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.

Comments

Good for greece

[Crashmarik]

One size doesn't fit all, so it should come as no surprise that a currency made for industrial nations doesn't work so well for a tourist economy.

Re:Good for greece

[Anonymous Coward]

One size doesn't fit all, so it should come as no surprise that a currency made for industrial nations doesn't work so well for a tourist economy.

Umm... that wasn't what this referendum was about. The Greeks will never accept an exit from the Euro. Even though they thoroughly deserve to be booted out.

Re: Good for greece

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Good for greece

[Anonymous Coward]

Citizen of Greece here. I absolutely want to leave the Euro.

Re:Good for greece

[Crashmarik]

All fiat currencies are inflationary, it's something of a design goal, deflation being a greater fear than inflation. A tourist economy isn't likely to be in sync with the industrials in terms of it's particular needs.

Re:Good for greece

[ColdWetDog]

Of course not, they're from Athens.

Re:Good for greece

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

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.

Re:Good for greece

[Rei]

Finally you can stop robbing the eurozone with "loans" that you never planned to repay. (And let's stop this "The loans are impossible to repay" nonsense - Greece's loans are less than the total value of its state assets. Now obviously nobody in Greece wants to sell off their assets - just to pick one category, a military without any hardware isn't much of a military. But the concept that Greece can't pay back its loans is a lie.)

Now, Greece "can't" without selling off extensive assets that nobody would realistically expect them to ever consent to selling... but the only reason for that is because Greece's worker productivity is so terrible and tax collection so pathetically low. Mind you, it's not the fault of Greek workers that productivity levels are low - you work more hours per week than most of Europe (including Germany). But you make a lot less with those hours. You have a highly inefficient economy, and the extensive tax fraud just makes it worse - businesses have disincentive to grow (and thus gain better economies of scale) because it makes it harder to avoid paying taxes. And your military is a financial black hole. Even if everyone just wrote off 100% your debt tomorrow, if you kept trying to live like the rest of Europe (let alone better, like you try to do in a number of respects), you'd be back in the hole in short order.

Anyway, enjoy having your money (both in the banks, and your salaries) devalued to a small fraction of its former value while the cost of all of your imports shoots up, without a corresponding export boost because you hardly export anything compared to the size of your economy - also, a non-Eurozone economy in chaos isn't exactly a good recipe for a healthy European tourism sector, so don't expect the tourism boost from a devalued currency that you may be envisioning. Just don't think that people are sad to see you go - they're just mad for having dumped so much money into your economy when it was obvious that you planned to weasel your way out of ever paying it back.

(Note: the Troika isn't faultless either. In exchange for loans, rather than focusing on trying to improve the raw numbers with austerity, they should have been focused 100% on trying to force you to fix your structural problems so you can be competitive enough to stay in Europe. They tried to tackle the root problem in a totally counterproductive way and ended up earning a lot of hate for that.

Re:Good for greece

[TheGavster]

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.

Re:Good for greece

[geoskd]

What do you think this referendum was about? A "no" vote is effectively the equivalent of Greece saying "We will not accept your bailout deal, so if you do not give us a better one we are leaving the Euro". Unless the EU caves, Greece could be off of the Euro this week.

This referendum was about Tsipras trying to save his political (and possibly literal) skin. His government botched this thing so thoroughly that people are comparing Greece to a third world nation. Make no mistake, The lack of a renewed bailout was what Tsipras and his Left wing group wanted. They are communists. They want the existing capitalist system to collapse so they can build a new communist organization where Greece once stood. Given all of the various options available to Greece, this might not be that bad an option all things considered, but make no mistake, The citizens of Greece are going to see a dramatic reduction in standard of living no matter what the deal on the table is, or who is doing the offering. The only things that can be done for Greece now, are to make some kind of attempt to get the money back from the wealthy Greeks who took it and subsequently tucked it away in foreign banks where the Greek government couldn’t get at it even if they weren't too corrupt to bother, and try to keep the runaway income inequality from becoming institutionalized.

The irony of all this is that the Greek people themselves created this mess by electing governments that would promise anything, and never deliver. They have demonstrated perfectly why democracy is a failure, even while being a shining beacon of it. Like any other kind of government, democracy is subject to the same corruption that is the hallmark of all bad governments. It is funny that the birthplace of democracy should be such a prime example of its most potent failures.

Re:Good for greece

[Rei]

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....

Re:Good for greece

[drinkypoo]

just to pick one category, a military without any hardware isn't much of a military. But the concept that Greece can't pay back its loans is a lie.)

Greece can't pay back its loans and basically remain Greece. You never give an order which you know will not be followed. And you should know ahead of time whether your orders will or will not be followed.

(Note: the Troika isn't faultless either. In exchange for loans, rather than focusing on trying to improve the raw numbers with austerity, they should have been focused 100% on trying to force you to fix your structural problems so you can be competitive enough to stay in Europe. They tried to tackle the root problem in a totally counterproductive way and ended up earning a lot of hate for that.

Notably, austerity tends to shut down the economy, which will only lead to further financial insolvency.

Re:Good for greece

[IamTheRealMike]

They have demonstrated perfectly why democracy is a failure, even while being a shining beacon of it.

Democracy is not a failure, don't be silly. There are lots of democratic countries that have managed to get a grip on public spending. Most obviously, Germany. Less obviously, the UK just went through an election where the party promising more austerity won a clear victory. California went through a massive crisis where they took their state to the brink due to referendums allowing the creation of unfunded mandates, but last I heard they had learned their lesson and got that problem under control. And so on, and so on.

What's more, it's not like dictatorships are all paragons of budgetary discipline. Far from it.

So whilst undoubtably there will be many further spending crises in advanced nations, democracy is not the problem - it just means a society has to learn to control their borrowing impulses as a group.

Re:Good for greece

[Lennie]

Personally I think what is worse is that the austerity in Greece is already literally the cause of death of certain people in Greece.

Re: Good for greece

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not Germany's fault that Greece didn't live within their means. And once they got in trouble they could have simply reformed by spending responsibly, cutting pensions, and accepted austerity fully. But no, they chose not to do that either. Now the mean people are shutting off the teet.

It's no different than how millions of people get into credit card debt over their heads. But the difference is those folks are smart enough to realize that filing bankruptcy is a way to move on. The Greeks? They cry (literally) and dig in their heels instead...doh!

Re:Good for greece

[blue trane]

Remember AIG and the $85 billion bailout the Fed gave it? Then remember how the Fed restructured the loan twice more, giving AIG something like $150 billion in total? Remember Neil Barofsky's testimony before Congress, that the US government made $23.7 trillion available to financial institutions during the crisis? Greece is small potatoes compared to the amounts the Fed created to bail out the very banks that are pressuring Greece now. Shameful.

Re:Good for greece

[rev0lt]

Well, they've been trying, but not even the Russians are really into it - Specially after regaining control of Crimeia and the "no" for Turkey in the EU.

Re: Good for greece

[whoever57]

It's not Germany's fault that Greece didn't live within their means. And once they got in trouble they could have simply reformed by spending responsibly, cutting pensions, and accepted austerity fully. But no, they chose not to do that either. Now the mean people are shutting off the teet.

If you lie to get a mortgage [join the Euro-zone], it's your own fault when things go wrong. What if the bank knows that you are lying? It was common knowledge that the figures Greece used to justify joining the Euro-zone were not realistic. Those bureaucrats must have known. Who is at fault now?

The real problem here is not Greece, but the precedent that it sets. There are much larger economies in the Euro-zone that may need a bail-out in the future.

Re:Good for greece

[Solandri]

Notably, austerity tends to shut down the economy, which will only lead to further financial insolvency.

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.)

Re: Good for greece

[Rei]

I'm not from Macedonia, although I know people there. Both of your sides need to read up on your history. Macedon was located between the traditional Greek city-states and the Thracian tribes (and others like the Illyrians), and had a culture and language closer to that of the Greeks but with strong Thracian and Illyrian influence (for example, they used both Greek, Thracian, and Illyrian names). The ancient Macedonians sought recognition as "Greek" from their southern neighbors, as Greece was the heart of wealth and culture; by contrast, the ancient Greeks debated heavily among themselves whether Macedonians were actually Greeks or not and many were not willing to accept them. The issue was only settled they were conquered by Philip (obviously not wanting to say that they had been conquered by barbarians ;) ) The Macedonian leaders' habits of adopting the cultures of the countries that they conquered made it a relatively moot point anyway. Macedon was near present day Thessalonica. The country of Macedonia's claim to the history of Philip and Alexander is pretty weak; they did not extend their empire particularly far up the Vardar / Axios (at the time, Illyria), and where they did they stayed near the river. However, future rulers of Macedonia did. By the time of the Roman conquest, what was Macedonia had become modern Macedonia plus modern Albania and the northern half of Greece. This become the Roman province of Macedonia, which existed for hundreds of years. Classical Greece remained its own separate entity under Roman control, Achaia.

Let's repeat: Modern Macedonia was the center of the Roman province of Macedonia for hundreds of years. Yes, they have a right to the name.

During the Byzantine times, a series of waves of Slavic invaders (the most powerful being a later wave, the Bulgars) moved into the area, overrunning not just today's Macedonia, but the entire interior of Greece. Their control of these areas lasted hundreds of years and they interbred with the local populations. Greek speakers retained control of the coasts, and eventually re-expanded back into the interior; the populations there were subsequently re-Helenized.

The area that is modern day Macedonia was subsequently traded off between one empire and the next all the way up to the modern period. Greece, after gaining its independence from the Ottomans (again, initially only in the southern portion of of what is modern Greece - the part that was traditional, pre-Macedonian-era Greece), progressively took over Ottoman lands to the north and northeast in the 1800s, expanding into the area formerly occupied by the city-state of Macedon, and even the areas once occupied by the Thracians. These areas were steadily Helenized, especially in the 1920s with the influx of large numbers of Anatolian Greek refugees - 270 thousand in Thessaloniki alone.

The basic summary of it is: there are no ancient Macedonians anymore, and nobody has a "pure" claim on the name. But both sides have ancient Macedonian "breeding". Neither speak the ancient Macedonian language (even the ancient Macedonians stopped speaking their language by the 3th century BC), although Greek is certainly closer. Both Greek Macedonia and the Republic of Macedonia are located in the heart of areas called Macedonia for centuries - Greek Macedonia being the heart of the original Macedonian empire, and the Republic of Macedonia being the heart of the later kingdom and the Roman province of Macedonia. So yes, you have every right to criticize the Republic of Macedonia's cooption of Alexander and Philip. But you're in the wrong when you try to act like they have no claim to the name.

Re: Good for greece

[murdocj]

So you are saying Greece lied, therefore the fault isn't with Greece, it's with the other EU countries? You're making my head hurt.

Re: Good for greece

[fustakrakich]

Why? It's the person who believes the lie, or knows that's it's a lie and uses it for profit that creates the problem. Liars are liars. The profiteers are criminal.

