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Greece Is Running Out of Money, Cannot Make June IMF Repayment
jones_supa writes: Greece, the country which has been in extreme financial trouble and high debt for years, cannot make debt repayments to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) next month, unless it achieves a deal with creditors. 'The four installments for the IMF in June are €1.6 billion ($1.8 billion). This money will not be given and is not there to be given,' Interior Minister Nikos Voutsis told Greek Mega TV's weekend show. Shut out of bond markets and with bailout aid locked, cash-strapped Athens has been scraping state coffers to meet debt obligations and to pay wages and pensions. With its future as a member of the 19-nation eurozone potentially at stake, a second government minister accused its international lenders of subjecting it to slow and calculated torture.
If Germany paid war reparations for the brutal occupation and raping of the country of Greece, it would amount to something like $150-200 Billion owed.
Of course, that is never going to happen.
What does the rest of the Eurozone gain by keeping this kleptocracy afloat?
I would be surprised if this development speeds up the adoption of the Euro within the rest of the EU members that have so far decided to stay out of this little experiment.
It's that eventually, Germany is going to get tired of you riding on their back. If you borrow money, eventually the people you borrow it from want to be repaid. You can negotiate for more time, but only so many times before they get tired of it.
It might be better to let Greece default. It'll be painful, yes, but better deal with that pain sooner than later. The longer this goes on, the bigger the problem is going to get.
When a country is lead by stupid politicians who learn to cheat their citizen but are caught outside the country. The Greeks do not pay tax (or do not want), yet expect rest of the world to take care of them. Also, the President or PM was arrogant forgot that "those who have money have you under their balls". Let them fail and learn a lesson and others will at least try to minimize their stupid behavior.; look at the Spaniards who looted gold from South America and enjoyed their life, but now their progeny are paying a price. That is karma.
Let's put the government in charge of healthcare! And everything else! That'll work out swell for everybody!
All they have to do is have 50% less deficit, or better, a 2% surplus. Solved. Can they do that? Not under their current "social contract". But is dead easy.
I am nervous as this feels like early 2008 all over again.
People though ack a few banks will be late paying each other for it's silly home instruments. Big deal let's buy banking shares now while they are cheap etc ...
We all know what happened next? Last year we finally came close to full recovery. The house of cards collapsed and is still being pumped up by the federal Reserve as we never had a full collapse!
Japan, America, and the EU may be next should Greece not to pay with skyrocketing rates and a great depression awaiting as the Federal Reserve won't be able to pump borrowed money to the banks, again.
Am I the only one who sees this?
http://saveie6.com/
At least Greece and even Mexico have better worker protections than the USA.
Mexico Labor Law Primer
The USA just doesn't favor labor as much as Greece or Mexico or even Venezuela.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73qPJAWqslc
I'd like to hear what the economists here think should be done about Greece.
"Soverign debt is not like personal debt!"
That's what the economists on this very blog say, when discussing US debt. It doesn't matter how far into debt the US is, anyone can see this by comparing our debt to our GDP: the latter number is really big, while the debt is really small.
See? You can't just say getting into debt is bad, because the two are entirely different.
I'd like to hear what the Slashdot economists think should be done about Greece.
the sun will likely come up tomorrow.
This default is not news.
The fact that they have gotten this far without one is the news.
It does not appear that they have any intention of putting their house in order until they have to.
A default may be a good thing.
The markets may actually like it.
Time to send an envoy to the iron bank.
Last time I count, the list of ingredient includes:
1. Greece
2. Money - rather, the lack of
3. Germany
4. IMF
5. WW2 reparation
Can someone please tell me what the above got to do with nerds?
Greece is resisting an IMF swindle!
If you bail them out, Spain will want free money too, then everyone and it will be a race to see how little work can command the most free money.
You have to let them fail. Greece is tiny, 2.5% of Eurozone, it fails, it can't print money so it becomes one of these satellite countries that use the Euro as proxy currency, and when it gets its act together again, it can be brought back into the zone.
A bit of tough love is needed, let them fail.
I just learned that the fines for illegal activity paid by banks since the economic collapse have totaled more than a quarter trillion dollars which is more than the entire economy of Greece. And that number is from 2014, before the $13 billion from Citi and the recent $5 billion for the banks involved in the price-fixing scandal.
Coincidence?
One of the traders for those banks, who was part of a collusion group that called itself (I'm not making this up), "The Cabal", said, in an email to the group, "If you're not cheating, you're not trying." That's $5 billion in fines for activity that made them hundreds of billions of dollars and bonuses.
And so far, not one of the members of "The Cabal" have been charged with a crime, and they'll be keeping their record bonuses. In fact, no one from those banks will be facing criminal charges of any kind.
So if you want me to be mad at Greece for letting the IMF dangle, I'm sorry. There are much bigger fish to fry.
