What's your thoughts about the current situation of Greece?

After the great responses in the politicians thread, I was interested what you guys thought of this. Especially interested in how Americans view this as 'outsiders' to the whole thing.

 

all i know about this i learned from polandball


(which is to say they have no money, are unable to repay loans, and refer to foreigners as kebab)

 

all I know about it is that people will only loan you money if you are
1. able to pay it back
2. too important to let go broke

Greece seems to be neither atm.

 

I don't think most people really want to see America have to pay the interest rate she deserves for her debt.

 

I know that my fries need more of it and my hair needs less

 

Well in itself it doesn't fulfil number 2, but within the context of the European union's sense of purpose, and in terms of a return on the money already leant it arguably is too important to let fall.

Having a member of what is supposed to be a family of wealthy, progressive states become improvised is bad for everyone, not least what it is supposed to mean to be European.

 

I don't think Greece is too important to the EU to let go bankrupt. They have to show that they can pay it back. Austerity measures I believe its called.

 

Catch 22. I certainly don't want them to leave the EU, that would be terrible.

 

There's no easy way out of a debt crisis regardless of whether individual, corporate or government. Governments have more tools, but also more consequences for bad policies.

What we don't know is whether western, democratic nations can pull out of a debt, death spiral like Greece finds itself in without falling into some revolution and having a tyrant in charge.

 

you cant climb out of debt without credit to keep you solvent and you cant get credit without making creditors happy. austerity measures make creditors happy.

 

Just some interesting trivia for those who aren't that familiar with the situation

• Greece has gone bankrupt 4 times in the last 200 years
• If you want internet installed, you have to file for it and it takes up to 9 months to get a permit (unless you're willing to pay extra), similarly with doctors etc (corruption is standard, it is expected that you pay more if you wish to be helped in time, otherwise you have to wait for a very long time).
• Schools provide a very basic aducation, very expensive private teachers at night teach the privileged
• Driving around with fake plates is illegal, but the norm because the police doesn't stop you. So you can effectively never be fine.
• Greece has no 'land registry/bureau of records' (im not sure which translation is correct, sorry). The only western country who does not. Effectively making it impossible to know who lives where, thus certain taxes can't be collected.
• Greece altered it's documents it had to provide to join the EU, covering up the shambles it was in (granted, the EU knew it wasn't clean and chose not to speak up).
• Lithuana is overall more poor than Greece, yet has to pay for it's bailout.
• Greece hasn't paid an official visit to Finland in over 10 years (which is quite unheard of), which infuriates the Finnish who refuse to bail them out anymore
• The inhabitants of the island Zakynthos got health insurance checks for years by claiming they all suffered from blindness, while only a few of them were blind. Nobody ever bothered to check whether they were actually blind, these sort of jokes cost the Greece government 111 million Euro in 2011. I assume it's about that much every year until they decided to check in on it.
• Greece had a limit on how much money you could take out from the bank per day, and only by credit card for the last few weeks. Unfortunately, most elderly people have no credit card and were unable to access their money all this time.

I had more of these, but I'm tired and I forget. This should give you an idea of just how corrupt and rotten Greece is. Since the last military rules in the 70's until now, the people have been consistently voting for whoever gives them the nicest talk. However, it always ends up with those in office putting the money in their own pockets and the country remaining in the horrible state it is in.

 

A deal has been made to avoid the grexit, which seems positive.

At least it will move the emphasis on to domestic reform.

 

the austerity measures show that youre serious about the issue if nothing else. no one thing will pay off their debt. that is long slow process. but they need to be able to function during that long slow process. but why should anyone help them function during that long slow process if they themselves don't take the issue seriously.

its like this, if your parents are paying your cable bill you don't order HBO and the Playboy channel. it looks bad. so yeah, austerity measures may be just for show. but that show is important. you need money, you don't live large.

 

yeah i do, but i tell my mom that dad can't visit alone

 

I do not live in Europe, but I do remember an old politics teacher I had discussing the likelihood of this happening several years back. It's really quite difficult because the bankruptcy of a nation is significantly different than the bankruptcy of an individual. The idea that Greece brought it on itself has some level of merit, I think, because several of their policies are really just unacceptable, especially the record-keeping problems (like the ones Burn was noting). But I also feel bad for the citizens of Greece because in all likelihood many didn't understand how their decisions would affect the economy at large. The people claiming benefits for blindness when they weren't all blind are obviously an exception to this sentiment and I'm sure there are many others who took advantage of the system for personal gain. There are also people in Greece who probably supported overly optimistic policies in the hopes that it would spur Greece's growth, sort of like a gamble with the country's treasury, which was reckless but a bit more excusable than just taking public money or evading taxation.

It's a very sad situation to me. People really don't talk about it much in the mainstream media in the U.S. (too busy covering Khloe Kardashian's latest break-up and SC Reps babbling on about how the Tennessee Battle "Confederate" Flag isn't about slavery or whatever), but it's interesting to me because I like to understand how systems of people affect each other. It must have been rough for the EU in some respects since they probably felt pressured to let Greece join but also someone reviewing them must have known that things weren't as they should be with their spending.

 

alternatively:
3. the lenders are so important themselves that if the person they loan to doesn't pay it back they get bailed out (or "bailed in").


I don't personally know the details of the origin of Greece's debts, but I've heard it's similar to America's expanded debts in the wake of the "Sub-Prime Mortgage" crash in 2008 where TARP was created to bail out the banks (rather than the people). It essentially transfered the bank's failure to the Government in the US.

This also means that allowing those financial institutions would not have exacerbated the debt.

If people have more specific detail on Greece's situation and it's differences, please do share.

(Of course, much of it will be legitimate, much like the US debt is legit, but I've been told there's other elements as well, which exacerbate it the issue and make it that much more difficult/impossible to actually pay off the debt.)

I don't know how positive a lack of Grexit is for Greece itself. And it seems to me that if the Euro and the EU is reliant on Greece (which is only a very small portion of the EU) than that is an inherently flawed system.

Most of all however, the "deal" that was struck was in defiance of the referendum, which is pretty messed up, and could potentially make the situation much worse in the long run.

 

I don't pretend to fully understand the situation, but if Greece would have been better off out of the euro I guess they would have left by now.