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> 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 actua
by 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 agoLook, 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.
- spiderfarmer 7y agoHe was merely stating facts and your analogy is wrong.