Syriza wins Greece election

[Crown]

The problem for Greece is that it has no industry to speak of. AFAIK they even are a net importer of olive oil.

You're wrong, it took 1min to Google to find out that Greece exports $431million worth of Olive Oil and imports $3.5 million (source). I understand this isn't the thrust of your 'argument' but how much credibility do you expect to have when you fail at the first hurdle?

So if they would leave the Euro, how would they pay for imports? Which importer would accept Drachme for oil or medicine? How would they even pay for mundane stuff like smartphones or clothes?

What? You can pay for things other than Euros, you know this right?

The problem I have with Krugman is that he ignores one major fact: Keynesian programs can only work in a closed economy.

The problem I think you have with Krugman is that you don't understand how economies work.

[Terralthra]

Thanas, your replies are an absolute fucking embarrassment to academia. Have you heard of a logical fallacy, like, at all?

Then tell the British to fuck off. The US did it way back in 1776, after all. You can have an EU without the UK, right?

You are under the mistaken impression that it is easy to get rid of a EU member.

Perfect Solution fallacy. Just because something would not be easy does not mean it is not a potential course of action. If the answer to the economic woes of Greece et al. were easy, there wouldn't be an issue, would there?

Also, last I heard the UK still had its own currency and not the euro even if they are part of the EU. This is about countries that are all using the same currency.

Yes, because just having a different EU for one and another EU for others is so easy and logical.

Having a political union where there is an economic one, and maintaining that similarity, does actually make a lot of logical sense. Was saying "hur hur that's so logical</sarcasm>" supposed to be an argument?

If Britain doesn't want to go all in tell them to fuck off. Right now the eurozone is hurting people, not helping. So change it. Either loosen the union or tighten it or whatever is needed to fix the problem, and those who don't want to play can take their marbles and go home.

See above re: unrealistic expressions.

"Greece must pay its debts even if doing so will starve a generation" is a pretty unrealistic expectation, yet that's what you advocate.

WHY is Germany throwing good money after bad? I can't wrap my head around that. WHY did you loan money to a bad risk? And having done that, why are you crying because the loan went bad? You took a risk and it turned out badly, that's why it's a risk.

Because the alternative was having the Euro collapse with several nations declaring bankruptcy, or have you forgotten what went on two years ago?

Loaning money to someone under conditions that make it harder for them to pay it back only increases their likelihood of bankruptcy down the road. It is, by definition, not an "alternative" if it results in the same thing.

MAYBE the EU should have been allowed to collapse if it was not workable. This looks like it just extended the pain and likely will make an impending collapse worse. Or do you think making the Greeks debt-slaves to Germany is a viable outcome?

You're shrieking again over how the EU should be allowed to collapse but then blame the EU for not getting things done. You can't have both ways.

No. She's saying the EU should, if it's a legitimate union, be doing things that benefit everyone, not treat monetary transfers as zero-sum games. If Germany's interest in Greece's economy not collapsing only lasts as long as Germany gets paid back, then, she says, the EU might not be an improvement over not-EU. The EU limits what actions Greece could take to deal with its economic problems (currency manipulation, etc.), and for what? The opportunity to put itself in economy-overwhelming debt, with conditions on the loans that cripple the ability of the government to stimulate the economy?

If the EU is a union dedicated to the benefit of all of its members, then it should do more than issue loans with demands of extreme austerity. If the EU won't do that, then maybe it's better off dissolving now, for everyone's sake.

Oh, and that whole thing about being the villain either way? Welcome to my world. That's how the US is viewed, after all, so sorry, doesn't get much sympathy from this side of the pond. If you want to play in international politics accept that sometimes it doesn't work at all the way you intend.

LOL at the false equivalency between the shit the US does and Europe.

"I'm not going to say how that analogy is false, because it actually seems pretty on-point, I'll just say it's a false equivalency and hope no one calls me on it."

THEN DON'T GIVE THEM ANY MORE MONEY.

I hear using caps lock must mean you are a responsible and knowledgeable adult.

And I hear style over substance fallacies are actually really good logic. Asshole.

And the last paragraph is a joke, considering his first step was to shore up the utterly corrupt greece state power industry, which was one of the main culprits of the crisis in the first place.

So... what are you saying, Greece should let the lights go out?

No, they should go ahead with the plans to de-monopolize it and have competition and stop using it as a retirement package for politicians. You know, what was agreed to in the first place.

Oh, my, a valid point buried in all the bullshit. ::claps::

Maybe Germany shouldn't have engaged in predatory lending, which is what it looks like from here. Honestly, what was Germany thinking, loaning that much money to countries with sinking economies?

Because the alternative was a Euro collapse, which the US begged us to prevent, btw.

If the goal was "prevent a Euro collapse", then accept that as your goal, and you succeeded. If the goal was "prevent a Euro collapse AND get every euro back from the countries we're loaning money", then maybe the plan wasn't so well-designed, because it looks like you're going to fail from over here.

It's not just the time span, it's also the size of the payments. If the result of the loan terms are such that the Greeks are no longer able to shelter, clothe, or feed themselves it doesn't matter

We are far away from that point.

Far away, in that it started happening a while ago?

Of course I'm biased because I live in an ass-backward country where a creditor is forbidden to take your home, your clothing, and the food in your pantry to repay a debt.

Your navel-gazing combined with REAL TALK while thinking that there are no similar protections over here in Germany is about as interesting as it is ever going to be.

The point she's making is that even if said protection exist on a personal level, you seem to be fine with doing so on a country-to-country basis, with the amazing insistence on getting Germany's money back from Greece no matter what. You sound like you're out of The Merchant of Venice.

No one put a gun to Germany's head and forced them to loan money to Greece.

You mean, Obama and Sarkozy did not pressure Merkel to the point of tears? I must be imagining things then.

It's weird. That all looks like political pressure and persuasion, not threats of violence or serious duress. People tried to convince Merkel to do something? How horrible! ::eyeroll:: If the plan was bad for Germany, and that's the primary motivation for Germany is its own self-interest, then Merkel should've said no.

You will though, because Germany pays her debts instead of demanding they be cut. So your shrieking can end right there.

Hilarious, from a country that has had major debt restructuring and forgiveness for every major foreign debt in the past century.

[bobalot]

You will though, because Germany pays her debts instead of demanding they be cut. So your shrieking can end right there.

Hilarious, from a country that has had major debt restructuring and forgiveness for every major foreign debt in the past century.

Indeed, following being utterly defeated after starting one of the most worst wars in human history, Germany had its debts written down, extended (last payment in 2010) and had the debt linked to export earnings.

[J]

It sucks that people are going to have to suffer for this, but no sovereign nation should ever expect a bail out. If they do they should be ready to cede at least some of their independence in exchange for it because at that point they clearly aren't fit to run things on their own. In this case I agree that Germany should be well with her rights to say you do this my way or you look elsewhere for help. Especially seeing that Greece lied their asses off to get into the EU at all and had pissed away their own economy long before anybody was asking for austerity measures.

All sovereign lending is by definition unsecured since there's no way to get the money back short of sanctions or war. Which means the lender can and will lose the entire loan on occasion, as has happened many times in history. No nation should expect a bailout, but the other side of the coin is that no creditor nation should expect all the money it lends out to return, and return with interest. Lending always carries an inherent risk of default. Always. Lending to a functionally bankrupt nation which was bleeding red ink and expecting the loans to be repaid is both foolhardy and stupid.

[Broomstick]

Well, I was going to reply to Thanas but pretty much everyone else beat me to it, especially Terralthra, whose post is pretty much what I was going to say anyway.

[Broomstick]

Given how dire the situation is why haven't government officials already slashed their own wages and put the money back into the community? The answer is because those at the top in Greece are still rotten. They're cutting these basic programs while maintaining a military and instituting conscription, DEI still hasn't been cleaned out, and I'd be willing to bet you'd find more juicy pork if you looked into nearly an infrastructure project. Sure, austerity isn't doing a great deal of good, but don't pretend that the Greek people need to be starving when cuts can be properly made elsewhere.

Slashing politicians wages is usually a symbolic or political move that makes little difference to the national finances, unless they are being paid an absurdly high amount of money.