There's so much more to this Greece story than just, "Oh those lazy Greeks with their big pensions." The IMF and the biggest banks were basically doing what those sketchy "payday loan" places in the strip mall do. They were basically doing what the home-lending institutions were doing in the 2000s. They were giving big bonuses to loan brokers for making loans - any loans - to people because they knew they could flip them on the secondary and CDO market. Investors were chasing yield so the word went out to mortgage lenders to "just get it done" and they basically defrauded as many people as possible. That's what the IMF does in countries like Greece and many South American companies. I think we're going to start seeing more of these countries deciding to just tell the IMF to go eff itself and take their monetary policy medicine and just be done with it. Then you'll start seeing the CIA-backed and German-backed and UK-backed coups start to happen.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"subjecting it to slow and calculated torture"
STOP LETTING PEOPLE RETIRE AT 55 WITH FULL BENEFITS! It's not a sustainable economic model you arrogant, self-absorbed ass!!!! He makes the democrats in California look smart by comparison. Greece is like a tax and spend nightmare cycle but without the tax part. I'm starting to think the citizens are the laziest, most needlessly entitled people in the world. The government programs and benefits and pay are absolutely mental! Seriously, look them up on Wikipedia. They're absurd!
Maybe Greeks are different but in Germany, if you borrow money, you are fully expected to pay it back. As soon as possible. Greece can make as much racket as it likes, but the Germans still want their money back. And frankly, I agree. If Greece is not willing to pay back what they take, that's theft, and they can go without aid for all I care. Especially when the borrowed money doesn't actually go to fixing its major economic issues.
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
The Greek government lied to its population, and the EU, about how much debt the country had. When the other party got into office they revealed the prior party's cover-up. So far so good.
The EU demands that Greece make deep budget cuts in return for aid. These cuts were made. Unfortunately, debt to GDP ratio is debt/GDP. Debt went down but GDP went down more. Austerity is like any other kind of easy answer, it sounds good but doesn't work.
Austerity is the reapers of nations. A country that tries to cut its way out of a debt crisis can end up in vicious cycle where each cuts drops revenue by more than it saves. Historically, either something happens to break the cycle of Austerity or things get to a point when the situation becomes unsustainable. Unsustainable situations often end in a situation where the people of a country must pull down the government out of a need for sheer self preservation. You want to pull a country apart, convince it's government to engage in Austerity until their is an uprising.
The Greeks, not wanting to have to pull their leaders out into the square and shoot them, elected an anti-Austerity party. Syriza has been pretty clear. They'll compromise if a demand could arguably help the nation. Selling off a port to Dubai Ports World? Well the government isn't going to like it, but if the purchaser will contract to improve the port, perhaps its a good idea. Ditto tax reform. If tax reform means going after rich tax dodgers, then the government thinks its a good idea.
Unfortunately, this isn't enough for many European nations. The EU is insisting that the Greek people collectively feel the pain as a result of their governments actions. It does not matter that making the people feel pain won't actually help. Remember, the issue here is debt/GPD. Making the people feel pain translates into things that cause GDP to drop. The EU has to pretend that pain is an economic reform. Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva convention states that. "No persons may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited." If the EU came out and said that it intends to hurt the Greek people to punish them for the crimes of the Greek government, then the EU would be committing a crime against humanity. As a result, retaliation has to be clothed in the idea of some kind of reform plan.
Making things worse, the Greeks are in a week enough position that they don't feel that they can leak the state of negotiations to the press. This means that all the press coverage so far has been one sided. On the non-Greek side, this is bringing about a self-reinforcing cycle of bad thinking. For example, a number of German politicians have called on the ECB to cut off support to otherwise solvent Greek banks to force the Greek government to capitulate. Let's break this down. Banks are private institutions. The Greek government is a public body. Attacking private institutions to force the Greek government to do something would be, in essence, weaponizing the banking system. Once banks become a weapon that can be wielded against a country's national interest they become a national security issue. Does anyone really think that turning banking into a national security threat is a good, long term, idea for the Eurozone? Self reinforcing cycles of bad thinking like this are how elites bumble their way to the Guillotine.
So now the game is up. A normally functioning country can roll its debt over. A rich country can, over time, pay down its debt (though this might not be a good idea as it can create a bubble in government debt by shrinking the supply of bonds). Almost no nation can pay off all of their debts right now. The Greeks are basically being told to either capitulate or find some way, without further borrowing, to pay off all of their debts in short order. To put this in prospective, what if somebody told you that you had to pay off all of your student loans
They obviously don't dive a fuck so neither do I.
ignore the jew masters, you'll be just fine greece
Why is this an article on this supposed technology orientated site? Has Slashdot turned into a generic news site?
You think they're going to come up with 1600M euro in June? LO to the L.
Russia can't afford to help them with this payment, Greece is dead broke and Goldman Sachs who helped Greece lie about their books to get into the eurozone in the first place is long gone.
Liberty.
Treaty or no treaty, any Eurozone country can pull out just by declaring themselves no longer in the Eurozone and declaring that all existing sovereign debt owed by them is hereby converted into the new national currency and if the creditors don't like it tough on them.
Yes, there will be a price to pay. Technically, the other countries could declare war on Greece for breaking the treaty but that's not going to happen. Much more likely, they'll just stop doing business with Greece and its citizens and companies and possibly pass laws making it hard for their citizens and companies to do business with Greece or its citizens and companies.
