6 ms·

Greek referendum results

45 points by atmosx 11y ago

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
oldmanjay 11y ago
>Chorafa said if the Yes vote won, she would be so disappointed she would think about leaving Greece with her two small children and moving abroad. That reminds me of the spate of Americanslwho, upon the Supreme Court striking down gay marriage bans, said they were moving to Canada. I feel like some sentiment is wildly out of whack here
- natrius 11y ago
  This is not the same at all. Greece has seen several years of economic depression on the order of America's experience during the Great Depression. Many people are leaving already to find work. A Greek threat to emigrate is not empty.
- ams6110 11y ago
  I guess they can join the ones who said the same thing when George W. Bush was re-elected.
- szx 11y ago
  Uh, no - this is a completely different situation. Whereas gay marriage has little to no effect on most Americans' lives, the results of this vote will affect each and every Greek citizen for years (decades?) to come. Moving abroad (assuming that option is available to you) might simply be the rational thing to do in such a case.
  - oldmanjay 11y ago
    True I should have been more specific about what I saw as the connection. This woman, and I presume many other people, seem to want credit for giving up. I'm not really speaking as to the rationality of the sentiment, just noting that giving up doesn't impress me much.
  - condescendence 11y ago
    The original commenter already responded to this post, but I'm pretty sure he was making fun of the fact that someone was pissed about the United States allowing gay marriages, and so the solution for them was somehow moving to Canada -where they've allowed gay marriages for much longer. Basically, I don't like what they're doing here so I'm gonna move to someplace where they're doing it worse (a little backasswards in thinking, maybe even ignorance). This woman would likely move to elsewhere in the Eurozone, or another country with similar banking/economics strategies.
- iMark 11y ago
  In the case of gay Marriage, there were very few consequences for anyone, beyond gay men and women being able to get married. In contrast, the outcome of this referendum will have significant effects on the lives of ordinary Greeks for many years to come.
- chongli 11y ago
  Equally ridiculous when you consider that gay marriage was legalized in Canada by the Civil Marriage Act of 2005.
orf 11y ago
Well great, it seems like the No vote has comfortably won. The futures looking bleak for Greece.
- elektromekatron 11y ago
  Greece is in bad shape but might actually do better from having more independent control while sorting out its finances as the direction from Europe at the moment suffers from severe conflicts of interest. Either a yes or no vote could have bad consequences as Greece is between a rock and a hard place right now, but the reputation of the Eurozone leaders is what really took a hit here, not Greece.
  - jedmeyers 11y ago
    What does "sorting out finances" even mean in the context of a country that does not actually produce/export anything[1]? Will they somehow make money appear without outside investments? [1] compared to UK, France, Germany
    - elektromekatron 11y ago
      Irrespective of snark, it means sorting out finances. As a percentage of their GDP, Greece has a larger industrial sector than the UK, and they also have the world's largest merchant navy. Greece should have no problem in having a functioning economy, this current crisis is all structural, not fundamental. edited to add, I would also not be hasty to write off the Greeks, of all people, as unable to construct innovative economic and political solutions in a crisis. They have form.
      - raesene9 11y ago
        That seems unlikely I'm afraid. Their banking sector is insolvent and without ECB support it will not revive without a return to the drachma and a devaluation. ECB support seems unlikely unless Greece is within an approved bailout programme and that in turns looks unlikely as it took 5 months of negoatiations to come close to the last agreement and that was only to complete an existing programme, not start a new one. The process of issuing a new currency takes, from what I've read, months, during which the Greek economy will be in limbo, which will do a large amount of damage. Sure in the long term they would get increased competitiveness from being a cheaper source of goods as the drachma devalues, but that'll be after an extremely painful banking event.
tristanperry 11y ago
Looks like a solid No victory - a 21% gap between no and yes. Live results available at http://ekloges.ypes.gr/current/e/public/index.html#{%22cls%22:%22main%22,%22params%22:{} http://ekloges.ypes.gr/current/e/public/index.html#{%22cls%2...} (click on GB flag on bottom left to change to English)
- tptacek 11y ago
  Doesn't that depend on where the current results come from? If you watch the results of a US Presidential election on the county level, you can see much wider swings; the cities, which vote D, often turn in their results much later than the rural counties. (Or maybe in this case, the results really are representative. I know nothing about Greek politics.)
  - alexgia 11y ago
    The results are in real time and are representative. Each voting center sends its results via phone. The site has also an api http://ekloges.ypes.gr/current/more/customizer/paramsdoc.html http://ekloges.ypes.gr/current/more/customizer/paramsdoc.htm...
    - jsnell 11y ago
      The map on the Guardian page that this HN submission points to suggests otherwise re: it being a representative sample. The districts appear to be relatively large, and most districts are reporting 0% counted while others are at e.g. 50%. The districts with any votes reported at all are also strongly clustered.
    - tptacek 11y ago
      I think we're working from different definitions of "representative" The sense I mean it in is, "the election centers that have reported results are demographically representative, and therefore predictive, of countrywide results". That might be the case, but you didn't provide any evidence to suggest it is, so the more likely explanation is that you thought I meant something else by the word.
alextgordon 11y ago
Piketty, Stiglitz and Krugman support a No vote, so if the Greek people are wrong on this, at least they'll be wrong in esteemed company. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/03/greek-referendum-what-the-experts-say http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/03/greek-referendu...
