Greece's Debt Crisis

[Mugwump]

^ You can do the banker demonisation thing (hell, they deserve it) but the bulk of the debt is with public institutions, the ECB and IMF (taxpayers), not private institutions. They have a democracy as well.

I think you're working several levels below the systemic point, here. The Greek people are indeed undergoing a hideous trauma, and though it is primarily of their government's making, I agree it's been made worse by the ham-fisted austerity programme. The root issue, though, is that both debt-relief AND foreclosure have ramifications way beyond Greece. In that context, getting the Greek populace to vote for a better deal from their creditors is pretty surreal, but that's Syriza histrionics for you.

[pietillidie]

^You're being arbitrary there, though. The histrionics are also every bit with the EU and the banks they represent (surely you have to admit, they're a massive trickle-down front with all kinds of biases towards wealth). But watch Bloomberg for five minutes if you want to see real histrionics today!

I don't like anyone whether be Syriza, the Troika, the unambitious and irresponsible voter, or self-entitled ideological investors. Syriza makes me cringe every bit as much as the rest of them!

I think you're also arbitrarily assigning a negative value to the referendum because you can, not because you have any convincing reason for doing so.

Perhaps you're just uneasy about power not being in hands you know, despite the hands you know causing an absurd 25% decline in Greece's GDP. I'm also uneasy about Syriza, but we can't keep erring against people because they don't benefit us, or we feel safer in the hands of the powerful, or we worry clients will discipline us for being too leftist. A sustainable solution is the priority here.

Again, this is an assessment of the negotiating positions, which is all that matters to me as I'm after a lasting settlement, which suffering and hopelessness can not and will not in any way get you:

[Mugwump]

[pietillidie]

Reflexive? You jest and are by now way out of date. You've just gone through the financial crisis and response to it, and you're still quoting old school statist EU discourse.

The true colours of the EU have been well and truly shown; you do remember the GFC and response to it? You do remember the names of the EU banks concerned, still, right?

You're off on Planet Cameron, way over in elite land, well pre-GFC, if you think the EU now looks anything like the old statist left. The IMF's wondrous record speaks for itself, of course.

Welcome to 2015, Mugwump! Where you and Cameron think austerity of -25% is nigh on socialism!

[Mugwump]

If you think that the necessity for bank recapitalisations during a banking solvency crisis makes governments a "representative" of the banks, then I doubt i can persuade you otherwise. But let's have a go.

in the GFC, the banks were bailed out as a regrettable necessity, and we were lucky that some leaders - Gordon Brown chief among them - had the practical sense to do so. The banking system is like a sewage system run by vastly overpaid incompetents - deeply necessary, but it'll overflow copiously every generation or so. When it does, the government has to step in and clean it up. It doesn't make the government a "representative" of the water board. Just a huge stakeholder-of-last-resort in cleaning up the dreck.

I'll say it again as it is critical to understanding what this now about. The debt-holders for Greece are very largely (>80%) not private banks ; they're non-Greek EU taxpayers via public bodies. It's a bit silly to vote yourself more of another country's taxpayers' money., which is what the Greeks were just urged to do by Tsipras and Co. But i guess if your mindset is that the people who lent you money that you will not repay are "terrorists" because they won't give you more, (as Varoufakis declared last week), silliness is relative.

[pietillidie]

^Okay, the last bit sounds like a tele-evangelist trying to impugn practical power negotiations between a creditor and debtors of the sort which happen daily between countries and large organisations without any moral posturing whatsoever. That's just silly.

However, prior to that, your conflation of the temporal need for bailouts to keep the system liquid with the broader issue of purchased power, cronyism, revolving doors, and the like, which enable absurd, unpriced systemic risk and bailouts to begin with, is quite a different matter. That's plain old evasion.

Also, you talk of the need for bailouts as if describing a physical law, for goodness' sake. No, many of the properties of the system being underwritten are conscious phenomena which have handles at many points along the way. As a case in point, did I just read somewhere that the recent stress tests of the same old EU banks have already been shown to be ridiculously inadequate? And, of course, one would hardly expect you to mention the Goldman Sachs currency swaps which hid Greece's deficit from those very same "individual tax payers" to begin with.

