Debt relief irony

[ferri]

*uh hum...back on topic please! thanks!

[FreeRights]

To be fair, you've been so defensive in this thread that Amy amount of speculation or evidence has just turned into you name calling and deflecting.

Fact: One of Greece's major problems is tax evasion.
Fact: Right wingers want to give major tax cuts to the rich.

That point alone suggests to me that the issues in Greece aren't due to rampant Communism at all. Your own political alignment is to blame.

[maryjane48]

That point alone suggests to me that the issues in Greece aren't due to rampant Communism at all.

since greece was was one the countries that wrote off 50 percent of germany's debt in the 1950s , my gut says when greece realized germany was not going to do the same back for them , they said screw it if we are going to default we might as well go big . but imo the underlying factors are the eu allowing greece into the eu with loans they knew from day one that greece could not pay back , and only allowing the eu countries to have a low percent debt to operate with . most the other countries including us are allowed to operate with a way bigger debt ceiling .

[Donald G]

To lakevixen ...

If the financial figures that Greece gave the EU had been honest Greece could have paid back the debt. Since the figures that Greece gave the EU were false and gave a false picture of Greece's ability to repay the loan Greece had to default and the truth about the Greek falsification of their fnancial situation came out.

[maryjane48]

To understand why Greece’s Syriza-led government had only the Grexit card to play, it is worth explaining how the political dynamics within the eurozone had stacked the negotiations against Greece from the get-go. Germany is Greece’s largest creditor and the continent’s most powerful nation, but it was not alone in its resistance to Greek demands for economic relief. Greece was effectively up against the 18 other eurozone countries, which made for a very lopsided negotiation. Its struggling neighbors on the European periphery, including Portugal, Spain and Ireland, might have been seen as natural allies for Greece. But they all completed bailout programs that included intense austerity policies, so they were not about to endorse making an exception for Greece. Spain’s government in particular was concerned that granting Greece concessions would embolden its own resurgent, left-populist Podemos party. Slovakia and the Baltic states, which are economically comparable to or poorer than Greece, resented the idea of transferring more aid to a wealthier neighbor.


The continent-wide resentment of Greece is an elegant result of the way Greece’s bailouts were structured. Germany bailed out Greece’s government in 2010 and again in 2012 not to save Greece, but to bail out the German, French and Greek banks that held Greek government debt. Karl Otto Pöhl, a former head of Germany’s central bank, admitted as much. He said the bailout "was about protecting German banks, but especially the French banks, from debt write-offs." Consequently, as of January, just 11 percent of the 240 billion euro bailout funds had gone toward financing Greek government functions; the rest went to paying off Greece’s creditors. Then, in March 2012, the eurozone governments bought out the remaining Greek debt on the banks’ books at a 53.4 percent discount -- a good deal for the banks, since they would likely never receive repayment for the debts otherwise.



Bailing out German and French banks, and then having eurozone governments shoulder the burden, had two benefits. In addition to the practical matter of limiting financial contagion between Greece and the rest of Europe, it allowed Germany, France and the other eurozone nations to sell the bailouts to their domestic publics as charity for Europe’s welfare case rather than sweetheart deals for Europe’s unpopular big banks. As Mark Blyth, a professor of political science at Brown University, wrote in Foreign Affairs, “Chancellor Angela Merkel is not about to cop to bailing out [Deutschebank] and pinning it on the Greeks. Neither is French President Francois Hollande or anyone else.” The eurozone’s taxpayers were now on the hook for Greece’s alleged profligacy, generating political pressure to turn the screws on Greece no matter how much evidence showed that austerity was preventing Greece from recovering economically.

In addition, admitting that Greece’s bailouts were for the banks would weaken the political case against restructuring Greece’s debts, creating a possible slippery slope for debt write-downs for the rest of Europe. A eurozone-wide debt writedown, which former IMF senior manager Peter Doyle proposed in a June interview with The Huffington Post, would circumvent the problem of treating Greece differently than the other eurozone nations. But for political or ideological reasons it is not something Germany has ever really considered.

