To add to the other Greece Breaking News story (Greece Defaults, Still Wants Bailout)....
The Ars Writes:
Thom Feeney, a London shoe shop worker who started a campaign to raise €1.6 billion (that's US $1.78 billion). Feeney's IndieGoGo campaign, started just two days ago, has already raised an astonishing €478,575 (or $533,010) from more than 30,000 people.
"All this dithering over Greece is getting boring," Feeney wrote on his IndieGoGo page. "Why don't we the people just sort it instead?" He added that to come up with the €1.6 billion, every member of Europe would only have to give €3 each (well, technically you'd only need to collect from members of the European Union; that's not even counting any potentially generous Swiss or Norwegian people.)
The campaign has six days left to raise money. If €1.6 billion isn't raised, all the donors will get back their money.
This afternoon, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) declared that Greece was officially in arrears, but it has not yet declared that Greece is in default. Technically, the IMF could offer Greece an extension of its debt repayment obligation. On July 5, the country will hold a national referendum on whether to sign a deal demanding even stricter austerity from the nation.
But, if Europeans all chip in, maybe we can just put this silly bailout business behind us.
Original Submission
Related Stories
Greece missed a payment to the IMF on Tuesday and defaulted, but now they are willing to do the deal, or most of the deal, that would have prevented it. According to CNN:
Whoa! The Greek government is now ready to sign on to a bailout package it threw out just days ago, but the about-face won't fix the country's crisis any time soon.
Additional coverage of the Greek Referendum and the political backlash in the Eurozone can be found from the BBC.
It looks like they want to add amendments, so this is not a done deal. Maybe it's not too late for Greece? Or is the Euro better off without Greece? Or Greece without the Euro?
Original Submission
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SrLnclt on Thursday July 02 2015, @11:45AM
I know these things can have a snowball effect, but based on the numbers in the summary they are on track to collect 0.133% of the needed money in the time allotted, or everyone gets their money back. While a noble idea, I doubt this will be the fix Greece needs.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 02 2015, @12:09PM
Now (about 12PM UTC), the total pledged amount is €1,385,000+: almost 3 times more than TFS mentions.
Yes, I pledged. What the heck, as it happens I like Ouzo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by MrGuy on Thursday July 02 2015, @12:16PM
Three times as much is great. It's still WAY off track to come close to what's needed. It's now 0.1% of the way to the goal.
Raising over a million dollars for crowdfunding is amazing as an achievement. But it's like raising $100 towards the price of a $10,000 new car. You're orders of magnitude off from the scale you need to be at. This needs to pick up at an exponential rate to have a prayer of hitting the goal.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 02 2015, @01:03PM
Each person needs to convince other 3 - less than the typical pyramid schemes usually going with the power of 6
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Thursday July 02 2015, @07:35PM
Let me try to convince you what a bad idea this is.
What possible incentive would there be for Greece to start living withing their means if you pay off the debt they so glibly accumulated over the years.
What possible incentive would there be for the lenders to stop laying debt traps by funding regimes with no visible means of support, if everybody fills their coffers for them out of sympathy for their victims?
How soon will you have to do this all over again when, once again, there is no consequence to overspending and walking away from debt?
This is a fundamentally unworkable idea, which, in the extremely unlikely case it succeeds even to a marginal degree, simply kicks the can down the road a very short distance.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 02 2015, @10:16PM
Let me tell you why I pledged:
Yeah, maybe I'm naive and let IndieGoGo have my money for a week to pay their corporate asses from the accumulated interest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Insightful) by curunir_wolf on Thursday July 02 2015, @02:17PM
I am a crackpot
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @09:30PM
Yes, all those innocent Greeks. Poor innocent greeks. They were just doing nothing, spending money and then the big bad world took and took all the money from greece. Yeah, poor innocent Greeks.
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Sunday July 05 2015, @05:50PM
I am a crackpot
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Thursday July 02 2015, @04:21PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2015, @02:37PM
Are you sure it's not a certain fruit branded abuser picking up the slack to keep bsd barely alive?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @12:28PM
it won't cause it only fixes the ony payment they defaulted on last night, there's several tens of billions of payments due by september
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @08:39PM
No kidding the amount need is off by a factor of about 300.
