184

swatow wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you getting your claims about the recovery rate on these debts? >Most here also do not note that the balances here are also, by design, small as well. Can you explain how you think that relates to this discussion? If the debt is small, wouldn't that imply that the person was more likely to pay it off, at least in part?

My claims on recovery rates of debt are based on my experience in the banking industry. There are many public sources of information on this topic that you can refer to with respect to expected recovery rates of debts based on age. Provisions for these loses are written into regulations (national and international ones like Basel II/III). Small overdue amounts are very expensive to recover, if a letter costs you $1 a…

Ok you're probably right on the cost of the writeoff, and now I see your point on the size of the debts I agree with that too. Given this, the program isn't really that unique. For example, the US has a program to help out people with high mortgage debt or underwater mortgages.

Re: Croatia just canceled the debts of its poorest citizens

#227

Post by hueving » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 2:01 AM UTC

juliangregorian wrote: post #201

adventured wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? "Horrors like that rich people only live in compounds surrounded by walls and armed guards, and the poor are dying because of no health care and no food, and the middle class does not exist." The poor have essentially universal free healthcare in the US and have for a long time. I should know, I've used it before, and it's very easy to use. The poor also have the benefit of the one of the…

My b.s. meter is tingling at a lot of what you said (enough that on reddit I'd accuse you of being a shill), but you're being blatantly disingenuous about healthcare. It's true that emergency rooms won't turn anyone away (and maybe you bailed on the resultant bill as a "poor" college student), but Medicaid does nothing for most and even for those who qualify it gives nothing in the way of preventative care.

I don't think you know what the word "shill" means. You can't just use it as a term for people that have a different political view than you.

Re: Croatia just canceled the debts of its poorest citizens

#228

Post by hueving » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 2:02 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #181

jfoutz wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. Perhaps the line can be drawn a little closer to the truth, but i'm happy with the bias toward false negatives over false positives. In death penalty cases, when you'd expect the justice system to work its absolute best, 5% were overturned when DNA evidence became reliable. 1 in 20 on they way to die because of false positives.

Cynic in me would say that if we jailed all top-tier politicians, we'd have less than 5% false positives. I honestly don't believe that in an established democracy (as opposed to freshly formed) you can get to the level of a minister or above without doing something illegal or immoral. The dynamics of the system clearly shows that.

"illegal or immoral"

You can't be prosecuted for just the latter.

Re: Croatia just canceled the debts of its poorest citizens

#229

Post by nl » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 2:14 AM UTC

riffraff wrote: post #175

bsaul wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know the details but i suppose the debts weren't owned by the state (nobody borrows from a state) but rather by credits corporations or banks.

yes, but that doesn't change the fact that the croatian government would have persuaded/forced the banks to cancel the debt, it's not the people with a loan who decided not to pay.

Given the 30-300 million euro cost associated with it, I think the government is paying the debts for the people.

Re: Croatia just canceled the debts of its poorest citizens

#230

Post by arielpts » Mon, Feb 02, 2015, 2:30 AM UTC

ricardobeat wrote: post #177

popee wrote: post #45

Hi, croat here. Just one detail, this year there will be elections in Croatia and current gov didn't do anything useful for our economy, so this is kind of popular measure. Don't get me wrong, it's always nice to help, but situation is little bit complicated, taxes are very high and in some way this is not fair to people that are paying everything. Also, there are huge number of people living and exploiting social me…

These exact same words could come out of a Brazilian. Word by word. I don't know about Croatia, but in that case they are only half-truths. The idea that there are 'people who pay for everything' is usually misguided. There are the exploited, and the less exploited. Both pay in one way or another, and only a very small elite group is actually well off. You say "the situation is complicated" and "this is not fair", bu…

I'm sick of people like you. You really do not know anything about the socio-political situation on Brazil nor Croatia to state that.

Probably you are just a high class "worker" that compose the high income "class" which only say and trust their peers, wihtout seeking to know this huge country of ours.

You probably do not go to the city hall to get a say about the year's budget planning nor associate with peers to increase the power of representation, nor call or email your congress member to vote to which law you think will improve the situation.

Please do not be a teenager that think that everything is wrong and compare with Croatia that have a HDI avg "very high", a country that got it's independancy in 1991 and still have a better quality of live than us.

Please state your facts before comparing Brazil with a completly distinct scenario.

Edit: Please! your about.me says that you live in "Amsterdam, Netherlands". Get back here! do not run away. Help us get this great country better rather than escape and live "bettter" in another country, helping their economy.