@RedSky

Selling assets and, to a certain degree, the reduction of public employment is an unreasonable demand. There's too much controversy about the effects it has, with me being clearly biased to one side.

Privatisation of essential services (healthcare, public transport, electricity, water) is being opposed or even undone in significant parts of Europe, since it generally came with worse service at much higher costs and no accountability whatsoever. Therefore I see it as very reasonable for Syriza to stop the privatisation of their electricity grid and their railroad. There are, of course, unessentials that might be handed over to the private sector, but like Varoufakis said, not in the shape of a fire sale within a crisis. That'll only profit the usual scavengers, not the people.

Similarly, public employment. There's good public employment (essential services, administration) and "bad" public employment. Troika demands included the firing of cleaning personnel, who were replaced by a significantly more expensive private service. And a Greek court decision ruled the firing as flat out illegal. For Syriza to not hire them back would not only have been unreasonable financially as well as socially, it would have been a violation of a court order. Same for thousands of others who were fired illegally, according to a ruling by the Greek Supreme Court.

Troika demands are all too often against Greek or even European law, and while the previous governments were fine with being criminals, Syriza might actually be inclined to uphold the law.


On the issue of reforms, I would argue that the previous governments did bugger all to establish working institutions. Famously, the posts of department heads of the tax collection agency were auctioned for money, even under the last government. Everything is in shambles, with no intent of changing anything that would have undermined the nepotic rules of the five families. Syriza's program has been very clear about the changes they plan to institute, so if it really was the intent of the troika to see meaningful reform the way it is being advocated to their folks at home, they would be in support of Syriza.

Interventions by the troika have crashed the health care system, the educational system and the pension system. Public pension funds were practically wiped out during the first haircut in 2012, creating a hole of about 20 billion Euros in the next five years.

I would like to address the issue of taxation specifically. Luxembourg adopted as a business model to be an enabler of tax evasion, even worse than Switzerland. In charge at that time was none other than Jean-Claude Juncker, who was just elected President of the European Commission. He's directly involved in tax evasion on a scale of hundreds of billions of Euros every year. How is the troika to have any credibility in this matter with him in charge?

Similarly, German politicians are particularly vocal about corruption and bribery in Greece. Well, who are the biggest sources of bribery in Greece? German corporations. Just last week there was another report of a major German arms manufacturer who paid outrageous bribes to officials in Greece. As much as I support the fight against corruption and bribery, some humility would suit them well.


As for the GDP growth in Greece: I think it's a fluke. The deflation skewers the numbers to a point where I can't take them seriously until the complete dataset is available. Might be growth, might not be. Definatly not enough to fight off a humanitarian crisis.

Surpluses. If everyone was a zealous as Germany, the deficit would in fact be considerably narrower, which is a good thing. Unfortunatly, it would have been a race to the bottom. Germany could only suppress wage growth, and subsequently domestic demand, so radically, because the other members of the Eurozone were eager to expand. They ran higher-than-average growth, which allowed Germany to undercut them without going into deflation. Nowadays, Germany still has below-target wage growth, so the only way for Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy to gain competetiveness against Germany is to go into deflation. That's where we are in Europe: half a continent in deflation. With all its side effects of mass unemployment (11%+ in Europe, after lots of trickery), falling demand, falling investment, etc. Not good. Keynes' idea of an International Clearing Union might work better, especially since we already use similar concepts within nations to balance regions.

Bond yields of Germany could not have spiked at the same time as those of the rest of the Eurozone. The legal requirements for pension funds, insurance funds, etc demand a high percentage of safe bonds, and when the peripheral countries were declared unsafe, they had nowhere to go but Germany. Also, a bet against France is quite a risk, but a bet against Germany is downright foolish. Still, supply of safe bonds is tight right now, given the cuts all over the place. French yields are at historic lows, German yield is negative. Even Italian and Spanish yields were in the green as soon as Draghi said the ECB would do whatever it takes.

