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Reaped the benefits? Greece's GDP dropped 30% since 2008 it and was forced into austerity by the Troika to move debts from the left pockets of Deutsche Bank to

by xfs 7y ago

Reaped the benefits? Greece's GDP dropped 30% since 2008 it and was forced into austerity by the Troika to move debts from the left pockets of Deutsche Bank to the right pockets, with the interests paid for by Greek tax payers.

anovikov 7y ago
Thing is, it's GDP exploded for now underlying economic reasons in the previous decade... and they all consumed the absolutely unearned wealth produced by nothing but cooking the books. The real "fair" solution would be: to auction off their sovereign territory to the highest bidder, and paying off debt with that cash. If they try to object, confiscate their merchant fleet and block ports with aerial minelaying.
- RobertoG 7y ago
  Assuming that you don't care about the Greek people (and obviously you don't) and assuming that the narrative of "we the European people" is false (that obviously it's), what about the public debt? Because all the actions that took place "to fix" Greece was in order to fix the problem of the public debt. So, I suppose that now, after all the "hard medicine" the problem is solved. Well, it's not and it's not predicted to be in the future. So, what was all this about? None of the predictions made at the time by all those hardliners in Germany and company have become a reality. Of course, the guilt is going to be again on the Greeks. Then they will complain when the people turn anti-European and rationalistic.
  - rumanator 7y ago
    > Because all the actions that took place "to fix" Greece was in order to fix the problem of the public debt. That assertion is quite wrong and fly in the face of facts and history. For example, Greece received a massive debt pardon which whiped out about half the state's debt toward private banks. This alone triggered the bankruptcy of a bunch of private banks, including from other countries also undergoing bailout processes of their own. Additionally, the bailout process was focused on controlling structural deficit, and not debt. Debt is not the problem, but depending on loans just to keep the state operating is a collosal problem. After Greece's accounting fraud was blown, Greel governments were forced to face the problem of the Greek state enduring double digits deficits. "Austerity" is just a fancy word for "we need to reign in all this overspending", and it boggles the mind how the fact that Greece was routinely spending over 10% of it's fiscal revenue, resorting of loans after loans to cover the difference, is simply omitted or glanced over.
  - anovikov 7y ago
    This is exactly why i think the approach taken has been wrong. Austerity was an obvious mistake, it didn't work. What could work was just immediate debt repayment with whatever assets available. Either voluntary like: cutting them off with naval and aerial blockade and making pay for anything including critical imports, only after the debt is repayed, and only in cash, or involuntary say by taking some Mediterranean islands with airborne or sea invasion and selling the land off, deporting the population (obviously compensating the said population at market prices, meaning private entities or persons shouldn't suffer, point is taking sovereign i.e. government land). I think this isn't going to get fixed until the debt between nations will not be given against some specific collaterial with understood and universally accepted means of taking it regardless of sovereignty. I.e. don't give money to those stronger than you, and be ready to take it back at gunpoint.
xkemp 7y ago
It would have been impossible for Greece's GDP to drop by that amount (in absolute terms) before it joined the EU. Because it quadrupled after joining. Here, check out this graph, which rather obviously shows the benefit of joining the EU in 1981: https://www.google.com/search?q=greece+gdp&oq=greece+gdp&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l7.1559j1j7&client=ubuntu&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=greece+gdp&oq=greece+gdp&aqs...
- xfs 7y ago
  It quadrupled after joining because it borrowed money from Germany and other countries to buy German cars and other goods, not unlike the early stage of Bretton Woods. It had the lowest debt level before joining, like a fat cat to be squeezed by EU bankers, which was also why it was fast-tracked in joining the EU when it clearly didn't meet many clauses of the Copenhagen Criteria. But when push came to shove in 2008, the debts were exploding not in Germany, but in Greece.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - lottin 7y ago
    GDP stands for gross domestic product. As its name indicates, GDP measures the production of final goods and services. Borrowing foreign money to buy foreign goods has no effect whatever on a country's level of production and therefore it cannot have any effect on the country's GDP either.
    - rumanator 7y ago
      > Borrowing foreign money to buy foreign goods has no effect whatever on a country's level of production And this is where you're wrong. Borrowing money has a direct and deep impact on ta country's level of production, mainly because that cash is dumped on the economy by spending it on buying goods and services.
rumanator 7y ago
> Reaped the benefits? Greece's GDP dropped 30% since 2008 Most of it was due to the fact that Greece had forged their nation accounting to falsify their actual state and hide sovereign debt, and once they faced bankruptcy they had no alternative than to come clean and straighten their accounting. Another important fact that is oddly left out by proponents of the "austerity is a conspiracy" rhetoric is the fact that EU's national accounting reform kicked into effect in 2014, and included anti-accounting engineering measures which were highly abused to artificially inflate GDP and mask sovereign debt. > it and was forced into austerity by the Troika This conspiracy theory is absurd, as it weirdly imits the fact that member-states that underwent bailout processes had already exhausted their own access to sovereign debt markets resulted from their own financial and economic colapse, and the ECB/EU/IMF trio were quite literally the last people in the whole world willing to lend emergency funds that helped them soften the blow of the problem these countries' governments created to themselves over the years.
- xfs 7y ago
  Look, I'm no Greek, and you're entitled to your opinion. The problem is this is exactly the same kind of finger pointing and the Greeks (the Spaniards, the Italians, etc) are the spoiled brats rhetorics that are creating toxic politics in Europe and causing the rise of far right populists. I wouldn't imagine a rhetoric where evicted homeowners are blamed for causing 2008 crisis with irresponsible borrowing instead of the Wall St.
  - rumanator 7y ago
    > The problem is this is exactly the same kind of finger pointing and the Greeks (the Spaniards, the Italians, etc) are the spoiled brats You're getting emotional and in the process trying to out words into others people's mouths for no good reason. Greece's problems were a political and institutional problem, and it's not possible to hide this fact and its consequences. You cannot have a string of governments patently and systematically committing state-wide accounting fraud, and even resorting to paying consultants to optimize their fraud, and still try to spin it as emotional pettiness. Eventhough the actual Greek people had to bear the blunt of the problem, that changes nothing with regards to the problem, what caused it, andwho were responsible for it.

