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

[grumbler]

could you be a little more specific with what you're referring to?

Specifically, the Greek government achieved its primary surplus mostly but cutting spending, rather than tax enforcement (i.e. by drastically reducing the black economy), and it grandfathered in so many people on the pension reforms that it actually encouraged early retirement, driving pension payments as a percentage of GDP to unsustainable levels.

In addition, the government disguised the real levels of debt through those notorious "swaps" and issued what amounted to fraudulent bonds (which were overwhelmingly purchased by foreigners). I'd argue that the Greek rich suffered a lot less than the Greek middle class and poor under the previous government's handling of the crisis.

[Dauphin]

it was clear to me (of course i wasn't alone) in 2009 that greece was insolvent and that there were no measures that could restore the situation except a default.

damn, if only you were El Duce!

I don't see the 2009 point as passed the point of no return as a proven. Certainly not given contemporaneous knowledge.

[C0ckney]

yes i certainly agree with the second paragraph.

however the first i have a few issues with. greece is a very old country, the 4th oldest in the world, so of course its pension expenditure is high. greeks retire a little later than the EU average and later than people in 3 of the 4 biggest EU countries. the reforms that were undertaken will increase the average age further still in the coming years. i agree that more could have been done and could be done on tax collection, but a large part of the problem is down to the structure of the greek economy; around 30% of greeks are self-employed, which is double the EU average. self-employment encourages tax evasion. a cut in government workers increases the numbers of self-employed. of course there are other ways. some taxation can be moved from income onto goods and services, or (my preferred solution) onto land values and other economic rents. but even these kind of measures will not work if the central problem, i.e. greece's continued insolvency, remains unresolved.

[C0ckney]

damn, if only you were El Duce!

I don't see the 2009 point as passed the point of no return as a proven. Certainly not given contemporaneous knowledge.

the world would certianly be a better place if people took my advice more often.

[kentonio]

I must admit I enjoyed the Greek Finance ministers resignation more than pretty much any other I've seen. Not because he went, but because he took the time to craft an excellent **** you to his opponents.

I shall wear the creditors' loathing with pride

[Dauphin]

I just like the tortured name twisting. Yanis Theywillfackus, replaced by Euclid Sackthelotofus.

[-Jrabbit]

This article appeared in my newsfeed today...

Thomas Piketty: Germany Shouldn't Be Telling Greece To Repay Debt
Posted: 07/06/2015 11:46 am EDT Updated: 3 hours ago
THOMAS PIKETTY

Thomas Piketty isn’t mincing words when it comes to the Greek debt crisis.

In an interview with German newspaper Die Zeit last month (and translated recently by business analyst Gavin Schalliol), the leading French economist pummeled Germany for its hypocrisy in demanding debt repayment from Greece.

Greece on Sunday voted a resounding “no” on a bailout plan proposed by its creditors, making its continued membership in the eurozone more tenuous. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande will hold an emergency summit on Tuesday to discuss the crisis.

But Piketty, who penned the blockbuster 2013 book on income inequality Capital in the Twenty-First Century, slammed conservatives who favor the economic austerity measures Germany and France are demanding of Greece, saying they demonstrate a “shocking ignorance” of European history.

“Look at the history of national debt: Great Britain, Germany, and France were all once in the situation of today’s Greece, and in fact had been far more indebted,” Piketty said. “The first lesson that we can take from the history of government debt is that we are not facing a brand new problem.”

Germany, Piketty continued, has “no standing” to lecture other nations about debt repayment, having never paid back its own debts after both World Wars.

“However, it has frequently made other nations pay up, such as after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, when it demanded massive reparations from France and indeed received them,” Piketty said. “The French state suffered for decades under this debt. The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.”

Piketty criticized the “infantile” moral uprightness of Germany, whose economic success upon reunification has led it to rebuke nations like Greece for being in similarly weakened financial states as Germany itself was in decades ago.

Piketty argued that the same debt relief accorded to Germany after World War II should be granted to Greece today.

