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What I can still not understand: how could this have happened at all and how come just like with the financial crisis following the housing bubble, it is nobody

by kahawe 15y ago

What I can still not understand: how could this have happened at all and how come just like with the financial crisis following the housing bubble, it is nobody's fault really, nobody gets the blame and has to answer and step down and get locked up for it... and ultimately banks or the countries just get their bail-out and that's it. Few months from now life will just continue as usual as if nothing ever happened, just like it did on Wall Street. They went right back at it. The funniest thing, a few weeks ago it was a very popular opinion in the media in Greece (even in respectable papers) that Germany should absolutely have to pay since they got allegedly SOOO rich and happy on all those imports Greece bought from Germany. Which in reality were an absolutely ridiculous amount of like 1 or 2% of all of Greece's imports but it shows how quickly a scape goat was conjured up in the media to direct people's attention and hate away from their own politicians. Seriously, how can you not blame the politicians in that country and blame whoever was responsible for accepting Greece into the monetary union in the first place when they downright faked their economic statistics and obviously noone did any due-diligence? There is a constant decline in voters and a general sense of "disenchantment with politics" here; people just care less and less and I can really see why... it doesn't really matter who you vote for anyway, they all get away with whatever they want and the biggest crises of the last 10, 20, 30 years just get brushed off like nothing happened. Insane amounts of bailouts are paid out on the backs of the working citizens and then that's it. It is never anybody's fault so certainly this does not scare off ANYONE to refrain from careless, negligent conduct. I am not trying to troll, I just really honestly do not understand it... in my own understanding by all that is right, a few people who were actually responsible or in charge and did not do anything to prevent it should be hanging from trees or burning on stakes by now, figuratively speaking (but I would not mind having it literally). In any company a CEO conducting business like these countries are doing on a daily basis would have been locked up a hundred times over looong time ago for a multitude of very grave misconducts, evasion, falsification of accounts etc etc etc. When you rob a bank for petty cash, you get locked up; when you "steal a movie" you get locked up even longer. When you frakk over the whole world or the whole EU, then most everyone was joining in anyway so "shit happens", "tough luck", let's write a check and shake hands for the media. Can someone with more political understanding than I have put all this clusterfuck-shitstorm into perspective for me, please?

ristretto 15y ago
Here's my remarks about how the greek political system works: - Greece is a very recently established democracy (1974), before that greece was like a protectorate, due to a strategic positioning in the edges of the western-eastern block. - As such, previous generations used to see the state as 'the bad guy' whose raison d'etre was to oppress citizens and maintain class inequality. So it's natural to always try to cheat, steal from "the state" and to pass these attitudes to their children - Family ties; people can get elected for having a large extended family , and may even end up in the parliament. Are there many developed countries where father, son and grand-son, or uncle and nephew ALL become PMs in the past 30 years? - It's difficult for new people to enter the political scene, people will not judge you by your CV, but by your ability to trick people to vote for u. - The media is controlled by businessmen who traditionally have stakes in large (mainly construction) projects. Their main goal is to distract from what matters. - Justice fails to work, and blames the complex law system for that. Despite the fact that Greece enters a 30-year period of essentially foreign financial control, the media pretty much focuses on the triumph of no default. Greeks in general have a tendency to hypocritically pretend black is white, so, if anything, the deal will make the political parties who sank the whole country in debt to look as Jesus Savior (I am greek so i hope this is not taken as racist). I doubt anyone (hint, 2 persons: the previous prime minister, the finance minister when we entered the euro) will ever even be called to testify in justice about their wrongdoings. I 'm also curious to see how the rescue plan works out after this dust settles down (september maybe). Also interesting to see the real reaction of markets, after the August 2 distraction goes away
- nickolai 15y ago
  > So it's natural to always try to cheat, steal from "the state" and to pass these attitudes to their children Does this mean that - given the context you describe - Greece will be essentially unable to raise the resources needed to pay off even the extended maturity debts? I am merely being curious - please take no offence at my question - but what do you think are the chances that we see a 'hard default' in the coming years?
  - ristretto 15y ago

by kahawe 15y ago

ristretto 15y ago

Here's my remarks about how the greek political system works: - Greece is a very recently established democracy (1974), before that greece was like a protectorate, due to a strategic positioning in the edges of the western-eastern block. - As such, previous generations used to see the state as 'the bad guy' whose raison d'etre was to oppress citizens and maintain class inequality. So it's natural to always try to cheat, steal from "the state" and to pass these attitudes to their children - Family ties; people can get elected for having a large extended family , and may even end up in the parliament. Are there many developed countries where father, son and grand-son, or uncle and nephew ALL become PMs in the past 30 years? - It's difficult for new people to enter the political scene, people will not judge you by your CV, but by your ability to trick people to vote for u. - The media is controlled by businessmen who traditionally have stakes in large (mainly construction) projects. Their main goal is to distract from what matters. - Justice fails to work, and blames the complex law system for that. Despite the fact that Greece enters a 30-year period of essentially foreign financial control, the media pretty much focuses on the triumph of no default. Greeks in general have a tendency to hypocritically pretend black is white, so, if anything, the deal will make the political parties who sank the whole country in debt to look as Jesus Savior (I am greek so i hope this is not taken as racist). I doubt anyone (hint, 2 persons: the previous prime minister, the finance minister when we entered the euro) will ever even be called to testify in justice about their wrongdoings. I 'm also curious to see how the rescue plan works out after this dust settles down (september maybe). Also interesting to see the real reaction of markets, after the August 2 distraction goes away

nickolai 15y ago
> So it's natural to always try to cheat, steal from "the state" and to pass these attitudes to their children Does this mean that - given the context you describe - Greece will be essentially unable to raise the resources needed to pay off even the extended maturity debts? I am merely being curious - please take no offence at my question - but what do you think are the chances that we see a 'hard default' in the coming years?
- ristretto 15y ago