Re:Good for greece

[JeffAtl]

AIG had the capability to pay its bailout money back, Greece does not. AIG received $180 billion in loans and paid back $205 billion in 4 years.

Re: Good for greece

[FatLittleMonkey]

Germany will return to the DM, which all the sensible people in Europe will shift their savings and investments to, at which point the "new drachma", as the euro will be called then, won't be worth the paper it's printed on.

The vast majority of German exports are to Europe, and the majority of those to the Eurozone.

If Germany had a separate currency, it would appreciate relative to the rest of Europe. That would result in German exports being effectively becoming much more expensive. Similarly, with a drop in the value of the currencies (or joint currency) of the PIIGS countries, their own exports would suddenly become much more competitive and their wages much lower (without the pain of internal deflation).

That is the whole freakin' point of floating currencies. It allows effective inflation/deflation without internal real inflation/deflation, allowing the system to respond much more fluidly and rapidly. For example, German sovereign debts would have appreciated in cost (relative to other currencies), while Greek sovereign debts would depreciated sharply (relative to other currencies).

Switching to the Euro froze that, pushing all revaluations back internally, but the Eurozone failed to implement the internal corrective mechanisms that nations use (Federalised revenue and payment systems to compensate for regional downturns.)

Essentially, Germany has been gaining a huge advantage from the Euro. It prevents them pricing themselves out of the European markets via currency appreciation, while simultaneously not having to pay for failed regions within Europe. All the advantages of Euro-Federalisation with none of the costs to Germany that true Federalised economies like the US have.

Even better, Germans can play this bullshit "holier than thou" game when the system finally collapses in on itself.

Re: Good for greece

[buybuydandavis]

Interesting usage of "force": refusal to float an infinite supply of loans that will never be paid back.

The eurocrats are of course thugs, but limiting how much they'll shake down the rest of their subject citizens to subsidize Greece is not a great example of their thuggishness.

Re: Good for greece

[blue trane]

The Fed right now has $1.7 trillion in "toxic assets" on its balance sheet. In return, primary dealers got $1.7 trillion in deposit accounts at the Fed. No one else was going to lend to those dealers; they were tapped out, couldn't roll over their funding. But the Fed extended its unlimited safety net to them. Why not give Greece the same courtesy?

Re:Good for greece

[uncqual]

The Greeks will never accept an exit from the Euro.

If the ECB et al don't prop up the Greek banks w/more Euros, there will be a defacto exit from the Euro. The Greek government will have to take over the banks, but they can't pay depositors in Euros that the banks and government don't have, so it seems they will have little choice but to issue IOUs (for the sake of convenience, let's call these "Drachmas") on some vague hope that the Government/Banks will some day be able to convert these to Euros. However, until and if that day comes, the "Drachma" will become the primary currency that Greeks use for internal trade and a primary form of payment to pensioners and government employees. How much a "Drachma" is worth is anyone's guess, but a market will develop and currency (excuse me, IOU) traders will establish a value.

It won't be anywhere near as smooth as California's issuance of IOUs was some years back though.

Re: Good for greece

[buybuydandavis]

The Fed right now has $1.7 trillion in "toxic assets" on its balance sheet. In return, primary dealers got $1.7 trillion in deposit accounts at the Fed. No one else was going to lend to those dealers; they were tapped out, couldn't roll over their funding. But the Fed extended its unlimited safety net to them. Why not give Greece the same courtesy?

One bit of crony capitalism justifies the next? Some of us were against the Fed's bailouts too.

Re: Good for greece

[BradMajors]

No one forced Greece to accept the IMF and EU bailout. Greece could have restructured its debt before its bailout, but decided against it. Somehow I am missing how the IMF was cruel for offering loans to Greece and then expecting to eventually get the money paid back.

Re: Good for greece

[Bing Tsher E]

And I guess the Greeks can all start driving cars made by Greek car companies. If there aren't enough Greek automakers, maybe they can purchase the intellectual property from whoever owns the Trabant designs. Probably somebody in Germany, actually.

Re: Good for greece

[ultranova]

The eurocrats are of course thugs, but limiting how much they'll shake down the rest of their subject citizens to subsidize Greece is not a great example of their thuggishness.

However, putting fiscal policy based on ideology and dreams of building a new gold standard over the wellbeing of people is. And will likely be the death of the entire EU at this rate.

Re: Good for greece

[guardiangod]

>Eu has been very cruel to Greece and the Greek people.

In much the same way a rehab clinic is cruel to drug addicts.

Before you say that rehab clinics don't withhold living essentials (eg. food) from drug addicts, have you considered asking EU for those items, instead of asking EU to 'give us free money' (by way of forgiving loans).

I think, at this point, they would rather give you living essentials to shut the pensioners up, instead of giving them any more money.

Re:Good for greece

[Kohath]

AIG claims they paid all the money back and more. Is it true? Polifact says mostly true.

Greece may or may not be small potatoes. But what's the Greek plan to pay anyone back?

Re: Good for greece

[blue trane]

You should. The Federal Reserve Act specifically mentions loans to individuals. I think it was the Populists who got that put in; William Jennings Bryant wanted a Federal Reserve Bank at every crossroads, lending to ordinary people. That can easily be incorporated into the Federal Reserve's operations.

My proposal: have the Fed fund a basic income at zero cost to taxpayers. The Fed could structure it under Section 13 (13) of the Federal Reserve Act, as loans to individuals with negative interest. Thus, people would be paid to borrow. Give everyone who wants it, a basic income of $20,000 per year.

Indexation of all incomes to price rises eliminates any potential inflation tax. If incomes rise in lockstep with prices, your debit card can keep track of your money in units of purchasing power, which will not decrease.

The point about the Fed's unlimited swap lines is that they worked to keep their targets afloat. Now the Fed should apply that power of creating unlimited liquidity to improve individuals' lives, instead of only helping corporations.

Re: Good for greece

[Hognoxious]

Why would a comment like that be modded down?

For using the word troika twice without knowing what it means, and talking utter crap with no basis is economic reality.

Re: Good for greece

[khallow]

My proposal: have the Fed fund a basic income at zero cost to taxpayers. The Fed could structure it under Section 13 (13) of the Federal Reserve Act, as loans to individuals with negative interest. Thus, people would be paid to borrow.

Inflation is how taxpayers would pay for this "zero cost" proposal and it wouldn't be zero cost in reality.

Indexation of all incomes to price rises eliminates any potential inflation tax.

My take is that it would just create elevated inflation, perhaps even hyperinflation - where the money in question has no use as a store of value.

Now the Fed should apply that power of creating unlimited liquidity

The Fed doesn't have that power.

Re: Good for greece

[Aighearach]

Why? It's the person who believes the lie, or knows that's it's a lie and uses it for profit that creates the problem. Liars are liars. The profiteers are criminal.

Excellent job paraphrasing the Greek position. However, don't expect the bankers to forgive loans on the basis of, "it's your fault you loaned it to me, you should have known I was lying."

It is a rather funny position. If you attempt some long-term thinking and address the problem without country names, it should be pretty obvious that without the loans they would be poor, and they're guaranteeing increased future poverty by refusing to live within their means. Even if you believe in the moral position, it should be obvious that the bankers won't agree, and won't give handouts on that basis.

Total fail even if you agree with the position! That is some seriously deep fail.

Re: Good for greece

[Aighearach]

There was a documentary showing that EVERYONE knew that Greece didn't meet the qualifications to join the EU, but the expansion drift of the EU of that time didn't care at that time.

If that is what some unnamed "documentary" claimed to show, then we can tell it was just horse shit without even viewing it. I'm guessing that the claims were actually somewhat different, or it was so obviously bad that it isn't worth naming it.

I'll give you hint: Anybody who tells you what "EVERYONE knew" is full of shit.

Re: Good for greece

[cavreader]

The people and government entities who provide the money are not humanitarian operations. Loans and lines of credit get calculated and approved by evaluating the risk of getting the money paid back. Germany is a much lower risk than Greece is. Greece's government have bungled these negotiations at every turn. The "intellectuals" and "progressives" trying to manage the government are discovering that standing in the street loudly protesting the government is easier than having to actually manage the government. The elected government got swept into power by promising to magically make their debts disappear. They let their political demagogues exhort policies that are pure fantasy. If the Greeks think their economic situation is bad now just wait a few months. When you renege on billions of dollars of debt the country will find it damn near impossible to gain access to the global capital markets.

Re: Good for greece

[hjf]

That's borderline communist...
Wait, no. That's outright communist!

That's the thing I LOVE about america: communism/socialism is EVIL, but their public school system is great (yeah I don't care for anecdotical stories of how bad a particular school is. Overall, it's great). But they can't really use government money to build things, or to pay for R&D like most other countries do. So, they use loopholes: their military, for direct government-funded R government aid for companies that build "privatized" infrastructure, like roads (after all: the government isn't building a communist road, it's just "lending" money to a private company -- through a private bank, hopefully. Ah, the american dream). They're also super protectionist through loopholes (price dumping via agricultural subsidies, "diseases" that don't allow for certain produce to enter their country, etc). But they're the first ones to shove free trade agreements down third world countries throats.
Geniuses, i'd say

Re: Good for greece

[goose-incarnated]

And I guess the Greeks can all start driving cars made by Greek car companies. If there aren't enough Greek automakers, maybe they can purchase the intellectual property from whoever owns the Trabant designs. Probably somebody in Germany, actually.

That's actually the point of separate currencies - prices stabilise to reflect value in a single economy. With a separate currency (Say, DM vs Drachma) the exchange rate would float to reflect the difference between the economies, and german cars would effectively be priced out of (most) Greeks budget, thus opening a market for local manufacture.

Like I keep saying in every post on this subject, it's in Greece's best interest to leave the Eurozone, while it is in the EU's best interest to keep them in. The EU will give up a lot before they let Greece leave - they lose too much in a grexit.

Re: Good for greece

[lakeland]

Let's continue whoever57's analogy.

Your family have lived in a house for generations. A few years ago the house needed a bunch of work adding rooms and generally upgrading it to fit your new status as members of the respectable middle class. You didn't have the cash but you had the status and rates were cheap, so you took out a bank loan to cover it. As that loan came due, your husband lost his high paying job and had to take a cut.

So you begged with the banks and eventually they agreed to lend you more money, but at a higher interest rate. Paying more interest on less money is tough, the house continues to need work to keep it in good repair and you continued to not quite make ends meet. You go to the banks and beg for more money so you can keep paying the interest and repairs but the banks say no, they say you need to live within your means.

You promise to do that, and you quickly 'adjust' your finances to show how it's all going to work out. The bank sees through the farce immediately but he's a greedy fellow and with you agreeing to add 200 more basis points onto the rate, it's gotta be good for him. If you default, your cousin will probably cover it anyway so it isn't much risk.

You keep struggling, and you have to beg the banks for money every month. This starts to annoy and worry the banker, so he starts taking an increasing interest in your life. Don't do a good repair here, just leave the window broken... Don't send your kids off to uni, educate them at the local community college. These things save a little cash, but they also lead to you having to spend a whole lot more time looking after the house instead of making money. Even worse, your kids having a lower level of education means they can't get such a high paying job to help out which is a real problem since your grandparents have now retired and are moving back in.

