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Greece Rejects EU Terms
New submitter Thammuz writes: With almost all ballots counted, Greeks voted overwhelmingly "No" on Sunday in a bailout referendum, defying warnings from the EU that rejecting new austerity terms would set their country on a path out of the euro. Figures published by the interior ministry showed nearly 62% of those whose ballots had been counted voting "No", against 38% voting "Yes". "Today we celebrate the victory of democracy, but tomorrow all together we continue and complete a national effort for exiting this crisis," Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said in a televised address.
Eu has been very cruel to Greece and the Greek people.
Imf and troika already admitted through internal and leaked reports that Greek debt needs to be restructured. Yet they purposely are throwing Greece under the bus in an act of financial war. (to make them fall in line through force)
Hopefully this is the first step in dismantling the unelected eurocrats in ecb and troika who are destroying the European continent.
Greece will stay in Europe and the euro but start the process of fixing the euro so that it works for the piigs too.
Whatever your opinion of her otherwise, The Iron Lady saw this coming
007: "Who are you?"
Pussy: "My name is Pussy Galore."
007: "I must be dreaming..."
The City of Detroit's property taxes are ridiculously high -- as property values collapsed, they kept bumping it up to keep up the city income, helping to drive out further business.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
"To permit irresponsible authority is to sow disaster; to hold a man responsible for anything he does not control is to behave with blind idiocy. The unlimited democracies were unstable because their citizens were not responsible for the fashion in which they exerted their sovereign authority . . . other than through the tragic logic of history. The unique 'poll tax' that we must pay was unheard of. No attempt was made to determine whether a voter was socially responsible to the extent of his literally unlimited authority. If he voted the impossible, the disastrous possible happened instead—and responsibility was then forced on him willy-nilly and destroyed both him and his foundationless temple."
-- Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein (1959)
Everybody inflates these days, because it's just easier to pass a silent flat tax on wealth than anything on earnings (realistically it's probably recessive, since the wealthy are likely to have a greater share of their wealth in investments more resistant to inflation). Modern central banks also feel an obligation to inflate their currencies at accelerated rates in times of recession. The thing is, a tourist economy is going to experience recessions that lag those of the industrialized nations where the tourists live. In this case, the industrialized nations who dominate the Euro got through their recession, sounded the all clear, and turned down the tap. Problem for Greece was, they were a couple of years behind.
"Because Science" is one step from "Because old book". Try "Because of my experiment testing my falsifiable assertion".
So various countries (including GREECE) agreed to forgive much of the debt and to offer them generous lower interest rates for the rest.
So just offer Greece the same deal we offered post-NAZI Germany.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Europe appears to be prepared to maintain the current minimal level of bank support going until the 20th (yep, these bank runs are happening even with the banks still receiving some support, just not as much as they were before). On the 20th Greece will miss a payment that will give then the grounds to withdraw the remainder of the support propping up the banks - any banks still around then will probably collapse immediately (assumedly being nationalized). If Greece doesn't resort to printing currency (whether they call it an "IOU" or not) before then, they will have to at that point.
Greece has a press in Athens to print 20 euro notes and has recently started talking about using it to make up their Euro shortfall. They're seriously playing with fire here, as that would be counterfeiting if they're not authorized to do so. There's talk about launching lawsuits to try to get the courts to grant them the right to print more euros. But how far they're willing to play that risky game if they don't get any sort of authorization... well, only time will tell. If Greece prints counterfeit euros, there's really no limit to how extreme this thing could escalate - Europe would be forced to wall off trade with Greece and even potentially travel restrictions to avoid them getting into circulation. The calm, measured response on Greece's part would just be to introduce a parallel drachma currency rather than printing euros, but Syriza isn't exactly famous for calm, measured responses. And nobody has a drachma press - it takes longer to set up a press for mass production of a new currency than one might think. Really, where this all could lead is hard to speculate....
