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Thomas Piketty: “Germany has never repaid.”

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Re: Thomas Piketty: “Germany has never repaid.”

#291

Post by claudius »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #247
claudius wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but in which way did Greece not get some 300 billion euros? Whether they first borrowed that money from private banks and then the rest of the eurozone paid back the banks for Greece or whether they received the money directly from the other eurozone countries, the end result is still that banks now have roughly as much as before (modulo minor interests etc.), Greece has some 300 billion more and the rest of t…

As well as ignoring the banks culpability here, you're doing the same thing the original starter of this thread wanted to point out. Greece is a country, not a person. Did all Greeks benefit equally from that money? Or is large amounts of it sitting in accounts of corrupt politicians and the corporations (not necessarily Greek ones) that the money got spent on. I've seen accusations that the high military spending go…

> Greece is a country, not a person. Did all Greeks benefit equally from that money?

If they haven’t, that’s an issue internal to Greece to be sorted out by Greek people. You can’t continuously elect corrupt oligarchic governments for 40 years and then turn around and shout “Not my fault!!” if these governments don’t act in your best interest.

Re: Thomas Piketty: “Germany has never repaid.”

#292

Post by restalis »

"Germany is really the single best example of a country that, throughout its history, has never repaid its external debt. Neither after the First nor the Second World War."

Actually I remember an article posted a while ago right here on HN about the last payments for WW1. It is possible that Mr. Piketty may not have updated information, but it is also possible that he deliberately ignores some facts in order to stir a bigger debate.

Re: Thomas Piketty: “Germany has never repaid.”

#293

Post by twobits »

afsina wrote: post #219
coldtea wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This makes me lose respect for Piketty. There's a very clear difference between a country that comes out of two world wars, with everything all but destroyed, including millions dead. Yes. The main difference being that Greece didn't invade anyone, didn't cause millions of deaths and didn't exterminate 6 million Jews. Just over-borrowed. And it has paid for it with 5 years destruction of its economy (40-50% effecti…

>Yes. The main difference being that Greece didn't invade anyone.... Actually Greece Invaded Turkey in WW-I. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Turkish_War_(1919%E2%80%...

Well, not exactly. You get a better context if you say that the two countries have a sweet little history going back to byzantium, where turks invaded, greeks invaded, turks invaded, greeks invaded, turks invaded,...

PS: And yes, it was the ottoman empire, etc, but that's semantics.

Re: Thomas Piketty: “Germany has never repaid.”

#294

Post by MaulingMonkey »

cb18 wrote: post #249
cb18 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I know it is a bit of a stretch from the linked article, but the subject of nationalism in Europe was getting some traction in the comments and this matter(the subject of the killed post) seems to me to be tightly connected to rising nationalism in Europe. I've recently looked into this and it is shocking and disheartening, but I want to believe a not intractable problem and I was hoping to have some reasoned di…

I know it is a little déclassé or something to talk about downvotes, but that above post seems to be racking up about 1 every 5 min for that past 40 minutes. So as I think I pretty civilly and clearly laid out my reasoning for why I think it is an important topic to discuss, and so many of you feel strongly enough about it to downvote, maybe one or two of you wouldn't mind to put your thoughts into words? edit: Also,…

> So as I think I pretty civilly and clearly laid out my reasoning for why I think it is an important topic to discuss, and so many of you feel strongly enough about it to downvote, maybe one or two of you wouldn't mind to put your thoughts into words?

I think dang already laid out reason enough already. But hell, I'll add more fuel to the fire...

> [...] I did position myself pretty far to one side of an interpretive spectrum, as I find that is often a good way to elicit a response

You elicited a response alright. But not a good one, and not one conductive to constructive discussion. The well has been poisoned, so to speak. Why? Well, there's playing devil's advocate, and then there's playing the devil - your initial posts look more like a xenophobic version of the latter, to me, than the former. No offense...? I assume this is why your first post ended up flagged.

Even if we assumed this was on topic such discussion is unlikely to be productive at the moment as a result.

Rather than let sleeping dogs lie, you made a second post, defending the subject as on topic. Dang pointed out that it wasn't. Your reply, which we now discuss, admits you knew that it was "a bit of a stretch" (a bit of an understatement) - and still, yet again, attempts to force the topic, in explicit response to being asked not to. And you're wondering why it's attracting downvotes?

At this point, it wouldn't surprise me if the entire topic tree is eating down-votes - nobody wants to see any of this negative wasted opportunity for discussion. That includes this reply - if HN supported PMs, this is where I'd cut and paste this reply into one, to spare the other posters. As stands, I'll just have to take my licks as they come, if they come (I've found HN rather lenient in handing them out.)

(edit: fixed some awkward sentence flow.)

Re: Thomas Piketty: “Germany has never repaid.”

#295

Post by DanielBMarkham »

leoc wrote: post #144
sgnelson wrote: post #21

This makes me lose respect for Piketty. There's a very clear difference between a country that comes out of two world wars, with everything all but destroyed, including millions dead. I'm sorry, no matter how bad 2008 was, it was no World War. His inability to grasp this just boggles the mind. There's a very big difference between war caused debt and economic caused debt (note that I'm basically making these two "deb…

(I am not an expert on anything.) It's probably a bit unfortunate that this Piketty interview is getting prominence, because the whole question of analogies or disanalogies to Germany's war-related sovereign debt problems is mostly beside the point. The most urgent disanalogy in Greece's case is to what happens to just about every other country from A to Z that goes broke and needs to enter an IMF program. The SOP is…

Although you and I probably disagree on root causes and perhaps solutions, this was a great summary. Thank you.

