INFORMATION

This website uses cookies to store information on your computer. Some of these cookies are essential to make our site work and others help us to improve by giving us some insight into how the site is being used.

For further information, see our Privacy Policy.

Continuing to use this website is acceptance of these cookies.

We are not accepting any new registrations.

Grexit?

...on serious topics that don't fit anywhere else at present.
Message
Author
User avatar
Alan H
Posts: 24067
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:26 pm

Re: Grexit?

#41 Post by Alan H » July 7th, 2015, 7:05 pm

Latest post of the previous page:

thundril wrote:This month's Coolest dude in Europe (official) is a mathematician and economist. How often does that happen?
And what do we have? George Gideon Oliver Osborne with a 2.1 BA degree in Modern History.
Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

User avatar
anaconda
Posts: 219
Joined: June 18th, 2009, 11:07 pm

Re: Grexit?

#42 Post by anaconda » July 7th, 2015, 7:13 pm

Interesting how it appears that the Greeks want to restructure their debt whilst Germany seem to want to tell them how to run their economy.
John

User avatar
anaconda
Posts: 219
Joined: June 18th, 2009, 11:07 pm

Re: Grexit?

#43 Post by anaconda » July 7th, 2015, 7:16 pm

Nick wrote:
Greece - What You Are Not Being Told by the Media
Is this because the mainstream media don't publish ridiculous conspiracy theories?
According to mainstream media, the current economic crisis in Greece is due to the government spending too much money on its people that it went broke.
Absolutely right. Budget deficit of 15% pa.
This claim however, is a lie. It was the banks that wrecked the country so oligarchs and international corporations could benefit.
Oh perleeease. Banks make money by losing so much that they need to be bailed out? Yeah, that'll work as a great strategy.

The man's an idiot.
Hardly a huge leap of faith, nor a conspiracy given how polarised wealth has become. That didnt happen by accident.
John

User avatar
Alan H
Posts: 24067
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:26 pm

Re: Grexit?

#44 Post by Alan H » July 7th, 2015, 7:37 pm

Bank bailouts have obviously been many - and huge. But just what amounts are we talking about?

This is 'unadjusted' figures (which, apparently, are misleading) in 2011:
credit-crisis-bailouts_image002.jpg
credit-crisis-bailouts_image002.jpg (64.93 KiB) Viewed 2913 times
The number in the bottom right is $16 trillion.

And these are 'adjusted' and smaller, but the total is still over $1,000,000,000,000.00 - one trillion dollars.
credit-crisis-bailouts_image004.jpg
credit-crisis-bailouts_image004.jpg (71.01 KiB) Viewed 2913 times
From: The Real Cost of the Credit Crisis Bank Bailouts [So Far]
Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

Nick
Posts: 11027
Joined: July 4th, 2007, 10:10 am

Re: Grexit?

#45 Post by Nick » July 8th, 2015, 8:43 am

anaconda wrote:Hardly a huge leap of faith, nor a conspiracy given how polarised wealth has become. That didnt happen by accident.
Was it the lizards again....?

Nick
Posts: 11027
Joined: July 4th, 2007, 10:10 am

Re: Grexit?

#46 Post by Nick » July 8th, 2015, 8:52 am

The figures for bank bail-outs were vast. What point are you making, Alan, if any?

User avatar
Alan H
Posts: 24067
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:26 pm

Re: Grexit?

#47 Post by Alan H » July 8th, 2015, 10:12 am

Nick wrote:The figures for bank bail-outs were vast. What point are you making, Alan, if any?
I would have hoped my point was obvious: that stupendously vast sums of money can be conjured up in a flash and seemingly eagerly handed out to banks. After all, we can't have banks fail, can we?
Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

Nick
Posts: 11027
Joined: July 4th, 2007, 10:10 am

Re: Grexit?

#48 Post by Nick » July 8th, 2015, 1:51 pm

Alan H wrote:
Nick wrote:The figures for bank bail-outs were vast. What point are you making, Alan, if any?
I would have hoped my point was obvious: that stupendously vast sums of money can be conjured up in a flash and seemingly eagerly handed out to banks. After all, we can't have banks fail, can we?
But they are not "handed out" to the banks, are they? There is all the difference in the world between providing capital and liquidity which has largely been repaid and spending money with no hope of return as has happened in Greece. And looking at that poor beleaguered country, we see what happens when the banking system fails.

User avatar
Altfish
Posts: 1821
Joined: March 26th, 2012, 8:46 am

Re: Grexit?

