• Greek referendum was pointless and puts country in worse position.
    40 replies, posted
[url]http://www.businessinsider.com/greece-referendum-totally-pointless-and-puts-country-in-worse-position-2015-7[/url] [quote]Greeks rejoiced when their Syriza-led government let them decide their own fate by giving them a vote on whether to accept the bailout the European Union was offering them. But two days later, it is looking as if the referendum was completely pointless. That's because all the referendum has done is put Greece in its worst position yet in its ongoing debt crisis. The announcement of the referendum immediately triggered strict capital controls — a closure of the banks, with limits on depositors' cash transfers and how much they can take out of ATMs — and still the country is down to its last €500 million ($772.6 million). The announcement also led to the suspension of negotiations. So now Greece has no cash, is no closer to a deal, and has weakened its position at the deal table.[/quote] [quote]European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker: "[b]The Greek Prime Minister knows that the question asked in the Greek vote was no longer valid[/b]. I'm against a Grexit but we must discuss what 'respecting the Greek vote' means ... I'm very saddened that the Greek delegation left the negotiating table — you don't do that in Europe. It was a big mistake. We must try and find a solution."[/quote] [quote][b]Not only was the call for a referendum pointless in getting Greece "a better deal" — what Greeks were voting for didn't apply after June 30.[/b] This is because Greece defaulted on its €1.6 billion (£1.1 billion, $1.8 billion) payment to the International Monetary Fund, and the terms of the bailout were valid only up to that date. This is not a trivial claim — it's a technical and legal one. Like most deals, terms and conditions are presented to you on receiving the offer. A date is applied to your decision, and you have a deadline to deliver your verdict.[/quote] [quote][b]Business Insider's Jim Edwards suggested the Greeks wanted to teach Germany and its other creditors a lesson[/b]: Debt is not a guarantee of future payments in full. Rather, it is a risk that creditors take, in hopes of maybe being paid tomorrow. The key word there is "risk." If you're willing to take the risk, you'll get a premium — in the form of interest. But the downside of that risk is that you lose your money. And Greece just called Germany's bluff. [b]That may have taught the creditors "a lesson," but that doesn't mean it will improve Greece's future. Who wants to lend to someone who can't, or simply refuses, to give you your money back, or even resists working through how you can help repair the tattered remains of the borrower's balance sheet? It hurts the Greek credit rating too, making it even more expensive for the country to borrow money.[/b] So from the outside, the markets and European politicians saw the call for a referendum as a diversionary tactic, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras' way of [b]passing the pressure and the blame onto the Greek people when the country tumbles into a recession.[/b][/quote] The Greek government apparently just covered it's ass with the referendum and everyone is applauding it, illusion of democracy etc etc. Man, imagine the shitstorm falling on the Greek government if Yes had won with the deal already dead.
How is it their fault that the Eurozone decided to subvert democracy by withdrawing the deal that was to be debated in the referendum to force the referendum to have less meaning?
[QUOTE=FlashMarsh;48141115]How is it their fault that the Eurozone decided to subvert democracy by withdrawing the deal that was to be debated in the referendum to force the referendum to have less meaning?[/QUOTE] That's what happens when you try to do foreign policy decisions through democratic voting. Other countries have no obligation to respect your voting process.
[QUOTE=sgman91;48141127]That's what happens when you try to do foreign policy decisions through democratic voting. Other countries have no obligation to respect your voting process.[/QUOTE] They don't have to, but openly subverting the fairest and most democratic way to make an important, nation defining decision says something about the disdain that the EU has for democracy.
[QUOTE=FlashMarsh;48141115]How is it their fault that the Eurozone decided to subvert democracy by withdrawing the deal that was to be debated in the referendum to force the referendum to have less meaning?[/QUOTE] Any source on that claim? Greece knew about the time limit before the referendum.
[QUOTE=Electrocuter;48141173]Any source on that claim? Greece knew about the time limit before the referendum.[/QUOTE] [url]http://www.capx.co/greece-its-democracy-versus-the-euro/[/url]
[QUOTE=FlashMarsh;48141190][url]http://www.capx.co/greece-its-democracy-versus-the-euro/[/url][/QUOTE] That makes no sense because the deal DID last until June 30, it wasn't withdrawn. Even if it was withdrawn, the limit was still June 30, so nothing would have changed.