They have systemic issues. Of which Germany and France are taking advantage of. Never mind the cooking of the books they did to get into the euro in the first place. One in 4 people work for the gov. Retirement age is 57 and a huge pension fund that is un funded. Tax evasion is pervasive. On top of that a very large military outlay to protect against turkey?. Yeah they have some issues.
At this point I have heard that for every member in the union they have contributed 750 euros each already in loans. That are getting more and more difficult to pay back.
All I can say is it going to suck to be a Greek in the next 3-10 years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @11:46AM
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday July 02 2015, @01:17PM
Yeah, but Bill Gates is busy dumping his money into real problems affecting real people, not financial problems affecting institutional investors in the world's biggest economic zone.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @12:19PM
The Greeks are a bunch of dead beats. Pay your bills or lower your standard of living. If you can't pay it back, don't borrow it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @12:34PM
they did lower their standard of living, and rather massively:
- both wages and pensions went down 40-60% across the board,
- they lowered governement expenses by 20% in 5 years (absolotue figures)
- they also have near 30% unemployment and 50+% unemployed youth
- 45% of pensioners now get less then the poverty line
- health coverage is now so bad that 'doctors without borders' is the main provider
- they lost a 3th of their small businesses
- suicides rates are at record levels
(you can actually find the above numbers in mainstream sources, but only in the in-depth documentaries)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @12:37PM
They did all this after decades of corruption and profligate social spending. The barn door was open and the horse gone at the turn of the century.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @02:38PM
You're reply and Greece's situation is akin to person A being choked to death by person B while person B keeps yelling: "why are you letting yourself be choked... start breathing again..."
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @02:50PM
It's completely self-inflicted. Nobody made them join the EU, borrow money, or spend it all. No one is choking them.
(Score: 1) by sce7mjm on Thursday July 02 2015, @07:50PM
Think you'll find they didn't actually qualify to join the euro. So actually they were encouraged to join. Probably by the same people who lent them the money, and don't forget what they were buying with the money, military equipment from Germany, civil engineering products from the rest of Europe. The lender doesn't want the lender to go bust, this has been a political nightmare from beginning to end. The lenders want the interest and the capital with no risk. So actually both sides should suck it up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @09:33PM
And yet, they continue to spend huge amounts of money on military, when the money is needed elsewhere. Greece has no fucking idea how to handle money, and that's the root of the problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @04:22PM
Yes, and everyone knew about this. The country has been close to a debt crisis ever since it fought off the Ottomans nearly two centuries ago. Yet despite all that, they were still allowed to join the Euro zone and they still were allowed to borrow at inconceivably low interest rates.
You can't place blame on the Greeks alone. The other prospective Euro member states of the day are just as much to blame. As are the financiers of Greece's debt. All of them should have known better.
Also consider the fact that up until the eighties, it was not uncommon for countries to be acquitted of part of their debt because the burden of interest had simply become too big. Somehow, that apparently has become a no-no since.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Thursday July 02 2015, @04:34PM
Prior to the crisis, Greece was spending less of their GDP on social welfare than either France or Germany [ft.com], the same countries that are currently berating the Greeks for being profligate social spenders.
What's particularly dumb about all of this is that Greece was prepared to make loan payments that were going to chip down the national debt very slowly, but the problem was that Germany in particular was unwilling to accept their rate of repayment. To use a car loan analogy: Let's say you borrowed $12,000 to buy a car at 5% interest over 3 years, in 36 monthly installments of $350. You contract a severe illness, and you find yourself so strapped for cash that you can only come up with $315. Now, the $315 is enough to pay back the loan with more interest in 42 months, but the bank decides that instead of accepting your $315 and negotiating terms you can actually manage, they will instead refuse to accept your partial payment and will repossess your car. And now you can't get to work to do the job that convinced the bank you could afford the loan in the first place, and so your credit is in shambles and the bank didn't get their money back. And the bank is saying you are solely responsible for this when they could have accepted the $315 a month, tacked on some extra interest on the end, and eventually gotten their $12,000 back.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @12:44PM
What a very stupid thing to say... The politicians who borrowed the money are not the little people who are expected to pay it back. And who the fuck lends billions of dollars to dead beats? Part of the blame certainly lies on creditors.
