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posted by
martyb
on Monday July 06 2015, @08:57AM
from the getting-what-you-asked-for-may-not-be-getting-what-you-want dept.
from the getting-what-you-asked-for-may-not-be-getting-what-you-want dept.
The Greeks voted no to the European Union's terms, despite warnings from the EU that rejecting new austerity terms would set their country on a path out of the Eurozone. 62% voted "No" while 38% voted "Yes".
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Tax reform means "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind
the tree."
-- Russell Long
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Francis on Monday July 06 2015, @02:32PM
And how are they going to do that? The austerity measures have killed the local economy and the Greek people themselves have less money with which to invest in growing the economy or paying back their bills. Europe in general has seen slower growth as they've tried to be responsible rather than admitting that money is going to have to just be forgiven in the short term to get through this patch more quickly. Here in the US where we didn't go the austerity route things are finally getting back to normal.
Unfortunately, virtually all of the improvement is going to the rich because we don't have any measures in place to ensure that the people generating the wealth will be allowed to keep any of it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 06 2015, @02:46PM
What, am i supposed to come up with a plan for Greece to become a industrial country? Like they haven't have any time to do that on their own? I don't care how they pay the depts, i'm just saying they can't claim honor or any other such excuses for continuing to not pay.
I don't care about Greece, since they don't care about themselves or others either.
It's not like everything is fine where i live, and if i had to come up with a 100 trillion euro plan to save something, it'd be my country, not Greece. I'm so fucking tired of Greece and the fucking excuses and paying for their shit.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Monday July 06 2015, @02:54PM
They have to have money in order to pay money. That's what you and the idiots from the IMF seem to forget. They wrote the loans knowing full well that the Greeks were borrowing more than they could afford to payback. If they still want their money, they're going to have to accept that killing the economy is not likely to result in the money being there to be paid.
The IMF does things like this all the time, they're just a bunch of greedy, ignorant, self-entitled jerks and it's high time they were told to STFU so the adults can work on solving the problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 06 2015, @03:44PM
Different AC here.
They have to have money in order to pay money. That's what you and the idiots from the IMF seem to forget.
They've already received 240€ billion in loans, and are now asking for debt relief & more loans to pay back part of the the reduced amount that is due. If I told my loan shark that I needed him to forgive part of my debt and also lend me more cash so I could pay back a little of what I still owed him, well, once he was done laughing I would be crying.
Plus, Greece wants the IMF to increase the liquidity to their central bank because people are taking cash out of the Greek banks (limited to 60€ per day) and the central bank is broke too. Greece says it wants a "fair deal" but none of that "fairness" involves them paying back what they've already borrowed (or committing to pay back the new loans they keep demanding).
Blaming Greece's current financial disaster solely on the IMF, ECB and other lenders completely ignores the fact that Greece has been borrowing from one place to pay another for decades, and thinks living within a national budget is unfair. They don't enforce their tax laws on the wealthy, and hand out lifelong pensions like teenagers hand out promise rings. If they need "money in order to pay money" they should start with their upperclass tax evaders and get them to actually pay their taxes (which the upperclass feels is as unfair as having to pay back their loans).
(Score: 1) by Francis on Monday July 06 2015, @07:03PM
I'm not blaming them solely. I'm pointing out that the austerity measures aren't going to make it more likely that Greece will repay the loans, it makes it more likely that there won't be any money to pay the loans with. What happens if the people have a revolution over this?
Yes, they should pay the loans, but realistically, I'm not convinced that's going to happen without the loans being restructured so as to have more time. As it stands there's not much money left over for rebuilding the economy or other activities that would lead to there being money to pay the loans back with. The situation sucks for everybody involved, but further punishing people who may not have actually had any say is just plain childish. The people who borrowed the money are mostly not the same ones that are being asked to actually pay the money as it stands.
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Monday July 06 2015, @05:48PM
The austerity measures have killed the local economy
Not really.
What killed the economy is trade imbalances. If all a nation does is import and it has no means of printing currency, what do you think will happen? Couple that with Greek unwillingness to actually "sell" things to foreign investors, so they run out of money.
Greek problem is really a Euro problem. Inter-euro-zone trade imbalances need to be addressed with financial backflows, or every nation that has an inherent trade deficit in Euro area will also run out of money. Just like Greece. It may take longer, but eventually it will happen.
Here in the US where we didn't go the austerity route things are finally getting back to normal.
US prints their own money. And heck, the world loves US dollars so much that USD never devalue no matter how shitty US economy really is. And shitty it is - look at trade deficits for US. So please, don't lecture Greece on how things work. If US was using euros, US would be more broke than Greece.
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/balance-of-trade [tradingeconomics.com]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday July 06 2015, @08:49PM
Really? You still get as much for a dollar today as you got 40 years ago?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.