- mike_hearn 11y ago
  Not really .... their rationale isn't very good. Krugman disappoints, as is often the case. His logic is, "an elected government made unreasonable demands on other nations and when they refused, this was those countries attempting to replace the Greek government". Well, no. It's just them refusing a bum deal. If the result of that is Syriza falls, that'll be the Greek's doing, not the EU. Heck, the Eurozone FinMin's have been incredibly patient with Greece. It cannot be easy to negotiate professionally with people who are constantly calling you Nazis and terrorists for simply attaching some conditions to yet another loan.
  - DenisM 11y ago
    Krugman could have done a better job explaining his argument, but I think it's solid at the core: there is nothing to gain for the Greek from more austerity, that will only lead to further contraction of the economy. Greece needs inflation, not deflation.
  - raesene9 11y ago
    Yep it is amazing they've been this measured, however that is the European way. Unfortunately I think that reserve causes them to come off worse in the media war, as the other side are very quick to make bombastic statements and there's not a lot of people on the other side pointing out the, rather obvious, logical issues with them.
  - hackuser 11y ago
    > the Eurozone FinMin's have been incredibly patient with Greece I'm not sure they have. It's just rhetoric to offer obviously unacceptable terms and blame the other party for not accepting them, and it's old-fashioned cruelty to starve a debtor who obviously cannot pay. I'll add that it's less than persuasive to dismiss Piketty, Stiglitz and Krugman so easily. Their credentials don't make them right, but it takes more than that to write them off persuasively.
marvel_boy 11y ago
Newbie here. It seems that the result is a solid NO. What are the implications? Spain and Portugal will be the next to fall?
- raesene9 11y ago
  If you believe the various European governments, contagion risk is small, so it's not likely to hit Spain, Portugal et al. As the ECB can provide liquidity to European banks that are not insolvent (as it has been for Greece) they can stop bank runs from causing an issue in the short term at least. What Greece's future is, from what I can see, far less certain. The Greeks state that they will now get a quick agreement, but that seems unlikely. Any new bailout agreement would need to be ratified in 18 parliaments (the Eurozone) and in several of those the mood to accept the kind of deal Greece wants seems lacking. As such it seems there will be an extended negotiation, which wouldn't be a huge issue except for the fact that Greece's banks are currently insolvent and without ECB funding don't appear to have any route back to solvency without leaving the Euro. There may be some kind of political solution to that quandry but I have a feeling it will not be as certain and easy a path as the Greek government have currently stated.
- condescendence 11y ago
  Not necessarily, Greece in itself is a very interesting situation. Almost half of their entire countries' GDP was generated by a single city before 2011. [1][2]second link is a decent read about individual municipalities going down slowly within Attica I claim that the steady decline of economics in that city, which might have had something to do with the Fascism rise with the Golden Dawn political party, destroyed their overall economy. [3] Many foreign workers who made up a decent amount of the manual labor jobs in that city left in fear, meanwhile Greeks couldn't fit these jobs because of the lackluster pay and poisonous political/economic climate at that time. [1]http://www.ansamed.info/ansamed/en/news/sections/economics/2014/06/23/greece-attica-hardly-hit-from-the-6-year-economic-crisis_679f4107-220c-4464-8b53-42086733326e.html http://www.ansamed.info/ansamed/en/news/sections/economics/2... [2]http://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2012/09/21/greek-municipality-suspends-operation-due-to-economic-problems/ http://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2012/09/21/greek-municipali... [3]http://blogs.aljazeera.com/blog/europe/high-police-support-greeces-golden-dawn http://blogs.aljazeera.com/blog/europe/high-police-support-g...
anonymousDan 11y ago
It's actually pretty impressive how quickly they managed to organize the referendum.
raesene9 11y ago
I'm honestly puzzled by what the Greek Government's endgame is here. It looks like they've won their vote, but what's next? They return to Europe tomorrow and demand a better settlement. Why do they think the other Eurozone governments will accede to that demand? Yep the greek government now have a clear democractic mandate to demand a better settlement, but that doesn't mean the other Eurozone governements have to agree to one. The bit that I've not seen mentioned prominently in many articles on this is that every billion Euros that is forgiven from Greek debt or that is provided in aid, is a billion Euros that must come from the other Eurozone economies, and by extension their taxpayers. From a political perspective what national parliament are going to pass a bill that costs them that money, at a time when their own economies, in many cases, are already suffering. Also AFAIK a new bailout deal needs to be passed in all 18 other Eurozone nations, unanimously...
- imaginenore 11y ago
  It was all a bluff. The government got elected on bs promises, knew they couldn't keep them, diverted the decision to the citizens knowing perfectly well that whatever they choose will be painful, at the same time urging the citizens for the more painful (NO) option. EU called their bluff and now they are royally screwed. Instead of slowly paying their debt, they will very likely print their own money, which is guaranteed to be very inflational.
- jcfrei 11y ago
  I assume that Varoufakis gambled that the EU/Troika would never allow a Greek default and ultimately succumb to Greece's demands. However a Greek default (at least on parts of its debt) has been very likely for quite some time now. The burden of this default would be mostly carried by the ESFS and as a consequence EU countries (because they provide the guarantees). In a worst case scenario most countries could probably cover the losses on Greek debt by issuing new government bonds themselves, which would in turn be bought by the ECB, which just further inflates their balance sheet. This is not an improbable outcome because inflation rates are still very low.
  - raesene9 11y ago