“After large crises that created huge debt loads, at some point people need to look toward the future. We cannot demand that new generations must pay for decades for the mistakes of their parents,” Piketty said. “The Greeks have, without a doubt, made big mistakes. Until 2009, the government in Athens forged its books. But despite this, the younger generation of Greeks carries no more responsibility for the mistakes of its elders than the younger generation of Germans did in the 1950s and 1960s. We need to look ahead. Europe was founded on debt forgiveness and investment in the future. Not on the idea of endless penance. We need to remember this.”

Booting Greece out of the eurozone would splinter European unity and push markets to “turn on” the next struggling nation, he added. Instead, Piketty called for a conference to restructure all European debt. A committee in the European Parliament, for example, could be created to set a maximum budget deficit that would prevent debt from ballooning.

“Those who want to chase Greece out of the Eurozone today will end up on the trash heap of history,” Piketty said.

So, you lot who have been going on for over 400 posts, several of which are on topic, what say you? (I don't pretend to be up to speed on this topic.)

[Proteus_MST]

This article appeared in my newsfeed today...



So, you lot who have been going on for over 400 posts, several of which are on topic, what say you? (I don't pretend to be up to speed on this topic.)

LOL ... the author may forget that after WW1 france occupied Ruhr valley and transported off coal and other natural resources.
They also forget that the allieds and russians dismantled whole german industries and carried them away to their countries, as well as transporting german scientists into their countries. Not to forget that for almost a decade germany wasn´t allowed to rebuild many of the heavy industries.
Also not to forget that germany lost a lot of terrain ... parts of eastern prussia after WW1, the whole remainder of eastern Prussia after WW2 ...
and was a split country after WW2, with the german reunification just taking place in 1990 ... with lots of outdated russian industries in the former DDR that were more of a burden than an asset, requiring germany to invest lots of money into modernization and rebuilding.

Also german did pay war reparations ... even to greece:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_reparations_for_World_War_II

[C0ckney]

he's right about debt forgiveness, but i believe that it's unhelpful to bring the world wars, and all the associated patriotic penis waving, into it.

[Dr Strangelove]

This would be a wonderful time for one of the Republican candidates to make it part of his platform that European countries should repay their previous war debts to the United States. When I was a young'un this was a common ploy: "If you elect me I'll balance the budget by makin' those wuthless fureners pay what they owes us!"

[Saras]

This article appeared in my newsfeed today...



So, you lot who have been going on for over 400 posts, several of which are on topic, what say you? (I don't pretend to be up to speed on this topic.)

I respond to Piketty's shallow tripe with this:

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-01-27/germany-deserved-debt-relief-greece-doesn-t-i5fdca2y

[C0ckney]

well i suppose if your aim was to respond to picketty by showing just how much more lacking in heft, depth and moral worth the other side's arguments are, then you've succeeded.

[Proteus_MST]

I respond to Piketty's shallow tripe with this:

http://www.bloombergview.com/article...esn-t-i5fdca2y

The article also docuiments well the conditions from which germany had to restart after WW2.
Surely far worse conditions to start than Greece had after WW2.
Seems like germany did something right during the last 3/4 century and greece did a lot wrong

[Saras]

well i suppose if your aim was to respond to picketty by showing just how much more lacking in heft, depth and moral worth the other side's arguments are, then you've succeeded.

In my view Piketty's outlook on the world is fundamentally wrong, as is his reading of (economic, mostly) history. And I can't imagine how anyone can say that the article I linked to, which references actual research into post WW2 German economic affairs (a Germany destroyed, its undestroyed industry dismantled and shipped off, together with leading engineers and scientists, with several millions of refugees from East Germany to take care of etc), with unfounded bald assertions by a guy the left is idolising as if he's the second coming of Marx (but who instead is a champagne socialist pop icon), lacks breadth.

[regexcellent]

Whether Greece leaves the Euro or not, it doesn't actually have a choice about cutting spending in real terms since nobody is going to lend it money anymore.