Greeks vote to reject incumbants, austerity

[GlennB]

I think the Greek People..and a lot of people on this forum...are going to get a harsh lesson in economic realities.
I still maintains what it amounts to is people hoping there is a way for massive deficit spending by a government to continue forever without consequence.

Now it's all clear. You should have said this before!

 

[ddt]

Yes, though they might have discussed Orthodox Church icons and ceremonies.

They might have discussed Russian naval facilities in Piraios too. Or in Navarone.

 

[theprestige]

I would word it this way: Who designed a one-size-fits-everybody garment can't complain about the shortest member of the group dragging the fringe of her skirt on the dirty floor... the dry-cleaning bill is for the whole family to pay.

Terrible analogy. A garment can only be worn by one person at a time. The EU encompasses multiple discrete and disparate entities simultaneously. If each individual wears a separate garment, problems of fit are made by adjusting that individual's garment; however, in the EU it's understood that the individual members can and should make some adjustment to themselves in order to improve their fit.

It's probably better to leave analogies aside, and discuss the thing in its own terms.

 

[dudalb]

They might have discussed Russian naval facilities in Piraios too. Or in Navarone.

You mean Navarino.

Navarino:Actual Naval Battle off the shores of Greece in 1827.

Navarone; Greek Island with huge freaking Nazi guns. Great movie, but fictiious history.

 

[dudalb]

I think if Tspiris does play the Russian card, it will backfire bigtime.

And,frankly, Russia is not in that great economic shape itself.

 

[ddt]

You mean Navarino.

Navarino:Actual Naval Battle off the shores of Greece in 1827.

Navarone; Greek Island with huge freaking Nazi guns. Great movie, but fictiious history.

Yes, I'm fully aware. The name Navarone is also fictitious: in the story/movie, it would be an island in the Dodecanesus (i.e., near Rhodes off the Turkish coast), but such an island does not exist. The name was inspired - I was told by the Greek guide when I was there on holiday many years ago - on the name of the bay on the west coast of the Peloponesus where the 1827 naval battle took place.

 

[Oystein]

Now it's time for those who know deeply the inner working of the markets to dive in. An academic and expert in econometrics is not what's required.

Uhm okaaay...
How does one become an expert?

...
You'll have to trust me that ... I have a certain knack to spot who "tiene las uñas de guitarrero" (as I explained earlier)...

Yeah, right

 

[GlennB]

This evening the ECB played hardball on short-term liquidity, Merkel and Hollande talked meaningless bollocks, while Lagarde utterly contradicted herself.

Oh dear. If only the Troika-dudes could sing from the same hymn sheet, just once, it would really be quite refreshing.

But, bottom line: Greece cannot be allowed debt relief because then every other EZ debtor nation will "want some of that". Said it before and I'll say it again - Greece is seen as disposable pour décourager les autres.

 

[aleCcowaN]

Terrible analogy. A garment can only be worn by one person at a time.

The one-size-fits-all should have suggested you I was talking about a universal size for some piece of cloth. The analogy is perfect, and your commentary, a confusion on your part. I don't thing so, but you also might be mocking my inability to communicate with precision in a language that is not mine.

You galloped the horse of your "terrible .. blah, blah, blah" and now I only see the dust and a jumping point in the horizon ...

 

[aleCcowaN]

Uhm okaaay...
How does one become an expert?

An analogy is considering someone graduated yesterday from the School of Medicine, or worse, adding to that a postgraduate with theoretical studies in Medicine and field practice in laboratory research on cell tissues, is "expert" enough to direct and do everything in the emergency ward of a hospital.

If you can deduct how such expertise is obtained then you'll have got what I meant to say by "the kind of people who is needed for the job."

Yeah, right

A person who knows the topic may voir dire me about a knack that is not so uncommon in these lands the same way veteran soldiers with three years of warfare on their backs can spot who would make a good lieutenant or not.

 

[aleCcowaN]

This evening the ECB played hardball on short-term liquidity, Merkel and Hollande talked meaningless bollocks, while Lagarde utterly contradicted herself.