Symbolism can be important, though. It was quite popular when Arnold Schwarzenegger chose to work as governor of California for free, and the current governor of Illinois, Bruce Rauner, not only is working for free in that capacity but is also paying to repair the Illinois governor's mansion out of his own pocket. It can be an indication that a person is genuinely interested in reform rather than personal profit (the fact both those men are absurdly rich, of course, is also a factor in their decision).

Being willing to forgo pay can help encourage others to endure cut backs. Like all political tools it has a potential for abuse, but it also has its uses.

[Thanas]

Thanas, your replies are an absolute fucking embarrassment to academia. Have you heard of a logical fallacy, like, at all?

Then tell the British to fuck off. The US did it way back in 1776, after all. You can have an EU without the UK, right?

You are under the mistaken impression that it is easy to get rid of a EU member.

Perfect Solution fallacy. Just because something would not be easy does not mean it is not a potential course of action. If the answer to the economic woes of Greece et al. were easy, there wouldn't be an issue, would there?

Do you think there is a chance that the UK of UKIP and Cameron will ever agree to such changes? If so, show me one poll that says so. There is no such realistic chance.

So you tell me precisely how the EU can force Britain to leave or change the treaties without their approval.
And then you tell me how the EU can legally change the existing EU structures and organizations to such a new structure without the approval of Britain.
Go ahead. I am waiting. I am sure your extensive academic knowledge about EU law will serve you well.

"Greece must pay its debts even if doing so will starve a generation" is a pretty unrealistic expectation, yet that's what you advocate.

It will not starve a generation. While some throw around figures like "4% of their GDP goes to interest payments", those same people also fail to mention that Greece gets back every cent they pay towards the ECB, which lowers their overall interest expenditure to a mere 2.6% of GDP. This is far below that what other states pay (Portugal 5%, Italy 4.7%, Ireland 4.1%, Spain 3.3%) and barely above that of France (2.2%). Even if Greece were to force herself to dedicate 4% it would still pay less than Portugal, Italy and Ireland. As the situation currently is, Greece pays far less than any other troubled state. This myth about Greece being strangled by its debts is just that, a myth. Other nations pay far more in relative and in absolute terms.

I also struggle to think what further debt relief will do for the current cash flow of the Greek Government. I mean, you cannot lower interest rates any further than 0% and having no installments. This is already in effect the EU giving Greece free money and saying "Pay us back when you can".

EDIT: I shall also add that the debt is (according to current projections) going to fall to 112% of the GDP by 2020, which is less than Italy.

The cause of the Greek problem is not their debt. The main problems are corruption and not paying taxes, what with 2/3rds of Greeks not paying the taxes they owe or not paying any taxes at all. Greece is also ranked 22nd out of 26th countries in Europe when it comes to tax morality according to Transparency International. The total number of taxes that has been lost to tax evasion from 2000-2010 is ~120 billion. There are over 19 billion taxes owed by 1500 oligarchs alone. About 30 billion a year go uncollected. Aside from a few high profile things like tallying swimming pools via satellite (showing that out of 24k pools only ~400 people paid) the Greek government has done little to fight this. I don't need to tell you that had Greece done more to fix these problems they would not be in this situation. And that says nothing about corruption. The 69th corrupt country in the whole world and scoring a fat "none" on corruption enforcement.

That is the background to which the EU is demanding austerity. This is not only "be frugal", it also means breaking up the corrupt structures. Greece has not succeeded in the latter due to an unwillingness to take on the entrenched bureaucracy or an unwillingness to clean up the state companies.

Now, it is also a myth that Greece will not recover without debt relief. If they had recovered their lost taxes they would have slashed their debt by 38% already. If they make an effort to go after the oligarchs and other tax evaders they will look much better in the future - even without debt relief.

Now, what the EU could (and should do) is allow Greece to be more flexible with their surplus. Right now Greece is supposed to run a 4.5% surplus. This was a result of the EU not trusting Greece (and you can't tell me they were deserving of trust after the shit they pulled where they hired Goldmann Sachs to massage their stats to gain Euro entry). I see no problem with allowing Greece to run at little to no surplus in order to stimulate the economy, as I said several times in this thread.

Loaning money to someone under conditions that make it harder for them to pay it back only increases their likelihood of bankruptcy down the road. It is, by definition, not an "alternative" if it results in the same thing.

Please realize that "give Greece money and save the rest of the Eurozone even if Greece defaults anyway" is a better plan than "Let Greece default uncontrollably and Southern Europe follow suit, while this also happens in the financial crisis in the USA". Or did you just miss what the situation was like back then? There was a real risk of another great depression and everybody demanded the Greeks and Euro be saved.

"I'm not going to say how that analogy is false, because it actually seems pretty on-point, I'll just say it's a false equivalency and hope no one calls me on it."

If the worst you can say about one nation is "lend money to bad debtors" then that is not in any way comparable to what the US has done and is being criticized for. Something which I am sure you know yourself. It isn't even in the vicinity of the great ladder of evil things done by states.

No, they should go ahead with the plans to de-monopolize it and have competition and stop using it as a retirement package for politicians. You know, what was agreed to in the first place.

Oh, my, a valid point buried in all the bullshit. ::claps::

I know, I can be rather witty at times. Too bad that de-monopolization is apparently beyond the capabilities of the Greek state.

If the goal was "prevent a Euro collapse", then accept that as your goal, and you succeeded. If the goal was "prevent a Euro collapse AND get every euro back from the countries we're loaning money", then maybe the plan wasn't so well-designed, because it looks like you're going to fail from over here.

Answer me this: If the plan was to get every Euro back, then why did Germany agree to not have Greece pay any interest until 2020? Because you know, that kinda sounds like Germany accepted a loss of ~1-2% due to inflation each year already. And if Germany wanted all the money back, then why did Germany agree to not have any payback until 2035? Because that sounds to me like German money is being tied up at a net loss for a long time. Something you would know already had you read my posts.

So no. What Germany wants is that Greece pays less than half of what other nations in Europe are paying for debts. Germany also wants Greece to go after their corrupt public sector and privatise state companies that are used as retirement packages.

Saying Germany wants every Euro back is just the same kind of bullshit like "the interest payment is excessive".

It's weird. That all looks like political pressure and persuasion, not threats of violence or serious duress. People tried to convince Merkel to do something? How horrible! ::eyeroll:: If the plan was bad for Germany, and that's the primary motivation for Germany is its own self-interest, then Merkel should've said no.

I hear politicians make bad compromises because otherwise it would have been "GERMANY COULD HAVE SAVED US BUT DID NOT". I also hear that being isolated on an issue would make a good politician to compromise. Especially in a so-called union.

Hilarious, from a country that has had major debt restructuring and forgiveness for every major foreign debt in the past century.

Are you denying that we are paying back the Marshall fund?

[Jub]

Well that was a completely pointless news flash that no one needed, hey do you think maybe the reason we're all talking about this SYRIZA thing is because for the FIRST TIME since post Junta era Greece is being governed by a party that isn't ND or PASOK? And given what I posted on page 3 (Yanis Varoufakis (current Finance Misister), 'We are going to destroy the Greek oligarchy system') you should be dancing on the fucking streets that SYRIZA just got elected.

Have they actually backed up talk with action yet? Have they shown evidence of a concrete plan that the nation will have the stomach to swallow? Have they done anything besides whine about the previous government, the big bad Germans, and make promises that are easy to say but hard to do? Have they gotten food into the mouths of starving families?

Until they do more than talk they're just as bad as the old regime.

List them and show us the savings, otherwise this is nothing but more bullshit. J did a basic breakdown if what would be required for Greece to pay back the current loans (magic), I still haven't seen anyone contradict her.

I'm not talking about getting enough to pay anybody back, I'm talking about not letting Greek families go hungry or without power and heat. I'm talking disbanding the military to save 3 billion Euros per year so they can use that money on benefits for their poor. I'm talking about making the cuts to the actual pork rather than cutting low cost social programs. I obviously don't have access to the entirety of the Greek budget breakdown nor the time to go over it line by line, but I'm sure there are still sweetheart contracts that can be cancelled and government employee wages to be slashed.