#49 Post by Altfish » July 8th, 2015, 2:19 pm

Nick wrote:
Alan H wrote:
Nick wrote:The figures for bank bail-outs were vast. What point are you making, Alan, if any?
I would have hoped my point was obvious: that stupendously vast sums of money can be conjured up in a flash and seemingly eagerly handed out to banks. After all, we can't have banks fail, can we?
But they are not "handed out" to the banks, are they? There is all the difference in the world between providing capital and liquidity which has largely been repaid and spending money with no hope of return as has happened in Greece. And looking at that poor beleaguered country, we see what happens when the banking system fails.
But I thought that most of the money Greece requires is to pay of their debts...so the banks want their money back and at the moment are demanding it. Whereas the people of Greece will get a very small proportion of the 'loans'/'bailout'.

thundril
Posts: 3607
Joined: July 4th, 2008, 5:02 pm

Re: Grexit?

#50 Post by thundril » July 8th, 2015, 2:33 pm

How about THIS
A chance for happiness for Europe’s unhappy family (*)
Posted on April 27, 2012 by yanisvaroufakis

Europe is an unhappy family. And like all unhappy families, its diverse forms of competing miseries, afflicting differently its different members, are the reason it cannot regain its poise. Divorce is looming. Only in Europe’s case, and this is where my analogy with families breaks down, divorce can never be cathartic. It stands no chance of leading us to satisfying new relationships and to a future in which we can find peace, tranquility, and a calm state of mind from which to reassess our failed marriage. No, the disintegration of the Eurozone is bound to lead to a deconstruction of the European Union which will, in turn, spawn a postmodern version of the 1930s. The best we can hope for is that, this time round, the fallout will be more farcical than what ensued back then.

The problem is that Europe is not ready for the equivalent of committing to cohabitation ad infinitum; of living under a Federal structure; of paying for things from a common (federal) purse. And it won’t be until and unless we are ready to envision a common army; an electoral system where Greeks may vote for Germans (and Germans for Portuguese officials) to rule over them; of pictures on our euro notes that are images of really existing monuments (as opposed to fictitious gates and bridges that only serve as a reminder of our incapacity to share symbols). And there’s the rub: For we now know that without such unification Europe will unravel with hideous consequences not only for Europeans but for the global social economy as well. Europe, after all, has managed, twice in the last hundred years, to drag the planet into despicable mires. We surely can do it again!

But if Federation is out, at least for now, and the present confederacy is disintegrating before our stunned eyes, is it time to throw in the towel? Certainly not. Thankfully, there is an alternative path on which we can embark swiftly and which leads to a speedy resolution of Europe’s Crisis. The idea is to reconfigure existing European institutions in a manner that, at once,

(a) imposes no demands on the taxpayers of the surplus countries to finance the debts of the deficit nations,

(b) requires no new Treaties (since Treaty changes will, at best, come far too late in the piece),

(c) resolves the three interconnected, yet distinct, crises that are eating away into Europe’s foundations: our debt crisis, the crisis of substandard investment (especially in the indebted regions that need it the most), and, of course, our banking debacle.

Can these three objectives be achieved simultaneously? I submit that they can. To give you a flavour of how this can be done, let’s push the family metaphor a little further. Suppose that a young couple, with terrible credit-worthiness, is struggling to meet its mortgage repayments, due to high interest rates. Rather than having the rest pitch in, an aunt with good credit ratings could take out a loan (at much lower interest rates) to repay the youngsters’ expensive loan, on an agreement (supervised by the whole family) that the youngsters meet the monthly repayments. To safeguard the nice aunt, in case the young ones cannot meet these repayments, the rest of the family can buy out insurance that will repay the aunt if things go badly wrong. This way the young couple manages to make ends meet without having the rest pay for it. In Europe’s case, the equivalent is for the European Central Bank to issue its own bonds for the purposes of servicing member-state debt on condition that the members redeem these bonds in the fullness of time (but at the low interest rates secured by ‘auntie’, the ECB, on their behalf). Additionally, the current bailout fund (the EFSF), rather than bailing out member-states with the money of the surplus nations’ taxpayers, can simply provide insurance services to the ECB (in the remote case that some members do not redeem its bonds in the distant future).