The question for Greece is: What is your least-painful option?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The term slow torture is interesting. Eurozone "partners" indeed pressure Greece government to act against its own national interests.
The primary tool so far has been BCE supply of money to Greece's banks. While this mechanism has nothing to do with sovereign debt, it has been used as blackmail: "act as we ask, otherwise your banking system will collapse because of liquidity shortage".
The reforms they were not asked to perform are interesting. Greece has been asked to reduce salaries and pensions, and even to sell some territory. But when did EU "partners" did push for a tax reform so that the wealthier pay their share? When did EU "partners" asked for military budget reduction? When you have trouble paying debts, it sounds strange to let wealthy people's money leaking into fiscal paradises, and to buy submarines from Germany.
What business did Greece have joining the EU? It fudged its numbers to get in (while everyone turned a blind eye) so that idiot lefties could create a United States of Europe. Europe is made up of countries that are far to different in culture and economic prospects to ever fly under the same flag effectively.
Greece's weak economy was never capable of withstanding the monetary troubles of an entire continent. The single market/currency gives it no flexibility to do simple things like adjust interest rates and devalue currency to alleviate the debt.
Who gave it all that money anyway? What were they thinking? How much blame do they have for giving Greece infinite credit?
STOP LETTING PEOPLE RETIRE AT 55 WITH FULL BENEFITS!
The US military and some US civilian jobs such as FBI agents let you retire with full benefits after 20 years of service. The US military allows you to retire at 100% of base pay plus benefits at 40 years of service (typically age 58 for those enlisting straight out of high school).
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
...the entitlement societies cannot work long term. The government cannot carry your sorry ass from birth to death.
Kick them out of the EU currency. It'll keep other countries inline about being honest what's on their books.
So don't pay government wages for the next six months, like they did in few decades ago here in Finland. Fun times eating what you can grow in your garden, if you had one and sharing with the hungry kids of the area if you were in the position to do so.
The Greek government can never repay its current debt obligations, primarily held now by public sector international creditors that bailed out their own reckless and very poorly capitalized private banks to keep them on life support. (It takes two parties to accumulate debt: creditor and debtor. Greece's creditors shared at least as much blame as Greece's prior governments.) That's just a simple mathematical fact. The only remaining salient question in this tragedy is whether the European Central Bank (ECB), and specifically one very democratically unelected banker (Mario Draghi), will take affirmative action to destroy Greece's banking system solely because some other party (the Greek government) cannot and will not, in fact, repay its (euro-denominated) debts. As an approximate analogy it'd be as if the U.S. Federal Reserve decided to destroy Citibank, J.P. Morgan Chase, and BNY Mellon by terminating their loan facilities from the lender of last resort, even via nationalization, if the State of New York, where those banks are based, were to default on its bonds. Yes, that's *crazy*, that the Federal Reserve would act in such a way, yet here we are with the ECB.
I thought this was a tech site. silly me.
Currently, inflation in the UK and US, is hovering around 0%..... YET, more and more people are living in poverty. This is contrary to what you say. The truith is, inflation is one of the only mechanisms that transfer wealth from the rich to the poor (mortgages and savings both end up less in real terms over time). Without inflation, there are no pay rises, no increase in available cash to spend. If you want the Dickensian model of work houses and food banks, keep spouting the 'Inflation is bad' mantra.
It's a tiny economy, 2.5% of Eurozone GDP, its less than when France sneezed recently.
So PR aside, it has no real value keeping it a-float.
On the plus side, Spain just elected a bunch of anti-austerity MPs, and if you bail out the bail out of the bail out of Greece (this is the third bail out, they didn't make the requested improvements from the previous two bailouts), then Spain can rightfully demand free money too without restructuring.
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Good inflation is good, i.e. growth in money supply due to growing businesses and growing economy is good.
Bad inflation is bad, i.e. creating money and pumping it into random assets that benefit a few to create the inflation without the corresponding growth is bad.
That latter type of 'faked' 'knockoff' inflation is the problem here.
And inflation (both kinds) does not transfer money from rich to poor, wages are reduced in real terms, where as the new money goes into assets (which are owned by the rich). Wage rises are not rises if they're simply to offset an increase in money supply. They're corrections into the new diluted money.
Inflation does not transfer wealth from rich to poor, quite the opposite.
"If you want the Dickensian model of work houses and food banks, keep spouting the 'Inflation is bad' mantra"
When the Bank of England prints money and buys bonds driving up the true price of those assets, it is simply creating a false market in those assets. Such inflation is bad, because the wealth that money represents is taken from real business doing real work and making real products. In effect you're diluting their success, to subsidize bad business/government bonds.
and start taxing. Cut what you need to cut. But start raising revenues. Biggest problem with most countries is that they are afraid to tax the people who have money. Where else are you going to get money.
My grandparents were fallout of WW I - They left the Ukrainian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and came to the USA. I never met them, since they died young, working in shitty jobs like rubber factories (cancer) in Detroit.