You do realise that you're making the worst possible argument in the history of arguments? You do realise that the Greece lying to get into the EU meme has been debunked (source)?

You mean ignoring the fact that this source and this source make claims that "data submitted by Greece to Eurostat had a statistical distribution indicative of manipulation." Does falsifying your data while reshuffling your internal expenses to hide your true level of debt not count as lying now?

You do realise that even if you were right that's not an argument to continue a failed policy that has not a snowballs chance in hell of working, right?

That sounds like an issue for the Greeks and one they probably ought to have worried about sometime before now.

You do realise that countries defaulting isn't some kind of crime punishable by indentured servitude of their populations, right?

Historically it's been cause for war and the sacking of cities, so in that sense the Greeks are already getting off lightly. Now nobody wants to see war, but perhaps and independent Greece isn't what's best for anybody. Perhaps they ought not to be trusted to run their own affairs and control should be given over to the EU until such time as their issues are resolved.

You do realise that blaming this on sheeple who took advantage of low interest loans over predatory lenders is like blaming obese kids for eating sweets over their parents for buying them, right?

Except that as adults they have a responsibility to understand what the consequences of borrowing money are. I expect adults to be educated in the issues that effect them and not to complain about the results if they fail to do so. I don't feel it's unreasonable to expect people to understand basic finance.

[Crown]

Have they actually backed up talk with action yet? Have they shown evidence of a concrete plan that the nation will have the stomach to swallow? Have they done anything besides whine about the previous government, the big bad Germans, and make promises that are easy to say but hard to do? Have they gotten food into the mouths of starving families?

Until they do more than talk they're just as bad as the old regime.

They were feeding people when they weren't in power (source) and have pledged to enact laws which will make it impossible for people's primary residence to be seized to stop people from becoming homeless and destitute, but apparently according to you they should have already solved Greece's corruption, oligarchy, unemployment and poverty issue after being in office for ... 5 days.

I'm not talking about getting enough to pay anybody back, I'm talking about not letting Greek families go hungry or without power and heat. I'm talking disbanding the military to save 3 billion Euros per year so they can use that money on benefits for their poor. I'm talking about making the cuts to the actual pork rather than cutting low cost social programs. I obviously don't have access to the entirety of the Greek budget breakdown nor the time to go over it line by line, but I'm sure there are still sweetheart contracts that can be cancelled and government employee wages to be slashed.

In order for Greece to get the bailout it was mandated to cut the welfare state. When 25% of you population is out of work, when 50% of the youth are out of work, when 6 out of 10 people looking for work have been out of work for a year or more, how are people meant to feed themselves if the welfare state has also been disbanded?

Paul Krugman in the Irish Times, via The Times already pointed out that the Troika's demands and projections did not fit into any kind of reality, why is it so hard for you to accept that a failed policy implemented by an incompetent kleptocracy is going to be doomed to failure even if it was implemented by benevolent saints?

You do realise that you're making the worst possible argument in the history of arguments? You do realise that the Greece lying to get into the EU meme has been debunked (source)?

You mean ignoring the fact that this source and this source make claims that "data submitted by Greece to Eurostat had a statistical distribution indicative of manipulation." Does falsifying your data while reshuffling your internal expenses to hide your true level of debt not count as lying now?

Um ... that contradicted nothing from the source I posted ... kinda embarrassing for you to demonstrate an inability to read eh? You stated Greece 'lied through its teeth' to join the Euro, the link I posted categorically showed that was simply not true, and the links you have posted haven't demonstrated otherwise, all they have done is reinforce the Wiki timeline link by showing the creative accounting began while inside the Euro.

That sounds like an issue for the Greeks and one they probably ought to have worried about sometime before now.

What does this even mean? Of course it's an issue, an issue which is being addressed. By rejecting a failed policy (as admitted by the IMF in 2013).

Historically it's been cause for war and the sacking of cities, so in that sense the Greeks are already getting off lightly. Now nobody wants to see war, but perhaps and independent Greece isn't what's best for anybody. Perhaps they ought not to be trusted to run their own affairs and control should be given over to the EU until such time as their issues are resolved.

Greece isn't being allowed to run its own affairs. This very salient point is what has made a common occurrence (as J pointed out to you) a very uncommon one. The ability of a country to control its own currency is a key mechanism by which said country can handle an economic crisis. When that is taken away from a country, it is en effect not running its own affairs as you put it.

Except that as adults they have a responsibility to understand what the consequences of borrowing money are. I expect adults to be educated in the issues that effect them and not to complain about the results if they fail to do so. I don't feel it's unreasonable to expect people to understand basic finance.

It is also incumbent on adults to realise when something is not working and stop pretending that it is.

[K. A. Pital]

Given how dire the situation is why haven't government officials already slashed their own wages and put the money back into the community? The answer is because those at the top in Greece are still rotten.

There hasn't been a left-wing government in Greece since the whole thing started in 2011. You can't blame SYRIZA for the looting that happened under the previous governments. Seriously, get a brain.

They're cutting these basic programs while maintaining a military and instituting conscription, DEI still hasn't been cleaned out, and I'd be willing to bet you'd find more juicy pork if you looked into nearly an infrastructure project.

So, in all these years of 'austerity' the only thing that was accomplished is the demonstration of corruption that leads to mass human suffering? Gee, and I heard the words "resounding success" in this thread.

So what? All their friends were stupid enough to jump off a bridge and Greece was dumb enough to not only follow them, but to use accounting tricks to lie about having done so. The greeks have nobody but those they voted for and themselves to blame for letting things get this bad. They lied to get into the Eurozone so why should anybody let them off the hook now that they've essentially stolen large sums of money from the EU and Germany especially?

Idiot, Greece hasn't invaded all nations around it and slaughtered over 40 million people, and yet it can't get a debt writedown?

Historically it's been cause for war and the sacking of cities

Historically, you motherfucking idiot, the wrong color of skin has been a cause for war and sacking of cities. Ugh. You are annoying.

[Broomstick]

Do you think there is a chance that the UK of UKIP and Cameron will ever agree to such changes? If so, show me one poll that says so. There is no such realistic chance.

So you tell me precisely how the EU can force Britain to leave or change the treaties without their approval.
And then you tell me how the EU can legally change the existing EU structures and organizations to such a new structure without the approval of Britain.
Go ahead. I am waiting. I am sure your extensive academic knowledge about EU law will serve you well.

Disband the EU. Yes, I realize that's a tall order, but if everyone else leaves and only the UK remains then the effect is the same.

And if you've gotten yourself into a weak union you can't exit which is screwing with its members then you've make a very bad mistake. When that happened to some former British Colonies in North America they had the sense to reconstruct the union to something more workable. Why is it unthinkable for Europe to do likewise?

"Greece must pay its debts even if doing so will starve a generation" is a pretty unrealistic expectation, yet that's what you advocate.

It will not starve a generation.

Evidence has been presented in this thread by others that malnutrition IS a problem in today's Greece. How do you explain that?

I also struggle to think what further debt relief will do for the current cash flow of the Greek Government. I mean, you cannot lower interest rates any further than 0% and having no installments. This is already in effect the EU giving Greece free money and saying "Pay us back when you can".

Which is why I suggest you try something else. Like a jobs program, maybe? Put that 25% unemployed to work so they'll be paying taxes again?

The cause of the Greek problem is not their debt. The main problems are corruption and not paying taxes, what with 2/3rds of Greeks not paying the taxes they owe or not paying any taxes at all.

The unemployed who have no income are not only not paying taxes currently, they are unable to pay any back taxes they owe. That's aside from any corruption problems going on. Sure, 2/3 of Greeks might not be paying taxes, but one quarter have no income. Fix the no income problem and you'll make a significant dent in that 2/3.

I don't need to tell you that had Greece done more to fix these problems they would not be in this situation.

No one is disputing that. However, no one has a time machine, either. The past can not be fixed. Going forward how will this crisis be resolved?

That is the background to which the EU is demanding austerity. This is not only "be frugal", it also means breaking up the corrupt structures. Greece has not succeeded in the latter due to an unwillingness to take on the entrenched bureaucracy or an unwillingness to clean up the state companies.