The human body can be drained of blood in 8.6 seconds given adequate vacuuming systems.
I don't quite understand what they are cheering about. They have put themselves into this situation and really there is no good outcome now for them. They take the EU conditions and further tighten expenses (drastically) or leave eurozone and stay between Turkey, Russia and the EU. Also in the second choice (leaving the EU) they go back to Drahma and face weeks lasting deep crisis and than 5-10 years of economic recession. Really no reason to cheer in my opinion.
And for the record - I love Greece as a tourist. I've been there many times but I also recall that they have a culture of not paying taxes which in my opinion is stupid and unpatriotic. Mind you - I am Polish and here also people HATE to pay taxes - they know that their taxes are being spent in wrong ways usually, the taxes fuel a caste of mindless clerks etc. but nevertheless Polish people DO PAY taxes like VAT and icome.
For what I know the Greeks as a tourist I know that they had a culture of mass avoiding the taxes - f.e. in late 90's I were on holiday in Greece and common practice was to use credit card for payment - best bargaining method. You just go to shop, pick some wares and tell to pay with credit card - imediately they dropped the price to the minimum and begged you to pay in cash (since using credit card would produce paper trail and taxing). And it was extremely common. Also in restaurants - go, eat and then wave credit card - the payment would drop from f.e. 2200 drahmas to 1000 (!!!) with a promise of further discount the next day. Really. Not to mention thousands of not finished housed used as finished houses (another reason for not paying taxes).
I have nothing against the Greeks - I like them - they are kind, warm and similar to slavian people. But they need to learn that paying taxes is what makes you country function. They need to learn that if they are into some international community they can't lie about their finances to get a credit. And so on.
The European plan wasn't actually implemented. Basic things like, hey guyz, why don't you put together a land registry so people know who owns what? Yeah, that didn't happen. Ever. Been talked about since the 90s. Every other modern economy has one, Greece doesn't.
What about relaxing the labour rules? In most parts of the world it's possible to fire people for incompetence. In Greece, it's so hard to fire a civil servant that there is a case of a man who literally murdered the town mayor with an Uzi, went to prison ....... and wasn't fired, in fact, he continued to draw a salary whilst locked up! This is so absurd it's unreal yet, this is Greece.
There are tons of reforms that would actually be good for Greece in the long run, but Syriza seems to think every single reform is a bargaining chip.
Very badly, without a doubt. A humanitarian crisis is now looking not just thinkable but downright likely. The EU will pay vastly greater sums before the Greek crisis is over, if only because a failed state within the Schengen zone would make the current EU migrant problems look like a Sunday picnic in comparison.
Waves of starving Greek refugees who cannot afford food fleeing a country beset by blackouts and riots is something that Europe cannot afford, and thus, there is really no option but to continue massive wealth transfers into Greece. The only question is how the EU will ensure the Greek government is replaced with a proxy government, without triggering even greater problems.
One thing is for sure. All the people who voted OXI in the referendum thinking they would be taking control of their own destiny are deluded. Greece is about to fall apart. They will end up grabbing any lifelines the EU gives them regardless of how they voted.
Solidarity. Yes. I love and up your comment. I live in Poland which by Greek standards is kind of poor. I see poor people everyday, I also face hard working people daily. The ones which build up the economy on which Greece can now bargain for details - please also think about us who lend you the money. We are a community.
The fundamental problem here is that Greek pay (in Euros) is disproportionately high compared to their productivity vs other Eurozone nations'. "Austerity" is simply reducing wages to bring that wages-to-productivity ratio back in line with the EU norm. The reforms the EU was asking for addressed the other half of this ratio - increasing average Greek productivity. The growing Greek debt is created by this imbalance - people were being paid more Euros than they were producing via their labor. Greece was covering up this imbalance by borrowing, which is totally the wrong reason to borrow money. You borrow it to purchase things which will help increase your productivity so that you will no longer be running a deficit. You don't borrow it to continue to operate in arrears.
