Can someone explain to me what's going on in Greece?

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Wed Nov 02, 2011 4:47 pm

Criminal Charges, basically, for Counterfeiting.

They'd either charge the guy in charge of the Bank of Greece, or the politicians who made the decision, and of course the guys who work there who actually printed it.

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Wed Nov 02, 2011 5:18 pm

Kevin Drum's take.

Paul Krugman's take.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Wed Nov 02, 2011 5:23 pm

sabs wrote:Criminal Charges, basically, for Counterfeiting.

They'd either charge the guy in charge of the Bank of Greece, or the politicians who made the decision, and of course the guys who work there who actually printed it.

That response would run into problems rather quickly. The EU doesn't have a criminal court, the EU doesn't have any prosecutors, the EU doesn't have any law enforcement agencies and the EU doesn't have any criminal laws at all.

Counterfeiting isn't a crime in the EU, nothing is a crime in the EU. The European Parliament doesn't have the authority to make criminal law. And even if they did Europol doesn't have the authority to enforce criminal law. They're just an information-sharing agency, they can't arrest anyone.

And this means that any criminal prosecutions would have to be done by the Greek government, which doesn't seem too likely in the proposed scenario.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Wed Nov 02, 2011 5:52 pm

sabs wrote:Tzor, you have an American Education, and an American View point. I don't actually expect you to even remotely understand.

Sure I do, you're a fucking anti-papist. I'm just ignoring that because it's STUPID. The fact is that SPQR is far more in line with the European standards of democratic republics than the slave owning democracy that was Athens. (Why would the land that gave birth to the "Age of Enlightenment" ever want to search for pre-historic pond scum is beyond me anyway.)

Historical Greek Love is the same moronic worship of igornance that the Germans had with the Aryans. They actually love a myth that doesn't exist.

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Wed Nov 02, 2011 6:30 pm

You're ignoring 600+ years of Religious Wars and Turmoil in Europe because its' stupid?

Wait, did you just condemn Athens for being Slave Owning in the same breath as Praising the Roman Republic?

REALLY?

Historical Greek Love is no less stupid than fapping over the bible. Or going on about the Sanctity of the US Constitution.

And you do understand that 1/2 of Europe is Anti-Papist

with war stories that makes the Salem Witch Trials look like child's play. Course, the other half is pro-Papist, with very similar war stories.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Wed Nov 02, 2011 8:57 pm

sabs wrote:You're ignoring 600+ years of Religious Wars and Turmoil in Europe because its' stupid?

No, I think it is stupid to attach something that happened well over one and a half thousand years after a thing to a thing itself. I don't see what the reformation has to do with either the Roman Empire or one of the city states of Greece.

sabs wrote:Wait, did you just condemn Athens for being Slave Owning in the same breath as Praising the Roman Republic?

Actually I believe I implied that Athens democracy was only made possible because of the slave population. Comparing the two forms of slavery might be an interesting topic for anohter thread, but I'm not sure it's worth my time to feed the anti-papist troll.

sabs wrote:Historical Greek Love is no less stupid than fapping over the bible. Or going on about the Sanctity of the US Constitution.

Yes because the later are two actual documents, not ideal figments in the mind of someone else.

sabs wrote:And you do understand that 1/2 of Europe is Anti-Papist

We can go over the numbers, you would be surprised at how small the number is these days. Only small percentages of Low Anglicans are really "Anti-Papists" these days; most actually liked the recent Papal visit. Lutherans are decidely no longer as Anti-Papist as Luther was. France, hasn't been papist for centuries, it's downright "secular" by decree. You can tell how little Anti-Papist these days when the Vatican City Euro (which has the image of the Pope) got only token resistance.

The peak of Anti-Papist fevor is found only in Jack Chick land in the United States.

As for the horrors from the reformation, I am all too well familiar with them. (You know Luther wanted to burn Gallelio at the stake?) But I don't see what that has to do with anything. It's sort of invoking Goddard's law only with something other than Nazis.

Well that's enough of feeding the anti-papist troll. Sorry for being off topic.

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Wed Nov 02, 2011 9:19 pm

France was Catholic as early as 10 years go. Yeah, it's all hard core secular in public. But there's a reason for that. France had plenty of Huguenot/Catholic hate going on just 15 years ago. And yes, it's probably not a very Papist Country. But it's still plenty Catholic.

