Wot no Greek referendum thread? : Sun Jul 05, 2015 9:07 pm  

Maybe I haven’t looked hard enough to find one, I only looked on the first page, but is nobody else bothered about what’s appertaining?

Perhaps it just me, simply because I’m planning to move abroad in the next twelve months & the consequences of euro chaos doesn’t fill me with joy!

At least people are getting more euro’s for their buck, Hay-ho, every cloud & all that.

(except for a mushroom cloud)

Re: Wot no Greek referendum thread? : Mon Jul 06, 2015 9:52 am  

It's the right decision in the long term, although it will have a very severe effect on the living standards of the Greek people. The banks will probably go bankrupt and have to be broken up as well. Again, this is probably best in the long term.
I really don't see them staying in the Euro, and although going back to the Drachma will devalue Greek savings, and probably cause hyper-inflation it will at least give them the opportunity to print their own currency (being able to print our own currency is the only reason we're not deeper into the abyss than Greece) and give them control of their monetary policy.

I've thought all long that the instability in the Eurozone has been engineered in many ways in order to bring about it's collapse to enable the EU to have more influence on the Eurozone countries fiscal policy - a similar system to what they have in America.

Re: Wot no Greek referendum thread? : Mon Jul 06, 2015 11:24 am  

The Greeks have given Syriza a mandate to continue with its negotiating strategy. That's probably as far as it goes.

The IMF, ECB, Merkel etc will be horrified at the thought of setting a precedent whereby a country gets a better deal on its debt simply by voting for it.

Re: Wot no Greek referendum thread? : Mon Jul 06, 2015 12:40 pm  

When Merkel authorises the repayment of 20th century German debt, she may have a valid reason to pass judgement on other countries' fiscaL policies

Re: Wot no Greek referendum thread? : Mon Jul 06, 2015 1:52 pm  

Many of those German voices calling loudest for punitive actions against Greece are the sons and grandsons of Nazi Party hard-liners.

Popular history would have you believe most of the Nazis escaped down "rat lines" to Spain and South America (although less mention is made that it was with the full co-operation of the Catholic Church). Whilst senior Nazi Party members certainly did run in those directions the real truth is that the overwhelming majority stayed put in West Germany and were never prosecuted. Several took up positions in the fledgling West German government. SS General Rheinhard Gehlen became the head of German Intelligence!

Re: Wot no Greek referendum thread? : Mon Jul 06, 2015 6:11 pm  

The Greeks are somewhat the architects of their own downfall with having too generous retirement schemes etc and crucially a ridiculous tax collection system.

Having said that the IMF, Eurozone/Germany etc all knew this when they lent to them. These loans that are now due to these institutions were ridiculously short term, there was never a chance Greece could pay them back. They were the equivalent of Wonga.
And, as with all lending, the creditors should've weighed up the risk better, so it's them that takes a hit when Greece, inevitably, couldn't pay them back.

As Charlie Sheen says above, our ability to devalue our currency, drastically lower interest rates and print a shed load of money is what has primarily helped keep the crisis from being a catastrophe. Despite the bizarre situation where Monetary Policy was at complete with Fiscal Policy. Had they both been aligned then the crisis would only have lasted a couple of years in Britain and we'd be in a far better position now.

I really can't see a way out of this for Greece other than an exit from the Euro. Which would be crippling in the short term until the new currency stabilises. But I can't see the Eurozone countries (ie Germany) allowing any significant concessions to Greece, otherwise Spain, Italy, Ireland etc will soon follow. And a Greek exit from the Euro massively harms the Eurozone too.

But then they should've thought of that before allowing vastly different economies in to a currency union.

Re: Wot no Greek referendum thread? : Tue Jul 07, 2015 12:07 pm  

Whatever economic largess has taken place in Greece since it overthrew the murderous US/UK-backed military junta, the overwhelming majority of Greeks had little to no say in the matter. And it's a bit rich to point the finger at Greece's tax-collection policy from the World's Premier Tax Haven (TM).

It's dispiriting that so many see Greece's problems exclusively through the distorted lens of economics when the truth is far bigger. Seriously, do people really believe the over-generosity of Mr. & Mrs. Papandriou's pension (or not) is the real reason behind the barbaric collective punishment of an entire country?

No one would give a damn how much debt Greece ran up if it weren't for the fact that a new "Cold War" is brewing between the West & Russia and Greece's close proximity to the strategically vital route into the Black Sea (especially since Putin annexed Sevastopol) makes it a key objective (along with another target for destabilization - Ukraine) for EU but primarily US policymakers.

It's no co-incidence that Ukraine's economy has tanked roughly around the same time. Like Beirut and Mexico City in the 60s and 70s Greece is rapidly being transformed into "spook central". Billions of dollars are being pumped into both countries to help fund massive signals intelligence gathering operations, secure facilities need to be purchased for the CIA and its pals in the EU to operate in secret. Same again goes for military intelligence and a host of supposedly benign NGOs (such as USAID) which are really little more than fronts for the CIA, MI6 etc. Then comes the cost of recruiting agents, finding out which people in the Greek military, police, judiciary, prison system etc. are open to bribes (or blackmail) etc should the need of favours arise. All this costs a fortune and would be prohibitively expensive if the West were forced to pay the market rate. Which makes tanking the Greek economy great business sense.

Had Putin not performed an end-run about the US-backed fascist coup in Ukraine and snatched Sevastopol I'm sure a deal would have been struck. But what's getting both the US & Europe jittery is first China and now Russia's tentative moves toward providing some kind of Greek bailout (which really WOULD set the cat among the pigeons). Especially since there are no shortage of other debt-paralyzed EU states with long-standing socialist traditions who'd be only too willing to listen to alternatives to the "Washington Consensus"...

Re: Wot no Greek referendum thread? : Tue Jul 07, 2015 9:34 pm  

The issue is very simple - monetary union without fiscal union (and I would argue, linguistic union) is unsustainable. The while thing is fundamentally flawed and one has two ways to go - failure or one state. The one state solution also won't work because Germans will not wish to support the poorer regions in pother countries ad infinitum. The sooner they admit it is destined to fail and break the EZ and then EU up the better. Can't work, won't work.

Re: Wot no Greek referendum thread? : Wed Jul 08, 2015 5:02 am  

Dally wrote:

The issue is very simple - monetary union without fiscal union (and I would argue, linguistic union) is unsustainable. The while thing is fundamentally flawed and one has two ways to go - failure or one state. The one state solution also won't work because Germans will not wish to support the poorer regions in pother countries ad infinitum. The sooner they admit it is destined to fail and break the EZ and then EU up the better. Can't work, won't work.

Can work, will work, but first you have get rid of negative ideas, and be positive. If the will is there it will work, but too many people are ignorant if what the EU is, what the Euro is and what the ECB is and also the IMF.
They are being led by a biased media and an educational system that has failed to develop cognitive thinking. All part of the current mess but some are doing quite nicely out of this.

Re: Wot no Greek referendum thread? : Wed Jul 08, 2015 8:31 am  

Dally wrote:

The issue is very simple - monetary union without fiscal union (and I would argue, linguistic union) is unsustainable. The while thing is fundamentally flawed and one has two ways to go - failure or one state. The one state solution also won't work because Germans will not wish to support the poorer regions in pother countries ad infinitum. The sooner they admit it is destined to fail and break the EZ and then EU up the better. Can't work, won't work.

I think a one state solution has always been the objective, and although the system may seem deeply flawed on the surface, I think it's working exactly as intended.