Well, since the current "solution" has not cleaned up the corruption and has resulted 1/4 of the Greeks being without income and widespread problems like hungry, undernourished school children maybe it's time to try a different approach.

Now, it is also a myth that Greece will not recover without debt relief. If they had recovered their lost taxes they would have slashed their debt by 38% already.

Explain how someone without income is supposed to pay taxes.

Loaning money to someone under conditions that make it harder for them to pay it back only increases their likelihood of bankruptcy down the road. It is, by definition, not an "alternative" if it results in the same thing.

Please realize that "give Greece money and save the rest of the Eurozone even if Greece defaults anyway" is a better plan than "Let Greece default uncontrollably and Southern Europe follow suit, while this also happens in the financial crisis in the USA". Or did you just miss what the situation was like back then? There was a real risk of another great depression and everybody demanded the Greeks and Euro be saved.

Yes, I remember back then, and I remember dissenting voices that said the plan wouldn't work, which were ignored and shouted down. There were voices that said austerity policies were a mistake.

And if "Greece defaults anyway" was always a risk then maybe it's time to admit that, in fact, that actually happened and Greece is bankrupt.

Oh, and I believe we are all still at risk of another Great Depression - the world economy is still pretty shaky.

"I'm not going to say how that analogy is false, because it actually seems pretty on-point, I'll just say it's a false equivalency and hope no one calls me on it."

If the worst you can say about one nation is "lend money to bad debtors" then that is not in any way comparable to what the US has done and is being criticized for.

Germany really shouldn't get into a pissing contest regarding which countries in recent history have done the most horrible things.

I don't think the Germans loaned money to Greece with bad intentions. I think once it was done they hoped like hell it would all work out. Problem is, good intentions don't always bring good results.

So no. What Germany wants is that Greece pays less than half of what other nations in Europe are paying for debts. Germany also wants Greece to go after their corrupt public sector and privatise state companies that are used as retirement packages.

I fully support dismantling corrupt Greek political structures. However, I question if the current approach is getting the job done. If it turns out that the corrupt oligarchs are willing to throw the little people under the bus, literally let them starve to maintain their money and privilege, what can be done about it?

It's weird. That all looks like political pressure and persuasion, not threats of violence or serious duress. People tried to convince Merkel to do something? How horrible! ::eyeroll:: If the plan was bad for Germany, and that's the primary motivation for Germany is its own self-interest, then Merkel should've said no.

I hear politicians make bad compromises because otherwise it would have been "GERMANY COULD HAVE SAVED US BUT DID NOT".

Welcome to the world of damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Hilarious, from a country that has had major debt restructuring and forgiveness for every major foreign debt in the past century.

Are you denying that we are paying back the Marshall fund?

You will notice that the creditor in that case is not demanding you cut your social programs in order to make payments. Although at present Germany has a healthy economy and isn't having a problem with paying its debts that hasn't always been the case. There was a time when former enemies who were making loans to Germany to rebuild were also supplying actual food so parts of your population wouldn't starve while various problems were being cleaned up.

That's part of the PR issue here - Germany has been the recipient of both loans and outright charity in recent history, including changing of terms when that seemed reasonable. The resistance to the notion of changing repayment terms under current circumstances is, frankly, making Germany look bad. You won't even discuss to possibility, despite evidence of real suffering of real people. Instead you quote interest terms. It makes you look unempathic.

Absolutely the problems of corruption and tax evasion need to be fixed. So do the problems of chronic high unemployment, homelessness, and hunger.

[BabelHuber]

Idiot, how are their goods going to become competitive if they are not controlling their exchange rates? There's only one other way possible: wage depression. But guess what, foreign goods' prices will not go down, as they are denominated in the Euros and set by companies that make them in other nations. And who got Greece and the rest of the Europeriphery deindustrialized?

The neoliberal charlatans who had been running the show since the 1980s, and especially in the 2000s.

The average wages in Greece are higher than e.g. in Poland. So of course they will have to lower wages to attract investors. Also, they have to overhaul their overly complex bureaucracy, otherwise lowering wages won't have much effect.

The standard of living in Greece is inflated by 45 years of spending money from abroad. Perhaps you think that they hence have some right to keep this standard, but this is not how it works.
You have to actually earn your money, anything else is not sustainable in the long run.

This bullshit about some 'neoliberal charlatans' is nothing else than hot air. Greece got free money from 1981 to 2010 to make the country competitive. It is not the fault of the EU that Greece wasted this money instead of doing something sensible with it.

So the "deindustrialization" is their own fault, they have nobody to put the blame on.

[Jub]

They were feeding people when they weren't in power (source)

That's awesome, maybe you should have lead with that instead of more about them politicking.

and have pledged to enact laws which will make it impossible for people's primary residence to be seized to stop people from becoming homeless and destitute, but apparently according to you they should have already solved Greece's corruption, oligarchy, unemployment and poverty issue after being in office for ... 5 days.

I never said they should have everything solved, and in light of what they've actually done thus far I think they may actually have a shot at making things better. However none of that was posted here, what was posted was them making promises that anybody who got elected would have made. Plus they still stand every chance of failing to fix Greece if they can't tackle the endemic corruption and recover money owed to them by tax dodgers and this isn't something that will be easily done.

In order for Greece to get the bailout it was mandated to cut the welfare state. When 25% of you population is out of work, when 50% of the youth are out of work, when 6 out of 10 people looking for work have been out of work for a year or more, how are people meant to feed themselves if the welfare state has also been disbanded?

Paul Krugman in the Irish Times, via The Times already pointed out that the Troika's demands and projections did not fit into any kind of reality, why is it so hard for you to accept that a failed policy implemented by an incompetent kleptocracy is going to be doomed to failure even if it was implemented by benevolent saints?

Yes, blame everybody but the fucking Greeks who have flat out not done what has been asked of them thus far when they are the ones failing to enact sensible reforms. It honestly wouldn't surprise me if they've purposely gone about this is the least effective way possible given how badly they've done. If you don't believe me lets look a pair of examples to give some examples of how well the Greeks have implemented reforms thus far.

First let us look at tax reform. Frankly there isn't anything good to say here, they've yet to even make a dent on their tax evasion issue. As of early 2011 5,000 cases of suspected tax fraud had been found, yet by the end of 2012 it has been suggested that only 334 of these cases has been closed. These should have been open and shut cases given that dating back to 2010 the French handed them information to be used in going after people violating Greek tax law. Yet the government first lied about being unable to use this data and then waffled over to refusing to use stolen data instead. Then, making things worse, they arrested people publishing data on tax evaders using laws meant to protect people's privacy. Maybe if they'd worked at fixing these issues they might have money to feed their poor even without making further cuts. Given what we've seen in looking at their tax situation is it any surprise that the topic of corruption is next?

The fact is Greece is corrupt. Among European powers they are among the least effective and most corrupt stuck in a four way tie for last place with Italy, Romania, and Bulgaria as can be seen in the infographic here. Yet this is still considered an improvement from 2013 and a full seven points better than in 2012. When you can improve by 16% in two years and still be dead fucking last that shows you what kind of sleezeballs have been running things. It might also show that you haven't really been trying at all given that even after improvement they are still comparable to such wonderfully run nations as Brazil, Swaziland, and Rwanda and were down among basket cases like Mexico, Ethiopia, and Egypt in 2012. But of course, the mean old Germans and that damned austerity are to blame for all of this.

Now we can debate if austerity was the best plan, but you have to blame Greece and the Greeks themselves first for not actually solving any of their crippling issues.

Um ... that contradicted nothing from the source I posted ... kinda embarrassing for you to demonstrate an inability to read eh? You stated Greece 'lied through its teeth' to join the Euro, the link I posted categorically showed that was simply not true, and the links you have posted haven't demonstrated otherwise, all they have done is reinforce the Wiki timeline link by showing the creative accounting began while inside the Euro.

Your own source says:

Several arguments have been expressed about the implications of the audit. <snip> Also, there were arguments about massive "creative accounting" employed by many states in order to meet the deficit criterion for entry into the Eurozone.

