H

herbu

Audioholic Samurai
Is anybody keeping up w/ the "financial crisis" in Greece? Do you understand it? Here's what I think I learned from Wikipedia and TV News...

Greece has 2 problems... Not enough income and too much spending.
The lack of income is caused by widespread tax evasion, corruption and businesses leaving.
Too much spending is caused by high debt and liberal welfare benefits.

The so-called "austerity measures" cited on the news are budget tightening plans required by an institution or country for them to loan Greece money. This has already happened 7 times. The people of Greece just defeated a proposal for an 8th, saying the proposed govt cutbacks and tax increases were too much.

So the current situation in Greece is that the govt does not have money to make payments on their debts or continue paying their welfare commitments.

Is that about right? So what do they do now?
 
Irvrobinson

Irvrobinson

Audioholic Spartan
I'm sure I don't fully understand it, but a common currency without common taxation and monetary policy authorities looks like one of the dumbest economic ideas ever.
 
Steve81

Steve81

Audioholics Five-0
So what do they do now?
Presumably exit (or get kicked out of) the eurozone and return to the drachma. Unfortunately at this point, one way or the other it's going to suck for the Greek people.
 
lsiberian

lsiberian

Audioholic Overlord
As I understand it Greece is the Lehman Brothers of the European Crisis. Everyone else is getting bailed out, but them.
 
H

herbu

Audioholic Samurai
OK, so they go back to their unique local currency. It seems like that would protect the Euro from impact, but would do nothing to address their central problems. Right?
 
Steve81

Steve81

Audioholics Five-0
OK, so they go back to their unique local currency. It seems like that would protect the Euro from impact, but would do nothing to address their central problems. Right?
Switching currencies won't fix much in and of itself, though it does give the Greek government some flexibility in setting monetary policy (assuming anybody wants anything to do with a new drachma). Greece will still have to get its house in order. That said, their priority now is getting the Greek economy back on its feet. That's where austerity tends to become a major hindrance if you subscribe to Keynesian economics.
 
BoredSysAdmin

BoredSysAdmin

Audioholic Slumlord
Mass Tax evasion? Sounds very familiar. Back in early 90's - early days of "Perestroyika" this is how Russian Tax men looked like:
 
M

markw

Audioholic Overlord
All going back to the drachma will do is give them the power to print more money, like we do. This works to some degree but, at some point, spending has to become less that they are taking in, or printing. i.e. you can't spend more than you make indefinitely.
 
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C

Chu Gai

Audioholic Samurai
Spain, Portugal, and I believe Ireland have also received monies under the condition of austerity measures. We're Greece to receive a reprieve that softened the austerity, you'd see other countries clamor for the same thing. Watch Putin look to do something. As Margaret Thatcher said, "The proble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money."
 
TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
I have followed the Greek tragedy for years.

This is a humorous statement of the facts but true from the comment section on the Daily Telegraph in an article by Ambrose Evans Pritchard, "The ECB tightens the noose".

Tom Armstrong2 hours ago


Here's a simplified analogy to help all those who have swallowed the Goebbels-like lies and propaganda being put out by the EU understand what really happened.

You've just joined a club described as a bit like the Masons but funded mainly by the Germans and which has already handed you thousands of free money.

Shortly afterwards, a German banker calls on you and says he's got loadsamoney and is willing to lend you as much as you want at interests well below the 30% you've been used to all your life. All you have to do is spend it on German goods and, nudge, nudge, I'll tell them to 'look after you', know what I mean?

Why not take a couple of million says he, no, let's call it ten, no, fifty million, plus fifty grand off the record for your er, expenses.

But I can't pay you back, you say. Never mind, says your Fritz mate, we've had a nod and a wink from our mates in Berlin that if all goes down the drain they'll bail us out and pass the debt on to the dummkopf tax-payer. Sign me up you say.

A few years down the road the wheels fall off and you cannot keep up the payments. You call your sausage-bashing banker and remind him that the German tax-payer was supposed to bail you out.

Ah, mein freund, you must have haff misunderstood. It is we, the German bankers, who are to be bailed out. The German government will transfer another fifty million to your account tonight, but tomorrow you must send it right back so that it will be passed to us.