Fast-forward... since I never met the "folks from the old country" and only knew my mom and a step father who raised me as American, with no particular culture, other than American, I don't have any animosity towards past aggressors, I am happy with my lot in life.
My take-away, as trite as it may seem, is "what you don't know can't hurt you", and if you forget your (possibly shitty) past and just go forward you will be fine.
If you think you are owed something from those who went before you, you are in for a big disappointment, since those people are dead, and those who are here today only want to know "what have you done for me lately".
Do something and stop whining.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I dislike current populist Greek government (and live in Germany), but there is some injustice in what was done to Greece in my opinion.
Greece f*cked up big time by spending more than earning, there is no question about that.
The problem is, what happened afterwards.
And that was new loans AT INSANE RATES.
Last time I've checked check dept per citizen numbers, Greek was roughly on the level of Germany.
But interest rates they are paying (and that mostly to German banks), oh my goodness:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
So there IS a combination of incompetent reckless government and unfair interest rates. (yeah, if you don't want the money, don't take it, yadayada, I know)
Also see (Charges of hypcrisy (Germany))
even though many died to end it, and most came after it was already over (because they were leaving their own shitty situations).
Really, all the countries in the Euro zone should be on their own currencies.
Responsible governments will have low inflation and low interest rates.
Irresponsible governments will have high inflation and high interest rates.
In this way, those governments can continue to borrow money as much as they want. The interest rates will just go up.
And the governments will respond by jacking up inflation rates basically making their own people pay higher taxes by lowering the value of their money.... that difference in value being mostly used to pay off debt from the borrowing.
What is fun about this tax is that it is regressive. It doesn't impact the rich or corporations because they don't keep large amounts of money in cash. They keep their wealth in assets which do not depreciate with the currency. It mostly hurts poor people or anyone that has their money in cash. And that is sort of fair because the very people the entitlements are going to tend to be people at the bottom of society in any case.
So you're sort of taxing the people you're giving benefits to and that's reasonable.
Something I'd like to see is for all governments to have two currencies.
The first being a trade currency which most people would use for buying things and wages etc... but then have a debt currency for the government to borrow in.
The idea here is that you don't what to give the government an incentive to inflate the trade currency. If the government can only lower its debts by inflating the debt currency than they'll be less inclined to inflate the trade currency.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
It's not. That was the end of 2011, when Greece nearly defaulted and got a bailout.
Wrong. It's 1939 all over again.
Since that time, all the other banks have divested themselves of Greek bonds (and have been recapitalized by the ECB). There is no worry of contagion this time,
lol....yeah, NO worry at all.
That will give them a bit more money, but the major problem is not having enough money to pay their bills.
No, their major problem is TOO MANY BILLS.
Will they leave the Euro? Who knows,
Ooh, ooh! Pick me! I know this one.
Yes, they will leave the Euro....just like ALL the rest of Europe.
If you want to watch for a time to worry, the time will be when Germany, or France, or the United States can no longer borrow. Then there will be another 2008.
No, there will be another 1939.
Hint: you're living in it...
I've been following the Greek debt crisis for at least five years, Greece's problem is that they absolutely refuse to stop spending money they don't have. Remember: Greece has never practiced real austerity (cutting deficits to match receipts) since they joined the Eurozone. Not once. (By contrast, Estonia did eliminate their deficit, and as a result started recovering from The Great Recession quicker than other EU economies.) Greece merely slowed the rate at which they were going more broke (or at least pretended to). Despite being right at the edge of complete national bankruptcy, Greece continues to insist that there will be “no wage or pension cuts” for government workers.
Greece lied about their economic situation to get into the Eurozone, lied about it before the crisis broke, lied after it broke, and continue to lie now.
Keep in mind that the past four years of bank loans from the ECB have not been to save Greece. What they were really designed to do was to keep the card game running long enough to let EU insiders and favored national banks unload Greek bonds, and to reduce their exposure to Greek default risks long enough to put European taxpayers onto the hook in the inevitable event of a Greek default. They pretended to save Greece, and Greece pretended to reform. And now here we are.
The adoption of the Euro hastened and deepened Greece's crisis, but was not the central cause, which was their refusal to stop spending money they didn't have to prop up their extravagant (even by European standards) welfare state. This modern welfare state has now become more sacred to voters than the capitalist economics that make it possible. As Mark Steyn put it, "People’s sense of entitlement endures long after the entitlement has ceased to make sense."
The problem is that with declining demographics, the cradle-to-grave European welfare state is unsustainable. Greece and the rest of the PIIGS are discovering that first, but birth rates are declining all across Europe, and modern welfare states are unsustainable without a new generation to stick with the bill. Most economists believe that Greece will never be able to pay back what they've already borrowed.
Syriza was elected on a platform of ignoring basic economic reality, but they've finally run out of people willing to loan them money to spend. The risk of a Grexit is already priced into all the European markets, But leaving the Eurozone doesn't provide relief for any of the Euro-denominated debt Greece already owes, and there's no guarantee European markets would even be willing to exchange refloated drachmas for real(er) money. And since it's hard to see any sane institution buying Greek debt after a default, Greece's government would undoubtedly start printing drachmas like mad and trigger hyperinflation.