By rejecting austerity and failing to implement reforms, you don't leave many choices. The simplest is to boot Greece off the Euro. Then they can do whatever the hell they want with their economy, pensions, and pay, and it will automatically balance itself out via the Drachma falling in value vs. the Euro. You can either take a 30% pay cut in Euros, or you can switch to the Drachma and the Drachma declines in value 30% vs. the Euro. The end result is the same - "austerity". (Ideally Greece would increase their average productivity by 30% - then wages wouldn't have to drop. But they seem hell bent on refusing to do anything the EU suggests that could improve productivity.)
Well, yes and no. Most of the Marshall plan got "american" money, but not necessarily taxpayer money. And you did quite well in ensuring the EU (and specially the Germans) would not compete with you in the following decades - that's how you got the golden years of American industry - by financing out the competition. Best cars, best medicine, best computers, best everything. Meanwhile, everyone caught up. Now even Cuba is a better choice than an average USA hospital, cities like Detroit lose to Japan and Germany, and even in tech - the last remaining American bastion - loses ground everyday. If you ever studied the rise and fall of the roman empire, you can easily see the comparison. Don't pat yourself in the back just yet.
Greece was borrowing money to pay back formerly borrowed money. The U.S. is still borrowing money to do things with it (hopefully productive things). I'm a fiscal conservative, but in the current extremely low interest rate environment, it actually makes sense to borrow a lot of money to get more (productive) things done than you could do without borrowing.
The only thing you have to watch out for is that you don't borrow so much that you find yourself unable to pay it back when interest rates climb. That's the situation Greece found themselves in - as they got deeper into debt, their credit rating declined and it became more expensive for them to borrow money, which resulted in them being unable to pay back what they owed.
This is an incredibly stupid idea borne of holier-than-thou moralizing about currency valuations. You know why Germany wanted everyone in on the Euro? Because sans Euro, German exports drive the Deutschmark through the roof, German exports promptly tank, and everyone else has a fair shot of attracting investment, business and industry to setup those export economies in "weaker" nations.
The Euro doesn't work because it's an economic union without political union to match it. The currency represents a bizarre aggregate of political goals, rather then allowing the efficacy of policy in individual regions to drive it. What's really going to bend people's minds is when Greece exits the Euro and then runs a mini-economic boom on the back of cheap Drachma making investment suddenly very attractive again.
I am Belgian. Greece owes me, my wife and children over 3000 euro. We fronted it out of our taxes and if they don't pay us back, we'll pay it back out of our taxes.
You're blaming Greece for this? Why the hell did your country bail out Greece's creditors and take on Greece's debts? If your country had acted responsibly they would have let Greece's creditors fail.
The situation now is that we have Creditor A lending money to debtor B which Creditor A knows in advance that debtor B cannot pay back. So Creditor A then sells the debt that they already know cannot be paid back to EU countries. The only question in all this is: why did your country agree to this?
The people you should be mad at are the ones who bailed out the creditors. Once the loans were made to Greece, the "austerity measures" imposed +- five years ago were simply a blind to get the private creditors paid. Greece owed money to private creditors; your country (part of EU) decided to loan Your Money to Greece on condition that Greece paid back the private creditors. I feel no sympathy for any of the current creditors.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
The pensions and benefits thing is just a red herring that certain media loves to repeat. The reality is that Greeks who can't find a job, which is about a quarter of them, are extremely poor and the benefits amount to very little. Even those in work are low wages, part time hours and little hope that things will improve if they continue down the road they are on.
Their position is reasonable. Some of them voted for the irresponsible policies, but many of them, particularly the young, did not. Okay, the problem must be dealt with, but austerity is not the only way. Look at what Obama did in the US, he stimulated the economy with massive spending and is paying it off now things have recovered. Greece wants to fix its economy and get back on the road to recovery before settling its debts, so that ordinary people don't suffer unbearably.
