His 2010 video is *related=http://videosift.com/video/The-Greek-Debt-Crisis-Explained-in-Four-Minutes

The Greek Debt Crisis Explained in Four Minutes has been added as a related post - related requested by RFlagg.

I defer to @radx in these matters

@radx for EU president!

Pure quality by John, as usual.

There are a few points I'd like to add, in order of appearance.

5:10 – Greek default or Grexit could be manageable by the rest of the EZ, economically. Italy looks a bit shaky and Spain still looks like shit, so things could spiral out of control, but chances would be better now than they were in, say, 2010.

However, Grexit would be a political nightmare. EZ membership is supposed to be irreversible, so Grexit would reduce the Euro from a common currency to a peg when viewed from the outside. That's open season on the rest of the PIIGS. If Greek then rebounds, other people might very well decide to give Germany the finger and leave as well. If Greece fails, you have a NATO member turn into a failed state, which not only gives NATO the shivers, but also buries any notion of solidarity within the EU. This union survives because of the promises it makes, which include increasing standards of living and solidarity among different peoples. Without it, we're left with... what exactly?

And nevermind the humanitarian catastrophe taking part in Greece. We've conditioned ourselves to block out the pain and suffering of people in Africa. We even manage to shrug at the cesspool of corruption that is Kosovo. But if we do that to Greece as well, what little moral authority Europe might still have left would be gone then.

5:32 – The last payment Greece received was in August, long before Syriza took over. The previous government was in disagreement with the Troika and therefore transfers were frozen.

5:57 – Troika payments are required to service previous debt obligations. They are separate from what the Greek banks require to maintain their liquidity. That would be Emergency Liquidiy Assistance (ELA) from the ECB, which is a different thing entirely, even though it comes from a member of the Troika.

The ECB is bound by law to maintain and ensure the stability of the banking system(s) within the EZ. If a bank runs into liquidity problems, support is provided by the national bank of the respective country, which funnels funds from the ECB to the troubled bank. That's ELA, and a limit on ELA is a limit on the amount of funds that banks can draw from through this process. If an illiquid bank is cut off from ELA, it goes belly up. Bad idea.

Some argue that the ECB should not provide ELA to those Greek banks anymore, since they are insolvent, and ECB rules forbid ELA to insolvent banks. But as Varoufakis said, even the ECB's own Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) department, which is the new banking oversight, declares the four large Greek banks to be solvent. So there is no reason for the ECB to cut ELA to Greek banks. It's all political, and the ECB is designed to be outside of politics. That's also a reason why its membership in the Troika is so controversial.

The political argument for cutting off ELA is that Germany et al. are on the hook for the total amount should Greece itself go belly up. Somewhere along the line, someone made the glorious decision to install the ECB as a currency issuer without providing it with the attributes of a regular currency issuer. If the Bank of Japan or the Bank of England racks up losses, noone cares. They issue their own currency, they cannot go bankrupt, whatever debt they have in their books is irrelevant, for this discussion anyways. But the ECB has to balance its books, it has to receive funds from its members to balance losses, and in proportion to their economic size.

They made sure that politicians can scare the demos by pointing out how they have to foot the bill for this shit, even though it's the one entity where debt truly doesn't matter at all.

By the way, the funds that Greece is hoping to acquire are meant, primarily, for two purposes: making debt payments and to provide financial room to convert ECB(?) debt into EFSF debt (4% interest down to 1%). That's all. No spending.

6:54 – "Printing" money is generating demand out of thin air. There is a shortage of demand throughout the entire continent. So yeah, if the folks at the ECB could type in a few numbers, that would be swell.

Even Germany has a shortage of demand. We are merely hiding it behind the €200b+ of demand that we steal from other countries, i.e. our current account surplus. But the infrastructure and investment spending over here is at all time lows. We'd need an additional €200b+ just to get the infrastructure back to the state it was in a decade ago.

There is no productivity growth in Europe. The UK actually lost a lot of productivity by its introduction of zero hour jobs and other forms of slavery. Without sufficient demand, there is no need to improve production capacities – they can't even sell what they could produce right now.

... and those are comments on a video sharing platform, posted by a bloke without any economic bona fides.

Doesn't speak favourably to the state of the media, does it now...

Edit: I should be clearer. Some folks do a marvelous job of reporting on this issue. AEP, for instance, had a great piece yesterday, and so did George Monbiot. But the really good stuff, I'd say, comes from outside the media. Blogging economists all over the world are doing a terrific job. Yves Smith alone, over at NakedCapitalism, provides more and better info than the entire German press combined.

Ok... question.

Who is hank?

Hank is Johns brother.

Vlogbrothers https://www.youtube.com/user/vlogbrothers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VlogBrothers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Green

In my non-expert opinion the only way to really help Greece at this point is to release a significant amout of debt and set the interest of the rest to zero. (Instead of trying to keep on profiting on their misfortune)

And I fear a Grexit will inevitably lead to the worst case scenario for both Greece and the EU, hyperinflation in an european country.

Edit:
After having read some more stuff about Greece and monetary shell games aka economics I've come to the conclusion that zero interest debt would not actually help. Interest for goverment bonds has been declining worldwide over the last decades, yet government debt has increased proportionally.
Why is that? Well, if you, as a politician, can borrow more money for the same amount of effective interest to fulfill your election promises in order to stay in office for as long as possible then why the hell not? Some day you won't be in office anymore and the higher government debt isn't your problem anymore.
So in the end, lower interest rates may not be 'helpful' for the greek government to balance their budget.

Not sure what you mean by demand. Printing money is supplying demand out of nothing, or could be but usually backed by something tangible like gold. I think Greece has a great case for making there our own way. To start with, walking away from all that debt would balance the country for a short time to print. The country has oil for the people so the currency can be backed by that somewhat. Agree to farm and fish for new currency and people eat. The country is in a perfect climate zone so shelter is doable... in fact, I think most of the world would spend money to sleep on the beach of Greece for a vacation. Speaking of vacations, Greece could take all the Euro and Dollars in from tourism and back the new currency. The Gov would need to work extremely hard to pull it off but I think it could do it better then most of the rest of the EU.

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Greek-Euro-Crisis-Explained

Greek/Euro Crisis Explained has been added as a related post - related requested by notarobot.