So I was merely presenting information that raises doubts that the numbers they submitted were ever true at all. Even if everything was above board they barely made the cut and were lying to themselves and the rest of the EU if they thought that such levels of debt were going to be sustainable.

What does this even mean? Of course it's an issue, an issue which is being addressed. By rejecting a failed policy (as admitted by the IMF in 2013).

I still think the Greeks themselves are to blame for not actually doing enough to fix their issues while having to be prodded to take any actions at all.

Greece isn't being allowed to run its own affairs.

They aren't being forced to do anything, if they didn't want the money they could have simply refused to take it and not had to deal with the conditions attached to it.

This very salient point is what has made a common occurrence (as J pointed out to you) a very uncommon one. The ability of a country to control its own currency is a key mechanism by which said country can handle an economic crisis. When that is taken away from a country, it is en effect not running its own affairs as you put it.

Greece willingly and knowingly gave up that ability when they joined the EU. They don't get to bitch about it now after taking everybody's money.

It is also incumbent on adults to realise when something is not working and stop pretending that it is.

It's failing because the Greeks themselves are failures at actually fixing their issues. No plan could have worked if the same corrupt Greeks were in charge of it from the start.

[Jub]

There hasn't been a left-wing government in Greece since the whole thing started in 2011. You can't blame SYRIZA for the looting that happened under the previous governments. Seriously, get a brain.

That's nobodies fault but the Greeks, nobody but them elected these clowns and nobody forced them to keep them in power to this point.

So, in all these years of 'austerity' the only thing that was accomplished is the demonstration of corruption that leads to mass human suffering? Gee, and I heard the words "resounding success" in this thread.

What does austerity have to do with the previous Greek government being worse than useless?

Idiot, Greece hasn't invaded all nations around it and slaughtered over 40 million people, and yet it can't get a debt writedown?

What does that have to do with them willing letting things get to this point when any sane person saw a debt crisis looming will before it actually hit?

[BabelHuber]

You're wrong, it took 1min to Google to find out that Greece exports $431million worth of Olive Oil and imports $3.5 million (source). I understand this isn't the thrust of your 'argument' but how much credibility do you expect to have when you fail at the first hurdle?

AFAIK much of their olive oil 'exports' come from reexporting olive oil, but I didn't find the exact numbers. But be it as it may, this is an unimportant point anyways.

What? You can pay for things other than Euros, you know this right?

You are delusional if you think that prices would stay the same in Greece without the Euro. The Drachme would lead to a huge raise in costs for imported products.

The problem I think you have with Krugman is that you don't understand how economies work.

This is utter bullshit! Krugman's mantra is: "When a country runs into economical problems, it must spend more money".

The fact that money spending got them into this situation doesn't seem to play a role for him, his solution is always the same. This is moronic.

Also, it is a fact that Keynes only works in a closed economy - just try and model an open economy. Then you increase the spending of the state and try to calculate the effect.

Newsflash: You can't! Only when you remove exports and imports, then you can calculate the effects. But then you use a model which does not reflect reality and hence is wothless.

So don't act like an asshole, instead try to start your brain!

It's very easy to understand: When a state increases spending, this has only a positive effect on the economy as a whole if this money is spent within this country. If this 'new' money is mostly spent on imports, you boost the economy in the exporters' countries instead.

[Thanas]

Disband the EU. Yes, I realize that's a tall order, but if everyone else leaves and only the UK remains then the effect is the same.
And if you've gotten yourself into a weak union you can't exit which is screwing with its members then you've make a very bad mistake. When that happened to some former British Colonies in North America they had the sense to reconstruct the union to something more workable. Why is it unthinkable for Europe to do likewise?

Because it is beyond stupid to think that the 13 colonies are in any way compatible. The societies, power of the landed elites and complexities of the situation are unthinkable. It took over 50 years to get the EU to where it is now. You just cannot take so many different societies and say "blow it all up and let's reform". It is a pipedream. It is the sort of thing nobody even remotely familiar with the EU thinks possible, except for the Neonazis of Pegida and AFD. The challenge alone of trying to recreate the customs treaties the EU has with other nations is beyond stupid.

It would be (in practical, not legal terms) akin to the states of the USA seceding from Washington over Obama's policies and then attempting to recreate the union while missing all the federal money, buildings, powers etc. All the while being in the worst financial crisis of the last 30 years. BTW, when Germany would announce such a plan, half of Europe is pretty much going to declare bankruptcy. What do you think is the lesser evil of the two?

Maybe this is a worthy attempt once the storm has passed. In the current climate, it would be economic suicide.

Evidence has been presented in this thread by others that malnutrition IS a problem in today's Greece. How do you explain that?

And I have presented evidence that the problems are not linked to the debt. They are linked to the Greek economy. No matter how much Tsipras wants to pretend, the two are not one and the same.

Which is why I suggest you try something else. Like a jobs program, maybe? Put that 25% unemployed to work so they'll be paying taxes again?

Read my post again, you'll find me in favor of such programs. But these programs do not equal debt slashing, nor do they need it.

The unemployed who have no income are not only not paying taxes currently, they are unable to pay any back taxes they owe. That's aside from any corruption problems going on. Sure, 2/3 of Greeks might not be paying taxes, but one quarter have no income. Fix the no income problem and you'll make a significant dent in that 2/3.

The main people who aren't paying taxes are lawyers, doctors, oligarchs, bureaucrats, business owners etc. They are not the unemloyed on the streets.
Besides, even when the economy was good the tax evasion rates remained the same among the working population. In 2005 49% of the Greek population were evading taxes. This problem is a recurring one and not the result of austerity measures. In fact, in the first year of austerity measures the corruption actually went down several percent.

This is a good article.

No one is disputing that. However, no one has a time machine, either. The past can not be fixed. Going forward how will this crisis be resolved?

Starting to fix the problems would be a good option. But Tsipras is unwilling to do so, as his refusal to break up the state monopoly on electric power has shown and his program to rehire thousands of the corrupt bureaucrats who were tossed out.

Well, since the current "solution" has not cleaned up the corruption and has resulted 1/4 of the Greeks being without income and widespread problems like hungry, undernourished school children maybe it's time to try a different approach.

What current solution has been attempted? Cleaning up the corruption has been barely attempted. State monopolies are untouched. The bureaucrats are untouched. The oligarchs haven't been taxed. The number of cases for tax evasion is low. When they were given a list of ~2000 high ranking officials who had illegal swiss bank accounts, the Government tried to imprison the guy who published the existence of that list in the newspapers. Not a single one on those list has been indicted. In fact, they flat out stated that they would refuse to do so. Germany offered experts and investigators to help built an enforcement arm. This offer has not been taken up.

The enforcement arm has not worked. In Germany, we had 2200 convictions and over 20k lesser convictions/plea deals in 2013 alone. In October 2013, this was the situation in Greece:

Tryfon Alexiadis, the vice president of the tax collectors union, said he wondered whether his bosses even want the system to improve. Mr. Alexiadis pointed out that Greece has only 0.87 auditors for every 1,000 citizens, compared with Germany’s rate of 1.36 and Belgium’s 2.67.

Until recently, only nine auditors were assigned to a list of 54,000 cases involving money sent abroad, even after 24,000 of those cases were deemed likely to involve tax evasion, he said. After they protested in September, the number of auditors was raised to 50. The Finance Ministry said recently in Parliament that two audits have been completed so far.

Now Greece has apparently gotten around 2000 cases with charges in total. This is still only ~10% of German cases and Germany does not suffer from the same sort of tax evasion.

Yes, I remember back then, and I remember dissenting voices that said the plan wouldn't work, which were ignored and shouted down. There were voices that said austerity policies were a mistake.
And if "Greece defaults anyway" was always a risk then maybe it's time to admit that, in fact, that actually happened and Greece is bankrupt.
Oh, and I believe we are all still at risk of another Great Depression - the world economy is still pretty shaky.

However, Greece can pay their interests payments in their current form. I don't know why people claim they cannot when they pay less than half of what other nations pay.

Germany really shouldn't get into a pissing contest regarding which countries in recent history have done the most horrible things.

