[civil] "Greece moves closer to eurozone exit after delaying €300m repayment to IMF "

[pchang]

What about the difference between Finland and Malta? Finnish economy contracted as well in the last decade.

Speaking of irrelevancies, what world dominating company did Greece have that collapsed like Nokia?

[grumbler]

Speaking of irrelevancies, what world dominating company did Greece have that collapsed like Nokia?

Shipping.

[pchang]

Shipping still exists

[Proteus_MST]

Greece also seems to have a big potential for earning lots of money, in form of large deposits of oil and gas in the eastern mediterranean

[Sir Og]

Tourism and Oil don't work very well together.

btw for the record I don't think Greece is blameless or deserving of more money. I just think that the "solutions" proposed by EU bureucrats (Germans) are almost entirely worthless. Also the common currency and the fact that ECB effectively acts as Germany's CB is a mojor cotributor to Europe's inability to recover. It also makes this Greek mess nearly impossible to resolve with them remaining in the EZ.

[grumbler]

Shipping still exists

So does Nokia.

[pchang]

Only as a zombie

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Nokia Zombie with 60k employees, 15bn$ of revenue and 1bn$ of profit, ready to acquire Alcatel-Lucent.

They did shed current mobile division to MSFT, but this is about all they did, the rest restructured and is a fine company again ( ; ), a treatment that would be just as appropriate to a different entity being discussed here.

The whole point of the comparison with Finland is that it is as absurd as the comparison to Malta. Different market, different history, different issues.

While there is doubt that previous Greek governments are just as guilty of squandering the loans of the past, as the lenders who enabled them - the issue should be done as a proper restructuring, either outside or inside EU. Current "EU" solution, is ignorant of reality (bankruptcy), and is just kicking the can down the road again, with another loan put on top of the pile, while the population affected suffers with no end in sight.

Actually in my view the only way out for Greece is outside of the EU, as even if EU would have given them a reasonable deal (a proper restructure focused on growth), the monetary setup in EU would have strangled them again, so the inevitable would have popped up again with the next crisis, but at least in the meantime the country would have had a chance to recover and hope that EU institutions go through a restructure themselves before the next crisis comes along.

However with the current "deal", people can only move out of Greece, as there will be even fewer jobs, paying even less with economy being strangled by austere measures coming from a different parliament 2000 miles away, where those losers are forcing the EU to throw good money behind bad one, to make it all bad a few years down the road, just as they did in 2010. Nothing was learned, and they need to throw another 50 bn or more, at least they are not throwing it to support outright war as you do in the US, but it is not that far from it.

This is the bureaucratic utopia we have in Brussels right now, with no hope of it getting better in the future, either near or far.

[C0ckney]

good posts onefoot , though i think the warning about casting pearls before swine applies here.

[pchang]

The whole point of the comparison with Finland is that it is as absurd as the comparison to Malta. Different market, different history, different issues.

Which is exactly my point about Og's misleading and cherry picking chart. Glad you agree.

[Dinner]

It looks like Greek banks will reopen on Monday but the capital controls will remain in place. So no transfers over seas and only Euro 60 per day.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Which is exactly my point about Og's misleading and cherry picking chart. Glad you agree.

So you are saying that removing ability to set monetary policy domestically has no effect on the local economy, or that the chart is not showing it?

[Dinner]

It certainly has an impact but there are a lot of other factors which also have an impact, often an even larger impact. The Greeks should start concentrating on those things it can control (like regulations) or just quit the Euro and admit they are failures.

[C0ckney]

whoosh

[Proteus_MST]

Nokia Zombie with 60k employees, 15bn$ of revenue and 1bn$ of profit, ready to acquire Alcatel-Lucent.

...

Nokia Locust, who grazes the subventions of a country with the promise to open a factory in one land and then, when the subventions run out, closes the factory and moves on to the next land (so happened in Bochum, Germany and afterwards in Juca, Romania).

If greece promises good subventions, maybe the Nokia locust will open a factory there as well (until the subventions run out )