by xfs 7y ago

anovikov 7y ago

Thing is, it's GDP exploded for now underlying economic reasons in the previous decade... and they all consumed the absolutely unearned wealth produced by nothing but cooking the books. The real "fair" solution would be: to auction off their sovereign territory to the highest bidder, and paying off debt with that cash. If they try to object, confiscate their merchant fleet and block ports with aerial minelaying.

RobertoG 7y ago
Assuming that you don't care about the Greek people (and obviously you don't) and assuming that the narrative of "we the European people" is false (that obviously it's), what about the public debt? Because all the actions that took place "to fix" Greece was in order to fix the problem of the public debt. So, I suppose that now, after all the "hard medicine" the problem is solved. Well, it's not and it's not predicted to be in the future. So, what was all this about? None of the predictions made at the time by all those hardliners in Germany and company have become a reality. Of course, the guilt is going to be again on the Greeks. Then they will complain when the people turn anti-European and rationalistic.
- rumanator 7y ago
  > Because all the actions that took place "to fix" Greece was in order to fix the problem of the public debt. That assertion is quite wrong and fly in the face of facts and history. For example, Greece received a massive debt pardon which whiped out about half the state's debt toward private banks. This alone triggered the bankruptcy of a bunch of private banks, including from other countries also undergoing bailout processes of their own. Additionally, the bailout process was focused on controlling structural deficit, and not debt. Debt is not the problem, but depending on loans just to keep the state operating is a collosal problem. After Greece's accounting fraud was blown, Greel governments were forced to face the problem of the Greek state enduring double digits deficits. "Austerity" is just a fancy word for "we need to reign in all this overspending", and it boggles the mind how the fact that Greece was routinely spending over 10% of it's fiscal revenue, resorting of loans after loans to cover the difference, is simply omitted or glanced over.
- anovikov 7y ago
  This is exactly why i think the approach taken has been wrong. Austerity was an obvious mistake, it didn't work. What could work was just immediate debt repayment with whatever assets available. Either voluntary like: cutting them off with naval and aerial blockade and making pay for anything including critical imports, only after the debt is repayed, and only in cash, or involuntary say by taking some Mediterranean islands with airborne or sea invasion and selling the land off, deporting the population (obviously compensating the said population at market prices, meaning private entities or persons shouldn't suffer, point is taking sovereign i.e. government land). I think this isn't going to get fixed until the debt between nations will not be given against some specific collaterial with understood and universally accepted means of taking it regardless of sovereignty. I.e. don't give money to those stronger than you, and be ready to take it back at gunpoint.