Why not? Since the founding of the federal republic of Germany we haven't done a fraction of the shit. I'll happily get into a pissing contest with anybody about recent German history. (And if you claim Nazi Germany is recent history then you must be joking. Anything that happened before your lifetime cannot possibly be recent history to you).

I fully support dismantling corrupt Greek political structures. However, I question if the current approach is getting the job done. If it turns out that the corrupt oligarchs are willing to throw the little people under the bus, literally let them starve to maintain their money and privilege, what can be done about it?

A lot. You could for example threaten the swimming pools with demolition. After all, they are clearly illegal buildings. You could seize assets. You could even make an actual attempt to tax the rich.

Let's take just one class of oligarchs here - shipping owners. 140 billion in untaxed profits since 2002. Some not taxed due to loopholes, some taxed due to outright tax evasion. Investments in Greek ships by those owners: 20 billion last year alone.

Last year, they ordered 275 new ships worth almost €10 billion, more than any other country in the world. A similar sum was invested in the renovation of their fleet. In just the first weeks of this year, Greek shipping companies ordered 15 used and 19 new ships worth about €5 billion. It's almost as if there hadn't been a shipping crisis over the last several years.

and their tax burden on ~ 14 billion profits a year? Less than the crews.

while Greek shipowners privately paid €15 million in taxes into the state coffers in 2012, the sailors paid over €55 million.

The greek idea to fix this? Tax them an additional 100 million.
(More here).

The example of the shipowners above is also grating to me personally because German shipowners have suffered greatly over the past few years while Greece's shipowners have raked in huge profits while their state was being bailed out by German money.

And that is just one of many examples. I think you will find it fair that before the Greeks ask for more money from Europe, they have a duty to do their best to root out corruption and tax their people. IMO this does not even approach a half-hearted attempt.

That's part of the PR issue here - Germany has been the recipient of both loans and outright charity in recent history,

No, we haven't. The vast majority of Germans were not even alive back then.

including changing of terms when that seemed reasonable. The resistance to the notion of changing repayment terms under current circumstances is, frankly, making Germany look bad. You won't even discuss to possibility, despite evidence of real suffering of real people. Instead you quote interest terms. It makes you look unempathic.

I quote interest terms because the interest is not the problem. The repayment of debts is not the problem. The problem is with the greek economy and corruption, not with the debt. If you pay less than half of what Portugal, Italy and Ireland pay, then you cannot really claim that the debt repayment is throttling your economy. The problem is not the debt, nor the debt repayment.

Absolutely the problems of corruption and tax evasion need to be fixed. So do the problems of chronic high unemployment, homelessness, and hunger.

The problem is that Greece's solution right now seems to be to rollback the meagre attempts at fixing the former and demand more money to spend on the latter.

[Edi]

Do you think there is a chance that the UK of UKIP and Cameron will ever agree to such changes? If so, show me one poll that says so. There is no such realistic chance.

So you tell me precisely how the EU can force Britain to leave or change the treaties without their approval.
And then you tell me how the EU can legally change the existing EU structures and organizations to such a new structure without the approval of Britain.
Go ahead. I am waiting. I am sure your extensive academic knowledge about EU law will serve you well.

Disband the EU. Yes, I realize that's a tall order, but if everyone else leaves and only the UK remains then the effect is the same.

And if you've gotten yourself into a weak union you can't exit which is screwing with its members then you've make a very bad mistake. When that happened to some former British Colonies in North America they had the sense to reconstruct the union to something more workable. Why is it unthinkable for Europe to do likewise?

I think now is a good time to ask who slipped some heavy duty mind altering substances to your morning tea, Broomstick. There is no possible way this bit makes any sense in any real world context. There is absolutely no reason to disband the EU just because Greece happens to be a problem case. The benefits member states have gained from the cooperation in the Union meant that suggestion is absolute nonsense.

You also seem to completely ignore the reality of government as it has been in Greece and as it currently is. For all intents and purposes, Greece has no tax system. They have something called that, but none of it works, as detailed earlier. Even if they find jobs for 100% of their population, that is not going to change a single thing because there is effectively no penalty for not paying taxes, so few people do.

This is just one of the things that Greece has refused to even attempt to fix and until there is some meaningful progress there, it's no use throwing good money after bad. Especially when they are also saying outright they have no intention of even trying to fix any of the many things that are broken in their country. Unless they are first given more, of course, at which point they may consider doing so.

It's also telling that in terms of the aid Greece got and some of the austerity measures related to that, they chose to cut the welfare state to the bone, but did not do anything to fix the tax system, corruption etc. Had they done so, even halfway, they could have their welfare state AND be paying down the debt. But apparently this is not acceptable to Greece.

[K. A. Pital]

That's nobodies fault but the Greeks, nobody but them elected these clowns and nobody forced them to keep them in power to this point.

I am not sure you realize how a corrupt political system works, you idiot.

What does austerity have to do with the previous Greek government being worse than useless?

Perhaps the fact that it was implemented by the previous Greek government, you moron, and that heads were rolling left and right whenever anyone doubted that this policy is sensible?

What does that have to do with them willing letting things get to this point when any sane person saw a debt crisis looming will before it actually hit?

It has to do with you being a fucking moron and saying a small and harmless nation cannot get a writedown because its previous government was corrupt and this led to their own suffering, but other nations can get a writedown despite being implicated in war, mass murder and plundering other nations. You are seriously retard number one in this thread.

The average wages in Greece are higher than e.g. in Poland. So of course they will have to lower wages to attract investors. Also, they have to overhaul their overly complex bureaucracy, otherwise lowering wages won't have much effect.

The standard of living in Greece is inflated by 45 years of spending money from abroad. Perhaps you think that they hence have some right to keep this standard, but this is not how it works.
You have to actually earn your money, anything else is not sustainable in the long run.

This bullshit about some 'neoliberal charlatans' is nothing else than hot air. Greece got free money from 1981 to 2010 to make the country competitive. It is not the fault of the EU that Greece wasted this money instead of doing something sensible with it.

So the "deindustrialization" is their own fault, they have nobody to put the blame on.

Another brainless fucktard in the thread: Poland has its own currency and no hard peg, therefore your comparisons are meaningless. Greek standard of life is not 'inflated' by 45 years of 'spending money from abroad', they only got access to low-rate eurocredits after getting into ERM. And since, of course, the stability of the euro allowed for a glut of unreasonably cheap credit in the periphery and made any adjustment impossible, the whole thing just blew up in 2011 and looks forward to blow up again now.

Deindustrialization is a direct consequence of the periphery countries' competitiveness being undercut by the ERM mechanism. Even the most die-hard liars who spouted how the Euro will benefit everyone in 1998-2001 admit as much now. Once again, don't be so fucking stupid, this doesn't fly here.

[J]

"Greece must pay its debts even if doing so will starve a generation" is a pretty unrealistic expectation, yet that's what you advocate.

It will not starve a generation. While some throw around figures like "4% of their GDP goes to interest payments", those same people also fail to mention that Greece gets back every cent they pay towards the ECB, which lowers their overall interest expenditure to a mere 2.6% of GDP. This is far below that what other states pay (Portugal 5%, Italy 4.7%, Ireland 4.1%, Spain 3.3%) and barely above that of France (2.2%). Even if Greece were to force herself to dedicate 4% it would still pay less than Portugal, Italy and Ireland. As the situation currently is, Greece pays far less than any other troubled state. This myth about Greece being strangled by its debts is just that, a myth. Other nations pay far more in relative and in absolute terms.

No EU country has ever run a sustained budget surplus of over 2%. I've gone over this already. Your problem is you don't seem to understand basic exponential functions, which you should've learned by the time you were 15. Let me explain this to you, since you've clearly forgotten or failed high school math. When one base number is already larger (debt compared to GDP) and its exponent is larger as well (interest rate vs. budget surplus), it will run away every single time. The gap between the required interest payments and the budget surplus available to pay them blows out. Guaranteed. The math just is, and no amount of insistence to the contrary will change it.

Hilarious, from a country that has had major debt restructuring and forgiveness for every major foreign debt in the past century.