You get desperate and crawl to the bank begging for more and more. They look over the situation and say, well, maybe, but you have to cancel all expenditure. House repairs, who needs them? Further education, completely abolished!

You hold a family conference. What to do? Give in to what the bank wants and destroy your family's future? Or default and have the bank potentially take possession of your family home. Put like that, it isn't such a hard call, you tell the bank to f. off and wait too see what will happen.

Who's at fault? You for living beyond your means? Yep. You for lying to the bank? Yep. The bank for accepting such an obvious lie? Yep. The bank for loaning money to someone that couldn't possibly pay it back? Yep. The bank for insisting on austerity measures that will have a negative long term fiscal impact, yep.

Does that help?

Re: Good for greece

[gnasher719]

Why is there no production capacity shortage to keep Greek pensioners at a decent standard of living?

The problem really is that 57 year old German workers don't want their money, earned by hard work, going to 57 year old Greek pensioners.

Re: Good for greece

[terjeber]

It may be hard to understand, but in reality it is quite simple:

Greece never qualified for entry into the EUR. Ever. Eurostat said this again and again. The politicians of EU demanded, again and again, that Eurostat revise its numbers so that Greece would qualify. In other words, EU politicians were going to get Greece into the EUR no matter what. Greece also desired this, but so did France and Germany. To the extent that they eventually threw the rule book out and admitted Greece.

Side note - some will point to the Goldman Sachs situation where they "hid" EUR 2.8bn in Greek debt, which was a dubious move for sure, but it had no impact on Greece joining the EUR. People bring up this all the time, but it is in fact irrelevant. Greece had already been admitted into the EUR when Goldman Sachs pulled it's magic, and it had no impact on Greece being inside or outside of the EUR.

So, the non-qualified Greece is let into the EUR and things start going sideways quickly. Partly because the EUR is not a suitable currency for Greece, but also because the ide of the EUR is fundamentally retarded in the first place. You can have a single currency in an area with a single fiscal policy, a single central bank and (in effect) a single minister of finance. This means that you can have a single currency when you have a single foreign (and mostly domestic) political scene. In other words, Europe got it ass backwards. You can't use a single currency to create a cohesive singe federation with a single government, you can have a single currency after you have a single federation with a single (mostly) government. Europe is not ready for that solution, and probably won't be for at least a century.

Now, things are moving sideways in pear-shaped boats, and we hit the financial crisis of 2007-08. Basically, incapable of adjusting by using fiscal policies, Greece completely collapses. Given the above, this is inevitable, and the main cause of the collapse is that Greece has no real control over its fiscal policies - in other words, the Greek collapse is mainly caused by them being in the EUR and not having its own currency. Thanks to German and French politicians who wanted this despite the idiocy of it. Under pressure Greece begs for help. It doesn't get any. It's given loans. That's like giving new credit cards to a kid that has just over-drawn five of them. Its idiotic, moronic and seriously counter productive. It also comes with serious strings attached.

What does Germany do after Greece basically has collapsed and begged for help? They lend money to Greece, with strings attached. "You gotta buy three submarines from us". "You have to buy five frigates from France too". In other words, not only do EU do the decidedly moronic thing of lending Greece money, they also force Greece to spend up the wazoo with their new credit cards. This is not only unhelpful, it is basically tantamount to a declaration of war. The added debt is used to force Greece to sell of national assets to German and French companies. So the war makers are now getting their grubby hands on Greek property and national assets without firing a shot. Finally, by forcing Greece to take loans and implement austerity measures that are designed to ensure Greece can never grow its economy, Germany makes sure that there is no practical way Greece will forever be slaves to their European overlords.

This crisis was caused by Germany and France forcing Eurostat to "change the rules" to let Greece in. It was exacerbated by instead of helping out when the crisis hit, they made it worse by forcing more debt on Greece and forcing austerity measures that are designed to prevent economic growth.

Angela Markel is missing two personal features, a curiously stiff right arm and a silly little mustache, but other than that, she handles Greece in the way Germany always thought Greece should be handled. Angela is also using monetary measures rather than paratroops to terrorize the Greek citizenry, but that is a technicality.

Re: Good for greece

[terjeber]

Who said the Eurocrats believed what Greece told them?

The Eurocrats (represented by Eurostat) never believed Greece, or, they did, since the reports out of Greece always said that Greece was unqualified. The politicians of Germany and France would not accept that that was the answer though. The politicians felt that it was important to let Greece in no matter what. The "rules" where therefore altered again and again, and even though Eurostat clearly stated Greece was not qualified, they were let in.

There is in fact no reason to think that Greece lied, the rules were so muddled and riddled with exceptions etc that it is quite probable that the Greek ministry of finance actually thought they qualified. Perhaps they even did.

Some might bring up Goldman Sachs at this point and how they helped Greece hide about 2.8bn in debt, but that move is irrelevant since it occurred after Greece was admitted into the EUR.

Re:Good for greece

[AmiMoJo]

What the EU is proposing won't increase productivity, it will decrease it. Many Greeks don't have any kind of health insurance any more, for example. An unhealthy workforce is not very productive. No money to buy modern equipment, low wages and high unemployment making people unable to afford to spend and keep the Greek economy moving.

The Greek government is proposing a big increase in productivity and growth, rather than more austerity. Some people doubt they can do it, which is fair enough, but what the EU is proposing it not really a fix, it's just more austerity.

Re: Good for greece

[Mostly a lurker]

I think much of your analogy is flawed, but accepting it at face value, the correct move now is to sell the house that is inappropriate for the family's financial circumstances, and move into an apartment or much smaller house. If this solution is refused, the creditors (in this situation, I am sure the family has other debts) are within their rights to seize the family's assets, including the house, and leave the family to fester.

In most countries, there is a bankruptcy process that can ameliorate the consequences somewhat. There is no bankruptcy process for countries so, if they upset their creditors too much, they can expect truly unpleasant consequences.

Re: Good for greece

[terjeber]

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.

Re: Good for greece

[terjeber]

refusal to float an infinite supply of loans that will never be paid back

You have, without looking at facts, swallowed the German War Ministry's PR entirely.

Some reality - most of the "loans" issued to Greece (about 80%) have been used, not to assist Greece, but to shift German and to a degree French banks debt from the private sector to the public sector. In other words, the money didn't go to help Greece but to support failing European banks and their bar private sector investments.

There are two main goals behind this, to salvage what was basically bankrupt European banks that were "too big to fail". In addition, by forcing Greece to use the "loans" to purchase to a high degree German the funds have also been used to support low unemployment in Germany. No, Germany hasn't escaped the horrors of the financial collapse mostly unscathed due to German financial sobriety but through blackmail of poorer countries who wants to stay in the EUR.

Imagine - when Germany wants sobriety within Greek spending, that does not extend to the point where Greece does not buy five German submarines. It also does not extend to the point where Greece does not spend money on French frigates or military helicopters. According to EU-MPs, the Greek bail out was contingent upon Greece purchasing military supplies from Germany and France.

Re: Good for greece

[njnnja]

The real Greek position, which no one will say in public because there is too much national pride at stake, is that the bankers (i.e. Germany) *should* give handouts to Greece on a moral basis. Germany doesn't have any particular obligation to, say, New Zealand, and so the idea of German taxpayers shoveling a bunch of Euros to the Kiwis each month is kind of ridiculous. But for completely non-economic reasons, the "European Core" such as Germany and France *want* Greece and other poorer, less productive countries (like Portugal) to be part of the "European Project." Greece does not have the resources, such as a highly productive, skilled, and educated populace that Germany and France do, so Greece does not naturally fit with Germany and France and that is the source of the disagreement.

Germany then says, "If you cut your pensions, reduce corruption, and collect taxes you will be more like Germany and then we will all fit together."

But Greece says, "That may help in the long run but 1, if you want us in your project so badly then you must give us financial support (handouts) in the form of fiscal transfers, and 2, we are Greece and don't want to be Germany."

So they all kind of want to stay together, but Greece wants a monetary and fiscal policy that enables them to maintain a high standard of living, while Germany wants every country to be rich so that changes to monetary and fiscal policy are unnecessary.

Re: Good for greece

[allcoolnameswheretak]

I'm sure that corruption in Greece (the highest in the Eurozone) huge, ineffective government, people not paying taxes, lots of people receiving dubious benefits and tax exempts, high military spending, on average 10 year earlier pension age than EU and comparatively high pensions compared to richer nations have absolutely nothing to do with Greece problems.

It's all Nazi Germany's fault.

I hope for an agreement

[faragon]

Nationalism is the main threat for destroying the European Union. And that is not going to be good for the Greek people, not for people in other countries. Is a win-win vs lose-lose situation. Please, everyone, more brain and less nationalism.

Re:I hope for an agreement

[Lennie]

There might be a chance Greece will leave the Euro. But the chance they'll also leave the EU is a lot smaller. Don't confuse the two.

There are political reasons Greece is part of the EU, those will not change.

Also when Greece leaves the Euro Greece will default (the other EU members will not get their money) and the Greece economy collapses even further. After which the other EU members will burn up more money so they can help the sick and needy with aid like medicine, food and other supplies.

Yes, it's strange the Greece economy is part of the Euro-zone and has the same monetary system as the rest of the Euro countries. It should not have happened in the first place because only similar economies should be part of the same monetary system otherwise you can't use the currency to at least have some control of your monetary system.

But I'm not so sure GrExit really is a great solution. Because it won't give the creditors their money back. And the current austerities are already the cause of death of certain people in Greece right now, let's not make it a lot worse.

Good

[hsmith]

The Greeks can't seem to come to terms with reality. It is for the best of the EU they are booted. Clearly they don't understand austerity is necessary, they want their free shit to run on forever. Sadly, their free ride has broken down.

Re:Good

[caladine]

Actually, they clearly understand that simple austerity isn't going to correct the situation. The last 5 years of austerity have made the Greek debt burden even more impossible to shoulder rather than less. Greek debt needs to be restructured into something that is actually sustainable in addition to structural reform of the Greek economy. That's the deal that the EU should have on the table.

Re:Good

[Zapotek]

You're right in general, but regarding the remark about gettings things for "free"; can we switch the generic "Greeks" to "Greek politicians"? Because us Greeks in general have gotten jack shit for free, if anything, we've been paying for everything twice.

Free health care: passing doctors money under the table to get them to work on you.
Free education: Having to spend tons of money and time for private tutoring.
(In both cases, with a crumbling infrastructure.)
Democracy: Pretty much the same stacked 2 party system as any other nation, with extra corruption sprinkled on. I'm talking about major parties, not nutty ones with inconsiderable amounts of supporters. The currently governing party did shake things up though, broke the 2 previous major parties' taking turns, not sure if that is for better or worse, we'll found out in a few days.

And it's not like we've had it easy on taxes either, middle class families having their income taxed in half and paying out of pocket for all the things those taxes should have bee going to in the first place.

