6 ms·

"Germany had brought it on itself, of course, but it was no longer ruled by the Nazis" So when a country changes government we should just cancel their debts?

• drzaiusapelord 11y ago
  The Russians said they weren't going to pay Soviet debt and told everyone to get lost. So yes, this actually happens. Credit ratings fall, etc but that's it.
  • user_0001 11y ago
    Having a few mega bombs probably help. I don't think it works out for some smaller countries
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• omonra 11y ago
  I guess what Germany went though can be described as complete change of the system (similar to Russia post revolution). Greeks merely elected a different government while keeping the system intact. If they were taken over by the Troika who would do as they pleased, I imagine that would likely precipitate debt writeoff. The problem is that the Greeks want to keep things as they were / be forgiven the debt. That's mutually exclusive.
  • afterburner 11y ago
    "The problem is that the Greeks want to keep things as they were" I don't think that's true, if you remember that they just elected a very different party into government.
    • omonra 11y ago
      I'm talking about things that led to the financial catastrophe: Low productivity Entitlement system Patronage system etc These may be nice things to have but they simply don't have the money to pay for them. The austerity they've felt has probably gone 1/3 of the way of what is needed (random guess - maybe more or less). And then they elected this new government because it was too painful. I fully sympathize with their plight - it's similar to a nation going on unemployment after having a nice middle-class job. But there is simply no moral case that other EU members should be sponsoring their former lifestyle.
      • afterburner 11y ago
        Austerity is not the same as entitlement reform. Austerity is targeting a surplus regardless of the costs, which in this case tanked GDP faster than they could pay off debt, meaning the dept to GDP ratio got much worse. Entitlement reform is an entirely separate thing. And given that Syriza has, in fact, slashed pensions and raised the retirement age, they are clearly willing to do that. Since they are a new party dedicated to breaking with the past governance, they are also willing to embrace change. And since they won the election, this means the population gave them a mandate to do exactly that. The old party, which was responsible for many of the entitlements in the first place, sure as heck wasn't willing to change Greece. Complaining about the new party seems strangely misplaced.
• VeejayRampay 11y ago
  As much as I agree with the point you're making, the total number of casualties for WW2 is generally estimated at around 70 million people (sad to have to say that, but it's give or take). Needless to say that not all of those deaths were caused by Germany itself. Though you could argue that their actions got everyone involved and, as such, the war started. Also, it's not as much the "shitty socialist policies" (whatever that means, since Greece was until fairly recently, ruled by a conservative party) but the fact that taxation has long been a problem there, leaving the coffers empty and abandoning a huge chunk of the economy to hand-to-hand payments, tax dodgers and overall fraudsters.
  • afterburner 11y ago
    "got everyone involved" Heh, that's putting it lightly. They attacked everyone.
    • exar0815 11y ago
      Well, the Japanese were in the attacking business pretty much, too... And sadly never accounted for their warcrimes....
• elektromekatron 11y ago
  As far as I am aware, Greece and several other of the periphery Eurozone countries with similar debt crisis, accumulated their debt over time through a system of credit swaps developed as financial instruments by companies including J P Morgan and Goldman Sachs, to enable perifery EU countries to hide their borrowing to make it easier to appear to be inline with the rest of the Eurozone, which was fine until the crash and the tide went out. If you were in a cynical and slightly paranoid frame of mind, it could even look like an economic attack on the Euro by US financial institutions.
• hencq 11y ago
  I often see the trope that the nazi were democratically elected, but that either demonstrates a very poor understanding of history or is a deliberate misrepresentation.
  • dudul 11y ago
    Care to elaborate?
    • hencq 11y ago
      I suggest reading the Wikipedia article on the rise of the Nazi party [1] or doing a Google search [2], but here's the gist of it: The Weimar Republic was very weak democratically and there were regular street battles between Nazis and Communists. The Nazi party got elected into parliament, but didn't have a majority. Still, Hitler was able to convince president Hindenburg to name him chancellor. After the Reichstag fire, most civil rights were suspended, effectively ending democracy. Most of Hitler's political opponents were arrested or removed from the Reichstag. Even so the Nazi party did not achieve a majority in the next elections. He then essentially intimidated parliament to grant him dictatorial powers in the Enabling Act. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Party#Rise_to_power:_1925.E2.80.931933 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Party#Rise_to_power:_1925... [2] https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=was%20hitler%20democratically%20elected%20into%20office https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e...
• mikeash 11y ago
  The Nazis weren't elected. They never got anything close to a majority of the vote. They got a decent minority of the vote and then cheated their way to absolute power from there.
  • dudul 11y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_presidential_election,_1932 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_presidential_election,_... "[Hitler] was appointed chancellor on 30 January 1933." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_federal_election,_July_1932 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_federal_election,_July_... "They saw great gains by the Nazi Party, which for the first time became the largest party in parliament, though without winning a majority." That's what democracy is about, the dictatorship of the biggest minority. The constitution of the Weimar republic was crappy, but that's just how it was. How did they cheat their way to power?
    • dragonwriter 11y ago
      > That's what democracy is about, the dictatorship of the biggest minority. That's a notable failure mode of attempts to implement democratic ideals, but its definitely not what democracy is all about.
      • dudul 11y ago
        By "democracy" I meant "what today passes as democracy".
    • mikeash 11y ago
      Hitler being appointed Chancellor would have been unimportant if the rules had actually been followed, because the post of Chancellor had little power. However, not long afterwards the Reichstag was burned (quite possibly by the Nazis, but nobody knows who was really responsible) and the Nazis took advantage of the resulting environment of terror to seize power. The Enabling Act which gave Hitler absolute power was passed with a substantial number of legislators banned from participating, and the rest voted under explicit thread by armed Nazi troops.