Even if it wasn't actively drawn, the refusal to extend the offer to the referendum (despite previous German interest in a referendum) suggests firstly a subversion of democracy and secondly a proper and fair resolution to the bailout.
[QUOTE=FlashMarsh;48141430]Even if it wasn't actively drawn, the refusal to extend the offer to the referendum (despite previous German interest in a referendum) suggests firstly a subversion of democracy and secondly a proper and fair resolution to the bailout.[/QUOTE] Not really, that's like saying a sale should be extended by a week because I can't decide on buying the item on sale. Except there's a few million more people and it's not about buying but bailing.
[QUOTE=DVH;48141458]Not really, that's like saying a sale should be extended by a week because I can't decide on buying the item on sale. Except there's a few million more people and it's not about buying but bailing.[/QUOTE] It's not the same, in a sale you are simply buying something for you, in this case, it's about something that affects milions of people.
[QUOTE=eirexe;48141469]It's not the same, in a sale you are simply buying something for you, in this case, it's about something that affects milions of people.[/QUOTE] Yes but the point I'm making is that if something has a deadline (in this case june 30th) and a referendum is planned a week later it's not subverting democracy, it's being late.
greece being fucking retarded doesn't make the EU a bunch of fascist dictators the world is not obligated to bend over backwards so they can run their infantile dog and pony show
[QUOTE=Electrocuter;48141374]That makes no sense because the deal DID last until June 30, it wasn't withdrawn. Even if it was withdrawn, the limit was still June 30, so nothing would have changed.[/QUOTE] The fuckign second financial quarter ended in June. That means that the EU would have to re-prepare everything as they become prepared for the third quarter. That's why it ended June, because expanding a deal past a financial quarter of this size just isn't fair to everyone involved.
The referendum happened only because the ruling party (SYRIZA) was going to be torn apart by internal conflict if they had to decide on the deal. They divided a country (and reversed 6 years of slow but steady improvement) just so they could save their pathetic asses.
[QUOTE=AlienCreature;48141642]The referendum happened only because the ruling party (SYRIZA) was going to be torn apart by internal conflict if they had to decide on the deal. They divided a country (and reversed 6 years of slow but steady improvement) just so they could save their pathetic asses.[/QUOTE] Slow but steady improvement? Is this a fucking joke? Literally EVERYTHING has gone backwards. The surpluses were lies from the previous government, and under austerity and the burden of obscene debt, this trend will continue.
[QUOTE=FlashMarsh;48141689]Slow but steady improvement? Is this a fucking joke? Literally EVERYTHING has gone backwards. The surpluses were lies from the previous government, and under austerity and the burden of obscene debt, this trend will continue.[/QUOTE] I disagree. As weird as it sounds, we NEEDED austerity, because we have been living in luxury for decades on other people's money. Most of the reforms were things any sane country would have done anyway (such as shrinking our absurdly costly and inefficient public sector). I am not an economist, but even though my country so far is a lot worse off than it was before 2008, it was doing a lot better (before SYRIZA came to power) than it was like, three years ago. What I do know is that over the past five months, SYRIZA managed to undo what (little, perhaps) progress we had made and turned the entirety of Europe against us. In the past week alone, they WRECKED our banking system by having this joke of a referendum. They destroyed a large chunk of our potential tourism income for this summer by making us unreliable and are on the verge of dropping the masks and going full-on communist (seizing bank accounts and preventing people from getting money and valuables from bank safeboxes, that's under really strong consideration). Europe is right in everything they are doing, it's just that everyone around here is desperate to live on the state's money without doing any work.
[QUOTE=FlashMarsh;48141430]Even if it wasn't actively drawn, the refusal to extend the offer to the referendum (despite previous German interest in a referendum) suggests firstly a subversion of democracy and secondly a proper and fair resolution to the bailout.[/QUOTE] That seems kind of a bullshit attempt to try and force an extension on the deal with the referendum, why couldn't they have picked a time before the deal was up to have the referendum? Or maybe worked an extension before setting up a referendum? Maybe the plan WAS to make the EU look bad by not being forced by Greece to extend? Because either way the Greek government would come out fine from this. They would either get more power over the deal or make the EU look bad and not them. Anyway, if anything the EU did the right thing by not extending in showing that they're not taking bullshit lightly, even if that puts them in a bad light, democracy is all good but this shit doesn't just affect the Greek people, if affects all of us, the EU has a responsibility to all of us, not just the Greek. It might be "poor Greece" but if we don't want more poor countries then people need to stop catering to their government's bullshit.