Are you denying that we are paying back the Marshall fund?

After it was restructured and many of the loans turned into grants. In other words, forgiven and written off.

[Jub]

I am not sure you realize how a corrupt political system works, you idiot.

You mean a corrupt system that the citizens are implicitly in support of vis-a-vis not paying taxes and voting these clowns into power? How many of them were calling for internal reforms before the crisis? The answer is pretty much nobody, nobody in Greece gave a shit about this until the government corruption started to hurt them instead of help them, so why should the look behind the curtain? So yes, it is the fault of the people of Greece for not even calling for change until after the crisis hit/

Perhaps the fact that it was implemented by the previous Greek government, you moron, and that heads were rolling left and right whenever anyone doubted that this policy is sensible?

The new guys haven't proven themselves to be better at this point. Sure they helped some people, but that's a campaign winning move, not an act of policy, and (based on the lack of anybody posting it in this thread) they have yet to put forth a new plan for actually collecting taxes and fixing the corruption. So why should Germany negotiate with them under any but the harshest possible terms when Greece has thus far showed no ability to fix her own issues?

It has to do with you being a fucking moron and saying a small and harmless nation cannot get a writedown because its previous government was corrupt and this led to their own suffering,

This is a perfectly valid reason not to lend a nation money. Plus, at this early stage, we have no proof that the new government is any better than the old one when it comes to actually fixing Greece. Why should anybody lend them money for any reason that doesn't serve the lending nations interests?

but other nations can get a writedown despite being implicated in war, mass murder and plundering other nations. You are seriously retard number one in this thread.

Germany, being a major power in a key location in a post WWII environment was a special case. Plus as Thanas has pointed out the current government is honoring his debts and has enacted very sound economic policies while being strictly non-interventionist when it comes to their military. Saying that Germany has an unlimited obligation to help lesser nations because he received help in the past is bullshit and you know it.

[Simon_Jester]

I think now is a good time to ask who slipped some heavy duty mind altering substances to your morning tea, Broomstick. There is no possible way this bit makes any sense in any real world context. There is absolutely no reason to disband the EU just because Greece happens to be a problem case. The benefits member states have gained from the cooperation in the Union meant that suggestion is absolute nonsense.

I think that, not knowing American history by heart the way Broomstick presumably does, you may have missed something.

She's talking about the constitutional rewrite of 1787, in which the US dropped a non-functional constitution and created a (relatively) functional one with a meaningful central government that could solve policy issues and settle disputes between the states. The "weak union" she refers to is the Articles of Confederation.

Thus, her point is that if the EU is a weak union which results in harm to Greece (and other periphery states), and which Greece (and others) cannot realistically leave... the union that is the EU needs reform.

New structures should be created and new policies enacted, so that the EU can behave like a union whose members all have a right to succeed and thrive. Otherwise the EU simply becomes a cover for imperialism by the powerful members against the powerless ones.

The question is, are all the members of the EU on the same side when it comes to the question "should the Greeks do what is best for the Greeks, and results in them repairing Greece?" Or are they on opposing sides?

If there are EU countries that don't want the Greeks to do what it takes to fix Greece, then Greece is well rid of those countries. If the EU is all on the same side here, though, they need to act like it. Or at least stay the hell out of the way while the Greeks try (and possibly fail) to fix things themselves.

Demanding interest payments that exceed any reasonable share of Greek GDP does not qualify as helping. Or even staying out of the way.

This is just one of the things that Greece has refused to even attempt to fix and until there is some meaningful progress there, it's no use throwing good money after bad. Especially when they are also saying outright they have no intention of even trying to fix any of the many things that are broken in their country. Unless they are first given more, of course, at which point they may consider doing so.

I've been desperately busy over much of the past two weeks, so I may simply not have noticed the part where the new government said they refuse to try to enforce tax laws and so on until given more money by the EU. Would you mind enlightening me or at least linking to the posts that should have enlightened me?

It's also telling that in terms of the aid Greece got and some of the austerity measures related to that, they chose to cut the welfare state to the bone, but did not do anything to fix the tax system, corruption etc. Had they done so, even halfway, they could have their welfare state AND be paying down the debt. But apparently this is not acceptable to Greece.

Everyone with two brain cells to rub together knows the old Greek government was incompetent, corrupt, and generally a wreck. Hopefully the new one isn't going to be more of the same, seeing as how they were not in power when all the horrible decisions were made. Hopefully.

---

The average wages in Greece are higher than e.g. in Poland. So of course they will have to lower wages to attract investors. Also, they have to overhaul their overly complex bureaucracy, otherwise lowering wages won't have much effect.

So, basically, lower their standard of living into a Third World country so they can take a stab at replicating the success of the 'Asian Tigers' and work their population in sweatshops to produce consumer goods for everybody else?

This bullshit about some 'neoliberal charlatans' is nothing else than hot air. Greece got free money from 1981 to 2010 to make the country competitive. It is not the fault of the EU that Greece wasted this money instead of doing something sensible with it.

Money you have to pay back later isn't free. "Free" means "no strings attached," and half of Greece's problems stem from the strings attached to all that money.

Banks loaned to Greece expecting to get their money back, with interest- while the Greek government was incompetent enough to borrow more than their economy could ever realistically repay. Well, the Greek people have sensibly thrown out that government and replaced it with a new one that had nothing to do with the old stupid policy... But the foreign banks want their money back.

Question is, how can the Greeks possibly repay that money? Their economy isn't big enough, and not even starving themselves into 1950s-era South Korea and building an export economy from scratch will give them the prosperity to make interest payments any time soon. Even trying to pay the interest is likely to strangle any attempt at industrialization before it can really move.

A normal government has a variety of tools for dealing with this. The Greek government has fewer- because it has obligations to foreigners who control part of its economic policy. But trying to turn the Greek people into serfs to produce goods for foreigners isn't going to solve this problem, won't repay the old debts, and won't somehow make Greece a paradise 'eventually.'

You're wrong, it took 1min to Google to find out that Greece exports $431million worth of Olive Oil and imports $3.5 million (source). I understand this isn't the thrust of your 'argument' but how much credibility do you expect to have when you fail at the first hurdle?

AFAIK much of their olive oil 'exports' come from reexporting olive oil, but I didn't find the exact numbers. But be it as it may, this is an unimportant point anyways.

I have to ask... How do they re-export olive oil without ever importing into the country in the first place?

What? You can pay for things other than Euros, you know this right?

You are delusional if you think that prices would stay the same in Greece without the Euro. The Drachme would lead to a huge raise in costs for imported products.

Which might be just as well if it forced the Greeks to stop acting as a market for foreign industry and build an economy that serves their own needs.

The problem I think you have with Krugman is that you don't understand how economies work.

This is utter bullshit! Krugman's mantra is: "When a country runs into economical problems, it must spend more money".

The fact that money spending got them into this situation doesn't seem to play a role for him, his solution is always the same. This is moronic.

When I get sick because of my expensive new hobby, I must spend more money on a physician. Stopping the hobby and huddling in bed waiting for the pain to go away probably isn't a good strategy, not if the disease is at all serious.

The point here is that trying to put a national economy 'on a diet' isn't going to work. Ceasing to spend money making sure your own population stays alive and educated is a BAD idea if you want your economy to remain steady or growing over time.

Also, it is a fact that Keynes only works in a closed economy - just try and model an open economy. Then you increase the spending of the state and try to calculate the effect.

Could you expand on what learned source taught you this?

Also... you say that going onto the drachma would cause the price of imports in Greece to skyrocket, and that for Greek government spending to be good for Greece, the Greeks must produce domestically rather than importing.

It sounds like you've stumbled on two problems that solve each other, then.

---

Disband the EU. Yes, I realize that's a tall order, but if everyone else leaves and only the UK remains then the effect is the same.
And if you've gotten yourself into a weak union you can't exit which is screwing with its members then you've make a very bad mistake. When that happened to some former British Colonies in North America they had the sense to reconstruct the union to something more workable. Why is it unthinkable for Europe to do likewise?

