81–90 of 350 posts
This can't be upvoted enough. It's also ironic that Greece was one of the creditors that forgave a large amount of German debt.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/07/05/7...
If you believe Piketty, debt is never meant to be repaid and no one should therefore ever invest in sovereign debt. That would solve the debt debate. No creditor = no need to worry about whether we want to pile more debt. And he has a point. I personally don't believe that any of the US, Japanese and European sovereign debt will ever be repaid. The whole thing is a ponzi scheme. Investors hope that their investment w…
It is not a Ponzi scheme if it is not always and necessarily growing.
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…
> 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…
The countries that were the Allied powers are in no position to call out Germany for not repaying its debts after the second world war because they originated from the way the Allied powers handled the money situation during and after the Great War. Look at this quote: > We cannot demand that new generations must pay for decades for the mistakes of their parents. The Greeks have, without a doubt, made big mistakes. U…
It's also pretty evident that the rise of Syriza and Golden Dawn in Greece came directly from what the EU levied on the Greek people.
It will be a very dangerous signal to send that you can borrow money, and not pay it back without any retribution. This is particularly important since more countries are going in the same direction as Greece (I think Spain and Puerto Rico are close, but I might be wrong).
Besides that, it also hurts the confidence towards the Eurozone if the countries in it can behave this way.
Also, am I the only one that finds it weird that they wait until after the deadline, to vote on whether or not to pay the debt back?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>There's a very clear difference between a country that comes out of two world wars, with everything all but destroyed, including millions dead. Which allows us to provide a further distinction: the country who had everything destroyed was directly responsible for that destruction. Yet, the debt that they racked up because they tried to take over eurasia while killing and torturing millions in the process, was forgiv…
I'd draw a distinction between debts incurred by a democratically elected government and otherwise. I also think reparations are fundamentally different than loans. Comparing war reparations to loans is blurring the lines to make a political point.
I think that's a good point in principle, but remember that the Greece's poor suffer the most. Drive through a poor neighorhood in town and consider how much influence the residents have over national economic policy.
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…
The underlying assumption in the German "NO" to Greek pleas of debt relief is the "moral hazard" of writing off a country's debt just because they cried really hard. Why don't we talk about the moral hazard of writing off a country's debt after they kill 60 million people?
If you believe Piketty, debt is never meant to be repaid and no one should therefore ever invest in sovereign debt. That would solve the debt debate. No creditor = no need to worry about whether we want to pile more debt. And he has a point. I personally don't believe that any of the US, Japanese and European sovereign debt will ever be repaid. The whole thing is a ponzi scheme. Investors hope that their investment w…
> The whole thing is a ponzi scheme. It absolutely is. If you think of money as units of labour instead of 'wealth', it makes more sense. Every year, more people are born, the workforce grows, more things are produced, more food is eaten, etc... The money supply has to reflect that there's always more of everything. This means inflation. And it's not a bad thing.
Wait, what?! You don't understand inflation. If there was always "more of everything", the result would be deflation. More food -> food costs less. More cars -> cars cost less. More apartments -> apartments cost less. Economics 101.