The Greek people have been fucked over by their government so long that when it came for some responsibility to be taken, their government rushed through and offloaded a referendum about something that was very obviously intended to be used by the ruling government to save face when it defaulted.
[QUOTE=FlashMarsh;48141430]Even if it wasn't actively drawn, the refusal to extend the offer to the referendum (despite previous German interest in a referendum) suggests firstly a subversion of democracy and secondly a proper and fair resolution to the bailout.[/QUOTE] Maybe they should have hold the referendum months ago then, when German officials even suggested holding one.
[QUOTE=AlienCreature;48141735]I disagree. As weird as it sounds, we NEEDED austerity, because we have been living in luxury for decades on other people's money. Most of the reforms were things any sane country would have done anyway (such as shrinking our absurdly costly and inefficient public sector). I am not an economist, but even though my country so far is a lot worse off than it was before 2008, it was doing a lot better (before SYRIZA came to power) than it was like, three years ago. What I do know is that over the past five months, SYRIZA managed to undo what (little, perhaps) progress we had made and turned the entirety of Europe against us. In the past week alone, they WRECKED our banking system by having this joke of a referendum. They destroyed a large chunk of our potential tourism income for this summer by making us unreliable and are on the verge of dropping the masks and going full-on communist (seizing bank accounts and preventing people from getting money and valuables from bank safeboxes, that's under really strong consideration). Europe is right in everything they are doing, it's just that everyone around here is desperate to live on the state's money without doing any work.[/QUOTE] Europe is raging hard about immigrants "taking our jobs" or "living off our taxes" but when a whole country takes our money and doesn't pay back it's "poor them".
I don't follow your strawman of someone arguing against the position of the Eurozone, being extremely pro-immigration and seeing it as one of the few remaining benefits of the European Union. Ultimately I don't see it as 'poor them', but rather 'poor everyone'. The German, Italian and French taxpayers will ultimately pick up the bill for what was essentially a proxy-bailout of Greece to prevent the collapse of shaky Germany banks who were heavily invested there. The money will inevitably be lost, whether through default now, haircuts, inflation or default later. No-one will win from this situation, and although I understand why people are angry at the situation due to the lost taxpayer money, their anger should be directed at the political classes of all countries involved and the European bureaucrats. The current situation is, in Varoufakis' words 'trying to extract more milk from a sick cow by whipping it'. Its desperation in trying to get something back from the bailout that won't come due to the counter-productive austerity measures.
[QUOTE=FlashMarsh;48141836]I don't follow your strawman of someone arguing against the position of the Eurozone, being extremely pro-immigration and seeing it as one of the few remaining benefits of the European Union. Ultimately I don't see it as 'poor them', but rather 'poor everyone'. The German, Italian and French taxpayers will ultimately pick up the bill for what was essentially a proxy-bailout of Greece to prevent the collapse of shaky Germany banks who were heavily invested there. The money will inevitably be lost, whether through default now, haircuts, inflation or default later. No-one will win from this situation, and although I understand why people are angry at the situation due to the lost taxpayer money, their anger should be directed at the political classes of all countries involved and the European bureaucrats. The current situation is, in Varoufakis' words 'trying to extract more milk from a sick cow by whipping it'. Its desperation in trying to get something back from the bailout that won't come due to the counter-productive austerity measures.[/QUOTE] I'm sorry, I wasn't talking about you, just the general idea that's going around Europe that immigrants are bad. I also didn't want to imply you saying anything when saying "poor them", again, it's the general attitude of people towards Greece(from what I see on the news and personally). It was really just a comment on what AlienCreature said, sorry for the misunderstanding.
