Software Devs Leaving Greece For Good, Finance Minister Resigns 431
New submitter TheHawke writes with this story from ZDNet about the exodus of software developers from Greece. "In the last three years, almost 80 percent of my friends, mostly developers, left Greece," software developer Panagiotis Kefalidis told ZDNet. "When I left for North America, my mother was not happy, but... it is what it is." It's not just the software developers quitting either. The Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis also resigned. A portion of his resignation announcement reads: "Soon after the announcement of the referendum results, I was made aware of a certain preference by some Eurogroup participants, and assorted ‘partners’, for my ‘absence’ from its meetings; an idea that the Prime Minister judged to be potentially helpful to him in reaching an agreement. For this reason I am leaving the Ministry of Finance today."
News flash: employees in demand move (Score:3, Interesting)
Umm, I lived in Vancouver Canada for 10 years as a software developer and me and most of my software developer friends ALSO moved to the US (I currently work for Apple, most work for Google or other local companies). Greek developers may have an extra incentive to move, but they are hardly unique.
Varoufakis (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's pretty clear Varoufakis was turfed by Tsipras because the only hope in hell Greece now has of negotiating a deal with the Troika and remaining in the Eurozone and even in the EU is not having that man by his side. The price of even talking about a new deal and further bailouts is Varoufakis's head, which has been delivered to Merkel on a silver platter. This referendum was completely about Tsipras's political survival, and having achieved that, Greek voters will now witness just how utterly irrelevant the referendum was.
Re:Varoufakis (Score:4, Insightful)
My guess of they they'll turn in desperation to Putin, thinking he's going to help them (as he's going to promise). And he's going to screw them in ways they can't even imagine.
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NATO membership is going to be a problem.
Can Putin even afford to pay as much as they are currently getting from NATO, particularly from the NATO troops stationed in Greece.
Re:Varoufakis (Score:5, Insightful)
Putin can't afford to pay anything--Russia's broke too (if not quite as broke as Greece). But if they're stupid enough, the Greek government might not figure that out until it's too late.
80% of his friends left the country? (Score:2)
So long and thanks for smelling like fish (Score:4, Funny)
"Adios, suckers!" the Finance Minister screamed as he hit his secret eject button.
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Well, let's just say that acting like an asshole didn't particularly improve Greece's situation and standing in the world.
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Varoufakis told it like it is. That's not being an asshole, that's being honest.
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That's exactly the point: Greece has for a very, very long time been a two party system, both equally guilty of the current mess, hence the reference to the "Republicrats". This minster of finance and the current regime are not related to them at all. Could they have done a better job? Probably. Could the rest of the EU handled the situation better? I could hardly see how they could have done any worse. Their actions reek of racism, colonialism among other things, supported by a concerto of propaganda and o
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I do think it was in Greece's long term interest to essentially treat their loans as if it was a bank heist and keep the money. I don't know why people have trouble understanding this. Greece managed to steal literally billions from Germany and France and have gotten away with it completely. The Greek people, at least the ones who voted no, are all morally equivalent to bank robbers.
People who lent money to them were just suckers and fools. Germany and France have been scammed. Try not lending money to peop
Democracy (Score:2, Insightful)
This is the first time that I can think of that a population directly voted in the affirmative to collapse their economy.
I hope that's just me being cynical, but I think that's what's on the way.
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It happened in 2008 and 2012, too.
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By what measure do you figure the US economy collapsed itself in 2008 and 2012? The economy already was collapsing well before the election in 2008. By almost every economic measure I could find the economy is doing better now that what it was pre-2008. I'd say the actual damage was done in 2004 or 2006, not 2008 and 2012.
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Perhaps I am wrong, but it seems to me this is more about a population voting to recognize that their economy has already collapsed rather than attempting to continue veneering it over.
Re:Democracy (Score:5, Interesting)
From what I can tell, nobody knows WTF it means.
The Greek government thinks that the will of the people now means they have more leverage to negotiate.