The current spike in Greek yields strikes me as a bet that there will be a face-off between the troika and Greece, with very few positive outcomes for the Greek economy in the short run.

QE: 100% agreement. Fistful of cash to citizens would not have solved any of the core issues of the Eurozone (highly unequal ULCs, systemic tax evasion, tax competition/undercutting, no European institutions, etc), but it would have been infinitely better than anything they did. If they were to put it on the table right now as a means to combat deflation, I'd say go for it. Take the helicopters airborne, as long as it's bottom-up and not trickle-down. Though to reliably increase inflation there would have to be widescale increases in wages. Not going to happen. Maybe if Podemos wins in Spain later his year.

Same for the last paragraph. The ECB could have stuffed the EIB to the brim, which in return could have funded highly beneficial and much needed projects, like a proper European electricity grid. Won't happen though. Debt is bad, even monetised debt during a deflation used purely for investments.

@radx

I think the problem with say a 20 year time frame for Greece, is that same lack of trust and political inability to essentially prop up these governments with cash, year on year, for a period of that kind of time frame. I don't see Merkel being able to support this and not get pushed out of government. Functionally money has a time value so in essence, a long time frame is just more money. Rumour is Merkel is considering extending time frames on Greek loans (because most people don't understand that last point) but that will only come with a greater commitment to reform.

As far as collective punishment, it's more an issue that none of the other EU countries are responsible. I wouldn't characterise anything as being forced upon Greece, although I'm sure many feel that way. If they were to leave and reject aid they would be far worse though. The majority of Greece rightly wants to stay in. The Syriza win was about 'dignity' and basically getting better terms. But they won't get it because it would lead to parties in Portugal/Spain emerging and demanding the same thing. Morality doesn't really come in to it, I'm just looking at what's likely and/or possible.

As you mentioned, Germany went through its own period of austerity. It certainly constrained wage growth (which contributed to making its exports particularly competitive and put it in a good position to weather a downturn in the eurozone, when it can export to foreign markets) but I don't believe its inflation rate was vastly off. It was 1-2%, not vastly different to France for example. Either way politically, I don't see the German people being willing to pay these countries out of their troubles in effect.

I certainly agree though that eurozone rules were broken before the euro crisis, e.g. both Germany & France ran budget deficits in excess of agreed terms. Really it came down to the structural weakness of the eurozone's design. You can't have a monetary union (shared currency and central bank policy) without a fiscal union. What they had at best were fiscal guidelines and those weren't followed.

I don't see the eurozone collapsing though. Parties that want to leave are generally still fringe parties (excluding in the UK but it is the least integrated). France doesn't need bailouts, it just lacks growth (due to lack of the reforms Germany went through). The ECB's QE and the loose banking union for bailing out banks that they've developed will mean if Greece collapses these is unlikely to be any serious bank collapses or Lehman moments (or so the theory goes).

I don't really agree at the end with your characterization of a high German savings rate being culpability for inflating bubbles. That fault falls on the lack of domestic bank regulation within the respective countries, the lack of regulation to curb bad lending. In the same way I wouldn't blame China's saving rate for encouraging sub-prime US loans. Cash/liquidity is globally mobile and fungible. It's the responsible of the borrowers and their regulators to ensure they don't dig themselves into a hole. The lenders already stand to lose their investment if the loan goes bad.

In the current situation, "structural reforms" is used to subsume two entirely different sets of measures.

The first is meant to remove what you previously mentioned: corruption in all the shapes and forms it takes in Greece, from a (intentionally) broken tax system formed over decades of nepotism to a bankrupt national media in the hands of oligarchs. The institutions of the Greek state are precisely what you expect when a country has been run by four families (Papandreou, Samaras, Mitsotakis, Karamanlis) for basically five decades.

This kind of structural reform is part of Syriza's program. Like you said, it'll be hard work and they might very well fail. They'll have only weeks, maybe a few months to undo significant parts of what has grown over half a century. It's not fair, but that's what it is.