[QUOTE=FlashMarsh;48141836]I don't follow your strawman of someone arguing against the position of the Eurozone, being extremely pro-immigration and seeing it as one of the few remaining benefits of the European Union. Ultimately I don't see it as 'poor them', but rather 'poor everyone'. The German, Italian and French taxpayers will ultimately pick up the bill for what was essentially a proxy-bailout of Greece to prevent the collapse of shaky Germany banks who were heavily invested there. The money will inevitably be lost, whether through default now, haircuts, inflation or default later. No-one will win from this situation, and although I understand why people are angry at the situation due to the lost taxpayer money, their anger should be directed at the political classes of all countries involved and the European bureaucrats. The current situation is, in Varoufakis' words 'trying to extract more milk from a sick cow by whipping it'. Its desperation in trying to get something back from the bailout that won't come due to the counter-productive austerity measures.[/QUOTE] As defeatist as it sounds, Greece NEEDS to be forced to reform its entire economic system. Even if every single bit of the debt was forgiven, we would still end up with more debt after a few years because our governments are incompetent and can't manage money for shit. The government(s) took loans and grants from Europe that were destined to improve our industry and infrastructure, and they used it to increase pensions and public servant paychecks so they would vote for them. Any politician advocating for reforms and reducing public spending / promoting industry got chased out of politics, even our conservative party (New Democracy) is forced to play moderate because they wouldn't be elected otherwise. Greeks as a whole feel so entitled (and I am Greek, mind you). Everyone thinks they deserve a job in the public sector (a PERMANENT job, civil servants can't be fired save for extraordinary circumstances), and the public sector pays way too much money for the work it gets done. If you ask me, half of the public servants in Greece are absolutely useless, and the other half could do their job for the same money. In addition, EVERYONE sends their kids to go to university, it's a social stigma to do manual labor/not undertake tertiary education. As a result, we don't have any real production of goods (and people blame immigrants for taking their jobs, while the jobs they take are jobs Greeks feel they are too good to do). Tl;dr, we can't manage our economics for shit, I gladly welcome Europe to do it for us.
The problem for me is that the above reforms are not what will take place under the new bailout. The emphasis instead will be on simply cutting everything in order to achieve surpluses instead of fixing the inherent, long-term issues in the Greek economy (tax evasion, oversized public sector and oligopolies in the private sector). Greece will be unable to be competitive in a global economy while it remains within the Euro as it means that its goods are overvalued due to the strength of the Euro relative to the strength of a Greek currency, and with your two main industries (tourism and shipping) badly hit by both the current crisis and the overall state of the world economy, the economy is unlikely to recover within the Eurozone. [editline]7th July 2015[/editline] As an aside, would you agree that Greece is very decentralised with the central government having little power? My Greek friend feels this is one of the fundamental issues within Greece, causing issues such as tax collection due to the isolation of much of the mountainous mainland and islands from the government.
Leaving the Euro would destroy us because we import EVERYTHING. Thanks to the actions of the left (mostly the radical left) and the unions, our industry (even our farming sector) was downsized and most of our companies were chased out of the country (high taxation, a broken health insurance system, etc). It's also false that the Euro hurt our exports: they doubled after we adopted it. And to be frank, basing the economy of an entire country on tourism is a retarded idea, and whoever had it was a moron. The results of it will become apparent this summer: travel agencies are already recording mass cancellations since the referendum was announced. ...Greece? Decentralized? I would say it's the opposite, the government is so controlling and tries to gets its dirty fingers in every pie it can find, that it forces the private sector into shrinking. We have huge corruption issues that start at the stem (we aren't talking about low-level officials, we are talking about ministers). Tax collection is a problem both because the system for collecting taxes is absurdly complicated and yet inefficient, we have stupid stuff such as "proof of income" (having a car, for example, means that you make above a certain income even if you are unemployed) and the tax collectors are corrupt pieces of shit that bully businesses into paying them bribes. The taxes are also outrageous (they had been before austerity, it's nothing new over here).
So what should the key industries in Greece be? I mean, in my opinion it makes sense to have tourism be sizeable given Greece's comparative advantage in tourism (I mean I think Greece is nice place to go on holiday, and I enjoyed my time there a couple of years ago, beaches, sun, historic sites), but maybe not as important as it currently is, as, as you rightly point out, it is highly sensitive to the global economy and short term shocks.
Farming would be an excellent idea, due to our climate, but nobody wants to work as a farmer around here. We also used to have some heavy industry (assembling cars, jets, etc.) but the companies that did that were chased away by the unions, and the lack of backbone in our politicians has prevented us from fully exploiting the Aegean's oil reserves.
