Greece, what the fuck?

[ksen]

PUNISH THE EVILDOERS!!!11!1!

 

[bilby]

usury
[yoo-zhuh-ree]

noun, plural usuries.
1.
the lending or practice of lending money at an exorbitant interest.
2.
an exorbitant amount or rate of interest, especially in excess of the legal rate.
3.
Obsolete. interest paid for the use of money.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/usury?s=t

The whole issue on Greece versus extreme Capitalist usury sinks its roots into the whole ethical dilemma of usury, not of interest charging, but of excessive lending with exploitative charging.

If this isn't changed, we will have defaults all over the place all the time. Just as borrowers ending up jobless requires readjustments, countries being hard-hit by recession and extraordinarily high unemployment, require adjustments for the same reason.

Not to be confused with ursury, which is 'Excessive bearishness in financial markets'.

 

[Jokodo]

Ok, since you don't understand compassion nor empathy, let's see it from a point of view you will understand -sheer greed:

Not renegotiating a loan when the borrower is unemployed and broke, means you soon will not see a penny. Killing the hen who lays the golden eggs.


This strange world is called reality.


P.S. This is not a mortgage. The Fourth Reich will not get a house back by saying no to Greece. It's more like killing the Euro and blaming it on Syriza (who BTW just got here 10 months ago to pick up the previous Greek governments and IMF's mess). Oh, and guess who's getting a nice fat paycheck either way?

The problem is this goose lays rotten eggs. They are still unwilling to listen to reason about how they manage their social spending, until they get screwed by their misconduct there's no hope they'll reform.

They have listened to "reason" for the last five years. The result is a recession worse than the Great Depression was in the US.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The problem is this goose lays rotten eggs. They are still unwilling to listen to reason about how they manage their social spending, until they get screwed by their misconduct there's no hope they'll reform.

They have listened to "reason" for the last five years. The result is a recession worse than the Great Depression was in the US.

They haven't been listening. They've just been trying to get more money rather than fix their budget problems.

 

[tupac chopra]

They have listened to "reason" for the last five years. The result is a recession worse than the Great Depression was in the US.

They haven't been listening. They've just been trying to get more money rather than fix their budget problems.

The Europeans were asking them for a 4.5 or 5% GDP surplus. No European country has done that except Finland briefly during the Nokia boom and perhaps Norway which has plenty of oil. the demands were unreasonable.

It seems like the Greeks are saying 'let's stop pretending". The real problems will emerge if larger economies say "let's stop pretending"

 

[tupac chopra]

Lending them money has been more akin to charity than anything that even slightly resembles usury.

Charity for German corporations who have benefited by keeping the Euro together. They would not get so much "charity" if they had a strong deutsche mark

 

[Jayjay]

They haven't been listening. They've just been trying to get more money rather than fix their budget problems.

The Europeans were asking them for a 4.5 or 5% GDP surplus. No European country has done that except Finland briefly during the Nokia boom and perhaps Norway which has plenty of oil. the demands were unreasonable.

That's primary surplus, i.e. surplus without debt repayments (though this term seems to have been invented only for the situation in Greece). This depends more about percentage of government revenue per GDP, amount of debt and the credit rating of the country than its affluence. Norway with all its oil wealth for example has about 0.4% primary surplus if calculated this way. Germany ~1.4%, and France would be around 4%.

(Based on 2012 numbers scoured from the web, don't take this as an academic study.)

Generally, countries prefer to keep their debt in check precisely so that they don't have to pay an exorbitant amount of interest. I'm not an economist, but if France has primary surplus of 4%, I don't see why asking Greece to reach 4.5 or 5% is that unreasonable.

 

[barbos]

4% surplus (before paying national debt) does not seem too excessive.
I mean it's like working 1 day a month for Germany, I think it's reasonable price for a decade of easy life greeks had.
of course economics is weird, it can crash from .1% difference.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Unreasonable according to whom? Both sides think they are reasonable and have good reasons to think so.

This Margaret Thatcher quote is very apt in this situation:

"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money"

I do hate Thatcher with a passion. But she did say lots of great quotable things.

Unreasonable economic policy.

You can't destimulate an economy into growth.

The demands made on Greece were religious in nature, not sound economic policy.

Sound economic policy is to institute massive Keynesian spending to stimulate an economy first then when it is robust increase the demands to pay debts at a larger scale.

That´s not what this is about. EU doesn´t feel like Greece is taking them seriously. They´re sick of lending money to a country that doesn´t have an economic system even theoretically being able to pay back. I´m convinced EU will soften over time, once they notice Greece is playing along.