Notice that such a scheme at once ends the debt crisis and relieves the German taxpayer from having to pay, or guarantee, the Club Med’s debts. And that it does so without any new institutions, without federal moves, without all the commitments that the European family is not ready for. In my Modest Proposal the reader can find two more ideas of how to deal with the other two major crises: investment and banks. But these are details. The gist is that Europe can be saved without cohabitation under some, hastily assembled, oppressive, Federal structure. All it takes is a rational re-assignment of existing institutions. The burning question, however, remains: Are we prepared to accept that neither divorce nor the current confederacy are decent options for our troubled family?

thundril
Posts: 3607
Joined: July 4th, 2008, 5:02 pm

Re: Grexit?

#51 Post by thundril » July 8th, 2015, 7:10 pm


Nick
Posts: 11027
Joined: July 4th, 2007, 10:10 am

Re: Grexit?

#52 Post by Nick » July 8th, 2015, 9:41 pm

Altfish wrote:But I thought that most of the money Greece requires is to pay of their debts...so the banks want their money back and at the moment are demanding it. Whereas the people of Greece will get a very small proportion of the 'loans'/'bailout'.
Not the banks, but the IMF, ECB, EFSF, etc. The commercial banks have largely bailed out already, so it is other EU citizens who will eventually pay, which, understandably, they don't want to do.

But yes, if Greece had "behaved", (or rather, had carried on behaving, as it was before Syriza came along) then the loans would have been rolled over. Behaved well, and some (more) debt forgiven. But the Greeks (or at least the lefties in Greece) want the international institutions to throw good money after bad. There is no way out for Greece without the debt being partially written off; it's beyond the point of no return. The only option for Greece is to comply and have their debts reduced and help provided, or not comply and default, with a bit of humanitarian aid. Not pleasant.

User avatar
anaconda
Posts: 219
Joined: June 18th, 2009, 11:07 pm

Re: Grexit?

#53 Post by anaconda » July 8th, 2015, 10:39 pm

Nick wrote:
anaconda wrote:Hardly a huge leap of faith, nor a conspiracy given how polarised wealth has become. That didnt happen by accident.
Was it the lizards again....?
Hehheh...not my scene I'm afraid

Though if by lizards you mean faceless Bilderberg dwelling corporate entities then probably yes. Are you denying that the top wealth owners havnt increased their wealth hugely over the past fourty years? Of course not, it's common knowledge, and partly due at least in the UK to a huge drop in overall taxation for those with the most.

You seem to live in a bubble, a version of reality which is Curious......as if nothing ever happens, people's behavior or the behavior of corporate entities unless it's empirically clean and neat for you. Politics has been the plaything of big business for decades particulalry in the US. Just because it doesn't come with a weekly public briefing doesn't mean it isn't happening. Politics business and media. Comfy bedfellows.
John

Nick
Posts: 11027
Joined: July 4th, 2007, 10:10 am

Re: Grexit?

#54 Post by Nick » July 9th, 2015, 12:00 am

anaconda wrote:
Nick wrote:
anaconda wrote:Hardly a huge leap of faith, nor a conspiracy given how polarised wealth has become. That didnt happen by accident.
Was it the lizards again....?
Hehheh...not my scene I'm afraid
Really? I'd have thought, as an anaconda, you'd have had some sort of kindred afinity.... :D OK, so they've got legs, but they are somewhat short. :D
Though if by lizards you mean faceless Bilderberg dwelling corporate entities then probably yes. Are you denying that the top wealth owners haven't increased their wealth hugely over the past forty years?
No, I'm not denying it, but I do not subscribe to your apparent analysis as to why it has occurred. It is not because of some sort of class solidarity, but because of the changing nature of the international economy. Most of the richest in the West are self made, not the product of privilege.

An example (though nothing personal): David Beckham. He is very much richer today than was Sir Stanley Matthews, not because of lizards, but because he benefits from small amounts of money from a hugely increased fan-base. That is a product of internationalism and technology, not oppression. Not the same thing at all.

What we need to look at is why matters are as they are, and do what we can to nudge things in a positive way. The changing share of the economic cake relate directly to technology and tax, to migration and scarcity, not to oppression.
Of course not, it's common knowledge, and partly due at least in the UK to a huge drop in overall taxation for those with the most.
That is actually bollox. The richest pay more in total than ever before. The fact that marginal rates are lower, demonstrates the destructive nature of high taxes. You are completely wrong on this point. Please go and look at the data, starting with UK tax receipts following the reductions in the rates of top rate tax during Thatcher's premiership.
You seem to live in a bubble, a version of reality which is Curious......as if nothing ever happens, people's behavior or the behavior of corporate entities unless it's empirically clean and neat for you.
Dunno quite what you mean here.... But I do try to unpick woolly rhetoric, if that's what you mean.....
Politics has been the plaything of big business for decades particulaly in the US. Just because it doesn't come with a weekly public briefing doesn't mean it isn't happening. Politics business and media. Comfy bedfellows.
We're back to lizards again. :wink:

User avatar
anaconda
Posts: 219
Joined: June 18th, 2009, 11:07 pm

Re: Grexit?