Here's a documentary you might find interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debtocracy [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @12:52PM
The creditors, largely European banks, were foolish enough to lend the money, but that doesn't absolve the Greeks from the contract they entered into willingly and also foolishly.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday July 02 2015, @01:10PM
The current creditors were previously fooled by Greece helped by some US swindlers [spiegel.de].
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @03:10PM
When you take on a loan, the offset of the risk that is taken on by the lender is what they call the interest. That is why it exists: I take on risk to lend you money which you may not pay me back so I'm taking on interest so that I cover that risk. All in all and over all the loans I make, I'll come out ahead with my risk covered and a good bit of extra profit out of it.
I don't have a problem with anyone making a profit, but interest is not some inalienable right you as a holder of capital have to increase your owned pool of money.
The creditors did lend money to Greece and received interest for years. If all went well, the lenders would have made a nice, big fat wad of cash. Sadly it didn't but it was the creditors that took on the risk with the promise of interest.
Years ago, there was a housing crisis. You may remember remnants of it in the back of your head. Banks took on huge risks and everyone balked at bailing them out. Everyone inherently felt that something was morally wrong with that. Everyone was convinced that the banks got what they deserved, they took on the bet and lost. But we still bailed them out to the dismay of many because 'the financial system would collapse otherwise'.
And how exactly is this situation different from the housing crisis? Banks and lenders took on huge risk by lending Greece money and now may not be paid back. Once again there are threats of 'whole systems collapsing' (Euro[pe]) if we don't do *something*.
Essentially, it's the same problem: lenders took on a bet that they would get incredibly nicely rewarded for when all went well but for which they weren't willing to bear the consequences in case the bet went sour.
But there is a difference this time, and that is that it's not a couple of million individuals who can't pay back their mortgage; /those/ guys were an amorphous blob that you can't easily point at with your little wagging finger. Those guys were your average neighbour who's "a cool guy". You don't want to hurt Joe Schmo who's daughter is the girlfriend of your son, no sir-ee...
This time, it's a country, a different country than yours, it's a single entity. Something very easily pointed at and deamonized: "Ahhh.. those no-good, lazy, early-retiring Greeks.... they got what they deserved... let them suffer and rot in hell." That makes you feel good because you can attribute blame without having to consider the different factors that lead up to it.
Slipping into this kind of thinking is so much easier and so much more satisfying than actually thinking deeply about the situation.
Now I'm not saying that for years, Greece didn't live outside of its financial means. I think it is well established that they did. But I think that it's just a tad too easy to have that be the be-all-and-end-all argument in the discussion.
What we don't hear about is how Europe never knew about this. I seriously doubt that Europe didn't know this. They go through the budgets with fine-tooth combs and penalize countries who submit budgets that are not in line with regulations. Either these people didn't do their job or they ignored the warning signs. I find the argument that "Greece lied" to be a very weak one, especially because they 'found out about it' when it is super-convenient for them. Based on what I hear around the Commission, Europe knew, and never decided to do anything!
Because all was well in Euro-land. It was boom-times and no one raised any questions when the going was good. Now that the going is not so good, they need a scapegoat that they can bring to the altar and slit its throat in plain sight for everyone to see, just to show people that they are doing something. This 'sacrifice' is going to be equally effective as the human sacrifices made by the Aztecs back in the day.
But Greece is suffering in the process which makes us feel good. And it just ties in nicely with the perceived need for atonement in order to be 'cleansed of this badness'. In order to be helped you have to suffer first. Suffering is good because it makes us feel better about ourselves.
Ugh, call me a cynic...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @06:21PM
When you take on a loan, the offset of the risk that is taken on by the lender is what they call the interest.