Re: Good

[Anonymous Coward]

"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)

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like my boss - I don't get paid for a minimum of 4 hours a month, I don't get paid for my breaks but have to work through them, I don't get paid any of my legal entitlements.

Wait, that just can't be right! He's a hardcore rightwing voter, and a multimillionaire. He wouldn't take money from someone for work they did.... but he did... does not compute does not compute error error....

the only logical solution to the matter is that laziness has less to do with wealth than you'd think.

Time to accept that, chump.

Re:Good

[Zapotek]

Also, as an addition to my previous comment, you should have said 60% of Greeks "can't seem to come to terms with reality".
40% of us tried to be reasonable and play it safe with a matter of such importance.
I know gross generalizations sound cool when you're on your soapbox, but give credit where credit's due (pun intended).

Re: Good

[Zapotek]

That did happen, but it's not like anyone had a crystal ball. It was that we had all seen the results of the 2 major parties' work over the decades and they kept making matters worse. A change was needed. Who the hell knows what's going to happen now.

Not even the people in charge do, from any side. Obviously the austerity measures that have already been implemented had a negative impact, making it impossible for the country to grow economically and pay its outstanding debts.

This is a seriously complicated and screwed up situation and everyone just keeps blaming everyone else (and depending on who you ask, even themselves).

Re:Good

[geoskd]

Actually, they clearly understand that simple austerity isn't going to correct the situation.

Correcting the situation was never on the table. Greece F***ed up royal, and now the time has come to pay the piper. Their creditors insisted that they had to implement austerity to stop spending more money than they had in exchange for temporary loans. The alternative is enforced austerity vis-a-vis no more money to spend. Period. One way or another, the Greek people are going to balance their budget. Their apparent unwillingness does not change the fundamental reality they have to face. The other countries in EU, ECB, IMF are / were under no legal obligation to bailout Greece. Now, thanks to the Syriza governments popularly mandated behaviour, and their wholesale destruction of the Greek economy, Europe no longer has a moral obligation to Greece either, and there is nothing much more that Greece can do to financially harm Europe. The Damage has been done, let the Greeks drown in it.

Re:Good

[AchilleTalon]

Explain why a structural reform of the economy cannot be performed in parallel with austerity. Greece owe 300 billion euros to other european countries and there was 390 billion euros on the table to sustain Greece until 2020. That's the deal they refused. Explain us how Greece will now find someone willing to lend them more money at better conditions than the dead deal? How this referendum result has given Greek govt a better position to negociate with its partners?

Re:Good

[geoskd]

But it was all good-and-well when Greece, amongst 20 other nations, forgave Germany a massive swathe of her crushing debts following World War 2 [news.com.au]

The alternative was to set up the exact same conditions in Germany that lead to the rise of the Nazis. The German people are an industrial people. Much like the Americans, the harder you try to keep them down, the stronger they become. Had the Allies not saddled Germany with crushing debts post WWI (a war which Germany did not start mind you), there could have been no rise to power of the Nazi party, and would probably not have been a second world war.

Germany’s debts were unjustly forced upon them as a result of loosing a war for which they had only marginally more responsibility than any other nation. Greeces debts are the result of internal mismanagement. In spite of that, the other nations of Europe including Germany had made concerted attempts to help Greece. Like a concerned parent however, a condition of the assistance was / is demonstrating fiscal responsibility by not wasting the money. This was especially important given Greece's well earned reputation for corruption. The European nations had absolutely no desire to line the pockets of the corrupt in an attempt to help the Greek people. Greece promised a lot of things, but failed to deliver, and is being petulant about it to boot. Time for some tough love. Cut them off, and post signs at the borders: Let that be a lesson to you.

Re: Good

[IamTheRealMike]

Obviously the austerity measures that have already been implemented had a negative impact, making it impossible for the country to grow economically

At the time Syriza came to power the Greek economy had started growing again, albeit slowly, and the government had a primary budget surplus. This was despite that many of the obvious reforms Europe wanted hadn't been done.

Yes, the economy had shrunk a lot. No surprise - a big chunk of the Greek economy was simply jobs programs created by the state in order to buy votes. No way to fix Greece without jettisoning that part. But the reforms are mostly common sense and if Greece had stuck with them, the turnaround that was underway could probably have continued. But - they voted for Syriza instead. Syriza immediately started undoing the reforms of the previous government and, guess what, pushed Greece further under water.

Re: Good

[Zapotek]

I'm not any kind of authority on the matter, nor have I done any non-trivial research just what I see on the news and what I've gathered by talking with people here, but some surpluses that we got to see in the papers occasionally were a direct result of the austerity measures.
By that I mean something akin to firing 30% of your employees and then showing the investors all the money you managed to save, given a few more quarters the actual repercussions of that decision would become clear, i.e. lower productivity, eventual net loss.

Yeah there were more money in the country's coffers for a while, but it wasn't due to economic growth. Most people here who've managed to keep their jobs work a lot more than before with little to no pay (and I mean 6-8 months of no pay) and not leaving because if they do they won't be able to find another one, and just hope that the situation will improve and they'll eventually get paid. That's the opposite of growth.

And the equally occasional improvements in the national stock market (few points up every now and then) get undone soon after.

I could be wrong though, you may have a different source of information for what you said. Just letting you know what I'm seeing from the inside.

Re:Good

[brantondaveperson]

Greece F***ed up royal, and now the time has come to pay the piper.

You speak of Greece as though it were not comprised of people. What do you think the Greeks will do if they 'drown in it'? They won't stay within their borders, and it most assuredly will not be pretty. We, as humans, will have a moral obligation to do something about what will happen to the people of Greece. That is very likely to be much more expensive than solving the problem today while Greece is still a country.

Re:Good

[FlyHelicopters]

What's the difference? No one is going to lend Greece money because all of Greece's money is being taken by the Troika. Greece will be able to borrow more money once they leave the Euro for the same reason a person who declares bankruptcy is able to run out and get far more credit than before they wiped out their debts,

Leaving the Euro doesn't wipe out the debts. There is no bankruptcy for nations.

Greece is taking a huge gamble, the EU might cave, or not... If it doesn't, Greece is totally screwed...

I'm willing to bet large numbers of people voting "no" don't actually understand that.

Re:Good

[Paul Jakma]

Because the debt is not sustainable. It will leave the Greek economy with huge interest payments that will cripple its economy for decades to come.

It is in Greece's interests to at least significantly restructure the repayments (much longer terms, with 0 interest on much of it for significant periods). Ultimately, they can do this unilaterally - "default" - in which case they might as well give themselves the best possible terms.

The vast majority of debt is owed to EU member states and institutions, and France and Germany in particular. It suited France and Germany for Greece to take on massive public debt in a bailout in 2010, because a good chunk of that money went to repaying *French* and *German* banks which risked becoming insolvent and collapsing otherwise - as Greece didn't have the money. The 2010 bail-out was as much, if not more, about saving *French and German* banks as about bailing out Greece. Indeed that bail-out broke IMF rules, but the IMF made an exception because of the exceptional systemic risk to global finance and the fears of another Lehman Brothers like collapse.

The sane solution for Greece in 2010 would have been to privately negotiate debt restructuring with its creditors, and unilaterally restructure payments where ever agreement couldn't have been reached. However, Greece was instead heavily pressurised by the rest of the EU to *not* do the sane thing, but instead take on *more* debt, because some of its creditors might have gone bust had Greece done the sane thing. Greece did this under pressure, and took this on to *save European banks*. Its own banking system got about €48 bn, to recapitalise, and its government got perhaps €20 bn to €30bn for operational needs (though even some amount of that went on financing costs).

Greece has been made to pay, very heavily, for the mistakes of the French and Northern European banking sector. Further, those who were *least* responsible for this crisis in Greece have been made to suffer the most - the poor, the young. This is fundamentally unfair.

Greece acted in solidarity with EU partners in taking on this bailout of, largely, *OTHER* European banks. The bailout was simply too big to be sustainable for the Greek economy, which has collapsed amid one of the largest recessions ever seen in the modern world. Instead of acting reasonably and recognising the solidarity the Greeks showed in 2010, several EU nations have - cowardly - instead tried to paint this as all the fault of lazy Greeks, which is an objective falsehood.

The EU *needs* a deal with Greece, because, as with all the previous deals, they are protecting *their own* banks, above all else. The Greeks now are saying any such deal also has to stop punishing them.

Re:Good

[Xest]

That's one explanation. A more simple and succinct explanation though is simply that Greece agreed, legally, that the debt was settled decades ago.

So it really doesn't matter on any of the reasoning, Greece was happy with that settlement back then, and when you sign a legal document agreeing to a settlement you don't get to renege on it decades later when it suits otherwise frankly Athens owes the world an awful lot more for the many ancient Greek conquests.

When a debt is considered settled, it's considered settled, end of. We don't need to argue reasons for Germany not paying Greece more, Greece agreed a legally binding agreement that it doesn't expect and wont ask for more from Germany in war reparations and that's the end of it.

Re:Good

[Charliemopps]

You talk a lot about Greece here... what about the EU? Why would they take a loss on this debt?

Lets talk about it on a personal level....
Lets say I was your neighbor and lost my job. I came to you and said "I lost my job, my mortgage is due, I need to borrow $2000!"
You might think "Well, I don't want the house next door to me to foreclose on me, it would affect my houses value" so you loan me the money and say "Ok, but get yourself a job"
So the next month rolls around and I still don't have a job and not only can I not pay you back for the last loan payment, I want to borrow another $2000. Are you going to loan me money again? Not only are you questioning your original decision, but now I turn around and accuse you of extortion for expecting me to get a job. You mention that I have a very nice car, why not sell it? And so I canvas the neighborhood telling all our neighbors what a jerk you are... telling me to sell my car... it's not my fault I was laid off.

The fact of the matter is, restructuring the loan... what you're talking about... wont matter. Greece still doesn't have a job. They do not have enough GDP to sustain their spending, period. Their government is one of the largest, most expensive in the world. Huge swaths of the public live on government pensions. Most people don't pay taxes, especially the wealthy. The EU could forgive all of their debt today, and Greece would still go bankrupt in a few years. Nothing in this situation is the EU's fault, other than the fact that they shouldn't have given Greece the loans in the first place.

Drop the hammer on them.

[Anonymous Coward]

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. Now, I am all for social solidarity... anybody who has spent time here in Belgium knows how easy it is for an IT worker to do independent contracts under the table. I declare all of my side activities and pay my taxes specifically because I believe in helping those who are down on their luck.

But solidarity is a two-way street. Greece was bailed out once, in 2010, in exchange for reforms. They were slow in reforming and in 2012 we had to bail them out again... and they still haven't reformed and here we are in 2015 and they want more money. The reforms that our governments are asking are not onerous. It basically comes down to "don't spend more than you can pay". The Greeks for some reason seem to think that the rest of the Eurozone should pay for armies of useless bureaucrats and pensioners whose median pensions are higher than ours make more than my parents. Now, Greece is small and strategically important, so maybe every Belgian should just give them 600 euro and call it a day.