Oh dear. If only the Troika-dudes could sing from the same hymn sheet, just once, it would really be quite refreshing.

But, bottom line: Greece cannot be allowed debt relief because then every other EZ debtor nation will "want some of that". Said it before and I'll say it again - Greece is seen as disposable pour décourager les autres.

I was reading some financial newspaper from Athens via Google translate and as far I sampled the content and follow everything that looked like an editorial or an from-the-inside column, no signs there are any preparations for Grexit.

That's worrying, because those things take time and there are many that can be implemented publicly without giving rise to suspicion, like making debit cards freely available to all the pensioners and rural folk or implementing the POS systems through mobile phones. They can declare that those developments are to fight tax evasion and informality, and show it like a progress in the negotiations with the troika ("la troika del espiante", in Argentine slang, the "one, two, three" -grabbing a person, swinging him and throwing that person out to the gutter-).

I hope some measures are really taken care of in secret, like an emergency tax of 1 to 2% on bank debits and a lot of elements that require a well greased parliament.

 

[Belz...]

The Greek people want an end to austerity but they also, by a three-to-one margin, want to stay in the Euro. I think that these are mutually exclusive at this point and probably have been for some time.

I was under the impression that austerity doesn't work very well, in that it doesn't stimulate the economy as much as break it.

 

[aleCcowaN]

Varoufakis has published a book yesterday: "The Global Minotaur - America, Europe and the Future of the Global Economy".

Some extracts from there were published in The Guardian as:

Angela Merkel has a red and a yellow button. One ends the crisis. Which does she push?

An ideologized view but some parts are worth reading.

 

[ddt]

This evening the ECB played hardball on short-term liquidity, Merkel and Hollande talked meaningless bollocks, while Lagarde utterly contradicted herself.

Oh dear. If only the Troika-dudes could sing from the same hymn sheet, just once, it would really be quite refreshing.

But, bottom line: Greece cannot be allowed debt relief because then every other EZ debtor nation will "want some of that". Said it before and I'll say it again - Greece is seen as disposable pour décourager les autres.

That was actually a British tradition, allegedly, with Admiral Byng. When Germans go for the kill... never mind.

I wonder though, what happened with the €1bn cash that the banks had a week ago? When people withdraw their daily €60, what do they do with it? Put it in their mattress? Smuggle the cash across the border? Or do they simply spend it at the supermarket for groceries - after which the supermarket deposits it again at the bank, so the bank will have cash again on hand.

How do Greeks typically manage their financial day-to-day life? How do they pay their daily groceries, the cabbie, a restaurant, etc. etc.? Cash, or debit card or credit card? How much does the restriction on cash affect them in their daily life? (By comparison, I do so little with cash anymore that I only realized tonight, when I wanted to get a shoarma, that I only have a few coins and no bills - but the shoarma joint has machine for debit cards too). Of course, I understand that Greeks don't trust their banks anymore, that they might go bankrupt any moment and likewise the banks' guarantor, the Greek state.

And on another note: is it not possible to curb capital flight? To interdict the banks to transfer money abroad when there's no economic necessity?

 

[bit_pattern]

And on another note: is it not possible to curb capital flight? To interdict the banks to transfer money abroad when there's no economic necessity?

I remember hearing it argued (by Chomsky I believe) that one of the things that saved South Korea from the Asian meltdown was very severe penalties for capital flight.

ETA

http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/1991----02.htm

If you take a look at those Third World countries that pulled out of the crisis of 1980, it's the NICs [Newly Industrialized Countries] in the Japanese periphery. The comparison with Latin America is striking: Up to around 1980 they had similar patterns, then Latin America went into a free fall while the East Asian economies did well. That's because Latin America was opened up to international capital, while East Asia wasn't. You don't have capital flight from South Korea, because you get the death penalty for that. They not only discipline and terrorize the workers in the usual way, they regulate the capitalists, too. In general it's a move toward one end of the spectrum of state capitalism -- the fascist end -- that turned out to be effective in warding off the general crisis of the 1980s.