A more generous interpretation of the stiff bargaining position of European leaders is that they simply fear being in a position of constantly subsidizing Greece. As many analysts have noted, the unique problem with the eurozone is that the countries in it share the same currency but not a unified fiscal, banking or political system, which leaves countries with few tools at their disposal during a downturn. What is called a bailout between eurozone nations and Greece would really be a standard but unseen fiscal transfer in the United States between richer and poorer states. But maybe, as Josh Barro wrote in The New York Times, the Netherlands and Finland, for example, are not interested in playing the role of Connecticut to Greece’s Mississippi or Alabama if Greece is not willing to structure its economy more like theirs.




Whether the motives are cynical or genuine, however, European leaders’ morality politics made the notion of a significant restructuring of Greece’s unsustainable debt politically toxic. German politicians, in particular, have moralized endlessly about how their frugal taxpayers are being forced to pick up the tab for Greece’s irresponsibility. An example of how far this rhetoric can go is a German parliamentarian’s tweet calling Greece’s membership in the eurozone a “cancerous growth on the EU.”

And there has been no acknowledgement by Germany or the other eurozone nations that their banks were complicit in Greece’s fiscal irresponsibility. While Greece until the 2008 financial crisis took on debts it could not pay back, German banks are responsible for lending to Greece despite the known risks of doing so. The bad loans also contributed to Germany’s export boom in the 2000s by making it easier for Greek consumers and businesses to buy German products.

That is the bleak political landscape that Syriza stepped into when it came to office in late January. It could not threaten Europe with financial destruction, because the structure of Europe’s bailouts had already limited the possible damage of a Greek default by taking Greek debt out of private banks. It certainly could not appeal to European solidarity since its natural allies had already swallowed their austerity policies quietly, and the rest of the countries -- rich and poor alike -- had bought the narrative of Greece as lazy moochers.

And finally, Syriza had to reckon with the reality that Europe could use its disproportionate power to squeeze the country financially for political gain. In December 2014, for example, the IMF and the European Central Bank decided to withhold the final tranche of bailout funding in order to pre-emptively pressure the Syriza party, which was expected to win elections. More recently, the ECB’s cessation of liquidity transfers to Greek banks forced Greece to implement economically devastating capital controls, sending it back to the negotiating table on its knees.

Why was Grexit the best card to play?

Nonetheless, the political consequences of a voluntary Grexit could still weigh on European leaders, and were thus Greece’s only remaining source of leverage. If Greece was able to leave the eurozone without imploding, it would set a precedent that could send other skeptical countries packing if they encountered economic troubles in the future that soured them on the common currency. Suddenly, the entire European project would be in question. That is why the irreversibility of the euro has been a central principle of the common currency union. “The euro has never contracted -- it has always expanded,” Angelos Chryssogelos, an expert in the European Union at London’s Chatham House think tank, told The Huffington Post in late June.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/07/1 ... &ir=Canada

[logicalview]

my gut says when greece realized germany was not going to do the same back for them , they said screw it if we are going to default we might as well go big ..

And my gut says that your gut is totally wrong. The Greeks saw an excuse to default rather than clean up their acts, knowing a lot of really stupid people would sympathize with them instead of supporting doing actual work.

[logicalview]

To be fair, you've been so defensive

to be even more fair, no I have not.

[maryjane48]

And my gut says that your gut is totally wrong. The Greeks saw an excuse to default rather than clean up their acts, knowing a lot of really stupid people would sympathize with them instead of supporting doing actual work.

yes well i never posted it to please you lol

[steven lloyd]

To be fair, you've been so defensive in this thread that Amy amount of speculation or evidence has just turned into you name calling and deflecting.

Fact: One of Greece's major problems is tax evasion.
Fact: Right wingers want to give major tax cuts to the rich.

More fun facts:

Fact: The Canada Revenue Agency is planning to cut auditors at the same time it acknowledges difficulty in tracking and collecting billions of dollars in unreported income from domestic and international tax evasion.