If Greece was willing to pare back its welfare state to much saner levels, they might have a chance to slowly dig their way out of the crisis. Since they refuse to, they're in for a whole lot more economic pain...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
If an individual, and now apparently a government, finds that it is cheaper to default than to perform, that is a moral failing.
If a corporation find that it is cheaper to default than to perform, well that's just good business.
I guess since a corporation is amoral it is immune to moral hazard.
People act as if they've only now discovered that Greek have terrible tax collection and that their bonds were a bad risk. Sure, let's say there should be some consequence for Greece if it defaults. However, there should also be some consequence for the German banks that invested in what everyone else knew was a bad risk. The whole idea behind a risk premium is that there's a chance that you will realize that risk. Well, the German Banks did realize that risk and like good Americans they have attempted to socialize the losses.
You are *severly* udnerestimating it. It is not only that greece wll have tod efault, but also that greece will still be noted as junk as far as bond goes so will not be able to borrow again at good rate EVEN after default, but also that now that greece is outside of the eurozone, it will have to either junk their own currency so far down the rabbit hole to make export / import not kill them that the inflation in the subsequent decades (note the plural) will take a long time to stabilize the economy. And once out of the eurozone , guess what ? Greece will STILL have to have cut back on cost or have extreme inflation , maybe hyper inflation and their own bank default, if they start issuing bond on their own currency and spend like no tommorow.
Greece is a warning to France or even spain, italy and other of the eurozone with ramping up debt : get your table cleaned or it might get burn down as a sanitisation process by others.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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Here's some examples.
Yes, with interest, that debt can be 100% paid off yet still be bigger than it was before.
Germany could be wanting that money to keep austerity on the cards because they're sold on it 100% and don't want anyone else trying something different and, worse, succeeding, "eating their lunch" and showing them up as ideological morons, stuck to the wrong idea because they have blind faith in it.
A small portion of me is Black. As an aside, my family were slaves in the Dominican Republic, this is actually the more interesting (in my opinion) side of my much varied ethnicity, and the British brought them to fight in the Revolutionary war. They promised freedom and this promise was made in the name of the King. At the end of the war George Washington did not want to let them leave but the Brits already had them loaded on three ships in the harbor. They ran the attempted blockade and took them to Nova Scotia and dropped them off where they married into the Micmac tribe and stayed for quite some time (still there) while some came to seek their fortune in New England. My point being, well, the Americans don't owe me anything other than the rights afforded me due to the Constitution. I get better treatment in Canada anyhow and, as a dual citizen, I can move there and have been thinking about it for a while now. It could be (and is) worse - on the other half I am related to the Prescott family which makes me rather unhappy. Neither Canada nor Britain owe me anything as well. I was not "there" or harmed in any way. I have had fair treatment. So, no, any faults I suffer are of my own creation.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
It's still 100% accurate to yell at your military "STOP LETTING PEOPLE RETIRE AT 55 WITH FULL BENEFITS!". Ever wonder why your military budget is so high? All those private companies retiring their CEOs on a million a year pension at 50 skimming from the US government.
The generous pension of your military and police are very much a problem too.
Greece should never have been part of the Euro, in the first place: http://tinyurl.com/yzj8tzo
However the 'enthusiasm' of Goldman and probably the rest of Wall Street + [intellectually dishonest] desire from the EU Commission to have a great deal of buy-in [whatever the cost] pushed them in.
To declare interest, I'm a Brit, I worked for the commission for nearly ten years and for an investment bank in London. I don't admire or believe in either of them. I'm not a big fan of the euro, it connects everything and puts it [south and north, large and small] into a straitjacket. Indeed I'm a supporter of community currencies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... an idea that Bernard Lietaer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... also supports.
Greece is a mess, but basically this is warfare without guns. Maybe that's the future?
On y va, qui mal y pense!
Goldman-Sachs was a major player in the destruction of the Greek economy. They set up unsustainable loan arrangements and then bet that Greece would not be able to pay them off.
They pulled the same scam on US home buyers that they pulled on an entire country. They originated loans that they knew were going to default. They made money doing that. Then they sold the loans to another sucker. They made money doing that. Then the bet that the loans would fail. They made money doing that as well. In the end, both the US home buyers and an entire country were left with unpayable debts.
Goldman-Sachs was monumentally predatory. As the article says:
If you read the full article it's full of excuses why Goldman was not really a bad actor, but you must remember the source is the Business Insider, and they would happily support selling children into sex slavery if it was legal because Profit!
It's a pure swindle. Goldman had the deck stacked and the cards marked. Even a sovereign government was not up to understanding how a huge banking institution was able to manipulate the financial system to squeeze them dry and avoid any responsibility.
Why is Snark Required?
Greece is not Running Out of Money, it's going broke because it can't pay the IMF for previous 'loans. And it isn't that Greece can't make the repayments. The problem for Greece is that in order to qualify for IMF debt rescheduling, the IMF wants to impose 'adjustment measures' on an already weakened economy. Measures such as cutting the public sector, reductions in wages and pensions, increase VAT rate on food, selling of remaining state assets and suppressing labor unions. The main beneficiaries of such measures being Wall Street and US banks.
