EU Shocked And Furious At Greek Referendum Plan

Fresh Trouble for Euro: EU Shocked and Furious at Greek Referendum Plan

I'm FURIOUS!

Today is a national holidays since it's All Saints (tomorrow All Souls). It's a tradition in Belgium that we go visit the cemetary and lay flours on the graves of our loved ones and come togehter with extended family over a coffee table, so I haven't had heard the news today -- until I read a shocker of a post of The Don (= DonGlock26) in this other thread in the Western Europe subsection.

I went ballistic to say the least!

This is not about Greece alone. All Eurozone-members have been asked to tighten their belts -- even countries like Slovenia, Slovakia and Estonia who have a lower standard of living than Greece, Ireland, Portugal, etc. have been tightening their belts to contribute to the bail-out fund.

And now the weaklings are threathening to blow everything up: to cut off the hand that's feeding them.

Like the Swedish minister is saying, and what is known in political science, this is a TINA!

And as much as Greece wants to make this a TATA!

No!

There are others to consider!

How utterly shameful!

SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!

 

Janpor,

Not everybody is ready to give up their promised socialist benefits.

_

 

It is not clear whether the Euro currency is an economic dimension or a rather political one. From the moment of its start (in 1999?).

 

You may recall that I advised kicking Greece out of the Eurozone entirely some months ago. You met this suggestion with righteous indignation, jan, and called for European solidarity. Now, I think it is laid plain for everyone to see that the Greek bailout and aid is simply throwing good money after bad. They need to go.

 

No, no, no.

They don't need to go, I'll explain in a bit...

My family is leaving in a second so I need to go and kiss everyone goodbye -- and I'm going to have a short smoke. Then I'll post an article that explains -- between the lines -- why Greece MUST stay in the Eurozone. It's not cause California has problems that it needs to be kicked out of the Dollarzone, or what?!

We are just witnessing a political game on the side of Papandreou...

 

Meh, let them vote if they reject it kick them out.

Or make them vote again...

If it's accepted it will lend credibility to the government and the fund. IF they are not prepared to accept it they will probably be more comfortable outside the euro.

 

Kicking them out will solve nothing -- on the contrary, it will makes things even worse in the sense the problem will become unmanagable.

 

The article is a very interesting read and points out from a British perspective on what we here in Europe are working 24/7 on for the last year and a half: trying to police harcore capitalism and protecting the welfare and well-being of our citizenry via a democratic framework.

I've put the paragraphs of essence in bold, Plymouth.

Europe takes an inspiring leap but Britain has a lesson to learn

By Will Hutton

 

So, instead, you're just going to keep propping a lying, cheating, selfish, incompetent country up?

This is precisely the problem that I've always seen with the Eurozone and have explained many times on here: it is a patchwork -- and poorly done at that. It consists of people breathlessly running around and stamping out fires as they pop up. There is little central control, countries cook their books, a vast distribution of wealth is flowing from north to south, and its just a mess in general. A monetary union is all or nothing; you can't keep up these creeping measures and remaining oblivious to consequences down the road.

If the Eurozone wants to survive, it must -- it is imperative -- that Brussels centralize control and start whipping countries into shape. If, like Greece, they fight back, kick them out. Yes, this will initially cause problems, but it is the only permanent solution. When you put hydrogen peroxide on a cut, it burns. But it also heals.

 

Plymouth, stop throwing salt in our wounds -- I'd expect that kind of outrageous behaviour from The Don or Silicon, but not from you.

What you think this entire accord was?!

 

I'm not anti-Eurozone, like some other posters. I'm not going to harp about democracy or Orwellian bureaucrats, or whatever else have you. They are your countries and you are free to govern as you see fit. But in terms of economics, I, as they say, call it like I see it.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here, sorry.

 

Kicking them out will force them to get their own house in order and will force the german and french governments to move swiftly to stabalise their banks( yeah i know its part of the new deal but they are taking their sweet time about it)

It will also remove the bogey man of the IMF/EU. Greek politicians, greek governments will have reign in spending and leaving the euro will allow them to devalue and make them more competitive.

 

No,...

Their debts are in Euros, and when they have the Drachma -- which will be undervalued massively to try to restore competiveness -- they will run out of money in a heartbeat. It would be Germany under the Weimar Republic -- you'll need a small truck packed with money to go and buy loaf of bread...

Not going to work.

 

They will default on their euro debts and start again with a new currency that is not hopeless overvalued as a currency for the greek economy.

It won't be pretty but the short term pain is better than decades of stagnation and decay.

 

I'm sorry I thought that "accord" was acceptable in English too, from French "un accord", in Dutch: een akkoord,...

Synonyms are: a pact, an agreement, a treaty, etc.

The pact of last thursday answered all of your cricticisms...

 

...

Not going to happen.

Greece isn't a rogue nation...

A country can't walk away from their debts just because they want to pay it back.