Fact: In Canada an estimated $81 billion a year is lost to tax evasion in the ‘shadow economy’ - that is half of our total healthcare spending. Canada ranks 11th out of the 145 countries surveyed in total amount of tax evaded. http://www.taxfairness.ca/news/huge-cos ... s-launches

Fact: Since the 1970s, Canadian companies have flocked to Barbados with their cash in order to legally avoid paying Canadian taxes. More than 1,000 Canadian companies, including giants like Petro-Canada and Loblaws, have legitimate offices there. Canadian banks are on almost every corner to serve all the Canadian companies. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/tax-avoid ... -1.1913228

Fact: The amount of money hidden from Canada’s tax collector has reached a record $170 billion, by one estimate, ... http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/06/14 ... 37802.html

Fact (apparently): When Greek billionaires evade paying tax it is a failure of socialism. When Canadian billionaires do it, it is astute business acumen.

Fact (apparently): disputing these facts makes you a gob-smacking, vomit-inducing Lenin/Castro wannabe,

[logicalview]

Fact (apparently): When Greek billionaires evade paying tax it is a failure of socialism. When Canadian billionaires do it, it is astute business acumen.
,

Fact: this is complete and utter crap. And you know it's crap. But you dug yourself so deep with this whole "hard core right wing hypocrisy" nonsense that you now just have to keep digging. And dig you have. When Canadian tax evasion rates go to 89%, you will have a point. As it stands, you don't.

I don't have a link to where this info comes from as it came via an email, but as it appears that a link to information doesn't seem to matter for this thread, I offer this up purely for the comedic value. I honestly don't doubt most of this is true, and if it is, no one should be asking the question "why did Greece implode"? other than those who want to play politics and try to sell the nonsensical argument that somehow this wasn't the fault of the Greeks:

Experts mandated by the European Union to investigate the causes that led Greece to the current economic situation relate the following facts:

Greece falsified its accounts to enter the euro zone and has distorted the facts until it finally exploded. There was massive retirements at the age of 50 years. At Evangelismos hospital there were 50 drivers for officials' cars, and on average there were 45 gardeners for a small lawn with 4 bushes.

Greece has the highest population in the world of people reporting an age of 110 years. The deaths are often not registered and pensions continue to be received. The European Union had found that there are families receiving 4-5 monthly pensions which they are not supposed to get. There were still pensions paid to persons who died in 1953, 60+ years ago. 40,000 girls received monthly life pension of 1,000 euros for the simple fact that they were unmarried daughters of deceased civil servants. This, at a cost to the state coffers of €550 million euros per year. Now they will receive pensions only up to the age of 18.

The pacemakers in Greek hospitals were acquired at a price 400 times higher than in British hospitals. In Greece, many workers have benefited from early retirement, set at 50 years for women and 55 for men who belong to one of the 600 job categories identified as particularly painful among which included;

- Hairdressers (because of dyes that may be considered harmful)

- The musicians of wind instruments (blowing into a flute is exhausting)

- TV presenters (the microphones are supposed to cause damage to health).

**** This law was adopted by the Socialist government of 1978.

There are thousands of ridiculous "tricks" departments and unnecessary institutions, which many Greeks live off of. For example, The Institute for the Protection of Kopais Lake, a dry lake since 1930.

In the last decade, Greece has created over 300 new public companies. Tax evasion is massive, over 25% of Greeks do not pay a penny on personal income tax. In addition, the weight of the public sector in the economy is overwhelming. There are about one million officials to 4,000,000 active people.

Greek public railways: The average salary of employees exceeds €66.000.- per year. And this includes cleaners and other non-skilled workers. The (almost free) Athens Metro delivers about 90 million tickets a year, while the total cost of this public company exceeds the 500 million needed.

The French retirees receive, on average, 51% of the last salary, the Germans 40%, North Americans 41%, and Japanese 34%.

Meanwhile, Greek pensioners receive 96% of their salary earlier.

Greece has four times more teachers than Finland, the best situated country in the last PISA report, while the student performance in Greeece is the lowest among many European countries by comparison.