[QUOTE=AlienCreature;48141735]I disagree. As weird as it sounds, we NEEDED austerity, because we have been living in luxury for decades on other people's money. Most of the reforms were things any sane country would have done anyway (such as shrinking our absurdly costly and inefficient public sector). I am not an economist, but even though my country so far is a lot worse off than it was before 2008, it was doing a lot better (before SYRIZA came to power) than it was like, three years ago. What I do know is that over the past five months, SYRIZA managed to undo what (little, perhaps) progress we had made and turned the entirety of Europe against us. In the past week alone, they WRECKED our banking system by having this joke of a referendum. They destroyed a large chunk of our potential tourism income for this summer by making us unreliable and are on the verge of dropping the masks and going full-on communist (seizing bank accounts and preventing people from getting money and valuables from bank safeboxes, that's under really strong consideration). Europe is right in everything they are doing, it's just that everyone around here is desperate to live on the state's money without doing any work.[/QUOTE] I wouldn't go quite as far as to completely agree with the last sentence (I think the other countries are somewhat responsible for letting Greece amass so much debt in the first place.), but at the very least you're right about the tourism industry being hit: I heard (on the radio iirc) that booking was down 25% vs the previous year over the last few weeks already. I think one of the problems is that they're apparently trying to force communist(-ish) systems onto other countries (or at least pretending to do that in front of the Greek people). It's obvious that that's impossible if those countries' people reject it, but admitting they can't "magically" fix the situation as they promised would instantly destroy their credibility with the voters. At least that's what it looks like to me from over here, through all the sensationalist noise from everywhere. Politicians putting their own interests over those of the country is something I have a huge problem with in any case though, and I'm not going to say mine is free of populists or those who'd try to break international law and make knowingly unrealistic promises either. Normally they are forced to correct that before the vote happens though, since otherwise they regularly get utterly destroyed after a few months as minority faction in the parliament.
[QUOTE=AlienCreature;48141914]As defeatist as it sounds, Greece NEEDS to be forced to reform its entire economic system. Even if every single bit of the debt was forgiven, we would still end up with more debt after a few years because our governments are incompetent and can't manage money for shit. The government(s) took loans and grants from Europe that were destined to improve our industry and infrastructure, and they used it to increase pensions and public servant paychecks so they would vote for them. Any politician advocating for reforms and reducing public spending / promoting industry got chased out of politics, even our conservative party (New Democracy) is forced to play moderate because they wouldn't be elected otherwise. Greeks as a whole feel so entitled (and I am Greek, mind you). Everyone thinks they deserve a job in the public sector (a PERMANENT job, civil servants can't be fired save for extraordinary circumstances), and the public sector pays way too much money for the work it gets done. If you ask me, half of the public servants in Greece are absolutely useless, and the other half could do their job for the same money. In addition, EVERYONE sends their kids to go to university, it's a social stigma to do manual labor/not undertake tertiary education. As a result, we don't have any real production of goods (and people blame immigrants for taking their jobs, while the jobs they take are jobs Greeks feel they are too good to do). Tl;dr, we can't manage our economics for shit, I gladly welcome Europe to do it for us.[/QUOTE] it's funny how I hear the same shit from people over here in canada, the us and france and in the uk and probably most of the first world countries mind you. public sector too big, too much job security, overpaid worker I mean check, check, check and check they're all there. same goes for your woes on university and tradeschool.. everything the same. that's neoliberalism for you though. [B]edit: [/B] [QUOTE=AlienCreature;48142147]Farming would be an excellent idea, due to our climate, but nobody wants to work as a farmer around here. We also used to have some heavy industry (assembling cars, jets, etc.) but the companies that did that were chased away by the unions, and the lack of backbone in our politicians has prevented us from fully exploiting the Aegean's oil reserves.[/QUOTE] that too, heard it here also
[QUOTE]it's funny how I hear the same shit from people over here in canada, the us and france and in the uk and probably most of the first world countries mind you. public sector too big, too much job security, overpaid worker I mean check, check, check and check they're all there. same goes for your woes on university and tradeschool.. everything the same. that's neoliberalism for you though.[/QUOTE] I don't really hear the 'too much job security' in the US, given there is almost no job security.
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