08-15-2015, 12:20 AM
(08-14-2015, 10:45 PM)Benton Wrote: First off, welcome to the board. If you're a new member you may think I mean that sarcastically. I don't. I really do mean welcome and I hope you keep posting.
With that said, it might help to provide some background. 90 percent of the board has a basic "good neighbor" philosophy. Treat others as you want to be treated and, as long as it falls in the CoC, everbody posts and gets along. You want to talk about the greatness of Peko, the size of Andy's junk or Marvin's breakfast in Jungle Noise, go for it. Post a mock draft, great. Want to tell people what you hate about your job in Klotsch, then go for it.
But that 10 percent where the good neighbor tends to fall off is the smack forum and PnR. In smack, it's generally good natured between divisional fans and our Bengals fans. CoC rules still apply. They still apply here in PnR, too, but generally the topics shared here inspire a little more passion among posters. So if you make a sweeping statement like you did that trickle up economics were to blame for Greece's problem expect to get the deserving ridicule. It's not the same as if you call Eifert the greatest TE ever in Jungle Noise, or making a mock draft in the draft forum and having a punter going first overall. Sure, you'll get some sarcastic comments, but not like making sweeping, unfounded statements in PnR.
Again, Greece's problem has nothing to do with trickle up. It has to do with the switch to the euro. That had two effects. One it allowed them to borrow more money than they could handle. Two, to keep up with economic growth, they were forced to borrow. Not because they were giving it away to the masses, but because they didn't have the infrastructure in place to grow that fast.
Yeah....
Greece was part of the euro zone, so investors mistakenly thought that government bonds issued in euros were somehow safer — and deserved lower interest rates — than old Greek bonds in drachmas. Since Greek banks paid higher interest rates and capital was free to flow across borders, capital flowed into the country at a rapid pace.
Banks with swollen deposits made loans fast and loose, which turned out to be a problem when the property craze crashed.
Eurostat, the agency tasked with reporting the condition of all euro zone members, regularly traveled to Athens from 2004 through 2010 in search of good data on Greece’s finances, on both the private and the public side. They walked away with nothing but guesses.
Meanwhile, as everyone later found out, the Greek government was busy working with Goldman Sachs to borrow money in such a way that the debt would not show up on its books. By 2009, debt was growing fast and economic activity was stalling.
The 2009 budget deficit was first reported in 2010 at 6% to 8%, but was later revised to 12.7%, which seemed horrible, until it was later revised to an uglier 13.6%. This being Greece, even that terrible number wasn’t reality. When Eurostat finally got good data and calculated the real deficit for 2009, it was a massive 15.7%.
Claiming they wanted to solve their financial issues, the Greeks brought in all new people to measure and report their finances. That did not turn out well. In 2013 Andreas Georgiou, the new head of statistics in Greece, was charged with inflating the deficit of the country in order to make Greece look bad (this is not a joke!).
Eurostat defended Georgiou, pointing out that his calculations were within the guidelines of euro zone reporting regulations. That didn’t matter to the courts. The 2012 deficit was too high, and it was clearly the fault of the messenger!
By this time Greece was already taking bailout funds from the troika, the lending trio of the European Commission, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Along the way, Greece defaulted on its government debt that was held by private sector investors.
Oh, strike that. The International Swaps and Derivatives Association, which gets to decide who defaulted and who didn’t, claims that private sector investors “willingly” worked with Greece to lower what would be repaid, therefore no default occurred. This is a story for a different day.
In order to get the bailout bucks from the troika, Greece had to agree to cut government spending on social programs, pensions, and employees, as well as raise taxes and actually go about collecting taxes.
The Greeks cut social programs, as well as government pensions and employees. As for going after huge tax evaders and reforming business dealings that rewarded a small circle of the very rich… not so much.
http://economyandmarkets.com/markets/foreign-markets/greeces-economic-trouble/
