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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Senate Greece and Illinois - the Public/Private debt crisis spiral

Discussion in 'Archive: The Senate Floor' started by Jabbadabbado, Mar 11, 2010.

  1. mandragora

    mandragora Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    May 28, 2005
    No it wouldn't. That's what the banks and bank lobbyists would have you believe.

    Greece should have left the Eurozone 2 years ago. Of bn 78? Greece has received in terms of "rescue packages", bn 75? have been spent for interest payments to creditors. And people are asking where the hell all the money has gone. That's where it has gone. The rescue packages aren't helping the Greek people in the slightest. They are mostly helping French, Belgian and German banks.

    Analyses suggest that Greece needs 10 percent growth over the next 10 years, merely to ensure debt won't increase. We're not even talking about paying back debt. Well, the Greek economy has shrunk by 7 percent last year.

    The trouble in regard to the German government is that Ms Merkel is a physicist, Mr Schaeuble is a lawyer and Mr Roesler is a physician. No one in charge in the German government is a trained economist. The advisors those people used to rely on were Josef Ackerman and other economists of the Deutsche Bank. Advices by independent economists, including those of the advisory council to the German government, were dismissed.

    Now, slowly they are beginning to realize they've been had.
     
  2. SCOTSSITHLORD

    SCOTSSITHLORD Jedi Master star 2

    Registered:
    May 19, 2002
    Beware of greeks bearing gifts, especially if its a bottle of wine with a petrol fueled rag stuck in the neck.
    Only joking, personally I'm 100% behind the greeks out in the street protesting against the futility of the technocrats and their punitive solutions.
    Greece can't pay its debt and won't pay it any quicker or more thoroughly if Europe squeeze them til the pips squeak.
    This whole unedifying spectacle is a sovereign nation state being economically hamstrung to pay back those Euro banks foolish or profligate enough to have thrown money at them to subsidise a consumer led boom in the poorer southern half of Europe. The fact many of the banks most exposed are French & German is surely purely coincidental to the pressure being exerted on the Greeks by the French & German govts.
     
  3. mandragora

    mandragora Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    May 28, 2005
    Today news are doing the rounds that Schaeubles ministry is planning for a Greek default in the third week of March, possibly also for Greece leaving the Eurozone. Apparently the papers have been leaked at Wall Street. There's even a date mentioned for bank closure: March 23rd.

    Probably tomorrow will be the crucial date, with the Euro FinMins decision about the 2nd bailout. It'll be either yes or no tomorrow; it can't be postponed any longer or it is too late. If it's going to be no, prepare for the big bang on March 20th to 23rd.
     
  4. yankee8255

    yankee8255 Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    May 31, 2005
    Krugman's column on the (foreseeable) failure of austerity: NY Times One key passage:


     
  5. mandragora

    mandragora Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    May 28, 2005
    I'm sorry, but comparing the USA and Japan to Greece and Portugal is ridiculous. The former are high tech G7 countries, whereas the latter don't even have an industrial sector worth mentioning.

    Now Schaeuble is talking about increasing the ESM to $1 bn - before the law sans increase has even been passed by the Bundestag. He knows full well that constitutional complaints are inevitable and judging from what the constitutional court's president has stated in public at least twice last year, unless there are substantial changes there's no way this will get past the court.
     
  6. Likewater

    Likewater Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Dec 31, 2009
    The United States and Japan are very diffrent from Greece and Portugal.

    The problems with the US economy is Diffrent from the problems with Japan.

    Broad brush comparisons are silly at best, delusional at worst.
     
  7. mandragora

    mandragora Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    May 28, 2005
    Apart from being a G7 high tech nation, Japan's creditors are mainly the Japanese themselves.

    Piling debt upon debt won't solve the Eurozone's problems, neither will printing worthless money like mad. Greece and Portugal etc. are in deep recession, while Germany, Austria etc. are battling inflation. This is never going to work out. Unit labor costs in Greece and Portugal are 30 to 50 percent to high. Cutting them down to competitive levels is suicidal. They need to devaluate, and to that end they need to get out of the blasted Eurozone.
     
  8. Likewater

    Likewater Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Dec 31, 2009
    Well China owns what 8% of US debt. hardly "Having our jewels in the palm of Beijing?s hands"

    I meant as the Problem with Japan is their aging population, low Birthrate and rejection of opening themselves to Immigration. Not to mention the Disasters have only exacerbated the problem, and their political system seems hidebound at the very least.

    The United States is partially structural (unwieldy government overlap, local government corruption,), Partially the fact it is stuck in the past and Eurocentric view.

    A lot can be learned from non-European countries, Canada, Singapore, and yes even China who don't shy away from government investing in business ventures.

    Obama I think has been the first president to ask South Korea what they are doing right in education.
     
  9. mandragora

    mandragora Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    May 28, 2005
    Well, you are better off then we are, then. Merkel I think has been the first chancellor who doesn't ask or listen to anyone but herself and perhaps Josef Ackermann from the Deutsche Bank. The rest of the worst government my country has had since WWII, they're busy tearing each other apart. Last Sunday they almost broke up the coalition over a dispute who's to be candidate for federal presidency. Since then, the vice chancellor has compared her to a frog in a TV talk show. Now they are infighting with the third party in the coalition over the bailout plans for Greece. The debt crisis right now is the only reason Merkel didn't trigger premature elections, and Germany still has a government.

    So, in April there will be elections in Greece, with the far left parties leading in polls with 45 percent, in May there will be elections in France, with the socialists leading in polls, and no one knows how long Merkel's "chaos administration" will last in Germany (I wouldn't bet on September 2013, the regular election date). Expect some upheavals in the near future.

     
  10. yankee8255

    yankee8255 Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    May 31, 2005
    S&P has put Greece in selective default. Are we allowed to use that O RLY owl picture in the Senate?
     
  11. Jabbadabbado

    Jabbadabbado Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 19, 1999
    "Selective Default" makes it sound so civilized. Not that they're wrong about this, but in general the U.S. ratings agencies are criminal enterprises. So many heads at Moody's and S&P etc should have rolled over the real estate bubble and the MBS crisis, but didn't. The same clowns are still running the circus.
     
  12. DarthIktomi

    DarthIktomi Jedi Padawan star 4

    Registered:
    May 11, 2009
    Shh, telling someone two countries' economies are different is not going to win you many popularity contests. But "the U.S. is Greece" is like saying "Some woman in India married a dog, so we have to protct the Sanctity of Marriage? here." <godwin>Or "You're just like Hitler!"</godwin>

    The most basic comparison I can think of is that the Greeks, like American banks, told a higher authority (the European Union in the Greek example, the U.S. government in the American example) that they were "too big to fail", said higher authority bought it hook, line, and sinker; and a localized problem became everybody's problem.