The problem is they're asking for handouts and free money from other governments who have to explain to their citizens Greek pensions are being funded by everybody else.
Greece is essentially bankrupt, and wants more money. So either every other EU government is going to throw even more taxpayer money into the pit which is Greece's economy, or they're going to tell Greece to piss up a rope.
This sounds like someone having their house foreclosed demanding the banks forgive their debt, lower their interest rate, and give them more money to pay bills.
In other words, it sounds like the Greek government is living in a fantasy where everybody else pays for their society.
And I'm not sure that's gonna happen.
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The Greek government thinks that the will of the people now means they have more leverage to negotiate.
Well, in a sense they do.
The argument is something like "we have $200 billion of your money and we ain't gonna give it back. If you ever want to see it again you better talk".
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Honestly, from what I've been seeing ... it's more like "you're still not getting your money, we want you to forgive some of the debt, and we want you to give us even more money so we can pay other bills".
I'd gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today. Only on Tuesday it's another hamburger, and can you loan me $20 until Thursday.
That's not "negotiating", that's "sponging" or panhandling.
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In other words, it sounds like the Greek government is living in a fantasy where everybody else pays for their society.
This sounds like the USA, where all the world economy is sustaining the dollar's value.
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Except the USA isn't bankrupt, and there's plenty of people who don't mind investing in the US. Sure the country may be spending more than it gets through taxation, but everyone feels that the US fundamentals are good, and there are valuable assets in the country. And in general, the US economy is general
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They mistakenly believed that "a better deal" would come because Greece was "too big to fail" as part of the euro.
Personally, I don't think the vote bodes well for the people of Greece. It tells the creditors that the people don't/won't do what's necessary to repay the debts, and I don't think the creditors like that message because they won't get paid back. So the options are either just give Greece money and bail them out, or cut them loose from the euro. I don't think there is a political way that th
Spending cuts one way or another (Score:2, Interesting)
This 'no' vote self-imposes the spending cut that Greece hates to see but the 'yes' vote also imposes the spending cut. There is no way to avoid a spending cut for Greece.
Austerity is a strange word, it sounds sterile, it has strange connotations. The correct term is spending cuts.
You cut spending if you cannot afford what you are spending on and when you cannot borrow to spend either and in case of chronic offenders the sooner the creditors realize what they are dealing with the healthier for everybody.
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USA has its own version of what is Greece experiencing right now, that's what 'debt ceiling' is. Many believe that USA can simply print bonds and sell them and get out of jail free, however this only works as long as somebody buys those bonds and the bond market is the biggest bubble of all. USA will have its own currency crisis and bonds are currency promised into the future, so that will also collapse.
That is what the austerians want you to believe. The reality is that the USA will never have trouble 'selling' its bonds, because the federal reserve just buys them if nobody else will or it wants to drive down interest rates. This is precisely how the fed controls interest rates normally, and is the basis for quantitative easing. There is no possibility of the USA having a problem with its bonds because it can keep printing money until the economy takes off (at which point it would just create inflation).
T
Taking on the account, while letting the banks die (Score:2)
Not being an economist, is it feasible in an way to loan the money to the people of Greece and let the greek banks die?
Is Greece showing any real signs of wanting to address the problems of their economy and tax dodging?
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Greek people don't need the capital. They have all the taxes they didn't pay.
What they need is a solid currency. I suggest bitcoin.
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Banking in the EU is pretty much borderless for the wealthy. Just open an account in a German or whatever bank. You might need to establish 'residence'. But that's not difficult to satisfy the requirements of regulations. For the middle class on down, its another matter. If the neighborhood banks and ATMs shut down, what are you going to do? Hopping on a plane or train for a weekly cash run is no problem for the rich. Not so much for everyone else.
Any bank opening a branch (or ATM) inside Greece will expos
Let them go, they will come back. (Score:4, Insightful)
Not all of them returned, heck not even most of them returned. But risk-tolerance, ambition etc are not distributed uniformly, it follows the power law. So the 20% who returned took with them 80% of the risk-tolerance, ambition, entrepreneurship with them back to India.
