Comments on: Greece Gets The Green Light, But Will It All Work?

By: blue monkey

blue monkey — Sat, 15 May 2010 01:45:57 +0000

Greece and Spain won’t pay back. This was a calculated Risk, and a Lesson for the Banking System. What is happening in Greece, is a very well orchestrated show, to get granted â‚¬110bn aid, to avert meltdown. A new deception compared with the old Trojan Horse. The only thing Germans can do is:
REPOSSESS 170 Leopard 2AEX Battle Tanks from Greece, and 190 Leopard 2A6E Battle Tanks from Spain.
U.S.A must REPOSSESS 170 F-16 Jet Fighters from Greece, â€¦ the rest is gone with the wind â€¦forever â€¦
Greece must stop paying lucrative pensions with borrowed money, reform the free health care system, and cut down, 4 times the military budged.
Greeceâ€™s problem is too much debt. Greece has a budget deficit of 12.7% of GDP â€“ meaning that the country is spending 12.7% more than the value of one yearâ€™s economic output.
Greece is no different to a serial credit card borrower who canâ€™t pay back his loans. But just like a serial credit card borrower, as long as Greece keeps relying on borrowed money to fund itself, the problem wonâ€™t go away. It will just get worse.
http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/Greece-in-Default-on-U-214-Submarine-Order-05801/
But don’t worry; the ECB, the Fed or both will print the money.
And all of us will share the pain, with our hard-earned money.
Bad is never good until worse happens.

By: Germany Rescues Greece but Demands its Pound of Flesh | Brussels Blog | FT.com

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 12:04:07 +0000

[...] European Union summit in Brussels will set out the framework for a financial rescue operation for Greece.Â This much is clear is from various briefings being given by officials from countries as varied as [...]

By: rj

rj — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:39:06 +0000

Being too religious about these things can easily cloud your judgement. For example someone may overestimate the impact of the greek debt crisis only because he cannot wait long enough for the demise of the euro. Same thing when making suggestions on how to handle the crisis. The â€œeuro was a mistakeâ€ mindset isnâ€™t very helpful really, unless you also have a time machine.

As any engineer will tell you, you can’t solve a problem when you don’t know the root cause.

Anyway, I agree with most of what you state, and “religion” as you call it can definitely cloud judgment. I’ve always looked at the euro as a largely religious exercise, much like the people that always passionately defended democracy or free trade forever and always with no qualifiers.

It strikes me that the “non-religious” solution to this issue would be to bring in the IMF, as they’d officially have no opinion one way or the other on the sanctity of the euro project. They’d do what they think is right to fix Greece. Belgian FM Reynders, Swedish FM Borg, and British PM Gordon Brown stated publicly they all think the IMF’s the way to go. However, Germany stated the IMF is a “no-go”. So while “religion” or “passionately-held beliefs” can lead to tunnel vision, they cannot be discounted.

By: point74

point74 — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 09:53:18 +0000

Being too religious about these things can easily cloud your judgement. For example someone may overestimate the impact of the greek debt crisis only because he cannot wait long enough for the demise of the euro. Same thing when making suggestions on how to handle the crisis. The “euro was a mistake” mindset isn’t very helpful really, unless you also have a time machine.

By: Plus de GrÃ¨ce « Borderline significant

Plus de GrÃ¨ce « Borderline significant — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:29:17 +0000

[...] pour l’instant que l’UE a pris les choses en charge. Quelques postes de Edward Hugh (ici et la) qui prÃ©conise pour GrÃ¨ce d’aller voir le FMI m’ont fait penser un peu plus a [...]

By: Perplexed in Montreal

Perplexed in Montreal — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 15:09:38 +0000

point74, Oliver:

You point out an unfortunate difficulty that makes things considerably worse than what they should be. From the beginning, the euro debate was almost religious in its ferocity. On one side of this religion war, the euroskeptics who never have and never will accept the European project. On the other side, the eurogagas who see Europe as some kind of divinity. Most of the population is more moderate, but the political debate has been, and still is hijacked by the extremes.

Recent comments on the superior importance of the European project and the sacrifices it requires have a distinct religious flavor. To claim wanting to keep the euro intact ‘at all costs’ reminds of a general ready to fight until the last drop of blood of his last soldier. The European population may ponder other options.

At the onset of the euro, some people asked about the wisdom of imposing the same medicine to patients with so different conditions. The argument was contempted away by the eurocrats (‘you are probably motivated by your pre-existing anti-EU sentiments’) who announced that, being subject to the same monetary policy, the european economies would necessarily converge. We pay today the consequences of this suppression, by a political diktat, of a necessary economic debate.

By: Oliver

Oliver — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 10:32:13 +0000

Of course they are motivated by that. The question is, are they wrong?

By: point74

point74 — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 07:54:22 +0000

I don’t think that Greece willingly leaving the eurozone or EU altogether is a realistic scenario. Also I don’t think that anyone in Greece is seriously considering default as a desirable option. You make it sound like there’s nothing to it, debt written off without serious consequences for people and businesses. People suggesting those scenarios are probably motivated by their pre-existing anti-EU and anti-euro sentiments.

By: govs from Latvia

govs from Latvia — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 18:12:51 +0000

Nobody in the better performing Eurozone countries even tries to conceive the reality. Today’s article in Welt: Finnish FM says that the Greece does need help form Eu nor the IMF. Impossible mission.

In reality Finnland is performing itself very badly during the crisis and is planning a massive loan programm like France.

http://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article6293374/Finnland-fordert-haertere-Strafen-fuer-Euro-Suender.html

By: govs from Latvia

govs from Latvia — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 10:05:13 +0000

Expelling Greece from EUR zone will require the bystanding it with a cheap loan of magnitude of 100 bn. Because massive downgrades, inability of companies to repay foreign debts, bank failures can very easily provoke a very heavy defaulting. The ECB itself can stay easily on failed loans of 60-80 bn, and in the enormously leveraged EUROSYSTEM this will lead to Ultima Ratio extremely high costs for other Eurosystem members.

If expelled from EUR, it would be the best strategy of Greece to default, in order to invalidate liabilities.