xkemp 7y ago

It would have been impossible for Greece's GDP to drop by that amount (in absolute terms) before it joined the EU. Because it quadrupled after joining. Here, check out this graph, which rather obviously shows the benefit of joining the EU in 1981: https://www.google.com/search?q=greece+gdp&oq=greece+gdp&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l7.1559j1j7&client=ubuntu&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=greece+gdp&oq=greece+gdp&aqs...

xfs 7y ago
It quadrupled after joining because it borrowed money from Germany and other countries to buy German cars and other goods, not unlike the early stage of Bretton Woods. It had the lowest debt level before joining, like a fat cat to be squeezed by EU bankers, which was also why it was fast-tracked in joining the EU when it clearly didn't meet many clauses of the Copenhagen Criteria. But when push came to shove in 2008, the debts were exploding not in Germany, but in Greece.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- lottin 7y ago
  GDP stands for gross domestic product. As its name indicates, GDP measures the production of final goods and services. Borrowing foreign money to buy foreign goods has no effect whatever on a country's level of production and therefore it cannot have any effect on the country's GDP either.
  - rumanator 7y ago
    > Borrowing foreign money to buy foreign goods has no effect whatever on a country's level of production And this is where you're wrong. Borrowing money has a direct and deep impact on ta country's level of production, mainly because that cash is dumped on the economy by spending it on buying goods and services.

rumanator 7y ago

> Reaped the benefits? Greece's GDP dropped 30% since 2008 Most of it was due to the fact that Greece had forged their nation accounting to falsify their actual state and hide sovereign debt, and once they faced bankruptcy they had no alternative than to come clean and straighten their accounting. Another important fact that is oddly left out by proponents of the "austerity is a conspiracy" rhetoric is the fact that EU's national accounting reform kicked into effect in 2014, and included anti-accounting engineering measures which were highly abused to artificially inflate GDP and mask sovereign debt. > it and was forced into austerity by the Troika This conspiracy theory is absurd, as it weirdly imits the fact that member-states that underwent bailout processes had already exhausted their own access to sovereign debt markets resulted from their own financial and economic colapse, and the ECB/EU/IMF trio were quite literally the last people in the whole world willing to lend emergency funds that helped them soften the blow of the problem these countries' governments created to themselves over the years.

xfs 7y ago
Look, I'm no Greek, and you're entitled to your opinion. The problem is this is exactly the same kind of finger pointing and the Greeks (the Spaniards, the Italians, etc) are the spoiled brats rhetorics that are creating toxic politics in Europe and causing the rise of far right populists. I wouldn't imagine a rhetoric where evicted homeowners are blamed for causing 2008 crisis with irresponsible borrowing instead of the Wall St.
- rumanator 7y ago
  > The problem is this is exactly the same kind of finger pointing and the Greeks (the Spaniards, the Italians, etc) are the spoiled brats You're getting emotional and in the process trying to out words into others people's mouths for no good reason. Greece's problems were a political and institutional problem, and it's not possible to hide this fact and its consequences. You cannot have a string of governments patently and systematically committing state-wide accounting fraud, and even resorting to paying consultants to optimize their fraud, and still try to spin it as emotional pettiness. Eventhough the actual Greek people had to bear the blunt of the problem, that changes nothing with regards to the problem, what caused it, andwho were responsible for it.