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Uhh, the bankers who lent to Greece and started this merry-go-round *were* the people in business you seem to venerate. They're a more fundamental source of the problem than any current Greek or German politicians. The massive ECB and IMF loans propping up Greece's economy are essentially a bailout of German, French and (to a lesser extent) UK banks who lent money to the Greeks on dodgy loans they couldn't hope to repay. They're underwriting Greek loan repayments; loans on which the bankers have not (yet) accepted any sort of partial losses, I might add.
Hmm, you seem to be as under the mistaken impression that I was referring to the Greek public sector./government as the principal 'villain of the piece', whereas although certainly critical of them (as stated), I was actually talking about the machinations of the EU. (I suppose you could consider the regulatory and quasi-governmental bodies of the EU as being the 'public sector' but certainly not in any conventional sense)
More pressingly, how anyone can even consider I am in any way 'venerating' the banks who lent Greece all this money, or that I consider them 'private sector' in the same way as SMEs and other real businesses that don't rely on multi-billion bailouts and nationalisations to survive etc., is truly anyone's guess, Doc. Suggest re-reading my last closing para, for one.
As I've said, successive Greek governments borrowing all this money they had no means of repaying, and those banks lending said money, are two sides of the same coin: both are clearly responsible for this. But this wasn't even what my post was supposed to be about in the main; who cares whose fault it is, we are where we are regardless, and blaming X and/or Y won't butter any parsnips that's for sure. I suppose all those banks believed all the crap about it being "impossible" for any State to be ejected from the Euro, ergo the EU itself was a de factor guarantor, but if that's the case, more fool them. Even the most cursory knowledge of how markets, and more importantly domestic German politics operates, should have told them all they needed to know. Now they're going to take one hell of a 'haircut', and it won't be the last before the whole sorry saga that is the Euro is fully played out. Bye bye German pension funds? That'll go down well...
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I don't see how you can shoehorn your reflexive narrative of "public sector bad, private sector good" into that one.
Gawd...
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Also, the Greek economy has run at an honest-to-God surplus for most of the last eight quarters, which is much more than the Conservatives have managed in the UK. By your usual metric, the Greek economy is being more competently managed.
You yourself state "fuck knows" in response to how the Greeks are ever going to pay off their existing massive debts, let alone new ones to rob Peter and pay Paul. I mean seriously, in what universe could the Greek economy ever be said to be 'competently managed'...? (Certainly not mine; as I said to you here the other day, ever increasing debt isn't 'good', because you know, it has to be paid back at some point, with crippling ongoing interest payments until it is repaid).
The fact that Greece has been in "surplus" to the tune of about a fiver a year, as against impossible billions in debt, is pretty much a moot point, I'd say. If I owed you £100 million but managed to save £20/month in a post office savings account, I assume this wouldn't cut much ice.
Look, it's a mess, you cannot get blood out of a stone and it's madness to deepen the problem even more by "bailing out" a bankrupt state to the tune of billions they can never pay, just to be able to claim they're up to date with previous (unrepayable) debts. It's just yet another example of kicking the can down the street that I've been talking about - it's ludicrous window dressing, no more. The very concept and status of the term 'bankruptcy' exists for perfectly good reason.
Clearly, the options are either GIVE them the money and/or write off the unrepayable debt, and do much to prevent the problem recurring by giving them back their currency which can then be massively devalued. Hopefully, you can now see why I said the Euro was such a crap idea all those years ago, too.
(Greece are going to default regardless, so the writing off current debts bit isn't even an option now anyway)