So let Greece give up euro for drachma, let drachma fall as low as INR. It will thrive on tourism, and the Greeks coming back to start companies a few years down the road.
Germany has benefitted a lot by the economic union. Had Deutschmark stayed out of euro, its exports would have become so expensive no one could import them. 80% of Germany's exports are to rest of Europe. Capital would have naturally flowed to less expensive countries, and they would have the companies and employment restoring the balance. Greece leaving euro is going to be a bigger blow to Germany than to Greece.
And so it begins.... (Score:3)
The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.
Re:Outside help (Score:5, Insightful)
A developer working in Greece will pay taxes in Greece and spend most of his/her income in Greece.
A developer leaving Greece will not pay income tax in Greece and IF he/she sends back any money it is nothing compared to what he/she would earn in Greece. Furthermore Greece paid the developers education in the expectation it would be a wise investment in the future (education == long term investment).
Note, in case this developer is doing work for a foreign company, this adds to Greece export and the differences are even larger.
Sorry, the helping out relatives story is not in the interest of Greece.
Re:Outside help (Score:5, Insightful)
"A developer working in Greece will pay taxes in Greece"
No he won't. That's why they're in this mess.
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"A developer working in Greece will pay taxes in Greece"
No he won't. That's why they're in this mess.
He won't, but it's not the flight of labor out of Greece that's the cause of this problem. It's a symptom of the deep rooted issue that has doomed Greece to be crushed between their national debt and the Eurozone.
The MESS is caused by the baby boom and Greece's liberal government funded pensions (we call it Social Security in the USA). The boomers are getting older, consuming more and more resources but having long sense retired produce nothing. That leaves fewer and fewer workers to collect taxes from i
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No man. The people left the country because investment dropped off a cliff and unemployment climbed up at the same time taxes increased to counter receipt loss from what I just said before. Greece has been in a recessive death spiral since 2008.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Outside help (Score:4, Insightful)
When 51% are on the tit, democracy is over and done. Stick a fork in it.
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You do live in a democracy right?
Athens is credited as the birthplace of democracy even though only racially privileged landowners even had a vote. Guess what.
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Unemployment is high in Greece. How about encouraging unemployed Greeks to move to Germany or France. Then they will have to pay the welfare, not the Greek government.
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Sorry, the helping out relatives story is not in the interest of Greece.
Unless, of course, your wife loves the money you send back and doesn't want you to come home.
I had roommate's brother who came from the Philippines to do electronic assembly work in Silicon Valley. He hated the job but his wife didn't want him to come home. After a few years, he quit, returned home and got divorced. His wife spent every dime he ever made in the U.S.
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Or you know, have the balls to not send the money?
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be rich, or have a bitch. pick one.
Try not marrying someone whose goal in life is to be a housewife or otherwise taken care of. Marry someone that is accustomed to taking care of themselves. Trouble is, that trait is generally not initially obvious or especially sexy in of itself, and most people don't think with their brains when it comes to objectively evaluating those that they are sexually attracted to. I had plenty of girlfriends that ultimately weren't suitable to marriage before I found the right woman that knew how to manage her o
Re:Outside help (Score:5, Informative)
Women wanting to be housewives aren't the problem. The problem is a socieconomic setup that makes it difficult to support a family on one income unless you're relatively well qualified or otherwise independently wealthy. Very few of the acceptable latter day social philosophies have a reproductive strategy outside of mass private or public childcare facilities, which most responsible parents quite rightly find repugnant.
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The Greek financial disaster came from refusal to pay taxes and constant reduction in tax enforcement. This is the end result of modern "fiscal conservatism" and why a socialist government so easily swept into power there. The people bailing are people who suspect Greece is about to come knocking and demanding what was due a long time ago but they refused to pay.
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You are partly true, since it's a national sport to avoid taxes.
I read that in one of the greek islands, a lot of taxi drivers were "officially" blind.
The real problem is that Greece has to spend 13% of its GDP to pay for its retirees.
