Greece to go bankrupt?

[Winner]

Not just the Greeks. Look at the demonstrations in pretty much any European country where the government had to cut expenses. It's funny that everyone agrees that cuts are necessary, it's just that nobody wants the cuts to touch his own particular interest group.

Unless the country really goes down the toilet, it will be next to impossible to make major budget cuts.

 

[kronic]

Not that I think that PASOK or any other Greek party is able to do this but you guys should keep in my mind that much if not most of the retrenchment in the public sector in Europe in the past decades was done by left wing parties in government. Stop being ideologists.

 

[Winner]

Not that I think that PASOK or any other Greek party is able to do this but you guys should keep in my mind that much if not most of the retrenchment in the public sector in Europe in the past decades was done by left wing parties in government. Stop being ideologists.

I am not, actually, I don't think a right-wing party would do any better.

Heck, in my country we have an apolitical caretaker government, which means there is a wonderful opportunity to do major budget cuts with almost no responsibility to bear for it (since no party clearly rules), but even under there extremely favorable conditions the parliament is still too afraid to do that. It's pathetic, really.

 

[onedreamer]

Oh, no, Germany will just do the paying, as usual. Maybe France will make some demands but its not very likely because it will look bad. Most likely is that Greece will make some superficial reforms "with EU consultation". Something like that.

They should not have been let in in the first place, Greece never was a successful western economy. The EU wanted ancient Greece, for the status it would bring, it got modern Greece. And here we are.

They let in Romania and Bulgaria, I don't see why not Greece.

 

[Gelion]

The problem with this is that you control your personal debt and if you can't, you suffer the consequences. Countries are not persons.

In the particular bananistan where I live, the parliament just approved the next year budget - another huge deficit, over 6% of the GDP or so.

A professor at my college once challenged us students to perform an experiment: try spending about 3 or 4 per cent more than you earn each month for a period of 10 years, then report back.

He used this to demonstrate the folly of the Czech politicians, who increased our national debt from near 0% in early 1990s to some 35% today, all that during a period of strong economic growth. Yes, those morons were unable to eliminate deficits even when the economy was booming and we should have had large surpluses. We are boasting a Scandinavian-style welfare state without earning enough money to sustain it, so we're borrowing money to pay for it. It's the worst reason to get into debt EVER.

We'll end up just like Greece, it's only a matter of time. 15-20 years, give or take. Hopefully I won't be living in Czechbabwe by the time it goes bankrupt.

What are your plans? London? NY? Sydney?

 

[really]

Quick graphic from the BBC.

The new government has announced spending cuts.

 

[Karalysia]

Nicely done Italy. Nicely done indeed .

 

[Navarre]

Hey, do you think statues come cheap?

UK's budget deficit makes 13% of the GDP? What's happening?

 

[GinandTonic]

Hey, do you think statues come cheap?

UK's budget deficit makes 13% of the GDP? What's happening?

Banking collapse. The cash cow's milk just turned sour. World financial services capital takes the biggest hit to the tax take, and has to spend a fortune propping up/ nationalising the lenders. Bast part of a decade of war hasnt come cheap either.

 

[Winner]

The only good thing about the banking collapse is that it didn't affect Czechia in the slightest. Whoever says that regulation doesn't work should take a good look.

 

[onedreamer]

Like I said from the beginning, Italy is next
Or should it actually have been before ? The difference between Greece and Italy is that the italian gov. refuses to acknowledge the problem, the greek gov. instead asked for help.

 

[Winner]

Well, Italy is generally considered to be "too big to fail". Greece is much smaller and economically less important for the rest of Europe, whereas Italy is one of the core founding EU member states.

 

[kronic]

Italy is in a much better position. Italy's debt has been relatively stable and actually falling for a while now. What's more important is the fact that Italy doesn't rely much on foreigners to buy their debt. Most of it is bought by Italians themselves. As long as that continues, Italy is much safer than Greece.

 

[onedreamer]

Italy's debt increases daily, it's not falling at all.

 

[kronic]

Italy's debt increases daily, it's not falling at all.

At the moment, yes. But before the crisis it looked like this:



That's a rather good record for the decade before the crisis, especially given Italy's low growth.

 

[onedreamer]

the only problem with these graphs is that they don't show the current situation. That's a history graph, the CURRENT situation with the current government is bad. I am not talking of the average of the last 10 years.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Meh, modern Greece would be a lot better off if not for the French, Italians, and British

Not to mention the Greeks.

 

[kronic]

There we go. The Financial Times Deutschland reports that the German Ministery of Finance is engineering a bailout for Greece. A European solution is the preferred option but the government appearently is even ready to go it alone.

German article: http://www.ftd.de/politik/europa/:h...chland-will-griechenland-retten/50071966.html

 

[Winner]

Can't they just rename the country, reinstate the emperor and pretend that their debts aren't theirs?

Sigh.

 

[RedRalph]

So is Germant going to more-or-less own Greece now?