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Hold on...are they talking about extending Greece a loan or simply paying of it debts in return for said benefits? The problem with a loan is that loans need t

by smegel 11y ago

Hold on...are they talking about extending Greece a loan or simply paying of it debts in return for said benefits? The problem with a loan is that loans need to be repaid, and Greece seems unwilling to take the kind of internal reforms needed to generate enough revenue to pay back loans. The issue has never been the willingness of others to extend Greece a bailout - it has been the unwillingness of Greece to accept the kinds of conditions attached to such bailouts. If Greece was willing and able to commit to the right kinds of internal reforms, then I am sure that Germany and other countries would be quite happy to extend another bailout. No-one (in the EU at least) wants to see Greece collapse. On the other hand, simply giving away $200B for the kind of sweetheart tax deal that is usually achieved simply by gracing a country with the presence of a multinational headquarters (bestowing employment, secondary industries and prestige), seems to be insanely bad business. I mean, even if they wanted to bribe their way in, would it not be far more effective to bribe politicians a few tens of $M rather than an entire country $200B?

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
That's very much the party line, and very much incorrect. Greece has - rightly - been unwilling to crash its own economy in pursuit of some fictional idea of austerity which has been proven to fail whenever it's been tried. The UK has tried a more moderate version of the same nonsense, and if you look at the facts and past the propaganda it's clear that "growth" is stagnant. In fact there's no British recovery to speak of, beyond a trivial dead cat bounce and a foundationless wave of QE-induced share price inflation - which makes the "recovery" the slowest since the Great Depression. The problem is entirely political. Who runs the government of Greece - the Greek people, or the IMF and the ECB? The IMF and the ECB want to prove it's the latter. Unfortunately a Grexit would be a disaster for the EU and possibly the rest of the financial world, and the Greek negotiating team is well aware of this. I think it's quite likely anyway, because in international banking it's more important to save face and status than to save an economy. But we'll see.
- soup10 11y ago
  > In fact there's no British recovery to speak of, beyond a trivial dead cat bounce and a foundationless wave of QE-induced share price inflation http://i.imgur.com/hIfnD7N.gif http://i.imgur.com/hIfnD7N.gif

by smegel 11y ago

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago

That's very much the party line, and very much incorrect. Greece has - rightly - been unwilling to crash its own economy in pursuit of some fictional idea of austerity which has been proven to fail whenever it's been tried. The UK has tried a more moderate version of the same nonsense, and if you look at the facts and past the propaganda it's clear that "growth" is stagnant. In fact there's no British recovery to speak of, beyond a trivial dead cat bounce and a foundationless wave of QE-induced share price inflation - which makes the "recovery" the slowest since the Great Depression. The problem is entirely political. Who runs the government of Greece - the Greek people, or the IMF and the ECB? The IMF and the ECB want to prove it's the latter. Unfortunately a Grexit would be a disaster for the EU and possibly the rest of the financial world, and the Greek negotiating team is well aware of this. I think it's quite likely anyway, because in international banking it's more important to save face and status than to save an economy. But we'll see.

soup10 11y ago
> In fact there's no British recovery to speak of, beyond a trivial dead cat bounce and a foundationless wave of QE-induced share price inflation http://i.imgur.com/hIfnD7N.gif http://i.imgur.com/hIfnD7N.gif