If you want to vote "no" on your credit card bill go ahead, just declare yourself bankrupt. At some point that is a better option than trying to continue servicing your debt. No-one wants that, least of all the creditors, so why push you to that point if they can agree better terms and eventually get their money back?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
If the Greeks fucked up, then so did their lenders. Indeed, making the Greeks pay is about protecting France and Germany - Greece's biggest creditors - from the monumental stupidity of their own banks. The Eurozone forced Greek to take a bail-out in 2010 and pay off much of their private debt to French and German banks, rather than let those French and German banks go bust.
Unsustainable lending requires reckless lenders... And the EUs reaction since 2008 has been to protect those most responsible for the reckless lending - the financiers (and a small elite in Greece) - by making those least responsible pay for it.
Further, there is the mantra that it is unacceptable to default on debt. Of course, that only applies to debts owed to financiers it seems. Social debts to pensioners, who will have paid in all their working lives, and to whom there is a social contract of a (small) pension: default on them! But don't default on the financiers, never punish a financier.
The reaction to the 2008 crisis has been fundamentally inequitable, across Europe. The European people were of course always going to pay one way or another for the stupidity of the financial classes, of course. However, the financial classes have not been punished at all. They have been largely protected from their mistakes, and instead the rest of the population has been made to pay even greater prices for that protection. Usually in regressive ways too, so that the poorest have paid disproportionately more for the monumental stupidity of the financial classes.
The finance industry, globally, is out of control. It has been extracting ever greater rents from the world economy, without providing a commensurate increase in economic productivity.
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
Let's try a more real example.
You are a movie star with bad economy. You are wanted in this new high-cost neighborhood due to your celebrity status. You are audited by a firm that reports to the Home Owners Association (HOA), and the firm finds you do not qualify to live there. The HOA tells the firm doing the analysis to go eff them selves, they want you in their neighborhood. The HOA muddles the rules (as they have done for everybody in that neighborhood) and eventually you are let in. After being let it, you forge some debt numbers to impress your new neighbors. You also rent some of the rooms in your house to try to keep up with HOA fees and your mortgage.
It quickly becomes clear that your lack of qualifications might become a problem, and when there is a insect infestation and you can not afford to share the cost of pest control, its out in the open. You are not qualified. At this point, one of the attractions of the neighborhood is that it has a genuine (but broke) celebrity living there. so the HOA is unwilling to see you move out. Therefore they give you a few options.
Firstly they lend you some money at higher than market rate, so that you can pay, for a while, the HOA fees and your mortgage. You are not thrilled, but realize that it beats moving out. You are hoping for some decent paying jobs down the line, so it doesn't seem like a bad idea.
After agreeing, the HOA comes to you with a list of "austerity" measures they have. Firstly, the rooms you are renting will from now on be owned by the head of the HOA. Income goes to him. Also, that movie deal that you see coming, forget it, the movie is not according to HOA standards, so you will be not allowed to do that. Your protestations that cutting your possibility of gathering an income by 40% is going to make you even less qualified falls on deaf ears. Subsequent problems on your part and the HOA part leads to higher loans and more restrictions on your income possibilities.
Finally you point out to the HOA that you, with your current (forced upon you) levels of debt, paired with your severely restricted abilities to earn an income, now there is not even a theoretical possibility of you ever getting out of debt. The HOA director shrugs his shoulder and tells you that you are wrong, and that going forward you are to take on some more debt, and also, there will be more restrictions on your ability to earn an income. He is entirely surprised when you shoot him in the head.
You have swalloeed the PR from the German Ministry of War hook line and sinker. Stop being a useful idiot. The base cause of the problems of Greece is that they are members of the Euro zone. They never should have been. They wanted it, of course they wanted it, who wouldn't. They never qualified though, and all the governments of Europe knew. Hell, even I knew back then. Not suspected. Knew, and I'm just a regular guy.