45 points by atmosx 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

>Chorafa said if the Yes vote won, she would be so disappointed she would think about leaving Greece with her two small children and moving abroad. That reminds me of the spate of Americanslwho, upon the Supreme Court striking down gay marriage bans, said they were moving to Canada. I feel like some sentiment is wildly out of whack here

natrius 11y ago
This is not the same at all. Greece has seen several years of economic depression on the order of America's experience during the Great Depression. Many people are leaving already to find work. A Greek threat to emigrate is not empty.
ams6110 11y ago
I guess they can join the ones who said the same thing when George W. Bush was re-elected.
szx 11y ago
Uh, no - this is a completely different situation. Whereas gay marriage has little to no effect on most Americans' lives, the results of this vote will affect each and every Greek citizen for years (decades?) to come. Moving abroad (assuming that option is available to you) might simply be the rational thing to do in such a case.
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  True I should have been more specific about what I saw as the connection. This woman, and I presume many other people, seem to want credit for giving up. I'm not really speaking as to the rationality of the sentiment, just noting that giving up doesn't impress me much.
- condescendence 11y ago
  The original commenter already responded to this post, but I'm pretty sure he was making fun of the fact that someone was pissed about the United States allowing gay marriages, and so the solution for them was somehow moving to Canada -where they've allowed gay marriages for much longer. Basically, I don't like what they're doing here so I'm gonna move to someplace where they're doing it worse (a little backasswards in thinking, maybe even ignorance). This woman would likely move to elsewhere in the Eurozone, or another country with similar banking/economics strategies.
iMark 11y ago
In the case of gay Marriage, there were very few consequences for anyone, beyond gay men and women being able to get married. In contrast, the outcome of this referendum will have significant effects on the lives of ordinary Greeks for many years to come.
chongli 11y ago
Equally ridiculous when you consider that gay marriage was legalized in Canada by the Civil Marriage Act of 2005.

orf 11y ago

Well great, it seems like the No vote has comfortably won. The futures looking bleak for Greece.