The second kind of "structural reform" is meant to increase competitiveness, generally speaking, and a reduction of the public sector. In case of Greece, this included the slashing of wages, pensions, benefits, public employment. The economic and social results are part of just about every article these days, so I won't mention them again. A Great Depression, as predicted.

That's the sort of "structural reforms" Syriza wants to undo. And it's the sort that is expected of Spain, Italy and France as well, which, if done, would probably throw the entire continent into a Great Depression.

I'd go so far as to call any demand to increase competitiveness to German levels madness. Germany gained its competitiveness by 15 years of beggar-thy-neighbour economics, undercutting the agreed upon target of ~2% inflation (read: 2% growth of unit labour costs) the entire time. France played by the rules, was on target the entire time, and is now expected to suffer for it. Only Greece was significantly above target, and are now slightly below target. That's only halfway, yet already more than any democratic country can take.

They could have spread the adjustment out over 20 years, with Germany running above average ULC growth, but decided to throw Greece (and to a lesser degree Spain) off a cliff instead.


So where are we now? Debt rose, GDP crashed, debt as percentage of GDP skyrocketed. That's a fail. Social situation is miserable, health care system basically collapsed, reducing Greece to North African standards. That's a fail.

Those are not reforms to allow Greece to function independently. Those are reforms to throw the Greek population into misery, with ever increasing likeliness of radical solutions (eg Golden Dawn, who are eagerly hoping for a failure of Syriza).

So yes, almost every nation in Europe needs reforms of one sort or another. But using austerity as a rod to beat discipline into supposedly sovereign nations is just about the shortest way imaginable to blow up the Eurozone. Inflicting this amount of pain on people against their will does not work in democratic countries, and the rise of Syriza, Podemos, Sinn Féin, the SNP and the Greens as well as the surge of popularity for Front National and Golden Dawn are clear indicators that the current form of politics cannot be sustained.

Force austerity on France and Le Pen wins the election.

Meaningful reforms that are to increase Europe's "prosperity" would have the support of the people. And reforms are definatly needed, given that the Eurozone is in its fifth year of stagnation, with many countries suffering from both a recession and deflation. A European Union without increasing prosperity for the masses will not last long, I'm sure of it. And a European Union that intentionally causes Great Depressions wouldn't be worth having anyway.

Yet after everything is said and done, I believe you are still absolutely correct in saying that the pro-austerity states won't blink.

Which is what makes it interesting, really. Greece might be able to take a default. They run a primary surplus and most (90%+) of the funds went to foreign banks, the ECB and the IMF anyway, or were used to stabilize the banking system. The people got bugger all. But the Greek banking system would collapse without access to the European system.

Which raises the question: would the pro-austerity states risk a collapse of the Greek banking system and everything it entails? Spanish banks would follow in a heartbeat.

As for the morality of it (they elected those governments, they deserved it): I don't believe in collective punishment, especially not the kind that cripples an entire generation, which is what years of 50+% youth unemployment and a failing educational system does.

My own country, Germany, in particular gets no sympathy from me in this case. Parts of our system were intentionally reformed to channel funds into the market, knowing full well that there was nowhere near enough demand for credit to soak up the surplus savings, nowhere near enough reliable debtors to generate a reasonable return of investment without generating bubbles, be it real estate or financial. They were looking for debtors, and if all it took was turning a blind eye to the painfully obvious longterm problems it would create in Southern Europe, they were more than eager to play along.

Nothing is good about this situation and there is no reason to think this will end in anything but Greek default.

Greece's government, elected by its citizens ran up a large and unsustainable debt which was masked by easy credit before the GFC and fraudulent accounting.

There were many contributors. Corruption, hugely wasteful state owned enterprises, joining the euro zone before they were ready to lose the ability to devalue their currency and lower interest rates, and flagrant tax evasion.

