Greece, what the fuck?

[4321lynx]

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?

I shall get my partners in Nigeria to do that immediately.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Sweet. I'll be as rich as a Greek pensioner before I know it.

 

[4321lynx]

Sweet. I'll be as rich as a Greek pensioner before I know it.

How do you want your money? Greek New Drachmas? US dollars? Euros? You call it and we supply it. Guaranteed freshly printed, virgin, organic, all natural, never used, bank notes at bargain exchange rates.

 

[tupac chopra]

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%.

I think you will find that is negative 4%

 

[Jayjay]

Yes, you are correct (or actually I didn't check if that's exactly -4% but I take your word for it). I was not looking at budget surplus but interest payment as percentage of GDP, so the numbers I quoted were nonsensical. My bad!

However, since the argument is that interest payments are harmful because that money could be used to stimulate the economy, the same is true regardless of whether there is a surplus or deficit. If a country's primary surplus is negative, it just means it is accruing debt, which is ok for countries with good credit rating and not too much existing debt.

 

[Axulus]

Now Greece needs an extra 50 billion Euros:

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/greeces-tsipras-digs-against-bailout-052622818.html

It's a never ending financial black hole.

 

[tupac chopra]

Yes, you are correct (or actually I didn't check if that's exactly -4% but I take your word for it). I was not looking at budget surplus but interest payment as percentage of GDP, so the numbers I quoted were nonsensical. My bad!
However, since the argument is that interest payments are harmful because that money could be used to stimulate the economy, the same is true regardless of whether there is a surplus or deficit. If a country's primary surplus is negative, it just means it is accruing debt, which is ok for countries with good credit rating and not too much existing debt.

Well my thoughts were that asking any European country , let alone Greece for a 4-5% GDP surplus is unreasonable (I understand they did reduce this to 3.5% in some way though).

It's probably unworkable any way you slice it, and it seems Angela Merkel might think so too, according to Wikileaks new release.
https://wikileaks.org/nsa-germany/intercepts/

 

[tupac chopra]

Now Greece needs an extra 50 billion Euros:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/greeces-tsipras-digs-against-bailout-052622818.html
It's a never ending financial black hole.

Exactly! There is no way they can pay,and that is fine except Podemos are apparently wanting the Spanish debt examined now. Not to mention Italy!

 

[Ford]

Well my thoughts were that asking any European country , let alone Greece for a 4-5% GDP surplus is unreasonable (I understand they did reduce this to 3.5% in some way though).

Well perhaps Russia should annex Greece? I mean, Russia is greatest country ever and Putin is powerful leader, so maybe Greece should do like Crimea and voluntarily become part of Soviet Russia?

 

[Jayjay]

Latest poll shows country evenly split on EU bail-out referendum

A new opinion survey commissioned by the Bloomberg financial news agency shows that 43 per cent of people planned to vote "No" to the austerity plan, compared with 42.5 per cent in favour.

The latest figures suggest a switch of votes at the expense of the "No" camp, which had around 52 per cent of the vote as of last Saturday.

But it also suggests that Sunday's poll could fail to produce a clear winner either way, potentially increasing the bitter divisions that the issue has already sown in Greece.

(...)

Separately, another poll conducted by the ALCO polling institute and published in the Greece's Ethnos newspaper on Friday, suggested that the Yes camp had moved marginally ahead. It gave a slight lead for the "Yes" vote in favour of the bail-out at 44.8 per cent against 43.4 per cent for the "No" vote. 11.8 per cent were undecided.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Greeks should vote "NO!" but not in order to get a better bailout deal.

They should vote NO, but not for the reasons Tsipras is demanding, who is making the Greeks look like a nation of deadbeat crybabies. Still, they should vote NO and then suffer the consequences and learn that prosperity is created by efficient work, not by bailouts and chronic debt and scapegoating the dirty capitalist pigs.

The best outcome for Greece is to vote NO and then default on their debt and be forced to struggle along without any more debt/bailout.

Isn't there a way for a country to operate WITHOUT running up chronic debt? I can't believe they would just all starve. Why can't a nation do its budget and public functions on a pay-as-you-go basis?

If they have to, i.e., they have no choice, they will find a way. They will suffer, and maybe also some creditors, but after they recover from their debt addiction, and the withdrawal pains finally subside, that nation will end up better off, in the long run, than if it keeps on running up more and more debt.

