Greece's Debt Crisis

[ronrat]

No individual or corporation (except the St Kilda footy club)and the greedy bankers of New York would be allowed to get away with this. They borrowed money they had no intention of paying back in the hope it would go away. The bubbles caused their own demise.

[pietillidie]

[Mugwump]

^ ptid, Another typically ad hominem, content-free post which fails to engage with any of the real issues, sulkily strokes the old racism fetish, amd remains fearlessly oblivious to the history of the issue. Way out of your depth on this, sorry.

[pietillidie]

[Mugwump]

Ok, I just read your posts again, including the largely irrelevant blog post about the ECB (it's not the ECB that's at issue here, it's the people who are liable for the ECB's liabilities, ie the EU nations and their governments).

i can't see where you've even defined this fantastic coinage of "econoracism", let alone done more than just assert it as a fact.

If there is any racism here, it seems to me to lie in the assertion that i think you are making - namly, that the Greeks could, and should, never have been trusted to meet their commitments and abide by the rules they signed up to. That would have been a remarkable presumption.

[pietillidie]

By the way, the basic things we have always agreed on, such as the need for Greece to undergo transformation.

But that is not at stake; again, that's obvious.

But even we you acknowledge the need for the Euro area to find alignment, and to be elastic, the next minute you refuse to talk of the political force which needs to be dealt with to do that: i.e., classical Euroracism.

Then, the next minute, you slip into a fatalism about that being impossible, and can-kicking and what have you. If so, then you should be encouraging a Greek and beyond exit. But you're not; instead, you lunge into a defense of the ECB and Troika on the basis of supply-side economics, or contracts or too-big-to-fail systemic implications.

So, what is it?

The fact is, the Europe has to succeed. And that will take getting a grip on Euroracism, and getting a grip on inflation dogma and paranoia at the same time as bearing with Greece to see through their reforms. It's a two-sided problem and always has been. But the econoracism, and the systemic blackmail are by far the largest components of the problem because they're Euro-wide obstacles.

Your claim that consumption is not real growth is, again, only correct insofar as the timeframe concerned. But you're torn, aren't you: As a good Anglophile, you do so want your rival Europe to fail, but as someone vested in the economics, you do so want it to succeed.

Hence, the conflicted, scattered talking points.

[pietillidie]

[Mugwump]

^ on that civil note, there are certainly things i can agree with. I'm an Anglophile, but I've lived on the continent for five years and i do want my friends in Europe to make a success of their project. I just don't think that they can do so with the Euro, and absolutely not if the member countries will not follow the rules.

All that said, we can both bleed for the Greeks. It is a hellish situation, and though we may disagree with where the responsibility lies, it is one of the tragedies of life that good, ordinary decent people must suffer in their millions for bad government. I suppose that is why politics - and arguing about it - really matters.

[pietillidie]

[Mugwump]

^ fair enough, go and have a pint of good English bitter and i'll cruise over the football pages, now that the cotact sport is over 😉

[pietillidie]

^Okay, enjoy!

I was going to add, we all swap positions, too, depending on who we're talking to and why.

One minute, there I am defending Korea from racist contempt, and the next minute I am heaping scorn upon a similar thing because I think it is a thorn in the flesh of Koreans, and makes the lives of so many of my friends burdensome, say.

It could be the same fact: One moment used by an outsider as a general racist insult, say, framing Koreans as backward; the next moment being used as an example of the kinds of reforms Korea needs to push through; and still in another case it might be used in a moment of quaint affection, or banter.

Or, even more pertinent to this discussion, in conversation with my partner's Greek classmate I might next be rolling my eyes at Greek institutional cronyism! But not as one who has some underlying view of Greek folk being inherently inferior or superior in any way, but rather as one who knows the systems we inherit and are born into can frustrate the life out of us and always need ongoing reform.

This is why relationships and getting to the heart of people always matters, as I'm sure you agree.

[pietillidie]

Mercifully, the most "moderate" member of the Troika, the IMF, is pushing for greater debt relief in the deal. This is not surprising due to the US influence on the IMF, with economics in the US actually being much less fanatical at present than in Europe, bending its ear to the likes of Krugman, Bernanke and Yellen (the the latter two the most recent and present Fed Chairpersons, respectively, and not in the Greenspan fruit loop category).

That said, as others have pointed out, the IMF has been in the room the whole time, so who knows what sort of power shenanigans are going on. My pure gut guess is the US has leaned on them as I would've expected given the names above, or this is just part of the game play. Also, Krugman has noted the IMF is quite divided at the moment, IIRC.

No doubt there are plenty of onlookers both wanting to stick the boot into the EU, but also needing systemic stability generally.