elektromekatron 11y ago
Greece is in bad shape but might actually do better from having more independent control while sorting out its finances as the direction from Europe at the moment suffers from severe conflicts of interest. Either a yes or no vote could have bad consequences as Greece is between a rock and a hard place right now, but the reputation of the Eurozone leaders is what really took a hit here, not Greece.
- jedmeyers 11y ago
  What does "sorting out finances" even mean in the context of a country that does not actually produce/export anything[1]? Will they somehow make money appear without outside investments? [1] compared to UK, France, Germany
  - elektromekatron 11y ago
    Irrespective of snark, it means sorting out finances. As a percentage of their GDP, Greece has a larger industrial sector than the UK, and they also have the world's largest merchant navy. Greece should have no problem in having a functioning economy, this current crisis is all structural, not fundamental. edited to add, I would also not be hasty to write off the Greeks, of all people, as unable to construct innovative economic and political solutions in a crisis. They have form.
    - raesene9 11y ago
      That seems unlikely I'm afraid. Their banking sector is insolvent and without ECB support it will not revive without a return to the drachma and a devaluation. ECB support seems unlikely unless Greece is within an approved bailout programme and that in turns looks unlikely as it took 5 months of negoatiations to come close to the last agreement and that was only to complete an existing programme, not start a new one. The process of issuing a new currency takes, from what I've read, months, during which the Greek economy will be in limbo, which will do a large amount of damage. Sure in the long term they would get increased competitiveness from being a cheaper source of goods as the drachma devalues, but that'll be after an extremely painful banking event.

tristanperry 11y ago

Looks like a solid No victory - a 21% gap between no and yes. Live results available at http://ekloges.ypes.gr/current/e/public/index.html#{%22cls%22:%22main%22,%22params%22:{} http://ekloges.ypes.gr/current/e/public/index.html#{%22cls%2...} (click on GB flag on bottom left to change to English)

tptacek 11y ago
Doesn't that depend on where the current results come from? If you watch the results of a US Presidential election on the county level, you can see much wider swings; the cities, which vote D, often turn in their results much later than the rural counties. (Or maybe in this case, the results really are representative. I know nothing about Greek politics.)
- alexgia 11y ago
  The results are in real time and are representative. Each voting center sends its results via phone. The site has also an api http://ekloges.ypes.gr/current/more/customizer/paramsdoc.html http://ekloges.ypes.gr/current/more/customizer/paramsdoc.htm...
  - jsnell 11y ago
    The map on the Guardian page that this HN submission points to suggests otherwise re: it being a representative sample. The districts appear to be relatively large, and most districts are reporting 0% counted while others are at e.g. 50%. The districts with any votes reported at all are also strongly clustered.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    I think we're working from different definitions of "representative" The sense I mean it in is, "the election centers that have reported results are demographically representative, and therefore predictive, of countrywide results". That might be the case, but you didn't provide any evidence to suggest it is, so the more likely explanation is that you thought I meant something else by the word.

alextgordon 11y ago

Piketty, Stiglitz and Krugman support a No vote, so if the Greek people are wrong on this, at least they'll be wrong in esteemed company. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/03/greek-referendum-what-the-experts-say http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/03/greek-referendu...

mike_hearn 11y ago
Not really .... their rationale isn't very good. Krugman disappoints, as is often the case. His logic is, "an elected government made unreasonable demands on other nations and when they refused, this was those countries attempting to replace the Greek government". Well, no. It's just them refusing a bum deal. If the result of that is Syriza falls, that'll be the Greek's doing, not the EU. Heck, the Eurozone FinMin's have been incredibly patient with Greece. It cannot be easy to negotiate professionally with people who are constantly calling you Nazis and terrorists for simply attaching some conditions to yet another loan.
- DenisM 11y ago
  Krugman could have done a better job explaining his argument, but I think it's solid at the core: there is nothing to gain for the Greek from more austerity, that will only lead to further contraction of the economy. Greece needs inflation, not deflation.
- raesene9 11y ago
  Yep it is amazing they've been this measured, however that is the European way. Unfortunately I think that reserve causes them to come off worse in the media war, as the other side are very quick to make bombastic statements and there's not a lot of people on the other side pointing out the, rather obvious, logical issues with them.
- hackuser 11y ago
  > the Eurozone FinMin's have been incredibly patient with Greece I'm not sure they have. It's just rhetoric to offer obviously unacceptable terms and blame the other party for not accepting them, and it's old-fashioned cruelty to starve a debtor who obviously cannot pay. I'll add that it's less than persuasive to dismiss Piketty, Stiglitz and Krugman so easily. Their credentials don't make them right, but it takes more than that to write them off persuasively.