But as a country they're collectively responsible for not demanding the necessary reforms of their politicians to ensure they were not vulnerable to a credit crisis when the GFC hit and lenders began to look more scrupulously at individual European countries rather than Europe as a whole. Equally, Italy is responsible for voting Berlusconi into power for every year their economy recorded negative growth under his government. Spain is responsible for not providing sufficient oversight to bad bank lending leading a huge indebting bailout package.

Some of Syriza's reforms are reasonable. Tackling corruption and trying to break up oligopolies are worthy ideas, but they are unlikely to be easy and yield any immediate benefit. Raising the minimum wage and planning to hire back state workers as they have already promised will almost guarantee they will cease to receive EU funding/ECB assistance and later IMF funding.

The simple truth from the point of view of Germany and other austerity backing Nordic countries is if they buy their loans (and in effect transfer money to Greece) without austerity stipulations, there will be no pressure or guarantee that structural reforms that allow Greece to function independently will ever be implemented. These lender government and by extension its people have no interest in transferring wealth to Greece if it stalls its reforms.

Yes fire sales of state owned enterprises suck but the likely alternative at this point if the Troika lending is stopped is that all other lending stops and Greece defaults. At that point there would be mass loss of state sector jobs and sky-rocketing unemployment relative to what is now being experienced. It would take years of reform for the Greek government to be lend-worthy again. There is simply no trust for any alternative to austerity on the part of north Europe.

Currently Greece has reported positive growth in the past quarter and excluding debt repayments is running a budget surplus. Realistically, yes they cannot pay back the 180% of GDP. The likely way forward is after several more years of real reform they (+ Spain & Portugal) would get better terms from the EU as politically, leaders in Germany and elsewhere will be able to make the case that their objective has been achieved.

The ECB's QE package is in some ways already part of this. What I guarantee won't happen is electing Syriza to oppose bailout terms helping to secure that. Germany et al will quite rightly see that if they acquiesce to Greece they will encourage other populist parties in Spain, Portugal, Italy and France and stall reforms.

Could Germany and others in theory provide a huge cash infusion to Greece, Spain and Portugal now? Sure. And those parties would be voted out in the next election and the terms reversed. Even with the relative stinginess of current loan terms, the likes of UKIP and the National Front with their anti-EU stance, have gained political standing in the EU parliament and will likely see huge boosts in upcoming domestic elections.

About 15 months ago, at a conference in Austin aptly titled "Can the Eurozone be saved?", my favorite Greek mathematician/economist Yanis Varoufakis made center stage with his "Modest Proposal".

Now that he's in charge of Greece's finances, the media is firing broadside after broadside at him, trying their best to discredit the man. Doesn't even wear a tie, shaves his head, wears biker jackets, has a temper... the usual ad hominem bullshit. Yet it only took him three days to give the debate a new direction. Calling the austerity program "fiscal waterboarding" was a stroke of genius.

Him and Tsipras created the first crack in this bubble of lunacy that we call Eurozone. Someone might even realize that the Emperor is, in fact, naked.

Oh, and my personal word of the week: Stahlhelmökonom

(lit.: steel helmet economist, as in "a level of denial and ignorance made famous by the German military on the Eastern front" applied to economics)

The technique to making true Damascus steel was lost in the mid 1800s. The technique and composition to Greek Fire was lost in the 13th century or 19th, depending on whose stories you want to believe.

We were well on our way to losing the schematics and information on our original Apollo and Gemini space programs until they started trying to sort and salvage that data a few years ago. The problem is that when we replace something old with a better technology or limit the knowledge of a technique to a few people, we rapidly lose the methodology of 'how' to do the technique.

In the case of proper war and hunting archery, when guns became more common and easier to use, people gravitated to them because they were MUCH easier to learn than archery. Archery required specific training for war and for survival it was from the time you could hold a bow. Anyone could learn to use a gun quickly, so people just....forgot how to properly use bows. Probably as soon as the remaining archers died out.

