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.

I presume the next James Bond movie is going to feature as its arch villain a PPE graduate who's a member of Common Purpose.

Wait so is it the elites or not in Syrzia that want an exit? Can't you keep your own ideology straight?

Russia thinks Ukraine ought to be in its sphere of influence, but didn't care enough at the end of the Soviet Union to keep it. Now ordinary Ukrainians have seen the standard of living in fellow ex-USSR/Warsaw pact countries there's no going back - no matter their war games, Ukraine's citizens are firmly in the European headspace, if not there fully in terms of anti-corruption, strength of civil society.

Russia can attempt to dominate militarily, but as we saw with the protests against Yanukovich (which, unlike the Greek protests, Claig didn't support because they didn't suit Russian interests) Ukrainians will never willingly be Russians again. Even bloody Kharkov isn't a warzone - Kharkov used to be the centre of Soviet dominated Ukraine as a model city! Biggest square in Europe (back when those things mattered)!

'Mr Tsipras faces a critical choice. If he accepts creditor demands, he may lose a large bloc of his own party and have to rely on the establishment parties to push the deal through the Greek parliament.

Such a course of action would render him a Greek version of Britain's Ramsey MacDonald, the Labour prime minister in the 1930s who enforced austerity and became the socialist figurehead of a Conservative national government.

MacDonald never overcame the accusations of betrayal by the Labour movement. He died a broken man.'

www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/11673989/Syriza-Left-demands-Icelandic-default-as-Greek-defiance-stiffens.html

Tsipras was one of the 5 candidates in the EU election for President of the European Commission, so he must be Establishment or they would never have let him get near it.

Right so you no longer support the referendum because it was an elite plot?

'Wait so is it the elites or not in Syrzia that want an exit? '

It is difficult to know what is going on from the saloon bar at the Dog and Duck. But my prediction is that the rich elite Syriza - Tsipras, the PPE etc - don't want to leave the Euro and the elite want them in but damaging Germany.

The Syriza hardlners want to get out and default. Tsipras's job will probably be to manoeuvre the situation so that the hardliners do not get ther way.

'Russia thinks Ukraine ought to be in its sphere of influence, but didn't care enough at the end of the Soviet Union to keep it.'

It couldn't afford it and it let all its satellites split - Belarus, Georgia etc
They naively thought the West would be friendly to them. They soon found out that the "consultants", economists and banking "experts" who came to advise Yeltsin fleeced the country.

'Right so you no longer support the referendum because it was an elite plot?'

No, I support the referendum because I believe in democracy. The people have their interests and the elite have their interests and they often coincide. The elite are not wrong on everything.

Greece borrowed money from private banks who included Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, Cretit Agricole and others. These debts were then repayed by the ECB and IMF on the insistence of former ECB chair Jean Claude Trichet. That is not Greece's fault, it's Trichet's. If they should enforce austerity on anybody it should be him.

Another thing: the IMF and ECB are insisting on higher taxes and reductions in benefits for the poor. When Syriza put forward a plan that included taxing rich people and corporations it was criticised. Hardly fair but it's a well used tactic. If you have to borrow to live day to day you're less likely to revolt. Unfortunately for the ECB, Greeks, Spaniards, French and others don't react to bullying well.

Steve Keen on Max Keiser's Russia Today programme today. I like Steve Keen, he is a good economist, I think, but I am not an economist so I can only give an opinion. He is discussing the Greek crisis and in my opinion does not really understand the true political and geopolitical shenanigans that are behind it, he mainly concentrates on the evident economic stuff.

Max Keiser asked him why did the IMF release the report just days before the referendum which said some of Greece's debt needed to be written off and be solved with some debt relief which helped Tsipras to win the referendum?

Steve Keen wrongly in my opinion says that it is probably ecause they typed the figures into their economic model and that is what came out. But he then says that the ECB tried to prevent pubication of the IMF report and it appears it was pressure from the American government to release it.

Keiser thinks it was possibly the US trying to stop Russia and the BRICS gaining an advantage and putting pressure on the EU to come up with a deal.

I don't think that is the reason because the US can stop Russia helping Greece in my opinion, but it does want Germany to sort it out by paying to some extent.

The Blockchain could make the banks irrelevant. Could? Will, more like. With a digital currency based on Blockchain there is no need for banks at all, there are minimal fees for transactions and it is entirely transparent as all transactions are in the public ledger.

DoctorTwo, have you read Varoufakis's blog on bitcoin? He says that bitcoin has flaws because it is essentially like a gold based currency and like the Euro (which itself is like a gold based currency due to its strict rules which are deflationary). He says that bitcoin's flaw is that it is deflationary and cannot help when deflation sets in. He says currencies must be political i.e. controlled by politicians rather than independent banks. He has some kind of tweak to bitcoin which might solve the deflationary problem. But at that point I started to lose the thread of what was going on.

claig, if you bothered to read my posts you'd know that Merkel suggested using the BRICS bank to bail out Greece but was vetoed.

Steve Keen is right, and everything he said on Max's show was spot on. Did you know he was a student when Yanis V was a mid level professor? They're good friends apparently. When Steve said that most of the central bank leaders are lawyers I chuckled, 'cos he confirmed what I've been saying for ages. I'd put him in the top ten along with Mr V of thinking economists.

