Kinja reply list

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Volante3192Hamilton Nolan
7/13/15 12:36pm
Goddamnit Syriza. You had one job. One simple job. Tell the Eurozone to go fuck itself.

Just give the keys to Germany, already, Greece: you’re a colony now.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/0…
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  Vox PopulistVolante3192
  7/13/15 12:45pm
  Kind of like Germany is an American colony. The alpha monkey beats the beta monkey and the beta monkey beats the gamma monkey. Might makes right, as they say.
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  PseudoHermesVolante3192
  7/13/15 12:46pm
  Greece should declare war on Germany, and take no further action. See if Germany will actually invade again, and expose themselves for the villains that they are.
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JadeOwlHamilton Nolan
7/13/15 12:45pm
The problem is that you see everything in terms of austerity. A lot of the things that are being asked of Greece and being called “austerity” are painfull reforms that they should’ve done anyway.

Doing something meaningful about the absurd levels of tax evasion? Raising the retirement age? Liberalizing the labor market? These are all things that the Greeks shouldn’t have had to wait until they were on the edge of the precipice to implement!
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  PelllJadeOwl
  7/13/15 1:14pm
  Preach.
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  LtCmndHipsterJadeOwl
  7/13/15 1:17pm
  This is an excellent point. What the Greeks call “austerity,” the rest of the EU calls “the most basic reforms necessary to run a modern state in the 20th, nevermind the 21st, century."
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Carmellio SampersHamilton Nolan
7/13/15 12:49pm
There is no way out of this for Greece except for them to say goodbye to the euro and hello drachma and rolling out the printing presses not to create a hyperinflation but to simply print money so people can buy food and toiletries. Now if they do this they will have a hyperinflation, but a temporary one. But what are the risks to the “system” if this happens?

If Greece exits, it will eventually do well, eventually. Primarily because the market tells us that the Greek currency should be about 1,500 units to $1 not $1.10 per Greek currency unit which is now of course the euro.

Where does that excess Greek currency go? Makes the euro cheaper for Germany to export phone switches and BMWs to America and Asia. But that is precisely the risk to the system. That the system’s inequities is shown to the world and that ending is actually a good thing for everyone fucked up and trapped in it. And the the system of global creditor/export structures like the EU’s northern nations and global banks like Goldman (a bank that has profited mightily by shackling Greece with more debt in previous bailouts) will be forced to digest not massive debt write downs but massive debt write offs. Breaking that system is going to be nearly impossible but Greece must do it.
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  LZFRCarmellio Sampers
  7/13/15 2:09pm
  Of course one of the biggest problems is they don’t have printing presses. They can’t print the money overnight. Also, they don’t need to print money so people can buy toilitries - thats not the issue. They need to take ownership over their own currency and devalue like crazy so they can rebuild.
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  kidfrijolesCarmellio Sampers
  7/13/15 2:16pm
  If Greece exits, it will eventually do well, eventually.
  
  Maybe, maybe not. Greece has required social, political, and financial reform for a long time. Pre-euro/old-drachma Greece was not a paradise; to go by the numbers, they were distinctly worse off than they are now.
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TRUMP DELENDUS EST (fka Chatham Harrison)Hamilton Nolan
7/13/15 12:40pm
Austerity does not work.

The hell it doesn’t. Austerity keeps debtor states under the thumb of their creditors, which is exactly where the power elite wants them. There is a set of cultural assumptions that must be maintained for the elite to maintain their status: the priority of credentials over reason, the priority of pure growth over prosperity, and the nebulous promise of success for the peons who buy in. Austerity keeps public power crippled and static, leaving private power with a free rein. Austerity works perfectly.
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  Vox PopulistTRUMP DELENDUS EST (fka Chatham Harrison)
  7/13/15 12:47pm
  Austerity is the macroeconomic equivalent of bloodletting - the middle-aged cure for any number of illnesses, that, surprisingly, had the very opposite effects on its patients - yet never got questioned.
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  SiphanTRUMP DELENDUS EST (fka Chatham Harrison)
  7/13/15 12:53pm
  Exactly. The whole purpose of modern economics is not to create truth or understanding or to provide a framework to make things better. It provides a framework to justify the continued exploitation of the population at large. Only alternative theories like marxism offer any systematic approach to destroying the foundations of these processes. We will be slaves until we recognize the law and logic itself is designed to continue the process of exploitation.
  