But then Podemos in Spain will be asking for the same thing. Then the Five star movement in Italy will want their free money. I'm sorry, but fuck you guys. I work my fucking ass off to support my family and my countrymen. Greece threw my good will in my face. They can go become lackeys to the Russians for all I care, fight a civil war, I don't care. I hope my government refuses to give them another cent.

Re: Drop the hammer on them.

[IamTheRealMike]

Second, in Greece there have been traffic budget cuts, and everything was fine according to what was asked, it's just that the European plan was futile

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.

Re:Drop the hammer on them.

[hey!]

"Drop the hammer on them."

That's the easy part. The hard part is dealing with what happens after the hammer has been dropped.

Someone once said that the definition of a bad policy is one that leads to a place where you have nothing but bad options. I believe everyone (not just the Greeks) thought back in 2000 it woudl be good policy to bring Greece into the Eurozone. But now we've now reached the point where otherwise rational people are talking about "dropping the hammer", as if having an incipient failed state in Europe is a small price to pay for 600 euro in your pocket. The frustration is understandable, but the the satisfaction of dropping the hammer on Greece would be short-lived -- possibly on the order of weeks depending on the scale of financial disruption.

The unhappy truth is that bad policy choices fifteen years ago means all the options available today lead to long-lived, complicated, and expensive consequences.

Re: Drop the hammer on them.

[geoskd]

Dude, I am greek and I work in Belgium, previously in the Netherlands, and you are so, but so wrong. If anything, the amount of time Belgians spend at work is ridiculous, even more compared to employees in Greece. They work so little, that we actually make fun of them. In fact, I don't even know where Belgium finds the money, as practically the state spends on everything there, from social security to public health. Second, in Greece there have been traffic budget cuts, and everything was fine according to what was asked, it's just that the European plan was futile. So, please spare me the melodrama, especially given that you come from Belgium. People used to say that Americans are ignorant. At least, the average American cannot afford to go to the uni, plus they're ignorant of things on different continents. What is the excuse of the Europeans, who seem to have been so brainwashed, without even traces of critical judgment?

The judgemental attitude comes from the same place it comes from in America. In the US, a large portion of the population is vehemently opposed to welfare of any kind. The idea being that if someone needs money, they can damn well work for it. If they don't earn as much per hour, as someone else, tough luck. At the end of the day, the idea is that the free market can and will sort things out. Long term, that attitude may or may not be good fiscal policy, but it is easy to understand, and even easier to justify, after all they are the people actually earning money...

In answer to your statement about time spent working, there is a measure for that.. Funny that the top 10 nations on that list have close to double the productivity of Greece, including France which has a huge handicap by virtue of unemployment rates that rival some third world nations. In spite of that, the Greek pensions are higher than the European average! The reality is that The Greek GDP does not justify those pensions. Good bad or indifferent, the Greek people should expect to take a 40% paycut (including pensioners) based on the numbers that I have been seeing. This is simple standard of living math, and this is the reason the IMF and EU have been so hell bent on austerity and have been targeting pensions specifically. The GDP numbers in the link above mean that the Greek pensioners on average should be getting 20% less per year than their counterparts in the "northern" European countries. That means they should expect to give up a very large portion of their income. One way or another, when the well spring of money dries up, they *will* be taking that paycut.

Re: Drop the hammer on them.

[bloodhawk]

I wish you knew how ignorant you sound. Go do some research on where the greek debt came from and where (or should i say to who?) the "bailout" money goes (incl the interest) and you will understand.

Is this a serious post? Greeks loaned money and can't repay it and somehow it is the fault of those that lent them the money? that is some serious shit you a smoking. No matter how you twist this the problem was created by Greece, enabled by greedy bankers sure. but WHAT THE FUCK were they doing taking out huge loans to fund a lifestyle choices like low retirement ages, huge military and public service, lax tax enforcement etc etc.

Re:Drop the hammer on them.

[goose-incarnated]

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.

Re: Drop the hammer on them.

[IamTheRealMike]

Just go read the news articles on the front page - it's not finished, they're still building it. Been dragging their feet for decades.

Re: Drop the hammer on them.

[Alien1024]

- Retirement age is a myth. Average has historically been higher than the EU. For example, Eurostat data for 2005: 61.7. Higher than the EU and Germany.
- Huge military: maybe. I hope NATO doesn't bitch and moan if they downscale. Greece is at a key geopolitical location, sitting at the edge of the West's sphere of influence.
- Public service: used to be true, not now that they have grinding austerity. The Greek people have paid many times over.
- Tax enforcement: there's no discussion it has to be improved. In all fairness, it's nowhere as bad as commonly thought (with tax revenue at 39 percent of GDP). The standard VAT at 23% is crazy, by the way.

Re:Good deal!

[phayes]

Well goody for Greece where a majority thinks that that they can vote themselves out of responsibility for borrowing themselves into a hole. Now it's the turn of everyone else in Europe to decide whether to continue throwing good money after bad. The Greeks claim that the banks & everyone else are the problem. We'll soon see how well they do without either.

Re:Greece is a republican's wet dream.

[Anonymous Coward]

People only in their dreams are US Republicans not actually the most servile, rule-bound people on Earth. You have to look very hard to find another country than Greece where the population does essentially what it likes and fuck the govt. Everything from taxes to road signs is a suggestion in Greece.

The only reason Greece would be Republican's dream is because it's a fine example of what happens when socialists finally run out of other people's money.

Citizen of Belgium here

[Anonymous Coward]

Citizen of Belgium here. That is totally cool with me. Please pay back the 660 euro per person that you owe us on your way out, though (in Euro, not Drachma)

Re:Citizen of Belgium here

[Anonymous Coward]

Translation: My government and my country's banks exhibited an utter lack of fiduciary responsibility. Please help me continue to deny their responsibility.

Re:Citizen of Belgium here

[AchilleTalon]

Well said. Greece owe about 300 billion euros to other european countries that put together the plan to help them, this money is owed to ordinary citizen. Greece still need more money because the budget is having a negative balance. Who and at which conditions someone will be ready to lend more money to Greece now?

Apparently they voted against austerity. They may soon discover the one ahead is manifold worst than what was imposed upon them by the European Union so far.

Re:Citizen of Belgium here

[OrangeTide]

Thanks for the translation, it was all Greek to me!

Re:Citizen of Belgium here

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh. As a Dutch citicen I say everyone got what they deserved.
The EU beurorats let in a country that clearly has no business in the EU.
Banks and countries lent money to a country that clearly had no possible way of paying back.
Now they want their money back, and greece wants the handouts to continue.
Yeah, that's not how it works.
When I give a begger some money I do so with the understanding that I won't get it back.
But if he keeps asking for more I'll get pissed and stop giving.

Re:Citizen of Belgium here

[Anonymous Coward]

...the plan to help them, this money is owed to ordinary citizen.

It takes two to Tango and it takes two to make an irresponsible loan. The irresponsible creditors who loaned Greece money in the run up to this mess were the ones who really benefited from the bailout (otherwise Greece would have simply defaulted and they would have lost everything). If anything, it's Greece's creditors who should be paying back the rest of Europe for the bailout.

Re:Citizen of Belgium here

[Maxo-Texas]

Don't "loan" money to people without the ability to pay it back.

This money was gone a decade ago and many saw it then. You will probably never get back more than 66 euro per person- if that.

From the greek perspective-live misery the rest of their lives and sell away all their national treasures permanently was what was at stake. It was really a "peaceful" conquest by germany and the wealthy. I'd have said "screw that" too.

Re:Citizen of Belgium here

[blue trane]

How quickly you forget the unlimited swap lines the Fed opened for European banks, including the ECB, during the most recent financial crisis. You would be insolvent now if it weren't for the Fed's largesse, yet you criticize Greece for asking to borrow a tiny fraction of the amount you borrowed? As Bagehot said, "Men of business have keen sensations but short memories."

Re:Citizen of Belgium here

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh cry me a river. Our country was completely ravaged in both those wars (ever heard of the fields of Flanders or the battle of the Bulge?) and we're not crying about war reparations. Why? Because it is over. I was not alive then, you were not alive then, probably your parents weren't even alive then. World War II's impact on your economy is astonishingly small compared to all that has happened since.

You have countries in Eastern Europe with lower standards of living than you loaning you money out of solidarity. That you refuse to pay us back, and try to wave your moral obligations away by trying to appropriate the suffering of people long dead is disgusting.

Re:Citizen of Belgium here

[lakeland]

And what, make a whole heap of European bankers really rich?

Those loans were made irresponsibly, to a country that the bankers knew could not afford to repay them. The people who made them didn't expect to get paid back by Greece, they expected to get paid back by another EMF bailout of Greece.

Yeah, some responsibility lies on Greece for taking money they couldn't repay, but I think more lies on European bankers for giving Greece money they knew couldn't be repaid. It's time for Greece to default, have its debt wiped and be left to recover. That will mean some European banks lose a lot of money. If that's your money, then perhaps you should have thought about that before you lent it to someone clearly unable to avoid bankruptcy.

Re:Citizen of Belgium here

[ganjadude]

come to america, people are still complaining about things that happened 150 years ago!

Re:Citizen of Belgium here

[Lennie]

'funny' fact is, it's a US-bank that started this whole Greece in the EU thing.

Obviously it could only be Goldman Sachs and they made a lot of money on this.

People have been dying in Greece because of budget cuts for more than 3 years.

This really needs to stop.

Re:Citizen of Belgium here

[LynnwoodRooster]

The population of Germany was about 10 times that of Greece. The typical German got about 40% of the typical Greek.

And we Americans financed the whole thing. You're welcome.

Re:Citizen of Belgium here

[geoskd]

Central banks are not funded by taxpayers. The IMF for example was funded by the US in a budget-neutral manner, as an exchange of assets. Translation: the IMF's money is created out of thin air. That the IMF won't give Greece any of their created money is shameful, sociopathic, criminal, and utterly unnecessary.

That is just plain asinine. Money doesn't come from nothing. Even wall street isn't that far out of touch with reality. If there is value there, it came from something. Consequently it is funded by something. Even if the money was printed and then given to the IMF, the moment the money was printed, the value it has came from devaluing all of the other money in circulation. In the case of the IMF, it is funded by the countries that are its members

Re:Citizen of Belgium here

[kosmosik]

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.

Re:Citizen of Belgium here

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, you just don't get it do you? You don't get to appropriate the glory or suffering of your (supposed, claimed) ancestors and assign blame to the (supposed) descendants of another group of people that wronged your (supposed, claimed) ancestors. That world view has a name: nationalism. It is completely and utterly discredited (largely by the Nazis in the second war) as an effective paradigm within which to govern the world. It is furthermore pretty well discredited by anthropologists, historians and geneticists.

If you insist on taking a nationalistic world view that prizes historic myths over reality, please feel free to pay the Anatolians eleventy gazillion gold coins in reparations for the sack of Troy. Since there are a bunch of Turks living in Germany today, you can send their share directly to the German government. I am sure that in the name of bureaucratic efficiency, the Germans would be happy to accept payment in the form of you never talking about the WW2 thing again. Meanwhile I am Belgian and don't really care about your beef with the Germans.