Varoufakis probably explained that to the EU finance ministers (who Steve Keen says are mainly lawyers who haven't done more than first year degree level economics) and their eyes probably glazed over, their teeth began chattering as they demanded a top up of their glasses, and they probably phoned up the Greek government and demanded that Varoufakis be removed from all negotiations because what he was saying was all Greek to them.

'you'd know that Merkel suggested using the BRICS bank to bail out Greece but was vetoed'

Did she? What was she smoking? Doesn't she understand politics? The US must have been fuming.

'Did you know he was a student when Yanis V was a mid level professor? They're good friends apparently.'

No, that's interesting. I think Max is friends with Varoufakis as well, it seems to me.

Yes, I think I wil have to buy Steve Keen's book one day and try to get my head around it, after I have finished Farage's "The Purple Revolution".

Garage is an idiot. He's a banker like most of those who head finance ministries.

The ECB wanted the IMF report saying the Greek 'debt' was unsustainable to be kept secret, but the US wanted it published. So it got published, the ECB tried to scare the Greeks and they voted OXI. A win for democracy and a lose for neoliberalism.

Mr V saying that bitcoin is like gold is just what I've been saying for the last 4 years. But, if you're saying he's criticising it then that's bad. A currency should have a peg, whether that peg is gold or a limit. We all know the Blockchain limit on bitcoin is 21Mn, and about 13 Mn have been mined so far. So yes, it is digital gold. A finite resource. Which is what currencies should be. But we live in a era where fiat currencies reign, and they always fail. As Steve Keen said, neoliberal economies always end in a mountain of unpayable debt.

'But, if you're saying he's criticising it then that's bad. He is criticising it because as far as I understand it can't easily be used to expand the money supply in deflationary times. I think he is right and seems to be an old-fashioned real socialist who believes that the state should control the banks in order to control the money supply when deflatiion hits and the people need a way out.

'A finite resource. Which is what currencies should be.'

No, that is what the ECB are doing by limiting liquidity to Greece and the Greeks still voted "Oxi" to the bankers and their puppets. When people liquidity, the servants of the bankers should deliver it.

Here is the man himself, whom the lawyers masquerading as EU Finance Ministers demanded should be removed from the negotiation table because they couldn't understand what he was on about when he brought up economics.

He is right that money is political, finance is political, finance is a tool of politics and this Greek crisis is above all political, which is why Italy and France will do their utmost to jkeep Greece in the Euro, and Germany concentrating on finance will fail. And it is why the elite are behind what is going on.

"Bitcoin and the dangerous fantasy of ‘apolitical’ money"

yanisvaroufakis.eu/2013/04/22/bitcoin-and-the-dangerous-fantasy-of-apolitical-money/

and here he is on how bitcoin can be adjusted to fix its gold based currency flaws

BITCOIN: A flawed currency blueprint with a potentially useful application for the Eurozone

yanisvaroufakis.eu/2014/02/15/bitcoin-a-flawed-currency-blueprint-with-a-potentially-useful-application-for-the-eurozone/

No wonder the EU Finance Ministers wanted him removed from the negotiations. Whenever he asked them an economic question, they said can I confer? and phoned an economic friend.

Paul Mason on Channel 4 News says that there is a significant absence at the table - Christine Largarde and the IMF - and he said does that signal the disapproval of America and the IMF for what Germany has so far done?

Of course it does.

Germany has been played.

Christine said yesterday that the IMF were standing by ready to help. Today, she said they couldn't do anything as Greece had defaulted. How does that fit?

Hully, I think we are probably not being told the full truth by the media and the contradictory statements are intended to confuse the public and elevate the state of crisis which is what they want the people to feel.

We have just been told on the media that the Greek PPE Finance Minister turned up to the meeting with a one page hotel paper with bullet points on it as the Greek plan. They must think the public was born yesterday to believe this stuff.

I think the "no triumphalism" was a bit de trop. But there was a photo of him holding it. Do you mean it was fake?

I did like the file on the plane seat with the note from Alexis.

'But there was a photo of him holding it.'

No, but I think one of his flunkeys was probably carrying a briefcase full of the other documents that the media didn't tell us about.

'I did like the file on the plane seat with the note from Alexis.'

I havenn't heard about that one.

I'm feeling a lot less sympathy now. I mean what was all that partying about. They obviously thought they could carry on and borrow more and more without making any cuts and the debt would be written off. I don't think it should be written off. Because if it is then so should other country's debts be written off too. Let's all have our pension at 50 and pay no tax. Great idea.

vivieene, you are unable to move out of the simple narrative, aren't you?

claig, pic of a file on a plane seat with the title: Notes for Eurogroup (or similar) and then a post it note saying: don't leave on plane. See you later, Alexis.

'They obviously thought they could carry on and borrow more and more without making any cuts'

They have already made huge cuts and their economy has contracted by 25%. Have you seen the people in the hospitals not being able to get medicine or heard about the high levels of unemployment where families are being saved by the income of a pensioner, which has already been slashed?

'They obviously thought they could carry on and borrow more and more without making any cuts '

The German and French banks obviously thought they could lend more and more without checking creditworthiness because they knew the European taxpayer wold take over and pay the debt for their irresponsible lending and that the liabilities would be transferred to a sovereign debt rather than a private one.

But I think there is a lot of truth sometimes in simplicity. There was a Minister from Latvia (I think) saying with Greece it's always tomorrow. She's got a point. There's absolutely no evidence that anything will be reformed.