Are the Greeks really suffering so much from "austerity"?

No one has refuted this previous post:

When Greece’s finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, in an early round of negotiations in Brussels, complained that Greek pensions could not be cut any further, he was reminded bluntly by his colleague from Lithuania that pensioners there have survived on far less. Lithuania, according to the most recent figures issued by Eurostat, the European statistics agency, spends 472 euros, about $598, per capita on pensions, less than a third of the 1,625 euros spent by Greece. Bulgaria spends just 257 euros. This data refers to 2012 and Greek pensions have since been cut, but they still remain higher than those in Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia, Croatia and nearly all other states in eastern, central and southeastern Europe.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/30/w...ct-little-sympathy-from-poorer-neighbors.html

So, are the Lithuanians starving? the Bulgarians? Greece could not survive if they cut wages and pensions and other spending even further? And increase some taxes to help pay the costs?

If the other east Europeans are surviving, why couldn't the Greeks, who apparently have more capital and more income-earning capacity than those countries which are surviving on less?

Why couldn't they just default, to end the debt burden, and then go at it without the debt addiction any more? If they vote "NO" hoping for more bailout, maybe it will backfire and they will be refused anymore welfare and will finally have to grow up and learn how to earn their way, and thereby set a good example for many other countries which also need to put an end to their debt addiction.

And even if you think it's really the EU bankers or the IMF who are to blame -- OK fine, ALL THE MORE REASON for them to default and cut their ties with the dirty capitalist pigs once and for all!

It's not true that "austerity" doesn't work -- it hasn't been tried yet. Real austerity means ending the debt addiction, which Greece hasn't come close to doing. And even with real austerity, there's no reason Greece could not still keep its living standard above that of Bulgaria etc. where they're not starving.

 

[Canard DuJour]

Stiglitz in The Guardian :

The rising crescendo of bickering and acrimony within Europe might seem to outsiders to be the inevitable result of the bitter endgame playing out between Greece and its creditors. In fact, European leaders are finally beginning to reveal the true nature of the ongoing debt dispute, and the answer is not pleasant: it is about power and democracy much more than money and economics.

Of course, the economics behind the programme that the “troika” (the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund) foisted on Greece five years ago has been abysmal, resulting in a 25% decline in the country’s GDP. I can think of no depression, ever, that has been so deliberate and had such catastrophic consequences: Greece’s rate of youth unemployment, for example, now exceeds 60%.

It is startling that the troika has refused to accept responsibility for any of this or admit how bad its forecasts and models have been. But what is even more surprising is that Europe’s leaders have not even learned. The troika is still demanding that Greece achieve a primary budget surplus (excluding interest payments) of 3.5% of GDP by 2018.

Economists around the world have condemned that target as punitive, because aiming for it will inevitably result in a deeper downturn. Indeed, even if Greece’s debt is restructured beyond anything imaginable, the country will remain in depression if voters there commit to the troika’s target in the snap referendum to be held this weekend.

In terms of transforming a large primary deficit into a surplus, few countries have accomplished anything like what the Greeks have achieved in the last five years. And, though the cost in terms of human suffering has been extremely high, the Greek government’s recent proposals went a long way toward meeting its creditors’ demands.

We should be clear: almost none of the huge amount of money loaned to Greece has actually gone there. It has gone to pay out private-sector creditors – including German and French banks. Greece has gotten but a pittance, but it has paid a high price to preserve these countries’ banking systems. The IMF and the other “official” creditors do not need the money that is being demanded. Under a business-as-usual scenario, the money received would most likely just be lent out again to Greece.

But, again, it’s not about the money. It’s about using “deadlines” to force Greece to knuckle under, and to accept the unacceptable – not only austerity measures, but other regressive and punitive policies.

But why would Europe do this? Why are European Union leaders resisting the referendum and refusing even to extend by a few days the June 30 deadline for Greece’s next payment to the IMF? Isn’t Europe all about democracy?

In January, Greece’s citizens voted for a government committed to ending austerity. If the government were simply fulfilling its campaign promises, it would already have rejected the proposal. But it wanted to give Greeks a chance to weigh in on this issue, so critical for their country’s future wellbeing.

