The Greek debt crisis....why?

[InDespair]

cant find another thread about this so.....

Before anyone accuses me of being thick or burying my head in the sand, I can';t always watch the news in full, and I dont read newspapers. (and Im sure others are wondering too).

Who exactly is in debt?

the people?

the banks?

How did they get themselves into this mess, and why and how do they expect a bailout?

what have they spent all their money on?

And what about tourism?

Laymans terms please.

'except for the reservation that most of the actual members of said democracies are kept in wilful ignorance and simply don't have the information necessary to make a reasoned choice/vote.'

I agree with that Hully. That is why most of our Cabinet ministers have no training in the fields they are responsible for. That is why the EU Finance Ministers couldn't stand Varoufakis, they were shocked to come up against someone who was a Professor in Economics. The rulers prefer their politicians to be amateurs so they can be bamboozled and told what to do, along with not understanding that the 320 billion Greek debt figure is not based on international public accounting standards.

Imagine lending money to somebody you know. They don't pay it back and they get more and still don't pay it back. You say please sell your expensive car, get rid of your Sky TV and move to a cheaper house. Person says nobody tells me what to do and doesn't pay you back. Then wants more money. I know what I'd say. This is too simplistic but really what do the Greeks expect.

I'm not sure whether international law covers bankruptcy between countries, but a country can certainly have debts and not be able to pay them, sovereign or not.

If you can't pay your debts and you are reliant on your creditor or your creditor is in a position of power then you have a problem, whether you owe Barclays, the EU or the Mitchell brothers.

I'm not making a moral argument - just that countries tend to be interdependent and some have more power than others.

vivienne, everyone tries to put things in terms that they can then understand. Unfortunately, it does often result in accurate nonsense.

haha inaccurate

But Viviennemary imagine that you depend on this person to buy your excess courgettes, or they are your ally in the campaign to stop no. 24 from building an extension, or their inability to pay debts will result in them putting their car on bricks in their front garden and you want to sell your house and they live next door!

You might then change your terms.

MusterMark …. Re your ”A sovereign nation with its own currency can never go bankrupt”

• A Greece going back to the Drachma will STILL have Euro 323 billion of debts that need to be ‘serviced’ via that far weaker Drachma ignorantly increasing that debt.

• Greek bonds denominated in Euros are currently trading around 17% reflecting the countries credit worthiness, so for a Greece that had DEFAULTED on its Euro 323 billion of debts, what interest rate would a defaulted Greece desperate for loans to finance growth, have to offer investors for its new Drachma bonds?

• Greece is not a ‘producer’, they IMPORT 52% of their food and IMPORT almost 80% of their energy requirements so how will they pay for that?

• Greece’s tourism season reaches its peak around now, so it will not just be the 11 million Greeks lacking basic goods, it will hit the tourist season as well, reducing holiday makers much needed (and stronger) foreign currency spending, NEEDED to pay for imports and service new (and old?) borrowing etc.

If that is not teetering on bankruptcy, I’m not sure what is.

claig, reading the knots that Juncker is tying himself in, I think you may well be right re "just fucking sort it" instructions

This is all about what people think on the ground, actually. It's a distortion of facts that Russia has talked about to justify its invasion to say that they are welcomed by ordinary people. Debunking that is key to understanding that Russia is using Ukraine as a hapless pawn in its proxy war against Western liberal ideas and the scourge of a free and fair democratic society, where oligarchs wouldn't be able to treat the ordinary people of Russia like so much dirt to stomp on.

But UKIP is all for austerity & dismantling the welfare state, things that you are against in Greece. So, to me, it's quite transparent that your views are driven more by a starry eyed view of conspiracy theories than by real democratic action.

If we want to spend money, we need to borrow. Borrowing money is fine, as long as you can make repayments. To ensure you can make repayments, you need to have a robust tax base and good industry. If you borrow on false pretenses (as Greece did) and can't back your debts - you can default, if you want, and then never be able to borrow money at a good rate ever again, and destroy your citizens' savings and investments and employment...or you can work out a way to reform (painfully) so you can repay & build a tax base for future investment too.

isitme Yes sorry, I was typing before thinking through: obviously a nation with obligations in a foreign currency can become unable to meet those obligations and this is the problem with the Euro. A nation with its own currency and obligations in that currency is in a much stronger position. I don't see any easy solution to the Greek question except as Keynes I think said: the only thing certain about these debts is that they will never be repaid.

At least if my post was nonsense I thought it might be accurate nonsese! Goodness knows what's going to happen though.

'But UKIP is all for austerity & dismantling the welfare state'

How is scrapping the bedroom tax, scrapping tuition fees for science, medicine, engineering and technology degrees, injecting £3 billion extra into the NHS and opposing TTIP austerity and dismantling the welfare state?