The problem is that the people borrowing and spending the money are not the ones that have to pay it back. And, vice versa, the people having to pay it back are not the ones that benefitted from the borrowed money.
A simple example: divide the debt of the US by the number of people in the US. That is what you (yes, you personally) should pay back to get out of debt. Of course, you can't as it is way more money than you can possibly pay. Same for Greece: the government and cronies got a lot of money and now the people are expected to fill the gap. It can't be done, that money simply isn't there.
Gee... where did the IMG get the money from in the first place?
They created it OUT OF THIN AIR, based on nothing. So Greece can tell 'the IMF' to go fuck themselves. Who are they? Did the people VOTE them into power? No.
Just another JEW shakedown, creating money out of thin air, and then 'lending' it to a country, so that country is then OWNED by the IMF.
And look at the number of idiots on here who couldn't even be bothered to go and look up what money actually IS and where it comes from, so haven't got a clue what they are talking about.
www.positivemoney.org
I know we speak about very large sums of money here but one wonders how much unneccesary money has been paid to Microsoft in this shape of economy while Germany etc. are all switching to Linux/ sponsoring open source projects where possible.
There is a small possibility that they can uncover dirty tricks Microsoft and similar does to "convince" goverments to "choose" their software while Linux and even *BSD does the job perfectly.
How is this on the site? Oh, now I know, it's time for the EU to fine MS or GOOG again so it can help pay for its shite I suppose...
Any day now, I expect China to ask Greece if they can buy a Greek island for $30 billion or so. The island would need to be close to a NATO base. Of course, China would also need Greece to give its ships permanent permission to go through Greek waters, in order to get to that island. Then I expect China to put a listening post there.
So China would get a new source of information regarding the US military, and would gain the gratitude of Greece.
If Greece were desparate enough to avoid default, it might sell China one if its islands.
We have ouzo, tsipouro, sun, sea and broadband
Tomorrow who lives who dies ("Aurio poios zei, poios pethainei").
We also believe in afterlife, so who gives a fuck if this one ends bad
deltaS>=0 (c.s.)
So, no, any faults I suffer are of my own creation.
Ok, I'm willing to accept your assertion that's you, and your individual circumstance, and that your statements are true.
Now what the inhabitants of Rosewood, Florida? The black inhabitants of Tulsa, Oklahoma? What about the litigants in Pigford v. Glickman? What about Ed Johnson? What about George Stinney? The Scottsboro Boys? Freddie Gray? Tamir Rice?
Can you speak for them?
"The problem with Socialism is that, eventually, you run out of other people's money".
Isn't Socialism great, you Silicon Valley leftists?
The Euro zone treaties made this situate inevitable. They prevent Greece from running a deficit or devaluing their currency in order to subsidize their economy during a down-turn.
Actually they only really stop Greece from devaluing their currency. If they stopped Greece from running a deficit there would not be this huge debt which is causing the greeks all these problems.
What benefit would an individual Greek receive that would make him voluntarily agree to pay taxes to fund this "debt"? This whole mess stinks of socialism, and much of it enforced by non-Greeks as well. What you need to do is show each and every Greek how his sacrifice to others will be rewarded with profits in the near future.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
The US always pays its debts when they are due. I think perhaps the problem is you don't understand how US debt works, and why it is a bit special:
So the most important thing to understand is the US doesn't go and beg people to give it money, rather it auctions debt. People come and purchase the debt. You can do it yourself on their Treasury Direct site. The US sells debt instruments to interested buyers. They are bid on, and whoever bids the lowest interest rate wins. The upshot is the US sets the terms of the debt instruments sold. They have a variety, some are as short as 4 weeks, some as long as 30 years. When you buy something, the terms of repayment are stated up front: What it'll pay, and when. There is no provision to cash out early, and you don't get to dictate any terms, you just choose what note you want to buy (if they are available).
This is how public debt works in a lot of countries, but it isn't how things go when you are getting loans from the IMF.
The other important thing is that all US debt is denominated in US dollars. A US debt instrument specifies how many dollars it'll pay out and that number is NOT inflation adjusted, except in a few very special cases. Well the US government also controls the US mint, which makes US dollars. So the US government can literally print money, and inflate its way in to payments. There are negatives to that, of course, but it is perfectly doable. The US controls its fiscal and monetary policy regarding its debt. Since all its debts are in US dollars, and since US dollars are the world's reserve currency, the US cannot face a crisis where it can't pay, unless such a crisis is internally generated (via the debt limit).
Not the case with Greek debt, it is in Euros and Greece doesn't control the Euro.
Finally, there's the fact that the US has great credit. Doesn't matter if you disagree that it should, fact is it does. Investors are willing to loan the US money for extremely low interest rates because they see it as a very safe investment. 4 week T-Bills have been going for between 0%-0.015%. 30-year bonds have been going for 2.5%-3.75%. Investors bid the interest rates very low because they desire it as a safe investment.