Reading the HN comments, it occurs to me what a total mess this is. People on all sides are not happy. Furthermore it's one of those he-said, she-said stories where each party has a long and detailed argument for why outsiders should consider things one way or another.

Along those lines, I am very unhappy that Piketty chose to give this interview on this topic. I want to see his ideas about wealth being put under harsh light and deep scrutiny -- after all, he's supposed to have something important to say in this matter. But now he's just turning into another Krugman -- economist-cum-pundit. That's probably great for his career, but it makes honest and objective evaluation of his ideas much more difficult because from now on everybody's going to conflate his political views on various matters with his academic ones. Bah.

Re: Thomas Piketty: “Germany has never repaid.”

#296

Post by luso_brazilian »

pjmlp wrote: post #266
luso_brazilian wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, I'll try to shed some light on why this subject tends to inflame some of the europeans nationalistic sentiment with a concrete example: 1. Meet Portugal (my country). Some may know us derisively as the P in PIGS because of our financial problems (much similar to the Greek one in nature and extent). In 2010 and 2011 as one of the 14 member states of the EU that were part of the Greek loan facility Portugal contrib…

As Portuguese you should also be honest and mention how we tend to have similar corruption cases like Greece. How people avoid asking for bills when going to the doctor to avoid the extra 20 euros being added to the bill. How people get things done, because someone has a friend that knows a guy... Of course without anything written and payed in cash. How many small businesses closed down because they couldn't afford…

Hi there fellow country mate. Refer back to the first point where it's clearly referred to our situation as "much similar to the Greek one in nature and extent".

The purpose of that answer is not to identify the party at fault or to explain what went wrong. It is to explain one reason for the increase of nationalistic rhetoric when there are talks of defaulting that loan.

Many people weren't aware that the money didn't come of an abstract "European fund" but from individual countries and helpfully it shed some light on why nationals of those countries consider it "their money".

Also, by showing the amount of money that countries (specially the weakest ones like Portugal) have contributed compared to the sacrifice the population (specially the weakest ones like the minimal wage pensioners) had to make to collect about the same amount (3.5% of all income) hopefully it helps in the understanding that the sacrifices are not being made by abstract concepts and organizations but by the people living in those countries.

As for the rest of your comment it doesn't help advancing or refuting the points explained above so they are a little bit out of place.

Re: Thomas Piketty: “Germany has never repaid.”

#297

Post by socialist_coder »

Help me understand something.

Piketty seems like he is in favor of repaying this debt by "inflation, a special tax on private wealth, and debt relief."

But, he is against Greece leaving the Eurozone. So, how can they inflate their currency?

Instead of inflation, which is impossible if Greece shares the Euro currency, is he suggesting that some percentage of Greece's debts just get knocked off? That would achieve the same result, I think.

Re: Thomas Piketty: “Germany has never repaid.”

#298

Post by toyg »

claudius wrote: post #288
x0x0 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're determined to ignore where the money went. German, Dutch, et al banks -- specifically banks that had unacknowledged bad loans to Greece -- have several hundred billion more than before. Public sector balance sheets have that much less.

The money from the bailout programme went into the banks, sure. But that only happened because those banks had given out loans to Greece before. I agree that banks made some income from interest rates and also because they bought Greek bonds at lower-than-face value. However, somehow these bonds were still issued by Greece and bought by someone. Where did the money from all these bonds go? To Greece.

No, the banks didn't "make some money" -- they dramatically reduced their exposition to junk bonds at a point in time when that was an existential threats to them. For a number of European banks, that bailout kept them alive. Which is what the bailout was granted in the first place: because European authorities knew it was a bailout for their own banks, who had made terrible decisions in their continuous search for a quick buck.

Re: Thomas Piketty: “Germany has never repaid.”

#299

Post by pjmlp »

luso_brazilian wrote: post #296
pjmlp wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As Portuguese you should also be honest and mention how we tend to have similar corruption cases like Greece. How people avoid asking for bills when going to the doctor to avoid the extra 20 euros being added to the bill. How people get things done, because someone has a friend that knows a guy... Of course without anything written and payed in cash. How many small businesses closed down because they couldn't afford…

Hi there fellow country mate. Refer back to the first point where it's clearly referred to our situation as "much similar to the Greek one in nature and extent". The purpose of that answer is not to identify the party at fault or to explain what went wrong. It is to explain one reason for the increase of nationalistic rhetoric when there are talks of defaulting that loan. Many people weren't aware that the money didn…

I guess you are right, but as someone that knows the southern Europe quite well, I find distasteful the way that we and other southern European countries talk about Greece in the media, as if we had an higher moral ground.

Yet, on our daily lives we and our politicians do exactly the same things they get accused for.

So sorry if I went a bit too much off topic.

Re: Thomas Piketty: “Germany has never repaid.”

#300

Post by cuillevel3 »

toyg wrote: post #216
luso_brazilian wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, I'll try to shed some light on why this subject tends to inflame some of the europeans nationalistic sentiment with a concrete example: 1. Meet Portugal (my country). Some may know us derisively as the P in PIGS because of our financial problems (much similar to the Greek one in nature and extent). In 2010 and 2011 as one of the 14 member states of the EU that were part of the Greek loan facility Portugal contrib…

The problem with "your money" (as well as Belgium's etc etc etc) is that it didn't "go to Greece": it went to private lenders , aka French and German banks which were holding Greek debt. The honest people of Portugal were swindled out of their money, in the tradition of socializing private losses (while privatizing profits wherever possible). So I would suggest you redirect your complaints towards the real responsibl…

I fail to understand this argument. Of course you have to save the banks to save an economy. Greek was bankrupt 5 years ago, yet the cash machines never stopped dispensing money.
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