#55 Post by anaconda » July 9th, 2015, 12:33 am

i do have a soft spot for Gecko's, though not in any nutritional sense!

To use you expression...........'oh dear'

I thought you'd miss that one, though I didn't express the point being about relative taxation as I should have:

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/j ... x-research
John

Nick
Posts: 11027
Joined: July 4th, 2007, 10:10 am

Re: Grexit?

#56 Post by Nick » July 9th, 2015, 9:18 am

thundril wrote:How about THIS
It may surprise you (it certainly surprised me!) but I agree with much of this analysis.
A chance for happiness for Europe’s unhappy family (*)
Posted on April 27, 2012 by yanisvaroufakis

Europe is an unhappy family. And like all unhappy families, its diverse forms of competing miseries, afflicting differently its different members, are the reason it cannot regain its poise. Divorce is looming. Only in Europe’s case, and this is where my analogy with families breaks down, divorce can never be cathartic. It stands no chance of leading us to satisfying new relationships and to a future in which we can find peace, tranquility, and a calm state of mind from which to reassess our failed marriage. No, the disintegration of the Eurozone is bound to lead to a deconstruction of the European Union which will, in turn, spawn a postmodern version of the 1930s. The best we can hope for is that, this time round, the fallout will be more farcical than what ensued back then.
Agreed, pretty much. The threat of a return to protectionism, etc. Not good.
The problem is that Europe is not ready for the equivalent of committing to cohabitation ad infinitum; of living under a Federal structure; of paying for things from a common (federal) purse. And it won’t be until and unless we are ready to envision a common army; an electoral system where Greeks may vote for Germans (and Germans for Portuguese officials) to rule over them; of pictures on our euro notes that are images of really existing monuments (as opposed to fictitious gates and bridges that only serve as a reminder of our incapacity to share symbols). And there’s the rub: For we now know that without such unification Europe will unravel with hideous consequences not only for Europeans but for the global social economy as well. Europe, after all, has managed, twice in the last hundred years, to drag the planet into despicable mires. We surely can do it again!
Again, I can accept much of this analysis.
But if Federation is out, at least for now, and the present confederacy is disintegrating before our stunned eyes, is it time to throw in the towel? Certainly not. Thankfully, there is an alternative path on which we can embark swiftly and which leads to a speedy resolution of Europe’s Crisis. The idea is to reconfigure existing European institutions in a manner that, at once,

(a) imposes no demands on the taxpayers of the surplus countries to finance the debts of the deficit nations,

(b) requires no new Treaties (since Treaty changes will, at best, come far too late in the piece),

(c) resolves the three interconnected, yet distinct, crises that are eating away into Europe’s foundations: our debt crisis, the crisis of substandard investment (especially in the indebted regions that need it the most), and, of course, our banking debacle.
Wow! Tell me more!
Can these three objectives be achieved simultaneously? I submit that they can.
I can't wait to hear this!!

To give you a flavour of how this can be done, let’s push the family metaphor a little further. Suppose that a young couple, with terrible credit-worthiness, is struggling to meet its mortgage repayments, due to high interest rates. Rather than having the rest pitch in, an aunt with good credit ratings could take out a loan (at much lower interest rates) to repay the youngsters’ expensive loan, on an agreement (supervised by the whole family) that the youngsters meet the monthly repayments. To safeguard the nice aunt, in case the young ones cannot meet these repayments, the rest of the family can buy out insurance that will repay the aunt if things go badly wrong. This way the young couple manages to make ends meet without having the rest pay for it. In Europe’s case, the equivalent is for the European Central Bank to issue its own bonds for the purposes of servicing member-state debt on condition that the members redeem these bonds in the fullness of time (but at the low interest rates secured by ‘auntie’, the ECB, on their behalf). Additionally, the current bailout fund (the EFSF), rather than bailing out member-states with the money of the surplus nations’ taxpayers, can simply provide insurance services to the ECB (in the remote case that some members do not redeem its bonds in the distant future).
:boohoo: I thought you said there was a solution!