JPII was a very popular Pope. Especially in comparison to Pope Palpatine. And women's rights and AIDs aside, he did a lot to promote Peace on Earth. That's like saying there's no religious unrest in India because there's a bill with the Face of Mother Fucking Theresa on it.

Look at the EU.
They picked Belgium as the Capital because it was by far the least controversial country they could find. They probably would have picked Lichenstein if they could have.

History matters in Europe. We've got Bakeries that are older than the US. It's why the EU is such a long drawn out process.

Noone wants the brits in charge. Ditto Germans, or France. It can't be outwardly Catholic OR Protestant. Because Europeans fucking care about that kind of stuff. And the Italians are so fucked up, noone wants to make them feel important.

Just because you think it's stupid, doesn't mean it's not true. For fucks sake, the British Monarchy still claimed to be the Kings of France until 1801. The Irish are still blowing each other up over religious issues.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Nov 02, 2011 9:55 pm

hyzmarca wrote:Simple question:

Greece can't legally print new money without the ECB's authorization, but they're physically capable of doing so. The Bank of Greece controls printing presses that they use to print Euros when they do have authorization. What if they just printed up 80 billion Euros without authorization, essentially counterfeiting their debt away?

Serbia asked exactly the same question when the Yugoslavian Union rejected their exciting plans for Kosovo. Everyone left the union and people started shooting each other.

-Username17

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Thu Nov 03, 2011 12:02 am

So, what are the odds that the ECB will suddenly start being reasonable?

Whatever · Post by **Whatever** » Thu Nov 03, 2011 2:24 am

Grek wrote:So, what are the odds that the ECB will suddenly start being reasonable?

Bond markets say: very low.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Thu Nov 03, 2011 3:21 am

Grek wrote:what are the odds that the ECB will suddenly start being reasonable?

What are the odds of anyone finding their way into a seat of political power because they're rational and competent at the associated duties?

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Nov 03, 2011 4:24 am

What happens if the EU tell Greece to go fuck itself but then bails out one, more, or all of the following: Spain, Italy, and/or France. That is, Greece defaults, Germany has to do a taxpayer bailout, but then the ECB decides to give Italy the soothing relief they need because they have it on good proof that these countries are financially solvent and deserve a leg up on the pile?

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Thu Nov 03, 2011 4:43 am

Depends on the extent of the bailouts and would probably be a very nuanced and mathematical answer. But ultimately, Greece collapsing is a force that will drive confidence down, and bailouts will drive confidence up, and there is some threshold of financial action that is the difference between restraining and not restraining the effects.

And for no reason at all, it costs more money and Greece turns into a third world country.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Nov 03, 2011 6:40 am

Italy has a public debt of about 2.3 trillion dollars. The current entire bailout fund is just under 1.4 billion dollars. So while Italy is fundamentally solvent, the EU simply doesn't have enough "hard" money to actually pay it off. It's too big. They could pay off Greece in a lump sum and ask Greece to pay it back in some informal way in the future after they returned to growth - but Italy or France are just too big for them to pay it off from the fund they have.

The issue really is that the central bank has to commit itself to keeping the economy from collapsing and be willing to credibly offer that it will print money and risk inflation for that to happen. Since the current central bank refuses to do that, every member state in the EU is under risk from speculative attack, and the fact that the larger economies are actually too big to bailout from other funds makes them more vulnerable rather than less.

Spain is currently seen as safer than Italy even though Italy has a surplus and Spain is running a yearly deficit of about 10% of GDP and an unemployment rate over 21%. When the chips are down, the fact is that the EU has enough funds that they could just pay off Spain and their total debt is still fairly low even compared to GDP. But six hundred billion dollars is an amount of money that the EU fund could just pay in cash without having to convince the ECB to do anything.

The core problem is that in order to sell the idea of the EU to the various countries, they made guaranties about how none of the countries would ever have to pay for any of the other countries' problems. But not paying for those problems doesn't make them go away, and the combined currency area makes those problems shared whether they do anything about them or not. So basically the financial system was based on a series of claims that no one would ever have to deal with any problems - which worked fucking great until they actually ran into some big problems and then suddenly found that they had no mechanisms to deal with them.

-Username17

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Nov 05, 2011 1:19 am

Well, in my opinion it'd be the 'most' politically acceptable for:

A.) Everyone in the EU but esp. Germany and France pay half of Greece's and Spain's debt out of pocket of their regular government budgets, bullying/cajoling/convincing their constituents to go along with it.