Now, we are back where we began. I am Belgian and I loaned you money out of solidarity. You are not going to pay it back even though you could if you chose to. That is disgusting and I hope my government does everything it can to make a pariah out of you.

Re:Citizen of Belgium here

[Foobar of Borg]

come to america, people are still complaining about things that happened 150 years ago!

Well, I'm still angry that everyone seems fine with the treason Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, and the others committed! Yes, the Royalist patriots will rise again! First New England, then the rest of the USA!

Re:Citizen of Belgium here

[rev0lt]

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.

Re:Citizen of Belgium here

[lakeland]

*shrug* You can't? I'm pretty sure it was bankers doing it.

And... do you really believe the bankers lending them the money didn't know?

Re:Citizen of Belgium here

[JeffAtl]

Getting your news from a Michael Moore "documentary" is not really a wise idea.

Re:Citizen of Belgium here

[PopeRatzo]

Those loans were made irresponsibly, to a country that the bankers knew could not afford to repay them. The people who made them didn't expect to get paid back by Greece, they expected to get paid back by another EMF bailout of Greece.

Not just irresponsibly, but with predatory intent.

The IMF is a payday loan outfit. They're a loan shark who's happy to lend your restaurant money to stay in business with the hope that when you can't pay, they'll burn you down for the credit default swaps. The IMF are some of the evilest SOBs on the planet.

Re:Citizen of Belgium here

[buybuydandavis]

I'm confused... who held a gun to Greece's head and forced it to accept this plan to "screw" them?

The Greek government.

Re:Citizen of Belgium here

[mjwx]

Greece LIED/MANIPULATED their financial reports to get credits. You can't blame banksters for that.

What you meant to say is the creditors failed in their due diligence to ensure the information was accurate and correct.

Its not as if Greece hasn't got a history of corrupt and less than honest government.

This is a huge shit sandwich that should be eaten primarily by the creditors but we all know is going to be passed onto average people who had no part in the decision making process.

Re:Citizen of Belgium here

[gl4ss]

and if they had been forced to cut their pensions etc earlier?

greece just took debt for a decade and used it to pay for social benefits they had no money to pay for and to pay for a military that's way bigger than they need.

and now the government is saying that somehow, magically, this all can continue with them staying in the euro. the only way they can continue to pay their pensions, benefits and state servants(including military) is going to start printing drakhmas, which will subsequently inflate like there's no tomorrow.

Re:Citizen of Belgium here

[Electricity Likes Me]

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.

Re:Citizen of Belgium here

[Aighearach]

You're talking about banks in the U.S.A., right?

Signed,
a Canadian.

Newsflash, our government bailed out our own banks... within our means! No loans needed. No foreign bailouts requested or accepted.

Re:Citizen of Belgium here

[Noah Haders]

I thought it was the promise of pensions to all and retirement at 50. Hint: you need to balance your books, whether you're a mom-and-pop store or a nation.

On a different note, I'm voting NO on my next CC bill. That will work, right?

Re:Citizen of Belgium here

[davester666]

I think the real problem for the EU was when they effectively 'nationalized' Greece's debt. Before all the bailouts, Greece's debt was held by some other government organizations, but also a bunch of private companies [banks, private companies] that knew Greece was in trouble and charged them high interest rates because of it. Then, when Greece started having problems paying them back, the EU stepped in, just kicking the ball down the field by spending their citizens money to take over Greece's obligations.

This referendum should have happened 5 years ago [it would also have been a smaller problem].

Re:Citizen of Belgium here

[slashdot_commentator]

The banksters knew Greece lied & manipulated their financial reports. They asked their gov'ts, "So, can treat them like Eurozone members in fiscal matters?", and the politicians said "yes". And the banksters thought "Great! I'll run up a quarterly profit here, and if Greece can't pay up, the central bank (German taxpayers) will bail me out."

Re:Citizen of Belgium here

[AmiMoJo]

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?

Re:Citizen of Belgium here

[Afty0r]

Translation: My government and my country's banks exhibited an utter lack of fiduciary responsibility. Please help me continue to deny their responsibility.

This.

It's hard to convince your average European citizen what ACTUALLY happened to "their" money which went to bailout Greece - it actually went to Greece and then within days returned to European banks, predominantly French and German (a few others, but French and German banks account for the vast majority of it).

YOUR MONEY DIDN'T GO TO THE PEOPLE OF GREECE, IT WENT TO THE SHAREHOLDERS OF DEUTSCHE BANK AND BNP PARIBAS. IT WENT INTO THE BONUSES OF EXECS AT COMMERZBANK AND CREDIT AGRICOLE.

If Greece defaults on its' loans, these banks and their shareholders are out a ton of money - like an actual ton of money whether you weigh it in Gold, Diamonds, whatever. It was even worse a few years ago - before recent regulations requiring banks to deleverage and store more capital, a total Greek default would have brought these banks to their knees, some did not have enough liquidity to stay open if Greece defaulted on all it's commitments. Nowadays it's not QUITE so bad, but a lot of rich people stand to lose a lot (from their balance sheet) if Greece defaults.

The average Greek person might be a little more lazy and corrupt than others in Northern/Western Europe (see retirement age, hours worked, estimated percentage of people paying correct amount of income tax) but this situation is not all their fault. Their old government cooked the books and flat-out forged documents to get into the Euro, then started borrowing and spraying money around with a hosepipe.

The people who loaned them that money are to blame - they failed to do their due diligence and now their investment is at risk they have found a way to make all of us citizens provide free insurance for their investments.

Make no mistake, this is the fault of incompetent bankers, and almost identical to the banking crisis bailouts of major banks, except that this time the money changes hands briefly before arriving at the banks.

Greece should never have been allowed to join the Eurozone for so many reasons - the quicker they get out the better for everyone, but it will be a rough ride for a year or two in Greece, and we will need to pay them to keep migrants out - but that's OK, we've done that elsewhere...

Re:Citizen of Belgium here

[WhatHump]

Most of the Marshall plan got "american" money, but not necessarily taxpayer money.

Umm, all money is taxpayer money at some point.

Re:Citizen of Belgium here

[njnnja]

You are confusing money, value, creation, and notional. Not everything that has value is money. And the notional of derivative contracts is not the same as its value. If we make a bet on a coin toss for $100, we have created $100 of notional, not of value, and we have certainly not created $100 of money.

Re:Citizen of Belgium here

[whodunit]

Now even Cuba is a better choice than an average USA hospital,

Only on Slashdot will you find someone so fucking stupid that they will regurgitate the propaganda of a Communist dictatorship without blushing.

Pay Your Debt!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now they seem to be wanting a 30% discount on their debt. Funny that!
You give up now the 30%, and tomorrow they will put together another act like this to have another 30% cut.
Never negotiate with Debt Terrorists!
There are rules to be in the Euro zone. Nobody forced anybody to accept those rules.
If Greeks now they finally came to reality that retiring at 50yo might lead to shortage of pension funds, and they want "discounts", they should be booted out of EU.

Re:Pay Your Debt!

[drinkypoo]

Never negotiate with Debt Terrorists!

Fully agreed! Bomb the IMF! Even their name sounds like a terrist organization. International Monetary Front

Re:Good deal!

[fustakrakich]

The failure occurred within the banking structure itself. The irresponsible people were those selling junk portfolios. Iceland took the proper path in this matter, and everybody else should follow suit. I don't fall for that right wing schtick of blaming poor people who actually need help.

Maggie was right

[kimanaw]

Whatever your opinion of her otherwise, The Iron Lady saw this coming

The consequences

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not think the voters realize the consequences of the vote they just made. They voted to not accept the terms of a bailout which was asking for slightly reduced government spending and slightly more taxation of businesses in Greece, who have been simply not paying taxes due for decades.

This will result in Greece leaving the Euro and presumably the EU as well or at least reduce it to whatever status UK has. They have their own currency.

Greece will have to print its own currency again and distribute it via physical and electronic means to replace Euro holdings within Greece. Here's the rub. Based on current exchange rates with similarly situated economies fiscally, the exchange rate is likely to approximate 60% of the EU to $G or whatever they call it, probably the Drachma.

So people will have 40% less standard of living in exchange for a patriotic rant yesterday.

Once they realize this by experience they will seek a referendum as they have done several times recently, changing parties each time to try to change things. They didn't change. Greece has 50% unemployment, total public assistance, low tax collections, early retirement, and other factors that make zero financial sense, which is why they have debt several times their GDP and a credit rating of CCC, the lowest.

Greece will be monitizing debt, devaluing the currency and generally lowering the standard of living at a rapid pace much like the Fed does in the US at a steady pace by forcing 2% inflation. 10% less buying power every 5 years!!

Greece will lose 40% currency value overnight and an additional 3-6% for year into the forceable future, and owe the existing debt to EU until paid, payable with deflated currency exchanging to a powerful EU currency, a double cost repayment. Welcome to your future. You chose it.

JJ

Single currencies never work

[Anonymous Coward]

Single currencies never work. Just look at the disaster that is the 50 disparate states sharing the so called "US Dollar".

Re:Good deal!

[alvinrod]

Greece is screwed either way. We can argue about blame all day (and there's plenty to go around) but Greece is not Iceland. They keep voting for more bread and circuses and then collectively refusing to pay taxes for it. If they go back to the Drachma, the government isn't going to suddenly get their shit together and fix the country's problems. They'll just end up printing more and more money and drive the inflation levels out of control.

Meanwhile, the US debt keeps piling up, up, up

[davide marney]

Borrowing, who cares? Federal government spending is on auto-pilot to increase dramatically over the coming decades. When the feds run out of borrowing capacity, they will have no where else to turn but to raid people's investments. We are just as bad as the Greeks. We don't want to pay for our government, either.

http://www.usgovernmentdebt.us...

Re:Meanwhile, the US debt keeps piling up, up, up

[Solandri]

We are just as bad as the Greeks.

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.

What they are cheering about?

[kosmosik]

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.

Re:What they are cheering about?

[kosmosik]

> So you're proud to be paying taxes spent in the wrong way? Congratulations on being part of the problem.

Yeah I love people who tend to bend words tho their liking. I KNOW that in my country I guess that about 20% of taxes that I pay are spent wrong. But the other 80% are spent for pensions for elderly people (it is called generational agreement), for my FREE health care, for the roads I use, for police and firemen that keep me safe, for FREE education and so on. In general the notion of taxes is OK with me. So congratulations on not getting the facts right. Go on and invent somekind of larger society without the need to contribute to it. Please go on. Teach me.

I hereby ascertain the bankruptcy of Greece.

[Qbertino]

Idiots. The whole corrupt and incompetent lot of greek politicians. They frauded their way into the Eurozone and have been dragging their heels ever since. This whole Syriza stunt was the very last straw. They were the worst. They could've gotten real reforms on the way - they had the mandate by the people. Instead they kept fucking and bullshitting around, squandering the very last bit of good will with every gouvernment in the Eurozone. Even Italy is pissed - which actually is quite amazing in itself, because they're are almost right up there with Greece when it comes to mal-administration.