That is not entirely accurate. Interest is not used to offset default risks. If there is some risk the borrower will default, money is not lent at low interest (opposite of the case of Greece, which hid its real debt using derivatives). And if money is lent, the interest rate is very high making it infeasible for the borrower. What interest do you think you will charge Greece if you lend it money today (considering there is a high chance you will never get your money back)? And what interest would you charge France or Germany today (with no chance of default)?
However, interest payments can be used to buy credit default swaps and other derivatives in case the borrower defaults. But this is Europe, so I'm not sure they use CDS's much.
Based on what I hear around the Commission, Europe knew, and never decided to do anything
So now its Europe's fault?
Suffering is good because it makes us feel better about ourselves
But they are not children and they knew they had to pay borrowed money back. When its time to pay, its time to pay and no amount of noise will save you. Same rules for all.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday July 03 2015, @12:58AM
Interest is not used to offset default risks. If there is some risk the borrower will default, money is not lent at low interest
Nonsense. Someone the other day mentioned Argentina both its multiple defaults over the decades and the current 10+% interest rates it pays for debt. A replier noted that the unusually high interest rate was precisely due to the default risk premium that Argentina had to pay in order to borrow that money. And that's pretty much what you say in the second sentence. Of course, if the borrower is flaky enough, then no one will lend without collateral at any interest rate.
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Friday July 03 2015, @01:27AM
they need a scapegoat that they can bring to the altar and slit its throat in plain sight for everyone to see, just to show people that they are doing something.
What might actually be closer to the truth is, though:
they need an example that they can bring to the altar and slit its throat in plain sight for everyone to see, just to show people that they are doing something wrong if they think they can elect any change.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @01:03PM
Actually, a big part of the problem is rampant tax evasion in Greece.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @01:37PM
Thank god no one does that in amerika
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @01:55PM
Avoidance ≠ Evasion with regards to taxes
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @03:15PM
Avoidance: the act of avoiding
Evasion: to avoid doing
Avoidance != Evasion ... An interesting theory you have there...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @03:58PM
Here's what the IRS says about it. [irs.gov]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @05:27PM
You're being a pedant...
My point is that the net result of either is that no taxes are paid that are due/expected. One is 'legal' (but immoral) the other one is illegal (and immoral)
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday July 02 2015, @07:12PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 3, Insightful) by K_benzoate on Thursday July 02 2015, @03:36PM
From what I can tell, criminal tax evasion is when the poor and the middle class do it. When you're rich enough to hire lobbyists to rewrite the tax code in your favor, that's mere tax avoidance--a proud and perfectly legal American tradition!
Climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @06:17PM
Oh, I see what you did there! VERY clever. I can see you smugly looking around your surroundings with a self-satisfied smile when you typed that, hoping that someone will come by so that you can let them know what a clever little dickins you are!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by srobert on Thursday July 02 2015, @02:30PM
The Greek nation is like a guy who "borrowed" money to buy medicine for a sick kid. He would promise anything at the time to get the money to save the kid's life. So, he promised to kill one of his other kids, as a condition of the loan. The sick kid got his medicine. Now it's time to pay up. What do you think he's going to do?
What I think is needed are more liberal alternatives to organizations like the IMF, that are demanding privatization, austerity, tax cuts for billionaires, and other economically disastrous policies, as conditions for lending money to nations in crisis situations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @03:14PM
Greece is like a guy who borrowed money to buy an xbox off Craigslist.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by TheRaven on Thursday July 02 2015, @04:24PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @05:41PM
Do you really not know how easy it is to have a soft currency? Even the Greeks know how to do it. Do you really believe Germany doesn't know and instead invented the Euro and handed over control of its currency to an Italian because otherwise nobody would have kept buying stuff made in Germany?
(Score: 4, Informative) by maxwell demon on Thursday July 02 2015, @09:00PM
Actually the last thing Germany would want is a soft Euro. What do you think why Germany fought so hard for the current rules? It's because of the fear of replacing the hard DM with a soft Euro. So they fought for rules that were meant to ensure that the Euro would be just as hard as the DM.
