Yesterday evening all 17 Euro member states agreed upon a package to save Greece. And this package once again succeeded at buying time with money. My money. It is estimated that the Greece bailout will cost Germany up to 70 billions. Considering the population of about 80 mio (including all babies, ..) that's about 875 €, or $1261 for me. Add interest and receive pure fun.
Will it help? Well, yes, for a while. Apparently the euro members want to optimize governance in October. I guess that's something.
Actually, if somebody asked me how much I, personally, was willing to pay for the existence of the Euro, I'd probably name a 5 digit number, so the deal isn't all that bad. It's just that it doesn't attack the core problem. As long as some members of the union spend much more than they earn, I will have to give them money.
Greece needs to create institutions that are able to tax the rich. Right now they need to take the money from the middle class, because the rich can easily avoid paying. There are jokes about people who own yachts and earn some 20.000 € a year according to government records. I don't think that's all that funny; nor do the Greek people think so.
Right now it seems we go the easy way: Eurobonds. That, of course, solves the current crisis. Unfortunately, it also creates the mother of all moral hazards. If Greek politicians can spend my money without me having any effect on their elections, we are in for a lot of trouble.
Unfortunately, I would have a real problem electing a Greek politician, because he doesn't speak German. Well, I could communicate in English, if he could, but many Germans cannot. The fundamental problem of the European Union remain language barriers. Sadly nobody, certainly not the French, does something about this.
They are not saving greece, they are saving the german and france banks..the greece have signed that all the money they take must pay them for the debt and only for the debt..meaning that all the money Greece will take are forced to give them all to German and France Banks..
ReplyDeleteOr else the Greece wouldn't possible to pay them and then they had to anounce bankrupt and guess what?the German and France Banks would lose loooooots of money...
not one cent of these money will go to the greek people. Actually the greek people are evolving because they have proofs that all the money the goverment have borrow the last decades, the politicians stole them and they made illegal business with corrupted corporations like Siemens and corrupted banks like Goldman Sacks.
The fact is that the goverment with 15% (last count) of the votes are use the police and military to kill the people..once a real greek goverment will take charge all these thiefs will go to jail and we will prove that our debt is coming from illegal activities and though we do not accept it..
from the other side Europe, especially German and France, do whatever they can to keep in charge the current Greek Goverment and president giorgos papandreou because he promised them that he will kill all greek people in order to save the europian banks and continue give illegal greek people money to siemens
Giannis, if it were just a few German and French banks, the EU would let Greece go bankrupt and then re-capitalise the banks.
ReplyDeleteThe reasons we don't do this is that
1) This might create an uncontrollable chain-reaction where more banks go bankrupt than we can save.
2) If we did this with Greece, maybe we do this with Portugal too? Nothing good would come of this idea..
3) We actually like Greece and the Greece people as part of the EU. I agree that the Greece people elected stupid politicians for decades now. Stupid.
The Greek opposition right now is worse than the tea party. A bankrupt Greece would find itself in a civil war a few days later, as all the retirement pensions would be gone with the banks.
From Greek point of view what happened is the optimum. The only way to make it even better is to elect honest politicians in the next elections.
The Greek opposition right now is worse than the tea party
ReplyDeleteYou do realize the main plank in the Tea Party's policy platform is ending deficit spending, right? Do you think this is a bad thing?
It seems to me that if the Greeks had been tea party animals, you wouldn't be in this position now.
I wasn't talking about the tea party's desire for a blanced budget. I was talking about their willingness to sacrifice everything (including a balanced budget) for supposed political gain.
ReplyDeleteEveryone likes to talk about the terrible outcomes that will result from letting banks or nations default, but they don't like to talk about the outcomes that comes from giving heaps of cash to people as a reward for driving their country or business into bankruptcy.
ReplyDeleteGreece is still a democracy. Unless they agree to give that up, the EU has no guarantees that they won't simply recreate the same situation after being given a temporary reprieve. And what happens when Italy's economy goes the way of Greece's? The EU simply doesn't have the money to bail Italy out.
I honestly don't know what the right answer is, but I think we have to seriously consider that these bandaid solutions are just digging a deeper hole.
neowolf2: The main plank in every North American conservative party's platform for the last couple of decades has been a balanced budget - yet they don't deliver it. They promise to cut taxes, increase services and reduce deficit. The tea party is just the latest incarnation of the myth of lower taxes leading to balances budgets.
In reality they will simply cut taxes on the rich, sell off public assets for pennies on the dollar to the people who funded their campaigns, and probably manage to rack up a massive deficit at the same time.
"the myth of lower taxes leading to balances budgets"
ReplyDeleteMore like the myth suggesting that politicians of any sort are trustworthy. The economics are totally different from the politics.
Nil I just wanted to make clear that is not Greece that are saved but the big banks of europe and the whole Europe..because of what you said..
ReplyDeleteAfter Greece would be Portugal and then Spain and then Italy, it would start a domino of bankrupt..
Although as Greek I want to inform you and your readers,in case they don't know, that Greek people have the lowest wages by far in europe..all the money greece is missing are stolen money from illegal business our politicians had with corporations.
In conclusion Greece has one of the lowest debts in Europe..Italy have a Debt almost ten times more than Greece.The reason they attacked Greece is that our politicians "wanted to be attacked" and they managed to succeed this with purpose.
The reason is that if our people is fall to unemployment and hungry, they can do some things without having opposition..they want to sell greece in the 1/100 of the real price and to show us this as a solution to our problems..
Nevermind, my purpose wasn't to offend you, if you watched the news you would see million greeks on the streets trying to throw away of the country the thiefs politicians.
and the Eyrope know very well that they are thiefs, but as I said they do business with them, they sell submarines, airplanes, e.t.c.