You now owe us, or rather the German State, one hundred million, my dear Greek freund. Oh, and your repayments are also now doubled.

I wish I'd never joined that bloody club you mutter to yourself. Not only are you stuck with payments you cannot afford, but because of the terms of the repayments your income is declining, meaning you have to pay them out of less earnings.

You go to the German government (the banker has long since disappeared) and ask for some debt forgiveness as you reasonably think you have been stitched up. Mein Gott! What a lot of dirty lazy work dodgers you are! How dare you even think about it. No forgiveness for you, ever (it would cost us our jobs and maybe our necks if our dummkopf voters found out what we have done).

We are going to punish you and your family for seven generations to come!

And that folks, is about the size of it. end quote.

This is a long story, but the EU allowed Greece to join the disastrous Euro project when they should not have, nor anybody else come to that. The Euro project favors the Germans, and a few other select countries at the expense of the poorer southern nations and Ireland.

In the crisis of 2008 there was a stitch up where debt was loaded onto Greece to bail out banks, especially German ones and others. Much of this debt got illicitly loaded onto Greece. So much of this debt is not legitimate.

Now the EU which is anti democratic whose leadership is not elected as Nigel Farage continually points out. They hate elections and in referendums either deny their legitimacy as in Sunday's case or have them repeated until they get the result they want.

Now they are acting the bully boys. The Greeks are citizens of the EU, but are now being subjected to appalling abuse by the EU, especially Germans who are now acting to sterotype again.

This is what William Hague, former UK foreign secretary had to say today.

This is what Nigel Farage a UK MEP and leader of UKIP had to say today.

Hopefully the citizens of the UK will vote to get out of the EU which has to be held before the end of 2017. In my view David Cameron has zero chance of getting meaningful reform of the EU.
 
highfigh

highfigh

Seriously, I have no life.
Once again, Germany is lying to cause a war. What a surprise. I say that as a not-so-proud descendant of Germans, too.
 
H

herbu

Audioholic Samurai
I have followed the Greek tragedy for years.

This is a humorous statement of the facts but true from the comment section on the Daily Telegraph in an article by Ambrose Evans Pritchard, "The ECB tightens the noose".

Tom Armstrong2 hours ago


Here's a simplified analogy to help all those who have swallowed the Goebbels-like lies and propaganda being put out by the EU understand what really happened.

You've just joined a club described as a bit like the Masons but funded mainly by the Germans and which has already handed you thousands of free money.

Shortly afterwards, a German banker calls on you and says he's got loadsamoney and is willing to lend you as much as you want at interests well below the 30% you've been used to all your life. All you have to do is spend it on German goods and, nudge, nudge, I'll tell them to 'look after you', know what I mean?

Why not take a couple of million says he, no, let's call it ten, no, fifty million, plus fifty grand off the record for your er, expenses.

But I can't pay you back, you say. Never mind, says your Fritz mate, we've had a nod and a wink from our mates in Berlin that if all goes down the drain they'll bail us out and pass the debt on to the dummkopf tax-payer. Sign me up you say.

A few years down the road the wheels fall off and you cannot keep up the payments. You call your sausage-bashing banker and remind him that the German tax-payer was supposed to bail you out.

Ah, mein freund, you must have haff misunderstood. It is we, the German bankers, who are to be bailed out. The German government will transfer another fifty million to your account tonight, but tomorrow you must send it right back so that it will be passed to us.

You now owe us, or rather the German State, one hundred million, my dear Greek freund. Oh, and your repayments are also now doubled.

I wish I'd never joined that bloody club you mutter to yourself. Not only are you stuck with payments you cannot afford, but because of the terms of the repayments your income is declining, meaning you have to pay them out of less earnings.

You go to the German government (the banker has long since disappeared) and ask for some debt forgiveness as you reasonably think you have been stitched up. Mein Gott! What a lot of dirty lazy work dodgers you are! How dare you even think about it. No forgiveness for you, ever (it would cost us our jobs and maybe our necks if our dummkopf voters found out what we have done).