marvel_boy 11y ago

Newbie here. It seems that the result is a solid NO. What are the implications? Spain and Portugal will be the next to fall?

raesene9 11y ago
If you believe the various European governments, contagion risk is small, so it's not likely to hit Spain, Portugal et al. As the ECB can provide liquidity to European banks that are not insolvent (as it has been for Greece) they can stop bank runs from causing an issue in the short term at least. What Greece's future is, from what I can see, far less certain. The Greeks state that they will now get a quick agreement, but that seems unlikely. Any new bailout agreement would need to be ratified in 18 parliaments (the Eurozone) and in several of those the mood to accept the kind of deal Greece wants seems lacking. As such it seems there will be an extended negotiation, which wouldn't be a huge issue except for the fact that Greece's banks are currently insolvent and without ECB funding don't appear to have any route back to solvency without leaving the Euro. There may be some kind of political solution to that quandry but I have a feeling it will not be as certain and easy a path as the Greek government have currently stated.
condescendence 11y ago
Not necessarily, Greece in itself is a very interesting situation. Almost half of their entire countries' GDP was generated by a single city before 2011. [1][2]second link is a decent read about individual municipalities going down slowly within Attica I claim that the steady decline of economics in that city, which might have had something to do with the Fascism rise with the Golden Dawn political party, destroyed their overall economy. [3] Many foreign workers who made up a decent amount of the manual labor jobs in that city left in fear, meanwhile Greeks couldn't fit these jobs because of the lackluster pay and poisonous political/economic climate at that time. [1]http://www.ansamed.info/ansamed/en/news/sections/economics/2014/06/23/greece-attica-hardly-hit-from-the-6-year-economic-crisis_679f4107-220c-4464-8b53-42086733326e.html http://www.ansamed.info/ansamed/en/news/sections/economics/2... [2]http://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2012/09/21/greek-municipality-suspends-operation-due-to-economic-problems/ http://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2012/09/21/greek-municipali... [3]http://blogs.aljazeera.com/blog/europe/high-police-support-greeces-golden-dawn http://blogs.aljazeera.com/blog/europe/high-police-support-g...

anonymousDan 11y ago

It's actually pretty impressive how quickly they managed to organize the referendum.

raesene9 11y ago

I'm honestly puzzled by what the Greek Government's endgame is here. It looks like they've won their vote, but what's next? They return to Europe tomorrow and demand a better settlement. Why do they think the other Eurozone governments will accede to that demand? Yep the greek government now have a clear democractic mandate to demand a better settlement, but that doesn't mean the other Eurozone governements have to agree to one. The bit that I've not seen mentioned prominently in many articles on this is that every billion Euros that is forgiven from Greek debt or that is provided in aid, is a billion Euros that must come from the other Eurozone economies, and by extension their taxpayers. From a political perspective what national parliament are going to pass a bill that costs them that money, at a time when their own economies, in many cases, are already suffering. Also AFAIK a new bailout deal needs to be passed in all 18 other Eurozone nations, unanimously...

imaginenore 11y ago
It was all a bluff. The government got elected on bs promises, knew they couldn't keep them, diverted the decision to the citizens knowing perfectly well that whatever they choose will be painful, at the same time urging the citizens for the more painful (NO) option. EU called their bluff and now they are royally screwed. Instead of slowly paying their debt, they will very likely print their own money, which is guaranteed to be very inflational.
jcfrei 11y ago
I assume that Varoufakis gambled that the EU/Troika would never allow a Greek default and ultimately succumb to Greece's demands. However a Greek default (at least on parts of its debt) has been very likely for quite some time now. The burden of this default would be mostly carried by the ESFS and as a consequence EU countries (because they provide the guarantees). In a worst case scenario most countries could probably cover the losses on Greek debt by issuing new government bonds themselves, which would in turn be bought by the ECB, which just further inflates their balance sheet. This is not an improbable outcome because inflation rates are still very low.
- raesene9 11y ago