Meanwhile, nearly 20 years on, this could easily have been written about the current fiasco:

http://www.chomsky.info/articles/19980515.htm

The debt is a social and ideological construct, not a simple economic fact. Furthermore, as understood long ago, liberalization of capital flow serves as a powerful weapon against social justice and democracy. Recent policy decisions are choices by the powerful, based on perceived self-interest, not mysterious "economic laws." Technical devices to alleviate their worst effects were proposed years ago, but have been dismissed by powerful interests that benefit. And the institutions that design the national and global systems are no more exempt from the need to demonstrate their legitimacy than predecessors that have thankfully been dismantled..

 

[LondonJohn]

Varoufakis has published a book yesterday: "The Global Minotaur - America, Europe and the Future of the Global Economy".

Some extracts from there were published in The Guardian as:

Angela Merkel has a red and a yellow button. One ends the crisis. Which does she push?

An ideologized view but some parts are worth reading.

I think the fact that Varoufakis had the time and inclination to write and organise this book at a time when he should have been devoting 100% of his professional energy into his ministerial duties on behalf of Greece speaks volumes (no pun intended). What a joker. And a fame/money-chasing joker at that. No wonder the Troika ended up refusing to deal with him. And of course it reflects extremely poorly on Tsipras and other senior Syriza figures that they put this clown into such a critical post.

The sooner the Eurozone washes its hands of Greece the better. In my opinion, what's happening right now is all about managing political/economic expectations - the key Eurozone countries and the Troika itself will clearly suffer negative political and economic fallout when Greece gets kicked out.

 

[aleCcowaN]

And of course it reflects extremely poorly on Tsipras and other senior Syriza figures that they put this clown into such a critical post.

Syriza, like every 21th century's left-like Progressivism, centres on "the tellling". They do politics like they are part of some modern epopee, and sometimes they make wrong decisions just for the sake of how it looks their saga as a whole.

My opinions is that the country has been needing Grexit since before 2012. That the left was the best way to start it -but not the fatsos of PASOK- and the right the best way to complete it.

The future is worth of other political ideas less morally hemiplegic than all those.

 

[Childlike Empress]

Another smart move and I'm sure we'll hear from him.

Varoufakis has published a book yesterday

 

[Ziggurat]

You don't have capital flight from South Korea, because you get the death penalty for that.

I tried to find a source for that claim, because it sounds rather outrageous. This is the best I could find:

http://prospect.org/article/east-asias-challenge--standard-economics

"Illegal capital flight has been punishable in South Korea with a minimum of ten years' imprisonment and a maximum of the death penalty"

Not a lot of details here, and it's still essentially second-hand, though I'd trust it a lot more than Chomsky. First, what's illegal capital flight versus legal capital flight? Don't know. Second, even if correct, a death penalty was only possible, there's no indication that anyone was ever sentenced to death (or even threatened with it) for the crime.

 

[GlennB]

....
How do Greeks typically manage their financial day-to-day life? How do they pay their daily groceries, the cabbie, a restaurant, etc. etc.? Cash, or debit card or credit card? How much does the restriction on cash affect them in their daily life? (By comparison, I do so little with cash anymore that I only realized tonight, when I wanted to get a shoarma, that I only have a few coins and no bills - but the shoarma joint has machine for debit cards too). Of course, I understand that Greeks don't trust their banks anymore, that they might go bankrupt any moment and likewise the banks' guarantor, the Greek state.

I can only compare it to the UK and we live in a rural spot, but it's relatively heavily geared towards cash. There's a sizeable minimarket down the road here where I asked about paying by c/c and they were apologetic about not having the equipment. My dentist* is in a bigger town and she has no c/c machine either, and so on. And many older folks don't have a c/c or d/c at all, hence the effort to open the banks for pension payments.

*And this is part of the worry. She worked in London for some years but came back to escape the city hassle and lead a less wealthy but nicer life. She could work abroad at the drop of a hat, and a lot of skilled young Greeks are looking to do exactly that.