One thing we need to keep in mind is that Greece´s tax dodging culture means that their unemployment rate is a lot lower than the official figures. And their economy is a lot larger than the official figures. About half the countries economy is geared toward catering to tourists. Nobody knows how much money tourists bring with them on holiday, or how much they spend. It could be a quarter or even a third of Greece´s economy that is a complete mystery. And a black market is always a libertarian market.

So their situation isn´t nearly as dire as the numbers make it look like. Their economy is already well adapted to a super-liberal economic policy. Politics is the art of the possible. We´re not going to make Greeks start paying taxes overnight. It´s better to adapt policy to the system Greeks already has in practice, libertarianism.

No, I´m not a libertarian. I´m lefty. But this isn´t a question of which system is preferable. This is a question of which system is possible to implement at all. And then build up Greece´s tax collection system over time. Right now it´s completely and utterly broken.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Super-silly notion. Of course it´s not about humiliating anybody. It´s just a fact that Greece won´t be able to pay back without austerity.<snip>

It may or may not be able to pay back eventually without the kind of austerity the troika is demanding.

It will definitely not be able to pay back ever if it cripples its economic infrastructure by complying with their demands. We've seen where that leads over the last 5 years.

So either the troika is literally insane - trying the same thing again and again and expecting different results - or their real goal has nothing to do with getting the money back. My money's on the latter, but if that sounds too much like a conspiracy theory to you, you can bet on the former. In terms of practical implications, it doesn't matter much - they need to be stopped one way or the other.

I agree. It´s stopped being about the wisest economic policy. Now it´s about Greece showing some political will to take their situation seriously. They still aren´t. It´s only now starting to sink in that the EU has stopped being soft on them. I think Greece, as a nation, needs this. They need to be shaken out of their super-cynical mindset of that nothing ever matters, and it´s just about grabbing as much as possible for yourself, damn the consequences "because everybody else is doing it as well". That´s how they got into this situation to begin with. Greeks need to feel that what they do matters. Right now, they don´t.

 

[Jokodo]

It may or may not be able to pay back eventually without the kind of austerity the troika is demanding.

It will definitely not be able to pay back ever if it cripples its economic infrastructure by complying with their demands. We've seen where that leads over the last 5 years.

So either the troika is literally insane - trying the same thing again and again and expecting different results - or their real goal has nothing to do with getting the money back. My money's on the latter, but if that sounds too much like a conspiracy theory to you, you can bet on the former. In terms of practical implications, it doesn't matter much - they need to be stopped one way or the other.

I agree. It´s stopped being about the wisest economic policy. Now it´s about Greece showing some political will to take their situation seriously. They still aren´t. It´s only now starting to sink in that the EU has stopped being soft on them. I think Greece, as a nation, needs this. They need to be shaken out of their super-cynical mindset of that nothing ever matters, and it´s just about grabbing as much as possible for yourself, damn the consequences "because everybody else is doing it as well". That´s how they got into this situation to begin with. Greeks need to feel that what they do matters. Right now, they don´t.

This literally doesn't make any sense. You want the Greeks to suffer to teach them a lesson while admitting that their suffering is only going to make things worse for everyone else too. That's primitive eye-for-an-eye thinking which has never brought us forward.

 

[Jokodo]

They have listened to "reason" for the last five years. The result is a recession worse than the Great Depression was in the US.

They haven't been listening. They've just been trying to get more money rather than fix their budget problems.

Simply wrong. Greece's primary budget balance has gone from -10% of GDP in 2009 to +5% in 2013. But something funny and totally unexpected (not) happened: The massive austerity caused a double dip-recession, and the shrinking tax base combined with exploding welfare costs annihilated those gains - not excessive spending.


(via http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/4457/economics/austerity-in-europe/)

 

[barbos]

They haven't been listening. They've just been trying to get more money rather than fix their budget problems.

Simply wrong. Greece's primary budget balance has gone from -10% of GDP in 2009 to +5% in 2013.

If only we knew the definitions of "budget" and "deficit" greeks used at that time.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

They haven't been listening. They've just been trying to get more money rather than fix their budget problems.

Simply wrong. Greece's primary budget balance has gone from -10% of GDP in 2009 to +5% in 2013. But something funny and totally unexpected (not) happened: The massive austerity caused a double dip-recession, and the shrinking tax base combined with exploding welfare costs annihilated those gains - not excessive spending.

OK, so the Greeks pulled themselves out of their recession and became a productive economy that doesn't need any bailout, and the only thing holding them back is the debt obligations and austerity demands imposed onto them.