They could've gotten away easy - now they'll be left to their own devices.

At least it's a clear "No" by the people. Better a clear NO that a whishy-washy YES. Tsipras can use this to get some real internal reforms on the way. ... Although I doubt he will.
Well, at least we can finally make a clear cut. No more money for free for all. No more bizarely overpaid early pensioneers and nepotism. The Eurozone should finally cut their losses, have Greece move back to the Drachma and prepare for humanitarian help, like food supplies and such - at least that money won't be wasted.

Lets finally put the ECB goodies and candy to work for nations who are actually pulling their weight and can use a little help aswell, like some baltic nations.

My 2 eurocents.

Re:I hereby ascertain the bankruptcy of Greece.

[Moridineas]

I have a question for you. The few times I have been in Europe specifically for business, the businesspeople in Switzerland and Belgium who I met with spoke rather derisively of the "southern Europeans." Certainly from the comments on Slashdot today there seems to be a lot of anger and, from my perspective, prejudice (justified or not is another question) against the southern European countries. The southern European countries also seem to just be doing what they've always done.

So my question is--given this, why did banks lend so much to Greece? This seems to me as criminal as the subprime loans in the US.

Re: I hereby ascertain the bankruptcy of Greece.

[Qbertino]

Hey, thanks for your honest question. ... Wow, nuanced political debate coming up on slashdot - interesting! ...
I hope this answers your question:
I have absolutely nothing against any country or folks in our outside of Europe. And, funny clichees aside, I don't think anybody in Europe has anything against Greece or Italy or any other country. Most Europeans love Europe in its entireity. And also each country on its own, especially the differences. Europe would be quite a boring place if it weren't for those.
As for Greece, no problem at all. I would love for Greece to be a merry member of the Eurozone with no more problems than Germany at the moment. Part of this whole charade being such a waste is that we actually have enough problems in Europe without one country causing so much trouble.
The big problem though is that Greece has been living off emergency (!!) loans for quite some time now and has been unwilling to execute even the most elementary and pressing reforms. Their administration hasn't even started trying! To me and many other observers it seems that the Greek aren't really aware of how dire their situation is. An exit from the Euro is long overdue and I see absolutely no problem with that. Denmark and Norway have both kept their currency and AFAICT they're doing just fine. It's a drag to trade currency when I visit them, and I'd rather not have to, but I'll live and I still like to visit them and take the trading thing as an excersize.
As a currency, the Eurp is a tool. It's supposed to facilitate easyer trade amoung European Countries and move their economies closer together. The implementation of the Euro is buggy, no doubt, and it could've been done better. This Greece thing is an exception no one thought of, for instance. ... Well, except those who've been warning everybody else for years that is.

Bottom line:
Greece has to get its shit together, one way or the other. Just about now is the right time to call it quits and have Greece take the other way. At least that seems to be the broader opinion within the Eurozone and I can't blame them.

Re:Give them the same terms they gave Germany

[CrimsonAvenger]

So just offer Greece the same deal we offered post-NAZI Germany.

Including the occupying armies for the next half century?

Re:Good deal!

[IamTheRealMike]

We'll soon see how well they do without either.

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.

Re:Honour to the Greek People

[AchilleTalon]

Pretty silly. They owe money to other European citizen, not to banks. The banks are just the convenient intermediate here. They owe a total of 300 billion euros to other european countries. I don't know how devaluation of the drachma will help here, there is a limit on the amount of olives and feta cheese I can eat. Getting paid in monopoly money won't help neither to reimburse any debt in euros. And you are wrong, they have no budget surplus now. They still need to borrow money to meet this month's end obligations.

Re:Good deal!

[rev0lt]

Iceland took the proper path in this matter, and everybody else should follow suit.

Bullshit. I've worked for companies valued bigger than the GDP of Iceland. They're like a speck of dust in the EU windshield. Even Greece, its like 2% of the total GDP of EU (and almost two orders of magnitude above Iceland). Citing them as an example is the same as saying that smalltown city X is awesome because they connected to their people and solved bankrupcy problems. It doesn't scale to real situations.

Austerity fails again

[sjames]

It doesn't help that Greece was forced into an austerity plan in their last bailout. Essentially that kicked off a death spiral. Austerity has already been well discredited (see here, here, and here. Original paper here) yet it keeps being foisted off on citizens everywhere.

I'm not suggesting that Greece should spend money like a drunken sailor on leave, but following a faith based economic theory even after it has been disproven (even to the satisfaction of the writers of the original paper) is not the answer.

Re:Austerity fails again

[sjames]

You'll need to do some googling, I can't teach a full econ class here. But the TL;DR version is that every country that tried austerity has recovered more slowly than every country that didn't. That and the entire justification for austerity was in that one spreadsheet that turned out to have a glaring error.

Re:Austerity fails again

[rch7]

You can't really recover when you were spending foreign borrowed money for years without consideration. No way you can return to the same spending level, it is simple math. The US is completely different from Greece, and all these political columnists from N.Y. Times are having in mind US first, even if they talking about some other countries. Greece is just 2% or so of EU GDP, it is more like individual person in the EU, rather than country relying on internal consumption.

Re:Austerity fails again

[tlhIngan]

You'll need to do some googling, I can't teach a full econ class here. But the TL;DR version is that every country that tried austerity has recovered more slowly than every country that didn't. That and the entire justification for austerity was in that one spreadsheet that turned out to have a glaring error.

While true, you have to remember that the creditors were demanding austerity. Basically the creditors were telling Greece that the only way that they'd lend any more money is if Greece cut back its profligate spending.

If you switch to say, the US, creditors know that the US has far greater assets and far more people are interested in investing in the US that creditors don't have as much economic power.

You are correct in that austerity generally screws over the economy - see the Great Depression, and the intense spending and printing money that the US Treasury did helped pull the US economy out far faster. (And thankfully, the right part was in power to do so). However, that's because the US has the ability to borrow money REALLY cheaply because so many creditors want to invest in the US. The US also has a far better credit rating so creditors know they have a good chance of getting their money back.

Greece is different. People aren't so willing to invest. Pretty much all the institutional investors aren't giving Greece money. So the only reason Greece is getting any money is because the EU is being forced to prop them up, with little to no expectation of getting repaid. And they're demanding the government cut back because the government is spending more money than the economic activity they can generate.

In a more microeconomic sense, it's like spending more money than you earn. You'll eat through your savings, and many creditors will lend you cheap money at first. But continue on and if they see your debt approach your assets, they'll stop lending to you. You can still borrow, but now you're in the predatory lender category where you're basically renting to own at hugely inflated priced. You know, where you spend $50/month to rent a $500 PC for a couple of years before you own it. And miss a payment and it's repo time and you lose all your "equity".

The US is in the former category - they're basically balancing the books and have lots of assets. Greece is in the latter. And with the chaos caused by the past few weeks, they've effectively said "screw you" and the economy is in shambles. The only sector that still has promise is tourism, and even now tourists are seeing problems. Paying for stuff electronically may or may not be successful (because there's a run on the banks, withdrawals and transfers are limited, and Greeks need cash, because it's very hard to convert a card payment to cash).

Re:Austerity fails again

[sjames]

Carpenter sells hammer to make loan payment, income goes away and loan payment still due next month.

Clearly, do nothing isn't the answer but quit your job isn't the answer either.

Re:Give them the same terms they gave Germany

[rev0lt]

So just offer Greece the same deal we offered post-NAZI Germany.

It was done already. Both partial forgiveness and extending deadlines, that no other country got. Get your facts straight. And in the end, it wouldn't matter, at this point. They lied in the Euro reports to get onboard (yah ,everyone manipulates numbers, but they were obvious artists) to hid the problem. And in 10 years, they'd be - again - at this point.

Re:Maggie was right, so were the comedians

[Anonymous Coward]

James Hacker: Europe is a community of nations, dedicated towards one goal.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: [laughs]
James Hacker: May we share the joke, Humphrey?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Minister, may I?
[sits]
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Let's look at this objectively. It is a game played for national interests and always was. Why do you suppose we went into it?
James Hacker: To strengthen the brotherhood of free Western nations.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Oh, really. We went in to screw the French by splitting them off from the Germans.
James Hacker: Well, why did the French go into it, then?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Well, to protect their inefficient farmers from commercial competition.
James Hacker: That certainly doesn't apply to the Germans!
Sir Humphrey Appleby: No, no. They went in to cleanse themselves of genocide and apply for readmission to the human race.

Re:A Plan for Greece To Stay in the EU

[Zapotek]

I do the same rant/joke too, although in mine I also suggest selling a couple of islands, we've got like a bazillion of them. They're already running like crap, generally neglected, bad infrastructure, people with cardiac episodes being flown in super puma helicopters to nearby islands where there's a doctor.

Sell a couple to the EU, the Germans can build and run things, the French, Italians and locals can handle the touristy stuff, hell I'd move there permanently.

What's the Greek government's end-game?

[RogueWarrior65]

I'm curious to know what their end-game is. Let's say that the E.U. let's them out of the Euro. What international investor is going to want to risk their money in the country particularly if the government is capable of confiscating other people's money? They've already defaulted on their debt to the IMF. Are they hoping that all of their creditors will decide to forget what they're owed? Even if they all did that, does the country have enough domestic wealth to run itself without outside help?

A big opportunity for the rest of Europe!

[fustakrakich]

All EU citizens should demand a referendum asking if the taxpayers should pay this 'debt' created by derivatives and fraudulent market trading, or tell the bankers to write it off, suck it up, and never again be allowed to put depositor funds at risk on this commodities shell game ever again. And I have no trouble using some form of asset forfeiture against them to recover some of the stolen funds.

printing more money

[gl4ss]

that's what the greek people expected to happen. just printing more money.

NOW essentially what the goverment can do is to tax all money that is being held in greek accounts, almost the same as just printing new money.

they can't just print more money since they're in the euro, but the people still expect (and syriza promised to !) to pay money as usual. they expect that the government pays out more money than it has because that's "democratic".

also a confusing ballot is democratic according to syriza.. with an unlawlully short campaign time to boot. not that it matters, the cash is going to run out anyways. it's like the prime minister and finance minister either deliberately try to run the country into a crisis or they don't have even cursory knowledge of how things work.