It almost twice as much as other european countries, and it will gets worse because the population is older than most other countries, with a lot of unemployment for young ones (probably whose who are leaving the country).
Since everybody wants to profit from the current system
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actual interest payments are somewhere around 2.6% to 4.3% of GDP (depending on your calculation method)
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6e55... [ft.com]
greek tax revenue as a proportion of gdp is about 30%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
so greek interest payments are approx 10% of tax receipts
http://data.worldbank.org/indi... [worldbank.org]
Re:Outside help (Score:5, Insightful)
The Greek financial disaster came from refusal to live within their means and not run chronic deficits for decades on end. This is the end result of modern "borrow and spend" liberalism taken so far as to ruin the finances of Greece and exhaust the patience of the rest of Europe. The people bailing are the "children" spoken of when conservatives are heard to say we must not saddle our children with debt.
The thing that is not said is that the reason we must not do this is not merely because it is morally reprehensible, which it is, but that the children simply won't pay it. Unless you are ready to erect gulags to enslave people you can't make them live their lives to fund your unlimited socialist dreams.
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Re:Outside help (Score:5, Informative)
And yes, I do have actual data to prove it: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/s... [europa.eu]
If you check the numbers in details, it turns out that almost half of the German economic growth during the 2002-2008 period is solely because of this debt export to the periphery.
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Much smarter then you sucker!
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> Furthermore Greece paid the developers education in the expectation it would be a wise investment in the future (education == long term investment).
So what is your point with this? You want to bring back modern slavery? If you get an education paid by the state, you are not allowed to leave the state? Like in Soviet times?
Or to localize it, how many people on Slashdot have had their employers pay for them to attend training, courses, even further their educations? Does that mean that those employee
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So what is your point with this?
I never stated this should not be allowed. The OP presented moving abroad as a positive thing, I made this statement to show that it is not in the interest of Greece. Every comapny expects/hopes for a return on their investment, there is no difference for countries/governments.
Does that mean that those employees should be forced to pay back that education if they move to another company
That is not uncommon in Europe when such training is extensive and expensive. It is often provided with a clause that if the employee is leaving the company within a x number of years, an equivalent share shall be reimbursed. Often th
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From the article:
Companies, however, are experiencing a shortage of developers. "SEPE has undertaken recently an initiative to train 3,000 people, to fill this digital gap in Greece, and at the same time to certify another 3,000 Greek ICT professionals," the Federation's spokesperson told ZDNet.
IT jobs are the sixth hardest ones to fill in Greece, according to ManpowerGroup's 2015 Talent Shortage Survey, with senior developers' gross monthly salary varying between €2,600 and €3,200.
Please, do at l
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With luck it will end the lunatic Euro-dream too.
World War II called and wants its lunatic Euro-dream back.
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I never understood the contempt and hatred for the Euro. A loose economic union to facilitate trade and further diplomatic relationships with member states to ensure that another WW doesn't occur in Europe seems like a laudable goal. These goals seemed to be designed around the causes of WW1 and WW2. It may not have been perfectly implemented but what is perfect version 1.0? The USA had to rewrite the Articles of Confederation for similar issues (having the federal government assume the war debts of the Rev
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I've seen code written by them, so I completely understand why.
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If was living in Greece now, and had marketable skills, I would be leaving too.
I'd call you stupid if you where still in Greece myself....
The writing has been on the wall for Greece for nearly 2 years. It has been obvious that Greece was trying the patience of it's creditors and that eventually they would all get tired of kicking the can down the road. If that wasn't enough for you, the last elected government's platform should have made it clear to everybody who was working in Greece that it was time to get out because the door was slamming shut very soon.
If you are still there n
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What are these denbts of which you speak? I have never heard of this word.
Re: Yeah, software developers. (Score:4, Funny)
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It highlights your agenda, that's about it.
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Re:It's like Venezuela but without all the gun cri (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, look at how awful countries like Norway and Sweden are with all their "nanny-state policies".... they only have the highest standards of living in the world.