So now all they have to do is DEFAULT and run their economy without anymore debt, raising revenue from their productive citizens who are now running a budget surplus (without the debt obligations). And from now on do everything on a cash-and-carry basis only, PAY-AS-YOU-GO.

They can "restructure" the debt by themselves, without any EU or IMF approval -- JUST DEFAULT and tell the creditors to "shove it -- we don't need you." They don't need a bailout, or new loan, or restructuring, do they? if they're running an effective surplus? if they just default?

 

[Jokodo]

Simply wrong. Greece's primary budget balance has gone from -10% of GDP in 2009 to +5% in 2013.

If only we knew the definitions of "budget" and "deficit" greeks used at that time.

Those are OECD data.

 

[barbos]

If only we knew the definitions of "budget" and "deficit" greeks used at that time.

Those are OECD data.

It's greek data first

 

[DrZoidberg]

I agree. It´s stopped being about the wisest economic policy. Now it´s about Greece showing some political will to take their situation seriously. They still aren´t. It´s only now starting to sink in that the EU has stopped being soft on them. I think Greece, as a nation, needs this. They need to be shaken out of their super-cynical mindset of that nothing ever matters, and it´s just about grabbing as much as possible for yourself, damn the consequences "because everybody else is doing it as well". That´s how they got into this situation to begin with. Greeks need to feel that what they do matters. Right now, they don´t.

This literally doesn't make any sense. You want the Greeks to suffer to teach them a lesson while admitting that their suffering is only going to make things worse for everyone else too. That's primitive eye-for-an-eye thinking which has never brought us forward.

Greece´s civic institutions need to be reformed. To keep pumping money into that rotten-to-the-core shit is not a solution. All it does is keep the fantasy going, that it is salvageable. Austerity will force to them have to tear all that old shit down. And then they can start building a system that works, ie a tax collection-mechanism that can´t be dodged as easily, and a system that forces them to only use money they actually have. Look, if you live in a culture that assumes and accept tax evasion, then build the antidote straight into the system. There´s quite a few systems that can work. But the Swedish model is a no-go. Estonia in the 90íes had a similar, but much much worse, situation to the Greeks. The prime minister Mart Laar instituted full on Milton Friedman style libertarianism and it did exactly what he had hoped, and which Greece needs today. Today Estonia is like any healthy west European Economy, and not libertarian any more. But they needed it in the 90´ies.

This is not about Greek suffering. It´s about what is possible. What is important is that whatever solution we come up with won´t just simply lead to postponing the inevitable collapse of their society. I´m no libertarian at all. I´m very lefty. But a lefty society can only function if the basics are in place. The good thing with libertarianism is that it makes the economy work all by itself. It requires no babysitting. If the Greeks refuse to pay taxes, then I can´t see any other option. A lefty society without taxes flowing in is a lefty society that is going to go bankrupt sooner or later. Which is what has happened to Greece.

I´m not saying the Estonian way is the only way. But something along those lines will probably be mandatory.

 

[Derec]

So any of you willing to put your money where your mouth is and support Greece directly?
IndieGoGo Greek Bailout Fund
They already raised 1.5 million Euro. That's 1/1000 of the payment Greece just missed a couple of days ago, so you better get serious with contributing! You can even get some Greek goodies for your trouble.

 

[4321lynx]

So any of you willing to put your money where your mouth is and support Greece directly?
IndieGoGo Greek Bailout Fund
They already raised 1.5 million Euro. That's 1/1000 of the payment Greece just missed a couple of days ago, so you better get serious with contributing! You can even get some Greek goodies for your trouble.

Or you can invest your money with my Brooklyn Bridge Management Co. Inc and shortly will make enough profit to double or triple your donation to the above Charity for Greece and its. sympathisers. my verified Email is

BBMCO.suckers.wanted.@assoonasposs.com

 

[Tom Sawyer]

So any of you willing to put your money where your mouth is and support Greece directly?
IndieGoGo Greek Bailout Fund
They already raised 1.5 million Euro. That's 1/1000 of the payment Greece just missed a couple of days ago, so you better get serious with contributing! You can even get some Greek goodies for your trouble.

Or you can invest your money with my Brooklyn Bridge Management Co. Inc and shortly will make enough profit to double or triple your donation to the above Charity for Greece and its. sympathisers. my verified Email is

BBMCO.suckers.wanted.@assoonasposs.com

I've emailed over my bank account info and am cashing in my retirement savings as we speak. If I sign over my car title to you, would you be willing to put the blue book value of it towards your awesome bridge investment opportunity?