If you want to scare a German, tell him that the Euro is getting soft.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 5, Informative) by M. Baranczak on Thursday July 02 2015, @12:25PM
When you owe the bank $100 and you can't pay, then you have a problem. When you owe $1,000,000, the bank has a problem.
A lot of people look at debt in terms of morality and honor. This is a huge mistake! You bet your ass the banks don't look at it that way. The correct approach is to compare the costs of paying the debt versus the costs of refusing to pay.
Some thoughts from an actual economist. [nytimes.com]
(Score: 2) by tibman on Thursday July 02 2015, @02:54PM
Not honoring your commitments is rarely a good thing. That doesn't mean failing to honor a commitment won't bring you personal gain though. There are many times in life where doing the opposite of what you have promised to do will benefit you greatly. But people who do that are usually regarded as untrustworthy (especially by those who were relying on your commitment).
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by sce7mjm on Thursday July 02 2015, @07:57PM
So all banks fail to honor the commitment the second they lend any money from a depositors account, it's just that they get away with it because people don't want all there deposited money at the same time. They are taking a risk lending. The Europeans have got to accept that lending to countries is a risk. And it is difficult to lay claim to assets without getting the tanks out.
(Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Thursday July 02 2015, @09:41PM
Not honoring your commitments is rarely a good thing.
True. But sometimes honoring your commitments is even worse.
But people who do that are usually regarded as untrustworthy
And that's just one of the potential costs that I was talking about.
(Score: 4, Informative) by WizardFusion on Thursday July 02 2015, @12:32PM
How about a link to the actual fund raiser - https://www.indiegogo.com/greek-bailout-fund.html [indiegogo.com]
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Thursday July 02 2015, @12:32PM
Even if it fails, I'm fairly sure its going to set records. That being said, I actually think it might have a slight chance of actually succeeding ...
Still always moving
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @12:43PM
Are people actually contributing money, or just making pledges? If it's the latter, they'll have a tough time collecting from people who pledged more than say $20.
(Score: 2, Informative) by YeaWhatevs on Thursday July 02 2015, @12:48PM
It comes out of your account immediately if you use paypal, refunded later if the goal isn't met.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2015, @02:43PM
And then your account gets frozen for no reason if you use paypal, probably to never be thawed.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anne Nonymous on Thursday July 02 2015, @01:53PM
Speaking of which, you guys could reset the SoyNews fund-raiser counter back to zero, borrow a large amount of money in Zlotys, do a credit default swap into Zimbabwean dollars, let the banks create loan-loss reserves against your debt, arrange a temporary bail out from the Japanese until a budget can be passed, do a sale-and-lease-back of mrcoolbp through the Argentinian Central Bank, default entirely on the whole thing, and then do a Kickstarter to pay off the debt.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday July 02 2015, @09:10PM
What record levels? The top Kickstarter project raised $20,338,986 for the Pebble smartwatch. The Reading Rainbow program with LeVar Burton raised $5,408,916 at #9.
Top Indiegogo project: $12,174,187 for "Flow Hive", whatever that is. The failed Ubuntu Edge fundraiser reached $12,809,906 of Canonical's $32 million goal.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anne Nonymous on Thursday July 02 2015, @12:48PM
All right, but apart from mathematics, science, philosophy, democracy, medicine, cartography, and wine, what have the Greeks ever done for us?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @01:14PM
Gift horse. Pederasty. Souvlaki.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @09:36PM
What have they done since then? I think those things you mentioned have been paid back already. Are you saying we need to keep on keeping and pay them until the end of the universe, just so they can sit on their asses in the sun and produce nothing?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @12:50PM
Crowdfunding Greece's Repayment
What, like taxes?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @07:50PM
It's almost like people wouldn't complain if the taxes were voluntary...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @08:34PM
"Everyone else is paying sufficient tax as it is, my personal contribution will not make a measurable difference, so I won't pay".
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday July 02 2015, @12:51PM
If every member of Europe would only have to give €3 each then it perhaps indicates it's not about debt. It's about something else. Perhaps a signal to Italy, Spain, Portugal etc to not step into the not-pay-debt territory?