B.) The ECB suddenly wants to spend more time with their family, wake up next to dead strippers and/or mysteriously die of athlete's foot/cavities. Imagine that! Looks like we'll have to appoint new members.

C.) New members of the ECB to print enough money to make up the difference, causing single-digit inflation for awhile.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Sun Nov 06, 2011 3:35 am

Wait a second, are you seriously suggesting that the solution to the European Debt Crisis is to inflate their way out of it?

By the way, the Real Time Bomb is Italy. Italy doesn't have a crisis in debt, they have a crisis in confidence. They are running a surlpus, but if their current debt has skyricketing interest then when they refloat the debt the interest will eat all of the surplus and then some. Inflating out of it will only cause that debt interest to rise above the artificial inflation limit. It's a death spiral as the numbers get crazier and crazier.

This is not to say that the people at the ECB aren't doing stupid things. But replacing them and doing a inflate out of debt strategy is not the answer.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Sun Nov 06, 2011 3:56 am

A plan that will cause inflation =/= inflate out of debt.

An inflate out of debt plan works like this
1. Rack up a bunch of debts denominated in Currency A.
2. Trade a pile of Currency A for Currency B.
3. Do something to raise inflation on Currency A.
4. Watch as the Currency B to Currency A exchange rate skyrockets.
5. Exchange the Currency B from step 2 back for Currency A.
6. Pray that nobody catches on before you get to pay off your debts in monopoly money.

The plan being advocated above works like this:
1. Rack up X$ in debt insuring people's bank deposits in the event of a bank run.
2. Get Germany and France to agree to pay back 0.5X$ of the debt out of their budgets.
3. Make the EBC loan you 0.5X$ to cover the rest, printing it if they need to.
4. Eat some inflation, but feel OK about that because the economy is now more stable.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Wed Nov 09, 2011 9:01 pm

Re: Italy's interest rates. Well, looks like the Euro is fucked. Hello, global double-dip recession. Thanks, ECB, you fuckers.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Nov 10, 2011 12:33 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Re: Italy's interest rates. Well, looks like the Euro is fucked. Hello, global double-dip recession. Thanks, ECB, you fuckers.

But they want some fucking congratulations for maintaining Price Stabeeleeteeeee!

-Username17

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Nov 10, 2011 12:53 pm

You know, I was extremely skeptical about OWS originally. I didn't think that it was really going to go anywhere and would just join the ranks of events like 'Million Man March' where it was notable but didn't really change anything.

If the ECB doesn't pull its head out of its ass in time, which I don't think that it will, I'm going to change my mind about OWS; it's going to catch fire in a huge way.

sabs · Post by **sabs** » Thu Nov 10, 2011 2:04 pm

It's this weird thing where ECB thinks that inflation is the same as stealing money from rich people. And that's just wrong.

They really are just trying to destroy the EuroZone to benefit the Oligarchy.

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Thu Nov 10, 2011 4:19 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote:If the ECB doesn't pull its head out of its ass in time, which I don't think that it will, I'm going to change my mind about OWS; it's going to catch fire in a huge way.

Aside from the fact that it is imploding from the inside because it is by its very nature a paradox and a contradiction (eventually the protestors stop protesting against "da man" and start protesting against the "organizers" because it's the later who are taking things away from them in the here and now) it is clear that the "fire" started by "he who fancies himself as a meddling god" will continue to burn.

The great shorter has shorted again; this time he has placed his short against democracy itself. Welcome oh brave new world.

CatharzGodfoot · Post by **CatharzGodfoot** » Thu Nov 10, 2011 4:52 pm

OWS shut down the port of Oakland. It's already a big fucking deal.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Thu Nov 10, 2011 5:06 pm

I have to say that I am disappointed in the latest raving conspiracy theory of Tzor. OWS the product of a financial bet by George Soros? I mean sure, it has George Soros in it, and it's implausible, so that's two points in its favor, but that's really the best he can come up with?

OWS was started by a group of Canadians. In Vancouver. The big port closing stunt was prompted and empowered by documented unprovoked police brutality against peaceful OWS demonstrators in Oakland, California. Can I get a Left Coast Communist False Flag Operation up in this bitch?

-Username17

tzor · Post by **tzor** » Thu Nov 10, 2011 5:06 pm

I know this is flooding google like a virus but didn't the port get shut down eariler this year for some stupid reason or another, or was that last year. (Time flies so fast these days.) The world didn't end.