The Greek payment due is about 1 week's Apple profit (not revenue). Perhaps the Prime Minister of Greece should use an Iphone to give Time Cook a call.
With its future as a member of the 19-nation eurozone potentially at stake, a second government minister accused its international lenders of subjecting it to slow and calculated torture.
Well, yes, that is what the IMF does to the developing nations when it gets its hooks into them, why wouldn't they do the same to Greece? Germany's final solution of austerity to cure all ills caused by the banksters isn't going to help, either. Line the banksters up against a wall, withdraw from the EU, tell Germany and the IMF to go fuck themselves. Or roll over and take it up the stereotype.
Fascinating how Keyesian-something-for-nothing thinking continues to rule the day even as the end game for ALL the Central-Banking economies looms ever larger in the front windshield.
How long did it take the Euro scheme to set the stage for eventual bankruptcy in virtually all member states? You cannot borrow money into existence AT ZERO COST and loan it out WITH COMPOUNDING INTEREST into perpetuity without eventually having to deal with the reality that trees don't grow to the sky. It's simple enough math, but for some reason government schools and vassal institutions around the world continue to teach that economics is somehow exempt from the rules of algebra.
And in the case of Europe the Ponzi has run extraordinarily fast. Maybe because there was US "help" from G.S., etc. Maybe because - unlike in the US - citizens can't move from one depressed geographic region to another in order to side-step the resulting extraction; there is that little issue of language and accent+culture which restricts Greek citizens who might otherwise escape their plight (in droves) by moving to Germany and "blending in".
Anyway, it isn't that complicated. So it's kind of surprising that I'm reading so many "traditional" and unimaginative entries on this topic receiving 5 star rankings.
The sensible thing to do right now is to just print up all the money required pay off all the debts and hand it out according to need. Or at least "loan" it at zero percent into forever and *pretend* it will be repaid some day. Or just call it game over and upend the board.
If I could speak for them my comment would have included that. Thus I included only my own observations and history.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Greece has one major (and IMHO, their greatest) socio-economic problem: massive tax evasion by the rich and super-rich. Greece is a thoroughly corrupt country, and the elite has greatly benefitted from this corruption, at the expense of everyone else.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
The EU allowing countries to join who should not, as you point out with the word usury, is at this time looking like a fairly obvious game plan.
Pawn shops do it all the time.
Why not entire countries?
When times are hard, people tend to go back toward the "community" , group together to weather better the storm, a group is less likely to fail if individuals fails if other fare better and compensate. Thus the trend toward socialism/communism and other similar politics which tend to favorize the group and the lowest worker classes. It is just plain logic on the individual level.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
"They will have to pay back every dime or they will never borrow money again...."
Maybe it would be better if THE GOVT never borrowed money again. Maybe (gasp) it would be vastly better for humanity as a whole, and even society in the small, if governments NEVER borrowed money again!
Sounds radical ... until you actually think about it and look more at history.
The money banks are "loaning" is coming from nothing at this point. GS loans money to Greece which it gets for effectively nothing due to its political connections and simply because most "loaned money" is actually loaned CREDIT which isn't really backed by anything but bluff, pretense, and Ponzi to begin with (see the recent Money creation in the modern economy - Bank of England www.bankofengland.co.uk/ publications/ Documents/ quarterlybulletin/ 2014/ qb14q1prereleasemoneycreation.pdf for some enlightenment.)
If a government needs money it might as well print the money nakedly, without PRETENSE of a "loan". Yes, that will create devaluation in the currency...so what...better to face the ugliness of what is going down straight up when it can be pinned to the politicians who do the foul deed and the public which allow it. The overall cost would be lower.
It would be nice if the cost of printing money from government were that all politicians and high level (at least) "public servants" were summarily fired...but REAL public servants, as opposed to the norm of public SERPANTS, would do the right thing and take their lumps.
Anyway, humanity has been falling for the same stupid pet tricks for thousands of years. In the age of the internet lets see if humanity can develop a little more of a collective memory and a lot more wisdom.
There is an article from Greece's finance minister - Yanis Varoufakis for the current negotiations: http://www.project-syndicate.o...
did the blacks kill millions of white americans, just like millions of Germans were killed, raped and maimed cold-blooded ? Also, how many millions of white Americans were ethnically cleansed ?
Where are the Rheinwiesen camps, where pows were systematically killed by the ex-slaves ?
Making Germany pay is an act of slavery by the US Imperium, because they want to continue to own Greece as part of the Empire.
the banks OWN the fed? The Fed is NOT part of the Federal government (though it was deceptively named to give that impression).
You mock basic logic when you say the Fed is not to blame but the big banks are... that's EXACTLY what the scheme was intended to fool the gullible into believing. The Federal Reserve Bank is a private institution owned and run by bankers, to which the federal government has granted extraordinary powers in exchange for the President getting to appoint the Fed President. Neither the US President, nor the US congress has control over the Fed, and neither has even been allowed to look at "the books"; this is WHY there is a political drive to pass a law to let the congress audit the Fed. Nobody outside that small circle of bankers truly knows what they own, what they are doing to the economy, etc. We have only their word for it, and they refuse to let anybody outside the organization see any of the documents.