And the database servers of banks, credit card issues and IndieGoGo will have their work cut out.
Interesting times..
(Score: 3, Informative) by Kilo110 on Thursday July 02 2015, @01:32PM
That 3 euro number is nonsense. That's just the interest payment.
The real number is a couple of orders of magnitude higher.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @01:58PM
> The real number is a couple of orders of magnitude higher.
As the citizenry of the EU will soon find out.
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Thursday July 02 2015, @02:25PM
I am a crackpot
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @03:23PM
€400 billion, not €40 billion. And the crowdfunded €1.5 billion for the IMF wouldn't even cover everything that was due on June 30th. The Greek administration also stiffed their own national bank to the tune of €500 million.
But the thread starter is right, it's not about the money: If Europe wanted to, it would be possible to perpetually put all of Greece on the dole. What this is actually about is the rules that enable the Eurozone to exist. If Europe let's Greece get away with it, then other countries will vote for their national version of Syriza as well. Spain and Italy both have elections coming up where socialist parties are looking to gain similar support as Syriza, for similar motivations. Maybe Europe could even shoulder that, but I doubt it, and at what point would the northern countries (north of France) just say "fuck it" and leave the EU? Then what? Back to printing money, that's what. Before the Euro, Greece had more than 20% annual inflation. I wouldn't even call this a long term perspective if Greece isn't made to comply with the rules of the club they so desperately want to be in. It would all deteriorate in a decade tops.
IMHO, what Greece needs to do right now is vote "OXI", default and reject any further debt (last part's easy). Then they need to elect a new government, build a working tax collection system and make themselves self-sufficient, inside the Eurozone. The alternatives are: Vote no, default and exit the Euro. Then the Syriza government, being the communists that they are, would certainly resort to printing money and bring back the 90s level inflation. The other alternative: Vote yes and keep going into more debt, which is wasted without a working tax collection system. A couple more iterations of the same and Greece will end up with one of the other alternatives.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by TheRaven on Thursday July 02 2015, @04:41PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @05:08PM
Europe also taxes everyone and distributes money to poorer countries. Greece has been a major beneficiary of that system. The loans that the current crisis is about are something else: sovereign debt. The thing that Germany (and others) vetoed and instituted a no-bailout clause against is that a country can go into debt on their own and then have that debt paid by the other Euro countries. Germany would have been able to keep the D-Mark's valuation in check on its own. The Bundesbank would have done the same things that the European Central Bank does to regulate the money supply. But then it would have been the sole beneficiary of the monetary expansion, not all of Europe. It is disingenuous to blame Germany for the Euro. Other countries have gone to great lengths to join the Euro, not because they so dearly wanted to be Germany's bitches, but because they saw the mutual benefits also for their own businesses. Germany was strong going into the Euro and will be strong if push comes to shove and Germany returns to its own currency. That does not mean it is a bad idea for other countries to want to be in a monetary union with Germany. Greece has a hard time accepting that it is one of the regions where people don't earn as much money and can't drive as nice cars. What's the average income difference between let's say New York and Alabama? Does that mean Alabama should leave the USD zone? Does that mean Alabama can just borrow as much as it wants to without interference from the federal government and then expect to be bailed out by the other 49 states?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @12:51PM
Yeah, breaking news. Is there "wink wink" unicode character?
Till the next bailout.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Thursday July 02 2015, @12:59PM
Because if the economic structure isn't fixed no amount of money will fix the long term feature.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday July 02 2015, @09:08PM
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday July 02 2015, @09:11PM
Oh, and is there an Unicode character for "I forgot to preview"? ☺
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 02 2015, @09:36PM
For the nudge case, I guess you could just take ½ of the 👊 (punch) one.
Something like 😉😉 ½👊½👊.
(you know it makes sense)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Insightful) by hunchentoot on Thursday July 02 2015, @01:12PM
No matter where you stand on the next step for the country, you must agree the massive financial wreck that is the state of greece was architected by the troika and the wealthy elite of greece.
The poor commoners of the world bailing out the banks and the elite? Not to mention that no matter how paltry the amount of money you raise, it isnt going to any starving family in greece, it is going straight to the banks.