As a show of goodwill to the EU, the Greek government eliminated 10,000 postal office jobs, of which 8,200 didn't exist in the first place.

Like I said, I don't have a link for the above, but that doesn't appear to be a requirement in this thread.

[Atomoa]

The people who pay the most amount of taxes in Canada have had their rate cut in half over the last 30 years.

They evaded the taxes by funding elections (even illegally overspending to do it!) to put in power officials that reduced the taxes they pay by half while billions flow offshore untaxed. This group represents about 250,000 Canadians and this group holds 64% of all stocks, bonds and financial wealth devices in Canada. The remaining 34+ million Canadians pay more taxes, get less services and are in the most amount of debt in their history while sitting in their 30-40% overvalued homes watching their government spend beyond it's means. A inevitable few points of interest rate change would severely damage and ruin millions of Canadians. The minority group will be there with loaded pockets to buy up assets at cut rate prices when it happens. The more the merrier. The more blood on the floor the better the score.

The government can't tax their owners (there is never a good time to raise business taxes remember). They also can't tax the remaining majority worker population they pretend to represent because the aforementioned owners won't pay the workers anymore wages and the workers are bled dry and have nothing left to pay and there are no more members of the family left to send to work full time - mom's already working. So, debt - sold to governments by the owners, with interest.

Oh yes, it's the Greeks that are insane.

[steven lloyd]

Fact (apparently): When Greek billionaires evade paying tax it is a failure of socialism. When Canadian billionaires do it, it is astute business acumen.

Fact: this is complete and utter crap. And you know it's crap. But you dug yourself so deep with this whole "hard core right wing hypocrisy" nonsense that you now just have to keep digging. And dig you have. When Canadian tax evasion rates go to 89%, you will have a point. As it stands, you don't.

You say it is crap, and yet then you go on to provide an analysis (probably pretty accurate) of the Greek situation, while completely ignoring your past hypocrisy in excusing our government for practices that not only allow, but essentially encourage tax evasion here. 89% tax rate, eh? Nice deflection. With every post you dig yourself further and further into a hole while exposing yourself as an even bigger hypocrite. It is like watching a passenger train wreck. A person doesn't want to witness the carnage but yet just can’t seem to take their eyes away. Thankfully my work is going to take me away for a couple of days. Get yourself some rest LV. Don’t give yourself an aneurism, K?

[logicalview]

The people who pay the most amount of taxes in Canada have had their rate cut in half over the last 30 years.

Link? Oh right. You don't do that. You just spout untruths and then wander away when called out on them.

Oh yes, it's the Greeks that are insane.

Insane is a bit harsh. Naïve, spoiled little children is more like it. No different than the radical leftists in Canada.

[logicalview]

while completely ignoring your past hypocrisy in excusing our government for practices that not only allow, but essentially encourage tax evasion here.,

LOL - these are the rocks we will always crash on. This just plain isn't true in any respect. No one here, that I know of, be they these mythical hard-core right-wingers you keep spouting about, or even centrists, or leftists, have ever encouraged tax evasion, "essentially" or otherwise. It is not hypocritical to defend government taxation policy as it currently stands, especially when faced with bold-faced lies by imbeciles stating deliberate untruths about how our system currently works. If tax evasion is actually going on in Canada, we have a powerful taxation arm that goes about investigating, collecting, and imposing fines and penalties. Greece doesn't have such a branch, with such power and authority apparently (I honestly don't know) or if they do, they aren't doing their jobs. That's the problem. Or one of the problems, anyway. As per that email I posted last night, it appears that there are a lot of pensions still being paid from the 1960's to dead people in Greece. I actually laughed when I saw that the Greeks eliminated 10,000 postal workers from their payroll, 8,200 who didn't exist in the first place but were still being paid (to who knows who). Greece is a mess. And they have a lot of heavy-lifting to do to clean it up.

[John500]

Its the average European Joe who is on the hook. The Euro politician are just keeping busy keeping themselves in the Euro government.