Because it is beyond stupid to think that the 13 colonies are in any way compatible. The societies, power of the landed elites and complexities of the situation are unthinkable. It took over 50 years to get the EU to where it is now. You just cannot take so many different societies and say "blow it all up and let's reform". It is a pipedream. It is the sort of thing nobody even remotely familiar with the EU thinks possible, except for the Neonazis of Pegida and AFD. The challenge alone of trying to recreate the customs treaties the EU has with other nations is beyond stupid.

It would be (in practical, not legal terms) akin to the states of the USA seceding from Washington over Obama's policies and then attempting to recreate the union while missing all the federal money, buildings, powers etc. All the while being in the worst financial crisis of the last 30 years. BTW, when Germany would announce such a plan, half of Europe is pretty much going to declare bankruptcy. What do you think is the lesser evil of the two?

Maybe this is a worthy attempt once the storm has passed. In the current climate, it would be economic suicide.

Just to make sure you know what Broomstick is talking about, she appears to be referring to the constitutional convention of 1787, which abolished the Articles of Confederation and replaced them with a more functional government (at least by the standards of the time).

No one is disputing that. However, no one has a time machine, either. The past can not be fixed. Going forward how will this crisis be resolved?

Starting to fix the problems would be a good option. But Tsipras is unwilling to do so, as his refusal to break up the state monopoly on electric power has shown and his program to rehire thousands of the corrupt bureaucrats who were tossed out.

Er, I'm not clear on this... Did Tsipras renounce the idea of fighting corruption explicitly? Did he say "boy oh boy I love corruption!"

I mean, I can easily imagine a leader who wants to keep electricity a state monopoly, rather than, say, sell off the whole system to a lowest bidder who he expects will skimp on maintenance. Or who wants to hire state employees while punishing the ones who are specifically committing corruption.

What current solution has been attempted? Cleaning up the corruption has been barely attempted. State monopolies are untouched. The bureaucrats are untouched. The oligarchs haven't been taxed. The number of cases for tax evasion is low. When they were given a list of ~2000 high ranking officials who had illegal swiss bank accounts, the Government tried to imprison the guy who published the existence of that list in the newspapers. Not a single one on those list has been indicted. In fact, they flat out stated that they would refuse to do so. Germany offered experts and investigators to help built an enforcement arm. This offer has not been taken up.

Was this under the old government, or under the new government that is about a week old?

Because we knew the old government was stupidly corrupt and incompetent, that's how Greece got into this mess in the first place.

That's part of the PR issue here - Germany has been the recipient of both loans and outright charity in recent history,

No, we haven't. The vast majority of Germans were not even alive back then.

And yet, the modern prosperity and booming success of the German economy owes a great deal to the fact

I mean, most Germans may not remember the Marshall Plan, but they sure remember reunification. As I understand it, a large part of the difference between West and East Germany in those days was that the Western Allies committed to rebuilding West Germany as an economic and geopolitical peer (which they needed as a security buffer, if nothing else). Meanwhile the Soviets saw East Germany as a vassal state to be stripped of assets in order to partially repay the horrific damage caused to them by the Nazis.

It turned out that the half of the country which was given time and space and opportunities to rebuild did a lot better than the half which was told at gunpoint to "repay us NOW, damn it!"

Unless you think East Germany was better off than West Germany prior to reunification, it's hard to understand how you can think "repay us NOW, damn it!" is a good idea when dealing with destitute and dysfunctional nations. And given that reunification was a big deal within the last two or three decades, not just the last seven...

Yeah, I have to agree, having Germans be the ones who demand fast repayment of international debts no matter the costs or consequences really does seem like a stunning lack of historical perspective.

[K. A. Pital]

To Jub:

1. Usually when debts are written down, this impacts the credit rating of a nation. So in any case this has nothing to do whether something will be lent to Greece in the future. Most likely nothing, as their rating is junk anyway.
2. Nobody is being asked to lend money; the question is that a debt which cannot be repaid, will not be repaid. That is all
3. Germany is not a special case; no one is a 'special case'. There's no special nationality that deserves to be forgiven for its sins specifically. No 'great powerness', no 'whitness', no 'key location'. Either you are of the opinion that people are people, and therefore from the humanist standpoint a life of a German is worth the same as that of a Greek, or you are a social darwinist because you think some people are more special than others.

And guess what, moron - there's one thing I hate much more than idiots, and that's social darwinists. Germany has no obligation to 'help'. Greece has no obligation to repay a debt which it can't repay. End of story.

[J]

According to Jub's logic, and I use that word loosely, Greece should start a major war in Europe and lose, and in the process kill millions people and lay waste to several countries. This would allow Greece to claim vast amounts of international aid to rebuild itself, get rid of corruption, become productive, and oh yes, write off the vast majority of its debts. Because what's good for Germany is good for Greece. Seriously. Did you have to work to be this stupid or were you born this way?

[Jub]

To Jub:

1. Usually when debts are written down, this impacts the credit rating of a nation. So in any case this has nothing to do whether something will be lent to Greece in the future. Most likely nothing, as their rating is junk anyway.
2. Nobody is being asked to lend money; the question is that a debt which cannot be repaid, will not be repaid. That is all
3. Germany is not a special case; no one is a 'special case'. There's no special nationality that deserves to be forgiven for its sins specifically. No 'great powerness', no 'whitness', no 'key location'. Either you are of the opinion that people are people, and therefore from the humanist standpoint a life of a German is worth the same as that of a Greek, or you are a social darwinist because you think some people are more special than others.

And guess what, moron - there's one thing I hate much more than idiots, and that's social darwinists. Germany has no obligation to 'help'. Greece has no obligation to repay a debt which it can't repay. End of story.

Why should anybody absolve Greece of a debt that they knowingly and willfully took upon themselves, especially before Greece has shown any ability to enact the kinds of reforms that might convince people to throw them a bone? The answer is that they don't have one at the moment and throwing good money after bad, be that with loans or a reduction of debt load, isn't beneficial to anybody but the Greeks. Also, as it stands, the Greeks have the means within their grasp to fix things even without debt reduction and a debt reduction right this very second would do nothing to add tax money to Greece's coffers, do even less to fix the endemic corruption that caused this mess in the first place, and wouldn't put food on a single poor person's table.

In short, Greece needs to sack up and actually do what needs doing for its citizens. Until they do that I don't expect anybody to be sympathetic to her plight.

EDIT: Also Stas, if we allow any nation that fails is entitled to write off all its debts, what is the incentive for nations to grow the smart way rather than continually mooch off of other nations after misleading them into thinking they were a worthy investment?

According to Jub's logic, and I use that word loosely, Greece should start a major war in Europe and lose, and in the process kill millions people and lay waste to several countries. This would allow Greece to claim vast amounts of international aid to rebuild itself, get rid of corruption, become productive, and oh yes, write off the vast majority of its debts. Because what's good for Germany is good for Greece. Seriously. Did you have to work to be this stupid or were you born this way?

Given that Greece doesn't have the capacity to damage much of anything if it started a war and the fact that it isn't looking to be a key ally in fight much of anything, I wouldn't count on that being an option. Plus if that was tried, the Greeks would no longer control any aspect of their nation and the occupying power would call all the shots. Right now that means they'd probably get either Germany or the US occupying them and neither would be all that inclined to help Greece rebuild. So no J, my logic isn't that they start a war.

My logic is that they aren't special or useful in the ways German was in the 50's and thus they won't be treated like Germany was. It's not an issue of fair or not fair but of circumstance and and the political will to render aid to a nation in need when Greece has already squandered away aid given to it for the past decades.

[Edi]

Regarding the German debt relief in the early 1950s: Their creditors did not do that out of the goodness of their hearts or anything such. It was a measure calculated to bring West Germany firmly into the western camp and to thwart any possible ambitions by the Soviet Union to gain a foothold there.

A big part of it was Cold War politics and anyone who disregards that aspect of the issue and insists on a full on 100% equivalency to today's issues with Greece, particularly in light of the institutional problems with Greece's economy and corruption, is a fucking moron.

I don't actually oppose some form of debt relief for Greece, as long as they first fix their fucking tax evasion and corruption issues. If they don't, well, then they can get bent.