Greece (the young couple) has already had loans from the "nice aunt". Greece has been lent billions where no lender other than "family" would lend. And "the young couple" have demonstrated that they can't be trusted to change their life-style so that they can afford to repay the loan. There is still absolutely no prospect of Greece ever repaying its loans. So we are at the point where the family insurance kicks in. ie the tax-payers of the Euro-zone are bailing out the errant family members. Except that, they are refusing to renew the insurance because of the appalling claims record. There is no solution being proposed here at all.
Notice that such a scheme at once ends the debt crisis and relieves the German taxpayer from having to pay, or guarantee, the Club Med’s debts
What I notice, is that billions are being lent at low or no interest rates. This is effectively crystallising the loss for the German (and other Euro-area) taxpayers, not relieving them of future liabilities.
And that it does so without any new institutions, without federal moves, without all the commitments that the European family is not ready for.
It does so by picking their pockets without them noticing. Except that they will!
In my Modest Proposal the reader can find two more ideas of how to deal with the other two major crises: investment and banks. But these are details.
As the first idea doesn't work, I won't bother with the second or third.
The gist is that Europe can be saved without cohabitation under some, hastily assembled, oppressive, Federal structure. All it takes is a rational re-assignment of existing institutions. The burning question, however, remains: Are we prepared to accept that neither divorce nor the current confederacy are decent options for our troubled family?
The relationship has irretrievably broken down, but the feuding couple cannot even afford to go their separate ways. They should not have succumbed to the lust of the European project in the first place. And that applies to the extended family too, who encouraged and participated in the doomed marriage from the very beginning.

User avatar
animist
Posts: 6522
Joined: July 30th, 2010, 11:36 pm

Re: Grexit?

#57 Post by animist » July 9th, 2015, 9:53 pm

I would have to agree with Nick that conspiracy theories are out of place here - is there anywhere that they are not out of place? I had prepared the following response before the referendum last Sunday (not sure now why I did not post it at the time) but anyway, it remains my view, FWIW. Probably Greece will leave the euro, but I doubt this fearful notion of "contagion", and the EU will be keen to support the new drachma.

Just a hunch, but the Greeks and the EU bigwigs have been playing at brinkmanship for a long time and this may go on beyond default and even Grexit. Fortunately, unlike the brinkmanship of the Cold War, which risked nuclear strikes and total devastation, the start of a Greek collapse, as outlined in Nick's article, would I think make the lenders think again, and yet another bailout will be negotiated. Tsipras would have "won" this round of the game, at the cost of incipient economic collapse and some real bankruptcies; whether he would be allowed to stay long in office is another matter, and the underlying problem would still be there.

Nick
Posts: 11027
Joined: July 4th, 2007, 10:10 am

Re: Grexit?

#58 Post by Nick » July 10th, 2015, 9:27 am

It seems, based on R4's Today programme interviews, that the Greek government have capitulated completely. Whether they can actually fulfil their side of the bargain, in the light of their "win" in the referendum, is another matter. What if the Greek Parliament continues to reject the solution? I doubt they will, though. It seems the rest of the EU will refuse to acquiesce (except for Hollande's France - spot the connection :rolleyes: ) The prospect of every Greek bank failing, and having to replace the currency overnight, is really too much for them to handle.

I expect the Troika to lend them a little money for a short period, to make sure that they do in fact introduce the reforms. If they don't we are back to bank closures again. Only once the necessary reforms are in place (and Syriza effectively stymied in their unworkable anti-austerity policies) will there be any real movement on debt forgiveness.


(I could be wrong, though...... :wink: )

User avatar
Dave B
Posts: 17809
Joined: May 17th, 2010, 9:15 pm

Re: Grexit?

#59 Post by Dave B » July 10th, 2015, 11:51 am

As usual it is money that makes the decisions; people, quality etc. come a poor second.
"Look forward; yesterday was a lesson, if you did not learn from it you wasted it."
Me, 2015

User avatar
Alan H
Posts: 24067
Joined: July 3rd, 2007, 10:26 pm

Re: Grexit?

#60 Post by Alan H » July 10th, 2015, 11:55 am

+1
Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

Nick
Posts: 11027
Joined: July 4th, 2007, 10:10 am

Re: Grexit?

#61 Post by Nick » July 10th, 2015, 3:05 pm

Dave B wrote:As usual it is money that makes the decisions; people, quality etc. come a poor second.
I don't know what you think should happen at this point....? There really is no alternative, given the dire situation Greece is in, made dangerously worse by Syriza, who seem to think that they can make water flow uphill, just by shouting in the streets. The problem is not "money", it is the total failure of the Grand European Project. You can't have monetary union without political union, and no-one favours pan-European political union any more.

Post Reply