The Fed is probably the only actual conspiracy that need not be accompanied by a foil hat - because, unlike nearly all others, this one is both TRUE and an actual secretive conspiracy. Most American know little or nothing about this group, and yet there is a HUGE revolving door of people (in BOTH parties) going back-and-forth between working at the Fed and working in the Federal government and policies being set in secret using secret criteria at the Fed with cooperation with the Treasury (which IS part of the Federal government)
..."pensions"
There's part of the problem...just as bad as unions...
"Socialism always fails because, in the end, you simply run out of other's people money" - Margaret Thatcher. And, here we are.
Are they going to actually collect taxes to get some funds? - From what I've heard most citizens pay nothing in taxes or there are so many loopholes that they can avoid actually paying the taxes.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
You see the problem in terms of debt, but this isn't the real problem. The problem is lame, unqualified, prone-to-corrupt-and-clientelism politicians which are elected by uninformed citizens. The money of EU should be spent to increase economic and political awareness of the Greek people instead of just paying back debt or wages. The whole Greek public sector should be rebuilt from scratch. This doesn't require any "bright minds"; just copying successful (sub)systems from other countries. EU was available for help a lot during the last decades, but this wasn't leverages by the Greek system.
Fortune Rota Volvitur
That's how Russia was devastated in 90x: austerity. IMF demanded to cut budget spending without caring about real situation, Eltsyn's government caved in and thus police and judges went for many, many years without adequate pay. Guess, who really rule in Russia now? The same people who HAD to exploit their position or just starve on their $10/month salary. Those who did not want to be corrupted HAD to leave law enforcement, court system and other most important positions in government -- or lean to take bribes and to extort money from population.
Not millions, but post civil war Union leagues had organized blacks terrorizing much of the white south. The Wikipedia description of union leagues vs what actually happened is one of those hilariously disconnected descriptions that nobody is willing to put their name on correcting. It's unpopular politically in this country to ever say that organized black people have done something wrong.
Instead what we hear about is the white people who organized to stop the union leagues called terrorists and murders, as if there were no provocation. Doesn't make any of it justified, but it's not the one sided southerners are simply racist narrative that most of the country prefers to believe.
Whats the point of charging them interest. Just let them pay-back the loan when they can and within a reasonable time-frame. Why are we trying to profit from an obviously terribly run country. No-one wins in a default situation, however if you extend the horizon of the loan and offer 0% then they wont be in as much hot water.
Might as well try to mitigate as much of the damage as possible
Look, we actually have documents (go look at wikileaks, no I won't do your work for you) that prove that Germany has been instrumental in making sure that Greek milliionaires avoiding taxes aren't followed to their Swiss deposits and other tax frauds.
The only problem is that the German Banks might have to suffer a loss for Liar's Loans they made under the Goldman Sachs "promises" that Greece could be in the EEC (EU monetary combine), which even internal German audits show was known to be a lie.
The banks losing their money is what is supposed to happen when they make bad loans.
That and the lack of repayment by Germany for the war looting of Greece during WW II, which has never been repaid.
Does Greece have a strong economy? No, but it never has.
Is there massive tax fraud in Greece? Yes, but there always has been.
Is this a major risk for the EU? No, because .... wait for it ... Greece is less than 0.1 percent of total EU GDP. Total.
All the rest is sturm und drang by Reichsmarshalls in Den Stadt.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Why doesn't the US do similar kinds of transfer payments to the states?
Not millions, but post civil war Union leagues had organized blacks terrorizing much of the white south. The Wikipedia description of union leagues vs what actually happened is one of those hilariously disconnected descriptions that nobody is willing to put their name on correcting. It's unpopular politically in this country to ever say that organized black people have done something wrong.
Instead what we hear about is the white people who organized to stop the union leagues called terrorists and murders, as if there were no provocation. Doesn't make any of it justified, but it's not the one sided southerners are simply racist narrative that most of the country prefers to believe.
Old southerner here. I kinda agree with you, but for one thing.
"Not millions, but post civil war Union leagues had organized blacks terrorizing much of the white south. "
Regarding your statement, do you have any historical references for this statement?
The correct name for Greece is Hellas, and for the Greeks it's Hellenes, and for the Greek language it's Hellenic language. Greek is a name applied to us by the Romans against our desires and it had negative connotations in ancient times. We call ourselves Hellenes and our country Hellas, and our language is Hellenic. Please don't use "Greece" to refer to our country, use our correct name which is Hellas. Christina Neofotistou
It was all about the failed 'capitalism' model we see around the world since 2008. The most failed and bankrupt businesses aka banks are the most benefited ones. Too big too fail So they rule the political decisions and tax payers have too pay for loans that never touched the real economy and they can never hope to make by working hard. These casino money don't exist and therefore cannot be paid back http://m.slashdot.org/story/276409/newcomment
http://www.forbes.com/sites/st... must be understood to see the lunacy of the "medicine" prescribed to Greece.