That concern for popular legitimacy is incompatible with the politics of the eurozone, which was never a very democratic project. Most of its members’ governments did not seek their people’s approval to turn over their monetary sovereignty to the ECB. When Sweden’s did, Swedes said no. They understood that unemployment would rise if the country’s monetary policy were set by a central bank that focused single-mindedly on inflation (and also that there would be insufficient attention to financial stability). The economy would suffer, because the economic model underlying the eurozone was predicated on power relationships that disadvantaged workers.

And, sure enough, what we are seeing now, 16 years after the eurozone institutionalised those relationships, is the antithesis of democracy: many European leaders want to see the end of prime minister Alexis Tsipras’ leftist government. After all, it is extremely inconvenient to have in Greece a government that is so opposed to the types of policies that have done so much to increase inequality in so many advanced countries, and that is so committed to curbing the unbridled power of wealth. They seem to believe that they can eventually bring down the Greek government by bullying it into accepting an agreement that contravenes its mandate.

It is hard to advise Greeks how to vote on 5 July. Neither alternative – approval or rejection of the troika’s terms – will be easy, and both carry huge risks. A yes vote would mean depression almost without end. Perhaps a depleted country – one that has sold off all of its assets, and whose bright young people have emigrated – might finally get debt forgiveness; perhaps, having shrivelled into a middle-income economy, Greece might finally be able to get assistance from the World Bank. All of this might happen in the next decade, or perhaps in the decade after that.

By contrast, a no vote would at least open the possibility that Greece, with its strong democratic tradition, might grasp its destiny in its own hands. Greeks might gain the opportunity to shape a future that, though perhaps not as prosperous as the past, is far more hopeful than the unconscionable torture of the present.

I know how I would vote.

http://www.theguardian.com/business...litz-how-i-would-vote-in-the-greek-referendum

..what's odd, though, is that lately (at least some) EU technocrats do indeed acknowledge how flawed and damaging their models are. Whatever your opinion on austerity, at least Syriza's position is consistent.

 

[4321lynx]

I agree. But will the Greeks?

Living within your means is in fact not universal --

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_current_account_balance

but I guess in this game of the devil take the hindmost Pyramid Finances With Phantom Money, most are still repaying what they must every quarter.

 

[Horatio Parker]

I can't find the link, but I read recently that the referendum's voting will be carried out by a private company, with no public supervision. What could go wrong?

 

[rousseau]

So is the referendum about leadership dodging political responsibility for the country, or something else?

 

[Jayjay]

Isn't there a way for a country to operate WITHOUT running up chronic debt? I can't believe they would just all starve. Why can't a nation do its budget and public functions on a pay-as-you-go basis?

Yes, but it's not as efficient because it limits the amount of money you can invest for future growth.

You might as well ask, why do private companies seek capital investors even if it means giving up equity and paying dividends, rather than pay everything up-front from their own profits?

Also, you used Lithuania as an example, but keep in mind, that Lithuanian national debt (even if one of the lowest in Europe), is still around 40% of the country's GDP.

 

[Derec]

Things are really getting serious:

And this:

Although in fairness, it should be Tsipras or Varoufakis flipping the Greeks the bird.

 

[untermensche]

So is the referendum about leadership dodging political responsibility for the country, or something else?

It is about the idea that some leaders actually believe in democracy.

Shoving harmful ideas down the throats of voters happens so often in the US some think that is democracy.

 

[fromderinside]

So is the referendum about leadership dodging political responsibility for the country, or something else?

It is about the idea that some leaders actually believe in democracy.

Shoving harmful ideas down the throats of voters happens so often in the US some think that is democracy.

I agree untermensche. Why should a country that isn't particularly industrial be held to standard that are designed for very industrialized nations. It is clear that small populations don't have the capacity, whether industrial or no, to maintain their economy in a way that produces consistent growth based on productivity. Its a problem in the north, its a problem in the agricultural south, its a problem in the recovering communist economies in the east. Some one should tell Germany to stop insisting their model is the one necessary for EU economic success and population well being. They aren't particularly good at being able to enjoy life, what with their need to be superior, so they discount it. Get a pair of balls France.

 

[Axulus]

It is about the idea that some leaders actually believe in democracy.

Shoving harmful ideas down the throats of voters happens so often in the US some think that is democracy.

I agree untermensche. Why should a country that isn't particularly industrial be held to standard that are designed for very industrialized nations.

Horseshit. Greece is a first world industrial high-income country. Yes, it is on the lower end of the scale of income for the high-income category, but it is in the category nonetheless.