Re:It's like Venezuela but without all the gun cri (Score:5, Informative)
Greece has 12% GPD from exports, imports twice as much as it exports and has only 5 million in the workforce.
For perspective, the USA makes only 9% of GPD from exports (that includes the recent massive increase in gas and oil exports), imports 50% more than it exports and has 156 million people in the workforce.
Norway and Sweden's success has nothing to do with political models and entirely to do with geography. If the Aegean had oil fields, Greece would be a socialist paradise too.
Re:It's like Venezuela but without all the gun cri (Score:4, Interesting)
Norway and Sweden's success has nothing to do with political models and entirely to do with geography. If the Aegean had oil fields, Greece would be a socialist paradise too.
Not even close. Sweden doesn't have one drop of oil, we have industry. And adding to that, the social programmes of Sweden are more expansive than our Norwegian brethren, who have oil. You see the Norwegians fund almost all their oil income into the world's largest and most well managed oil fund that is set up to last "indefinitely". They're most certainly not burning it. (The money. The majority of the oil most certainly burns).
Also, the oil is a recent thing, barely thirty years old. (I am old enough to remember when Norway was "poor" and we used to go shopping for cheaper staples there), and guess what, Sweden's social programmes were even further ahead than the rest of Europe in particular, and the world in general.
Re: It's like Venezuela but without all the gun cr (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously! Have you made any attempt to understand this problem?
Former Greek governments borrowed the money, not bankers. Most of the money wasn't lent by bankers. The troika comprises the EU, the IMF and the European Central Bank - mostly politicians, not bankers.
The current problem facing Greece is that no-one will lend them any more money. Even if 100% of their past debts were written off, current tax receipts are insufficient to meet current expenditure. Without more money from the people you mistakenly call bankers, austerity in Greece will become much worse.
Put the blame where it really lies. Not with bankers, but with dishonest politicians and a delusional electorate who always believed someone else would pay their bills.
Re: It's like Venezuela but without all the gun cr (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if 100% of their past debts were written off, current tax receipts are insufficient to meet current expenditure.
That situation is exactly the same in the US (except the gap is about $500 billion right now, more than the entire Greek debt). The only reason that the US keeps going is that they control the lender (the Federal Reserve). At least they think they do.
Re: It's like Venezuela but without all the gun c (Score:3)
The Federal Reserve doesn't work like that. The USA can maintain its government deficit because enough people are willing to buy US government bonds. If, one day, people no longer trust it to repay its debts, there will be a financial meltdown the like of which the world has never yet seen.
Re: It's like Venezuela but without all the gun c (Score:5, Insightful)
The Federal Reserve doesn't work like that. The USA can maintain its government deficit because enough people are willing to buy US government bonds. If, one day, people no longer trust it to repay its debts, there will be a financial meltdown the like of which the world has never yet seen.
The largest purchaser of US bonds today is ... wait for it ... the Federal Reserve [nytimes.com].
Re: It's like Venezuela but without all the gun cr (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry, but you are incorrect. Greece reported a nearly 2 billion euro surplus in 2014, without taking interest payments into account. http://www.wsj.com/articles/greece-misses-target-on-budget-surplus-1421244654
If their debt were wiped out today they would keep that money and need no further bailouts. Better yet they could go back to the Drachma and manage their currency with a combination of monetary and fiscal policy, just like every other sovereign nation in the developed world.
You can't oversimplify the Greek situation as "socialism". There are plenty of examples of countries that are doing fine economically with policies that embrace social spending. The Greek situation is far more complex and involves politics and the Euro as much as anything else.
Re: It's like Venezuela but without all the gun c (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, but you're out of date. The Greek government's primary surplus disappeared shortly after the election of the Syriza government.
Re: It's like Venezuela but without all the gun c (Score:5, Insightful)
That's usually what happens when you fire everyone, liquidate what's left and then proceed to have no further source of income: A large inflow of cash, followed by nothing.