Why would you say it's co-incidence?
The area was designed as a giant, open air amphitheater. It's not co-incidence that they built it that way. It was necessary because they didn't have amplification back then, and for the priest/speaker to be heard, it had to be built acoustically near perfect. I think you get the same thing if you clap in a Greek amphitheater.
(But perhaps you just mean the bird sound and the (mispronounced) name being co-incidence? If so, nevermind!)

I don't understand what you mean about the police.
Unfortunately, recently, much more effective opposition to freedom of choice has come in the form of ridiculously transparently designed, unscientific, non-medical laws requiring completely un-needed expensive medical equipment and irrelevant abilities (like 'admitting privilege' at the nearest hospital, as if the hospital won't take an emergency patient without a Dr. 'admitting' them).
I have never heard of any campaign to sabotage execution machines or assassinate executioners or wardens. I guess THAT kind of "state sanctioned murder" is OK, but the kind science and law has repeatedly and conclusively said is NOT murder... people involved in that get threatened, harassed, and sometimes murdered themselves....by the "anti-murder" people. WHAT?!? I am glad that most of those people do lack the 'courage of their convictions' as you put it.
Ahhh, but aren't these actions are diametrically opposed to these people's stated ideology, of love and tolerance for other people's ideas and customs?...and doesn't giving to Caesar what is Caesar's means following the law (as I've had it described), and thou shall not kill mean no murdering Doctors...ever? (I'm assuming they are a Christian group, if this one isn't, then ascribe my comments to those that are)

What if others fervently believe the Greeks were correct, and it's really proper to not consider a baby a person until they are one year old, until then it's fine to just leave them outside to die or toss them off a cliff? (I'm not really saying that we should go back to that, I'm just pointing out that there are extremes on the 'pro-choice' or 'anti-unwanted children' side with historical and religious context to back them up). We would say it's fine to hold that ideology (well, legal to hold that ideology, maybe not fine), but certainly not legal or fine to act on it.

I feel that it's not meaningless to criticize a person's inappropriate actions, no matter the 'reason' for them, if it's backed up with consequence. Most people, as you noted, don't have the 'strength of their convictions' to risk going to jail, or even public ridicule for acting inappropriately, even if they sincerely believe it's for a good reason.

I have never understood why people would be satisfied with staying where they are. If they lived their entire lives in a forest and told to stay in the clearing, they'd wander out before long.

Why do people NOT want to wander out? What do we stand to gain from staying here? In 400 years time, should we still be worrying about car insurance and celebrity gossip, or would we rather be taking strides into the universe? Which one signifies progress?

What would some of the greek philosophers have said about us, i wonder? I think people have become too familiar with this reality we find ourselves in.. you put someone in the GTA universe, or Saints Row, and they will experiment and enjoy themselves for hours. There's a real world out there with tangible things that we can experiment with.. but people just want to watch TV or drink themselves stupid. Or maybe they're too exhausted to play and be inquisitive because they've been at work all day.

thank you so very much! even with you and gorilla helping...yeah..it was still greek to me.

There is no cross on that can.
Φφ Phi is the 21st letter of the Greek alphabet. (a drink for the 21st century?)
Phi is also used as a symbol for the golden ratio and on other occasions in math and science.

"666" in Hebrew would be written "Tav Resh Samech Vav," or "six hundred sixty-six."


http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/monster666.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phi

Greek military must be terrifying on the battlefield has been added as a related post - related requested by Norsuelefantti on that post.

The Greek Ministry of Silly Walks put on their first exhibition recently...

Yes its hilarious how uneducated he is

"Keep it 300 like the romans"

Moron, Spartans are Greek, and it historically references battle of Thermopylae which was then fictionalized into the graphic novel.

His rhymes suck so bad he tosses anything in that fits even if it makes no sense, and people call this talent?

He didn't even make the song, the beats/sound effects/screams/bass line are all samples of old music and movie clips

Pop can't make anything origial

It needs to be placed at 9 Vincent Square in the football field and loaded with Greek fire boulders with a trajectory dialed-in for Buckingham Palace for a November 5th celebration not soon forgotten...