Re:printing more money

[hjf]

Back in 2001 here in Argentina the government couldn't print more pesos than what was in the central bank reserves as US dollars. Provinces needed money (because some provinces subsidize others through federal taxes). So what did most provinces do? Print their own "money": bill-sized bonds with face values of 2, 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 pesos. The federal government responded by printing their own bonds. So basically every province had their own "quasi-currencies" that were valid only within their boundaries, and they were accepted at a value of 80-90% face value, and only up to a certain amount for your shop (usually up to 50% in bonds). (Except LECOP, the federal bond, which was accepted at full face value up to 100%).
These bonds had (I think) a 10-year payout at 3% yearly. They were largely forgotten when Argentina exited the "convertibility" system that tied the Peso to the USD, and the bonds were "recalled". People quickly traded their bonds for true Pesos at the bank. But of course, the banks kept these bonds and cashed them 10 years later.
This is one of the possibilities for Greece, assuming Greece has any sort of local production to feed their people (Argentina does. We don't need to import food, but we do import most other things)

and here we have the real reason

[rsilvergun]

Greece is getting thrown under the bus, "austerity". Aka lower living standards for the working class. It's already " live within your means " with you people. The Greeks weren't living the high life. A bunch of Rick asshats were passing bad debt around during the housing boom and Greece got caught holding the bag. If a big country like Germany had done it no harm no foul. It was too much for Greece though. And the powers that be are gonna use this to steal a bunch of old v folks pensions.

Re:and here we have the real reason

[Aighearach]

Well gosh, I don't see how refusing to "live within your means" will get you living above your means even after your credit rating hits 0 and you can't borrow other people's money.

Moralizing gets you what? It gets you living withing your means, because nobody will loan you anything. ;) Oh, and a crashed economy too. And decades of poverty.

Borrowing everything you can to live outside your means doesn't get you the good life. It increases your poverty. It decreases the "means" that you have to live by.

People think when we say to "live within your means" we're engaging in some sort of moralizing. We're not. It is a physical statement. It is like saying, "eat within what you can get your hands on" or "eat what you can grow or buy or earn or otherwise acquire." Live within your lifespan. Walk within your speed capabilities. Don't bite off more than you can chew. Fly within the flight capabilities of your aircraft. You can't get a free lunch.

Blaming the Germans for your poverty won't put any food on your plate.

Re:and here we have the real reason

[gtall]

Hmmm...you mean life isn't fair? Have you told anyone else about this?

A country is a big insurance policy...when it operates within its means. When it doesn't, then it is a large unhappy family because SOME family members were thinking only of themselves and not the rest.

Morals, or more accurately, ethics, are inescapably tied to economics. One has to accommodate and pay restitution for sins of the past. The sins of the future must be prevented by ethically thinking ahead for the future of the country. Greece wants to ignore the sins of the past and ask forgiveness without taking responsibility. They also want to sow the sins of the future by claiming the ethics necessary to avoid them are beyond anything they can do.

That said, the Euro politicians aided and abetted the behavior of Greece. And for that, the rest of Europe will pay one way or another. It matters who you elect to office. The U.S. has similar problems with politicians who refuse to pay for the past deficits in spending and won't acknowledge future debts, all on some misguided belief that that OTHER party is mainly at fault.

Re:and here we have the real reason

[Lauriy]

I don't think the Greek really worry about decades of poverty. Most of their economy has always flown under the radar. Someone who honestly declares and pays all taxes off their profit is an anomaly in Greece.

Plenty of differences

[Sycraft-fu]

A big one is just that the US controls both its currency and its monetary policy (meaning taxing and spending). That manes that it can take the steps it feels necessary to deal with loan repayments, such as increased inflation and/or a weaker currency. It doesn't have to convince other countries of it, it runs the currency.

An even bigger one at this point is that the dollar is the world's reserve currency. Things are settled in dollars on the international stage, meaning that the US can't have a current account crisis. It makes the dollars, things are paid for in dollars, so it can make more dollars to pay for things. It is unique in that situation. While it could change, that is how it stands.

In fact, that is part of the reason the US is able to borrow so much, and in some ways needs to. People and nations want to put their money in what they see as a safe reserve, and the dollar is one they seek. To make that possible, the US has to issue debt instruments. They have to be able to buy US dollars.

Yet another difference is that the US has high tax compliance. Most people in the US pay their taxes. There are those that cheat or outright evade, but they are the minority. That, combined with a generally quite low tax burden (compared to most first world nations the US has very low taxes), means that raising taxes in the US is a very valid strategy. People won't be happy, but they'll pay. Greece has real issues with tax avoidance which makes tax increases problematic.

Still another difference is in what the economy produces. Despite what you may have heard on whiny online sites, the US makes a lot of stuff. It is the #2 producer of durable goods after China, and only slightly. It builds lots of things that others in the world want. A good example would be microprocessors. Both Intel and AMD are US companies, and Intel fabs most of their newest CPUs in the US. The chips that run most computers in the world come from the US. Makes the economic situation rather different than a place that relies heavily on tourism.

Finally there's the issue of who owns the debt. Most of the US's debt, about 65%, is owned by the US itself. Of that a large part is intragovernmental holdings, and then debt held by the federal reserve. Of the nations that do hold US foreign debt the two largest, Japan and China, do so for strategic reasons to keep their currency cheap compared to the dollar and thus have a strategic interest in keeping that debt. Greece on the other hand, owes most of its debt to other countries.

It is far to simplistic to look and say "Oh this is all the same!" Public debt is actually a pretty complex issue.

Citation needed

[UpnAtom]

You'll need to do some googling, I can't teach a full econ class here.

Not least because you're hopelessly unqualified.

But the TL;DR version is that every country that tried austerity has recovered more slowly than every country that didn't.

Please list these countries that had a choice about austerity, and which countries you're comparing them to.

That and the entire justification for austerity was in that one spreadsheet that turned out to have a glaring error.

You seem to have missed the slightly more obvious justification of avoiding a debt spiral.

Next Steps for Greece Detailed Here:

[goruka]

The steps that Greece will take from now on, for those who don't understand enough economics:

1) Greece will leave the Euro
2) Their currency will be devaluated to stop avoiding losses (and the price of Euro will match savings and demand)
3) They will most likely set trade restrictions
4) Eventually, their balance will go back to being positive
5) Once balace is positive, Greece will renegotiate with the majority of entities it owes money to, and will end up paying back less (their debt titles allow this, unlike Argentina)
6) They will never return to the Euro, unless their GDPPC makes it worth it, but this (how much a country likes to work and produce (or has natural resources) vs how much it likes to import) is a cultural/natural thing and can't be forced on people.
that's it.

Goldman Sachs

[scsirob]

When Greece joined, they claimed to have a 3% or below deficit. It turned out to be more than 15%. Goldman Sachs helped them to cook the books. So there's multiple parties to blame. Greece for weaseling themselves into the eurozone, Brussels for turning a blind eye, and Goldman Sachs for committing large scale fraud. In the end, none of the responsible people will be punished. In the end, taxpayers in Europe, both the Greek and the rest of the Europeans are holding the bag. It is by design.

Re:Goldman Sachs

[terjeber]

Goldman Sachs did no such thing. The number cooking Goldman Sachs did occurred after the qualifications and had no impact on whether Greece qualified or not.

From the wiki:
An error frequently made in press reports, is the confusion of the discussion regarding Greece’s Eurozone entry with the controversy regarding usage of derivatives’ deals with U.S. Banks by Greece and other Eurozone countries to artificially reduce their reported budget deficits. A currency swap arranged with Goldman Sachs allowed Greece to 'hide' 2.8 billion Euros of debt, however, this affected deficit values after 2001 (when Greece had already been admitted into the Eurozone) and is not related to Greece’s Eurozone entry.

If Germans think Greece's actions unreasonable

[Chrisq]

If the Germans think that Greece's actions are unreasonable, perhaps they should look at their own history and see how they reacted to demands for huge repayments.

As a Greek, disappointed from slashdot

[periklisv]

As a Greek, I am stunned, and disappointed, by the level of criticism (and hate!) in slashdot. What I clearly see is that fellow Europeans are being told huge LIES about the Greek crisis, and what this referendum means. I'll try to put things in perspective:
1. The money fellow European governments are giving us, are not free; They are loans, that we happily repay, even if the interest rate is a highway robbery compared to what they are paying.
2. Nobody said about "writing off the debt". What we ask is for the due date to go further in the future and the interest rate to be lower.
3. If the rest of the European governments cared at all to be repaid, then they wouldn't insist on "reforms" which have been 100% proven wrong, such as tax increases and pension/wage cuts. These are the stuff we object to. Many of the other important reforms (early pensions, unemployment benefits) are already imposed for quite some time now. I could write a book about how increasing taxes can't increase a country's GDP but guess what, there are even now so many books that prove this.
4. Especially to my Belgian friends: The 2 bailouts of Greece helped repay loans given by private sector banks. In effect, we traded private sector loans with state loans. In other words, you people lended us money so that your banks didn't lose their money. Now we owe you money (instead of your private banks) AND you think that this was a mistake. We do too, so we agree on this.
5. Greece doesn't need more money to "keep spending above its limit". We've had a more or less balanced budget for the last couple of years, apart from the loan interest payments. So we need you to lend us money so we can repay the loans you already gave us. Is this more reasonable than what we're asking? (To postpone the pay off date and decrease interest rate)
6. You are angry because we tricked our selves into the eurozone. You are right. We are angry too that you tricked us into the eurozone. There was nothing good for us there, no reason at all to be part of it, yet our politicians agreed with your politicians that we need to be part of it, no matter what. And they, all together, agreed to put Greece into the Eurozone, what a huge mistake that was and oh how many lies were told so we believed them (you did too). They made a ton of money out of it. Then they made a ton of money from the debt crisis itself. Meanwhile, half the Europe suffers from austerity (with Greece being the most hardly hit country, but Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Cyprus got a great feeling of what austerity means) and the other half is being taught that "lazy Greeks are asking to be given for more money).

Friends, stop hating each other, we're passed beyond this. The people is suffering, not only in Greece, but in other nations too. A Polish fried says "you should see my country", and some other said "we're poorer than you". And why is this? Who is benefiting? Does this mean that Poland et.al. have to double their taxes and cut their wages in half and pensions by 60%, destroy their healthcare and educational system, sell out everything that can be sold, just to become "richer"? Would anyone really suggest that? Then why is it a must-have for Greece? How on earth will this help repay the loans? Up until now, it has created a 27% unemployment and 99% misery.

So, please people, don't believe what your media say. You're not giving away money, we're not asking for free money. Greece has paid the price, and was punished hard, for decades of poor planning, bad habits and outrageous corruption. But it's time for other countries to stop hiding behind the propaganda and be realistic, just like we are now.

Re:Honour to the Greek People

[goose-incarnated]

The resulting currency devaluation will make greek goods cheaper and exports will boom.

Greece can't export tourism.

Tourism *is* an export - foreign money comes in, services go out. Fair enough, the services occur locally, but they still go out while money comes in. Thus it's an export.

Six of one, half dozen of other

[Roger W Moore]

It's the person who believes the lie, or knows that's it's a lie and uses it for profit that creates the problem.

Greece lied to get into the Euro because it thought it was going to be richer with a stronger currency. The EU turned a blind eye to it because they wanted the Eurozone to be as large as possible. Both are now going to suffer because of it. The Eurozone countries are not going to get their money back and Greece is almost certain to exit the Euro and very possibly the EU since there is currently no legal means to drop the Euro while an EU member. At this point the best thing to do is make this happen as quickly and painlessly as possible.