We are going to punish you and your family for seven generations to come!

And that folks, is about the size of it. end quote.

This is a long story, but the EU allowed Greece to join the disastrous Euro project when they should not have, nor anybody else come to that. The Euro project favors the Germans, and a few other select countries at the expense of the poorer southern nations and Ireland.

In the crisis of 2008 there was a stitch up where debt was loaded onto Greece to bail out banks, especially German ones and others. Much of this debt got illicitly loaded onto Greece. So much of this debt is not legitimate.

Now the EU which is anti democratic whose leadership is not elected as Nigel Farage continually points out. They hate elections and in referendums either deny their legitimacy as in Sunday's case or have them repeated until they get the result they want.

Now they are acting the bully boys. The Greeks are citizens of the EU, but are now being subjected to appalling abuse by the EU, especially Germans who are now acting to sterotype again.

This is what William Hague, former UK foreign secretary had to say today.

This is what Nigel Farage a UK MEP and leader of UKIP had to say today.

Hopefully the citizens of the UK will vote to get out of the EU which has to be held before the end of 2017. In my view David Cameron has zero chance of getting meaningful reform of the EU.
I appreciate your emotional response, and the link to Tom Armstrong's explanation. Both give me a good view of one side of the coin, and that's helpful. However, I'm confused by the reference to the EU being, "a club described as a bit like the Masons". What does that mean? Who "described" it as such? Is that person a Mason? Are you, or Tom, or others who use this analogy a Mason?

Does an opening w/ an unclear and unexplained analogy lend credibility to the rest of his conclusions?

Past Master Herbu
 
B

Big Jake

Junior Audioholic
To put it all in a very concise, short, and easy to understand way that just about anyone should be able to understand... "Greece has run out of other people's money to spend, and their liberal welfare state utopia has imploded, but the people are too hooked on freebies and handouts from the government, so now they've voted to cut off their nose to spite their face. They'd rather go down in flames than tighten their belts, get to work and ween themselves off the government teat."

Wait until here in America when we can no longer make the interest payments on our debt, which will happen. It's virtually inevitable. Paying off our eighteen trillion plus dollar debt is virtually impossible. America is headed for the same fate. This is what happens when there's more takers than makers, and the government is Santa Claus.
 
M

markw

Audioholic Overlord
Now, I'm just a simple country boy, but this sounds a lot like the way our housing bubble started: People borrowing on stuff they knew they would never able to afford hoping the value of their investments would go up. Granted, the lenders encouraged this behavior but the borrowers have a great part in this too. Had they borrowed what they needed for basic housing for their family and stayed within their budget, not what they wanted as financial speculation, when the bottom fell out of the market, they would have still have had their modest housing and been able to maintain the payments.

Point being made: Ignore the Satan telling you to borrow more than you can count on repaying. This country should take heed.
 
TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
To put it all in a very concise, short, and easy to understand way that just about anyone should be able to understand... "Greece has run out of other people's money to spend, and their liberal welfare state utopia has imploded, but the people are too hooked on freebies and handouts from the government, so now they've voted to cut off their nose to spite their face. They'd rather go down in flames than tighten their belts, get to work and ween themselves off the government teat."

Wait until here in America when we can no longer make the interest payments on our debt, which will happen. It's virtually inevitable. Paying off our eighteen trillion plus dollar debt is virtually impossible. America is headed for the same fate. This is what happens when there's more takers than makers, and the government is Santa Claus.
I appreciate your emotional response, and the link to Tom Armstrong's explanation. Both give me a good view of one side of the coin, and that's helpful. However, I'm confused by the reference to the EU being, "a club described as a bit like the Masons". What does that mean? Who "described" it as such? Is that person a Mason? Are you, or Tom, or others who use this analogy a Mason?

Does an opening w/ an unclear and unexplained analogy lend credibility to the rest of his conclusions?

Past Master Herbu
It means the secret society of Masons. They are not thought well of by many in England. They are secret and feather each others nests, especially in matters of business. All done "behind the scenes."