It is just so miguided on so many levels
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 02 2015, @01:32PM
Hang on... is the bank going to send me a greek salad or a bottle of ouzo?
I think that, to deliver the promised perks, some actual greek people will need to work for some money: there's only 250millions of greek salads to send all over this world; and 160mil bottles of ouzo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Thursday July 02 2015, @02:28PM
I am a crackpot
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Thursday July 02 2015, @07:48PM
Yup. This has happened already once in Cyprus .
People responded by finding other places to put their money, which, as you point out is harder to do.
See http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/04/economist-explains-2 [economist.com]
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Thursday July 02 2015, @02:42PM
...does not constitute an emergency on my part. Seriously, why would anyone want to bail either Greece or their creditors out?
Greece has already declared bankruptcy multiple times since it was founded as a modern country. They've gone and outspent their income again, and lots of banks were dumb enough to loan them the money to do it. All that's been happening for the past few years is the EU loaning them money so that they can pay their loans. Like some sort of bad credit-card scam, they are just getting deeper and deeper in debt.
Greece should have left the Euro years ago. Declare all their debts void, reinstate their own currency, and start over. The longer they put this off, the more it is going to hurt, but it is the only way forward.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @03:57PM
The worst thing Greece could do now would be to reinstate their own currency. That would remove all pressure to achieve fiscal responsibility. The current government, with tremendous popular support, is socialist: They'll print whatever they need to pay for their handouts.
(Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Thursday July 02 2015, @05:01PM
Except that there's not enough paper in the universe to print the amounts needed.
If Greece does not pay back anything, and institutes their own currency, would you borrow them money?
Hell no. No one would. They'll take your money and just print what they owe you to pay you back in their currency. So their money would be roughly worth as much as the paper it's printed on.
If Greece institutes their own coin, they'll get hyperinflation to exceed Zimbabwe's inflation.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @03:26PM
European here: haven't we been crowd funding the Greek economy for at least a decade now?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @04:48PM
No, the European banks have. And everyone profited, especially the banks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @04:53PM
Not saying that you are wrong but do you have a citation for that?
My understanding was that for instance each Dutch person has paid the equivalent of 1100 Euros for bailing out Greece through taxes in the Netherlands.
http://m.trouw.nl/tr/m/nl/4496/Buitenland/article/detail/4058830/2015/06/06/Klaar-met-die-Griekse-spelletjes-tijd-voor-een-Grexit.dhtml [trouw.nl]
(Score: 3, Informative) by umafuckitt on Thursday July 02 2015, @06:43PM
No. We've been forcing it to not default by making it take out loans in order to pay back other loans. The "bailouts" aren't really bailouts. What Greece needs is either an orderly default or a supervised grace period to help it get its shit together. Today the IMF finally admitted this.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @07:53PM
The root cause of course being that Greece never should have been accepted as a EU member, but them being accepted based on falsified data ("accounting irregularities").
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Financial_Audit,_2004 [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday July 02 2015, @09:20PM
You are confusing "EU member" with "Euro member". Greece was already an EU member when the Euro was introduced. And there are still EU members without the Euro.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2015, @09:37PM
All the people who keep saying that we're not really helping Greece but the banks, or that paying their debt with new EU backed loans at low interest rates and with extremely delayed due dates isn't a bailout, need to turn on their TVs and open their fucking eyes: What you see in Greece now is what that "helping the banks" and "not bailing the Greeks out" has prevented until that Greek idiot and his motorcycle gang of one decided to walk away from the negotiations and brought the whole thing crashing down on Greece in a matter of hours after we stopped our "odious" behavior. This would have happened much earlier, and much worse, and it would have brought down Spain, Portugal and Italy too. And it didn't need to happen now either, but Greece voted for a demagogue who promised the impossible and blames the rest of the EU when it doesn't come true. Demagogue is a Greek word, btw., they should've seen it coming.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2015, @07:09AM
Countries are not the same as people. In a democracy governments change and the new one may not wish to carry on the policies of the old one. That should be taken into account when agreements are entered.