Re: It's like Venezuela but without all the gun cr (Score:4, Insightful)
I could take a cash advance on a credit card at 28%, put it in a deposit account at 1%, and generate a surplus without taking interest payments into account.
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Re: It's like Venezuela but without all the gun cr (Score:5, Insightful)
You donâ(TM)t actually know what you are talking about do you.
Most of the loans in question here were in fact loaned by German and French bankers to the Greeks prior to the 2008, Deutsche bank was one of the biggest. They could get somewhat higher returns loaning to Greece and they had some security because Greece was in the Eurozone. That security unravelled with the 2008 crash.
The ECB, EU, IMF gave massive loans to Greece in 2010, and most of it immediately went to extricate the German and French banks from their bad greek loans. If the Greeks has defaulted on the original loans then there would have been a massive banking crisis in Germany and France. The 2010 EU bailout was to save their banks more than it was to help the Greeks.
The Greeks just got more debt piled on top of too much debt and its totally destroyed their economy. Recently released IMF studies confirm the Greeks canâ(TM)t sustain their current debt load and it has to be restructed or they have to default. If they stay the current course with austerity and more and more bailout loans they are doomed.
If the Greeks had been smart they would have exited the EU and defaulted on the debt in 2009 and the people who made the bad loans, the German and French bankers, would have paid the price. Instead they got off scot free.
Iceland immediately defaulted in a similar situation, they had some short term pain but they rebounded, while the Greece has gotten nothing but worse and worse under the yoke of a corrupt European and global banking system.
For banking and loans to work there is a simple rule, if you are foolish enough to make a bad loan to someone who probably wonâ(TM)t pay it back, then you pay the price when they default. Instead the people who make the bad loans (i.e. bankers) get to keep their bonuses profits and everyone else gets to pay for their stupidity, greed and corruption.
Re: It's like Venezuela but without all the gun c (Score:4, Insightful)
You're quite right that the first two bailouts primarily rescued Greece's creditors, but Greece already owed that money to someone. The losers in those transactions weren't the Greeks - the big losers European taxpayers who adopted the Greek government's debts.
But you're very mistaken if you think that the biggest buyers of government debt are the banks. Pension funds, investment funds and insurance companies have far more cash to splash.
You're also pretty ignorant if you claim that institutions perform no credit assessment of their investments. For traded bonds like government IOUs, that assessment is essentially outsourced to three credit reference agencies, Moody's, Standard and Poor's and Fitch. Those agencies are supposedly licenced and regulated but utterly failed to identify the risk with Greek debt ahead of the downturn. If you're looking for a scapegoat on the creditor side, they're a much better scapegoat than the banks.
Blaming the banks is a lazy knee-jerk reaction that's not really grounded in fact. P.S. I'm not a banker.
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Iâ(TM)m not blaming âoebankersâ exactly, Iâ(TM)m blaming people who loan money to people who are may or may not pay it back and when they dont get paid back they go running to their central banks or governments and demand they get made whole at the expense of everyone else. Same thing happened in the U.S. in 2009 with the TARP and assorted other bail outs.
Yea the rating agencies really sucked especially leading up to the crash in 2008, but it doesnâ(TM)t relieve lenders of ultimate
Re: It's like Venezuela but without all the gun cr (Score:5, Informative)
A few additional interesting facts:
1) The original cause of the Greek debt was due to the fact that greek labor costs were significantly higher than other EU nations. When they joined the EU, this caused a large trade deficit...leading to lower GDP and higher debt.
2) Greece has always been somewhat left-leaning and rather than curtail spending during low income years, they actually increased spending by incurring more debt
3) The government (with the help of some banks) "hid" their massive deficit spending through the use of credit default swaps. This made Greece appear to be a better investment than they actually were when other banks provided loans.
4) Greece also historically has one of the highest rates of tax evasion
All of the above contributed to the present crisis, not just "bad greek loans".
Citations mostly from wikipedia [wikipedia.org], but plenty of similar info on the web.