 

LOL greece isn't a rogue nation? The Greek government cooked it's books, lied about its level of indebtedness and is now attempting to throw a grenade in what is probably the Eurozones best chance for survival. How would you describe it?

Of course a country can walk away from their debts they rarely do but it is well within their power to do so and it does happen.

The reason why greece won't borrow from bond markets? Because the interest they would be charged is so high it is prohibitive. Why? because it is becoming more and more likely that they will not pay for those bonds. So investors demand higher interest to cover possible losses.

 

I guess democracy is just dandy so long as it's not acted upon by the people in some silly referendum. Ah, what theater Europe creates with it's attempts to impose from the top down to the bottom, whilst singing the virtues of democracy.

 

Who owes the debt? A country is a 'thing' and can't be held accountable so the debt is owed by the Greek government, which can vote to default if it it chooses (that pesky democracy thing again). Or, the debt is held by the people of Greece, in which case I would ask, is each person responsible for just a share or is each one responsible for the full amount if none of his fellows is willing to cough up payment? If it's held by the people, are their children, born or not yet born, responsible for paying it if their parents skip out?

So yeah, a country can't walk out, because a country can't walk, but pinning responsibility for the debt on individual people will be very difficult.

The government will default, it will collapse, and it will be replaced by another and the only option is to go to war, occupy the country, and strip it of its resources to pay back the bonds holders.

 

What sort of nonsense is this? First of all, Greece doesn't have any resources to speak of -- unless olives have suddenly shot up in value? Secondly, who's going to go to war with Greece? Germany? France? The IMF? Investment Bankers?

 

Well of course it was meant as sarcasm. Greece is not an East Asian or North African country, so there's little reason to bomb it, occupy it, and install a new "democratic leadership." I was pointing out that there's little the EU can do if Greece defaults on its debts.

One thing Greece does have is beautiful islands. I've got dibs on Santorini.

What I believe will happen, if Greece defaults, is that the hard working taxpayers of the rest of the EU, and perhaps the US, will bail out the bonds holders. That will tie everything up nicely!

 

If they move back to the Drachma they can print their own Drachma and not have to worry about the ECB screwing them like the did in the late 90s and early 2000's like they did to Ireland.

What do you care if the Greeks have to bring a truck to the market to buy a loaf of bread? The whole point is to allow the Greeks to pay their debts in a way that doesn't screw them either. The rest of Eurozone has more to lose then the Greeks. As it's Euro banks that need Greece to pay back its debts in Euros and not Drachmas. Because once the Greeks start printing Drachmas it can eat the debt/gdp ratio away through inflation. So in the long run they can cut a few billion off the total tab.

 

Dear Members of the Political forum
As a greek i want to inform the people that

1) Greek people are against this, most of us consider the act of out prime minister crazy (some even call him a traitor) and many of us believe that his is acting as an american agent for the collapse of the eurozone.

2) Pasok and his Prime minister holds only 14% of greek population according to the last polls

3) As i know my people their frustration and their pressure will lead them to vote "NO" on everything not based on their logic but on their emotional pressure

4) I believe that the goverment this friday will collapse as already 15 people of the governing party said that they do not agree with this action so propably we will not have a goverment of Pasok anymore after friday (parliament will vote for "believing in goverments work".

5) as for the beggars.... some people say, dont push us because being beggars does not mean that we have to labandon our integrity and self - respect

ps: they try to put as out for the European family greeks do not want that nor they want to feel responsible for sending to financial crisis the whole planet
ps2: what greek prime minister done with his actions was to take the debt from 120% , he lead it to 190% and after the 10 year program from the EU it will come back to 120%, unfortunately the reason we are like this is cause of the inability of our goverment to really govern the place.

 

Greece, outside the euro, could have unilaterally defaulted on its debts, sparked a European bank collapse, devalued and shrunk living standards – all to preserve retirement at 53 and the middle class paying no taxes.

So the Socialist governments get into power by making promises which are unsustainable and impossible to keep. Then they need to import foreign labour of a productive age to cover their budgets.

Moreover, how come an average income of a Greek worker is still three times that of say - one in Slovakia (one of the countries which participated, reluctantly in the bailout), even after Greece declared bancrupcy?

Finally, one should consider a Greek Joe-shmow's point of view. Greece had a thriving tourism economy. It was so attractive to tourists because it was darn cheap. When Greece entered the Euro zone, the new Euro taxes kicked in. So now a tourist from Western Europe had to pay for a cup of coffee at a restaurant what it cost him back home. That knocked off a lot of tourism.

Then you had all those Greek villagers living their slow-paced lifestyles on their islands. They would usually partially sustain themselves by raising their own livestock i.e. live off the land. This is far from ideal, but at least they were self-sufficient. Then Euro regulators imposed a ban on that because they said this posed a threat of spreading diseases. I'm assuming some kind of compensation followed, but that's another expensive program to encourage folk to do nothing.

 

OK, everybody calm down. Greece doesn't make a referendum anymore.

Finally some a clever decision.