My father really disliked them. An ex Mason taught him the wobbly handshake years ago. Whenever he met a person for the first time, especially with anything to do with business, he always gave the wobbly handshake. If the other party was a Mason, they would say something like this: - "Oh glad to know you are on the Square." To which my father would reply: - "As a matter of fact I'm not!" Their cover was blown.
 
TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
To put it all in a very concise, short, and easy to understand way that just about anyone should be able to understand... "Greece has run out of other people's money to spend, and their liberal welfare state utopia has imploded, but the people are too hooked on freebies and handouts from the government, so now they've voted to cut off their nose to spite their face. They'd rather go down in flames than tighten their belts, get to work and ween themselves off the government teat."

Wait until here in America when we can no longer make the interest payments on our debt, which will happen. It's virtually inevitable. Paying off our eighteen trillion plus dollar debt is virtually impossible. America is headed for the same fate. This is what happens when there's more takers than makers, and the government is Santa Claus.
Unfortunately the tale is nowhere nearly as simple as that.

The problem lies at the heart of the Euro construct.

For the Eurozone to work it has to be a transfer union like the US. It is not, and the Germans say never to a transfer union. So this makes the Euro a crude currency peg. This means that countries can not devalue when that is what is required. So the only solution is to impose ruinous and abusive internal devaluations on countries which need to devalue. This however shrinks their economies, causes massive unemployment, especially among the young and contraction of GDP.

In other words, the wealthier Northern states want the advantages, but do not want to pay for a transfer union. What makes this worse is that there is no central fiscal authority. The ECB make up rules as they go along and act well outside their remit.

You can see this is so, as prices for the same items vary widely thought the Eurozone.

Take my mother careers their wages when converted to Euros, go far further by miles in the poorer countries than the wealthy ones. It would be like prices for stable in Alabama being many, many time lower than in Illinois.

So you can see that these internal devaluations make for wider discrepancies between Euro countries and make debt repayment even further out of reach.
 
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B

Big Jake

Junior Audioholic
It means the secret society of Masons. They are not thought well of by many in England. They are secret and feather each others nests, especially in matters of business. All done "behind the scenes."

My father really disliked them. An ex Mason taught him the wobbly handshake years ago. Whenever he met a person for the first time, especially with anything to do with business, he always gave the wobbly handshake. If the other party was a Mason, they would say something like this: - "Oh glad to know you are on the Square." To which my father would reply: - "As a matter of fact I'm not!" Their cover was blown.
I'm more worried about the Bilderburgs than the Masons.

I'm just not an NWO kinda guy, but I know that's where all the worlds rich are trying to push us all.
 
B

Big Jake

Junior Audioholic
Unfortunately the tale is nowhere nearly as simple as that.
Oh I'm sure there's little snippets of side stories to add, but the heart of situation in Greece remains that it was a socialists utopian dream, right up until they ran out of other people's money to give to non producing people. Now reality is hitting them in the face.
 
Irvrobinson

Irvrobinson

Audioholic Spartan
Wait until here in America when we can no longer make the interest payments on our debt, which will happen. It's virtually inevitable. Paying off our eighteen trillion plus dollar debt is virtually impossible. America is headed for the same fate. This is what happens when there's more takers than makers, and the government is Santa Claus.
It's not the same, Jake. The US government controls its own monetary policy. For one example, the USG can print money (it actually doesn't print money, it just increases the size of the money supply by monetizing debt, but the metaphor is basically correct) to reduce debt. That causes inflation, and inflation has the interesting effect of reducing the relative amount of debt compared to the size of the economy, because debt doesn't inflate with prices and wages. Greece can't print Euros. If it could there wouldn't be a problem, at least not in Greece, but that is exactly what they're going to do with their own currency, and cause runaway inflation. That inflation will pare down debt and interest payments as a fraction of the Greek economy.

BTW, I just looked it up, and the interest on the federal debt is about $430 billion per year. While this is a grotesque amount, 63% of the defense budget, the entire federal budget is $3.8T, so interest expense isn't even close to being onerous yet. Interestingly, US Treasury auctions have generally been over-subscribed, since the USG is still considered to be far and away the safest place to stash huge sums of money in the world.
 
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