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That's a good description, but everyone is still missing the actual cause. Firstly, the European Union is founded on an ideology that doesn't allow for an economic crisis. Second, when the crisis hit in 2008, the Greek *private* sector *reduced* their bank borrowing. Their money supply shrank, velocity shrank too, jobs were lost, tax receipts went down. Their government debt ratio went up, not because they were borrowing more, but because GDP fell. But the Euro doesn't allow Greece to run a large deficit, n
Re: It's like Venezuela but without all the gun cr (Score:4, Informative)
Most of the money wasn't lent by bankers.
Yes, it actually was. The EU/IMF/ECB then bailed those banks out, for some inexplicable reason, by taking the debt off their hands. Neither group, bankers or EU, did risk analysis. If they did, Greece never would have been lent the money in the first place.
Re: It's like Venezuela but without all the gun cr (Score:4, Funny)
Comedies generally sell better.
Re:It's like Venezuela but without all the gun cri (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes Socialism...
The banks are not the cause of the problem here, but the symptom of the sickness that's killing Greece (and countries in similar situations). Greek banks WILL fail. They don't have stacks of euros to stuff into the ATM's and the people of Greece are desperately trying to empty their accounts because everybody knows that if you leave your cash in the bank, you won't get it out. Everybody wants to be in hard currency, euros. The banks have run out.
Ask yourself, how did Greece get to this point? Basically it's because they failed to make the most recent payment on their national debt. There isn't enough euros in the government coffers to make the payment, they defaulted and now they cannot borrow because nobody wants to lend them anything. Why is the government in Greece at this point? Because they SPENT money they didn't have and cannot raise. Normally countries just print more currency to pay loans, but you cannot do that when it's euros you need to print.
So what did Greece spend all this money on? Early retirement for everybody and social programs. Socialism in leaning, if not actual practice is what has Greece into crushing debt.
Greece is being crushed between the Eurozone and their debt, the debt that funded their social programs. The sad part though is that the people who will really pay for this are the poor, the people who didn't have the ability to move their assets OUT of Greece.
Re:It's like Venezuela but without all the gun cri (Score:4, Interesting)
The poor really don't have assets. The people who will really pay is the people who aren't rich but not poor either. Those who have money they put away for their later years and other needs will lose it. I feel sorry for them but there is little hope and it's going to get worse. The US will be in the same place in a decade or so. I have a retirement I'll probably never see.
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Note not just socialism, but socialism *AND* cutting taxes low. They tried to have their cake and eat it too.
Of course before the Euro, they might have been able to stumble over this while massively devaluing their currency, and it wouldn't have been as disruptively bad. EU members might just have too much sovereignty to share a currency.
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GDP fell and unemployment is at 25%. A lot of people left the country. So tax receipts fell and the pensions system can no longer be sustained. So was this a problem with the pensions or a problem with a failed economy thanks to the measures of the troika?
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Hard to commit gun crime with a rock. Murder is less efficient but with a few whacks it's doable.
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I agree with you to some extent. The individuals must make the group stronger though. People who can contribute but refuse to are getting to be a serious problem. Dead weight will kill any group. Paying taxes is important for everyone. Having a third of the population that pays no taxes will cause resentment as well as economic problems.
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The problem in the U.S. is not people who don't have skills. People have skills. The problem is that skills aren't valued. If you have skills, you will get paid shit. If you manipulate money, you will get paid a lot. This is why there's been such a geek brain drain into the financial industry. The U.S. does not value working for a living. We value gambling for a living.
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Tell me about it! My fractions of Bitcoins are up nearly 25 cents!
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No. He has DOLLARS stashed somewhere from when he worked for Valve in Texas.
He's too smart to stash his money in Euros.
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Umm, then why do they need to borrow more money?
Or are you talking "current accounts are balanced"? Which is to say, except for paying interest on your bonds/T-bills/whatever, your budget is balanced.
Note that if you're making enough money to pay the bills, EXCEPT for the interest on your credit cards and mortgage, you're not really living with a "balanced" budget.
And if you really have a balanced budget, you really shouldn't be needing to borrow mone
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