You mustn't believe Cambridge graduate Andy Burnhamesque Labour propaganda about UKIP. Those Oxbridge graduates and PPEs are terrified of the People's Army because we are decimating their Northern working class heartlands by espousing pure common sense policies. If that is not a democratic revolution to end a client one-party state in the North of England, I don't know what is.

Yvette Cooper - PPE, Liz Kendall - PPE, George Osborne - PPE, David Cameron - PPE, Euclid Tsakalotos - PPE

Nigel Farage - graduate of the People's Popular Front and Leader and Chief Thinker and Drinker of the People's Army, Honorary Member of the Dog and Duck

Nigel Farage - graduate of the People's Popular Front

And Dulwich college, fees £16500 per year.

'And Dulwich college, fees £16500 per year'

That is a lot of money to not become a PPE.

I liked this piece here looking at the way critical voices of the EU's handling of this crisis are now coming from both left and right. Interested to see that on this thread, and also in today's papers.

What’s interesting about the 5 July referendum is that it emphasises a key reality of 21st century politics, that the divide is not so much Left v Right but one of globalists v localists. On the one hand the global financial authorities, the EU, the banks and big business and the pro free-trade economists; on the other a strange combination of radical leftists opposed to austerity and ‘neoliberalism’ (whatever that means), as well as nationalists (both decent and deranged) and Burkean conservatives.

On both left and right, the criticism is that this utopian project seems to be missing an important human dimension - whether that's the lefties arguing against perpetual austerity and in favour of human compassion for the impoverished Greeks, or conservatives horrified by the idea of the EU openly disregarding democratic referenda and pushing for an elected government to be replaced by technocrats, and calling for an abandonment of this elitist, authoritarian supra-government in favour of human-scale, democratic national sovereignty. On each side, the realisation seems to be dawning that the EU is neither compassionate or particularly left-wing (in fact, economically speaking, it's so right-wing I'm amazed the British Tories don't support it more openly) and nor is it particularly democratic either.

While I don't want to see the EU implode and be replaced by nasty nationalisms any more than anyone else does, I think something really does have to change or it's going to carry on end up inflaming exactly the intra-European tensions it was created to avoid.

Gemauve .... next claig will say that at least Farage 'had a real job', working for a French bank as a highly paid speculating on commodity prices, with other peoples money - so he really knows the 'value of money'. Not.

That is a lot of money to not become a PPE.

Or to be too thick to get into university.

PS please can we not have this thread disintegrate into anti-PPE ranting. (Though, claig, you might enjoy Dominic Cummings on the shortcomings of PPE as a background education for those who end up in government.)

'Or to be too thick to get into university.'

Have you forgotten how Farage, People's Army leader, wiped the floor with Cambridge and College of Europe trained Clegg, and how Bullingdon member and PPE, Cameron, performed the Oxford okey-cokey to avoid a debate with People's Army leader, Farage?

claig ...Cameron was to debate WHAT with Farage, the fact that UKIP after 20-odd years STILL didn't have coherent domestic policies within a manifesto to replace 'populist' rantings on policies that come and go, depending on which way the political wind is blowing?

And lets not forget Farage was REJECTED on his 8th time of standing for a Westminster seat, is that a record, what do the voters see face to face with any 'home grown' candidate YET to win a Westminster seat - and UKIP halved their 'bought' sitting Conservative seats prior to the election.

The Referendum is coming, UKIP will be toast by 2020, so Mr Putin and his internet minions will have to find another way to oppose the Conservative Party.lol

Viviennmary - the Greeks have implemented a hideously tough austerity programme. It's tanked their economy (because my spending is your income and your spending is my income). In other words, it isn't bloody working. This isn't about asking someone feckless to sell their TV. If only.

It's interesting that the "People's Army" have gone from two turncoat ex-Tory MPs to one turncoat ex-Tory MP, while the party itself tears itself to pieces and assorted racists come crawling out of the woodwork.

In March, our hero claig wrote of how "there has been a revolution in our politics and a lot of once safe seats are at risk now from the people's insurgency and its parties."

I wonder if they could remind us of the "once safe seats" that the "people's insurgency and its parties" won? How's Mr Farage's time in Parliament going?

£3 billion more the NHS is a sticking plaster, and other UKIP policies include limiting CB to only 2 kids (what if you have twins second time around?), lowering the benefit cap even more and abolishing inheritance tax, a complete boon for the well off and one which will entrench inequality even more in this country.

Farage is transparently in favour of policies that will line his pockets, and the pockets of those like him. Leaving the EU is a prelude to the destruction of working rights (i.e. 28 days' holiday, Maternity leave...) that Farage is rubbing his hands over. He wants us to become a neo-liberal state, and his previous stance on the NHS is very, very telling.