I'm sure it is comforting to believe the individual voter mandated the Troika to lend money to Greece under [unstated and unknown conditions per each individual tax payer], or whatever, and at the same time conveniently omit that the very same voters also did not approve such systemic risk to begin with.

Also, do you think EU taxpayers approved the self-defeating 25% decline in Greece's GDP, making recovery impossible, creating socio-political unrest, and creating further devaluation? Your imaginary moral contract between EU taxpayers and Greece has more holes in it than Swiss cheese. As if the picking of a clown in an election tells you anything about those details.

In your world, individual morality miraculously blesses the things which favour your biases, and conveniently ignores all the things which don't, which you cast off as necessity. (And there we were just the other day discussing the fact that utopian libertarianism is not a serious mode of analysis but rather a political wish).

In fact, you're reproducing the same logical error you made not too long ago when you thought that micro-economics scales in some useful fashion. No, sorry, it doesn't, just as individual morality doesn't scale in any useful fashion. There is no equivalent to Einsteinian relativity to unify the two. I am not Australia. You are not the United Kingdom. Some Greek bloke is not Greece. 22M individual Australians are not "Australia". Ms. Yakamoto's expression of guilt for national aggression is a gesture, not a logical calculation.

Studies of individuals give you virtually no handle on most macro entities, which is one of the reasons why economics is not a science (along with the inability to control or duplicate anything, of course); human dynamics are too adaptive and face too much observer interference. There have no doubt been some nice tries so far from some very smart folk, but no cigar, I'm afraid. The difference between the behaviour of individuals and the physics of mass groups is in many cases still quantum, not arithmetic.

As explained several times, we personify countries and economies as placeholders, not because anyone in any science or philosophy department anywhere actually believes countries and economies are like individual people.

But, that's fortunate, right? Because otherwise you and I would be personally responsible for the chaos in Iraq those criminally-negligent idiots Blair and Howard helped cause, for instance.

So, returning to the realpolitik, we've got two parties who are at an impasse and need to solve a problem. Thus, like all sane people before them, the two parties need to put aside silly talk of morality between themselves, pretend to be all angry for the cameras, use ridiculous personifications, beat their chests, pretend to look all generous, then posture a while, and finally lose, then save face and win, like a bad Hollywood movie.

Hopefully, they're adult enough to get it done. As explained, that's Syriza's real test.

[Mugwump]

^ you just built an army of straw men, imputing battallions of views to me without foundation (I'd defend Goldman Sachs role in this - really !?), and then bayonetted them with red herrings.

Syriza are muppets showing terrible leadership and irresponsibility. Time to move on.

[GreekLunatic]

germany got what they want with varoufakis gone. I can tell ya the measures greece will get will be harder than what they were offered before the referendum

[Mugwump]

[Morrigu]

[Mugwump]

[pietillidie]

[Mugwump]

How sophisticated [/quote]

Your microeconomics comment remains a fail in first year Eco, no matter how many times you repeat it or defend it with sarcasm like that.

[pietillidie]

There isn't a scientist in the world who thinks he can predict biological populations by understanding individuals. None. Not one. And you reckon economists have managed to achieve it for the most complex species on the planet! Laughable!

[Mugwump]

If you really meant to say that "it's a social science not a natural science and thus not perfectly predictive", then that's true. That woudl be obvious, and it's not what you wrote. You wrote that "microeconomics doesn't scale in any useful fashion". And any serious professional would say that's untrue.

Keynesianism to Monetarism are all based on microeconomic insights and assumptions, because they do indeed scale "usefully". When a national treasurer changes interest rates, or tax policy, or sets industry policies, they do so not because magic happens in some wildly unpredictable way, but because rational agents will respond in ways that are directionally predictable at scale. It's not perfectly predictable, because - like any social science - many things, from behavioural factors, to information asymmetry, and many other uncontrollable variables, all impact on the economic system. But at scale, microeconomics is useful indeed, It's why about 40% of most economics courses are spent on this "failed project".

Anyway, if you helps you to paint Syriza's critics as heartless and delusional austerity mongers grinding the face of the widow and the orphan for pleasure, and your team of cartoon Che Guevaras as brave heroes standing against "the banks" (aka the EU), then carry on. They'll cause a greater nightmare for the Greek people, but their cheer squad will surely find someone else to blame.