  We saw it in 2007 with the financial crises and we will see it again. Thankfully, the leftists here and abroad... myself included. recognize the failing system and are working to put in place alternative structures to protect as much as possible from the inevitable collapse.
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ARP2Hamilton Nolan
7/13/15 12:42pm
I agreed that writing down rather than restructuring debt is what’s needed here. What’s also needed (in exchange for the debt write down) are massive reforms to the Greek pension and tax system. They need to actually collect taxes rather than increasing taxes on the few that actually pay. They also may need to consider shipping taxes since I don’t see the “pull-through” benefits of having it tax free.

I’m in favor of a strong pension system, but they also need to restructure their pensions system to something more sustainable. Allowing hairdressers to retire at 50 (or pick your outrage of the week) due to hazardous work encourages more corruption, loopholes, etc.
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  qu1j0t3ARP2
  7/13/15 1:11pm
  Why shouldn’t a “hairdresser” retire at 50?!
  
  In the superior-feeling-but-not-actually-superior North America, even highly skilled workers can’t retire at 65. They’ll be booted out of their hipper-than-thou startups, though, and right into the maw of a less-than-minimum-wage Walmart or other Bullshit Jobs in Graeber’s memorable phrase: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar…—where they will work until they drop, still indebted.
  
  & that’s exactly what the “austerity” agenda means. Helpless, powerless meat for their grinder.
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  TheHoopoeARP2
  7/13/15 1:26pm
  Greece has 800k civil servants for a country of 11 million. A complete joke. The government is just a jobs program for cousins and nephews.
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kindofadickHamilton Nolan
7/13/15 12:48pm
People blaming Greece for not saying fuck you and leaving the Eurozone are being unrealistic. The truth is that the centrist coalition fucked the country when they accepted the first and second bailout programmes and allowed the troika to assume the private debt from European banks.

Introducing a new currency is a long and arduous process and if Greece tried to do it under current condition they would experience devastating capital flight. No one is going to keep their savings in the country when they know they’ll soon be converted to nigh-worthless drachma. As Varfoukis pointed out in a recent op-ed, the U.S. military could barely do it in Iraq over a course of years.

Greece lost the only leverage it had as soon as the contagion was contained and losses were accounted for by European sovereigns. Syriza’s fight was noble, but it was lost before its started. The country was simply outmaneuvered.

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  pdxwhykindofadick
  7/13/15 1:17pm
  As someone whose family is from Latin America, I totally get what you are saying and you are damned right. YET. Those Northern European banks made a lot money on their Greek bets, and have been bailed out without Greece receive any write down of the debt nor being able to grow the economy. At a certain point you have to say enough.
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  TheHoopoepdxwhy
  7/13/15 3:01pm
  Greece received a 100 billion debt reduction with the 1st bailout.
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ThrumbolioHamilton Nolan
7/13/15 12:42pm
So we basically have a country chronically unable to balance its books vs. lending institutions basically exploiting that irresponsibility?

Huh. Sounds about right.
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  SlickWillieThrumbolio
  7/13/15 12:46pm
  [Hands you a TeamNoOne jersey]
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  dronesandgroansThrumbolio
  7/13/15 12:58pm
  You shouldn’t cheat an honest man, but never give a sucker an even break
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MarkYubanHamilton Nolan
7/13/15 12:43pm
Great write-up Hamilton. So many American conservatives seem content to focus on Greece’s “spending problem” (and how it’s just like the US) while ignoring Greece’s lax tax enforcement problems. Meanwhile the IRS’ budget has been cut almost 20% in the last 5 years with the GOP pushing for another $800 million in cuts next year. It’s like some are bent on making US like Greece.
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  theBatmanLivesMarkYuban
  7/13/15 1:02pm
  are you saying the IRS need to be given more money and more power?
  
  If the US is like Greece it’s not because of tax collection. The IRS will hunt you down. It’s because a large segment of the population have taken to raiding the public coffers for BS reason. The politicians live like kings, huge amounts of welfare and disability benefits are fraudulent, the military-industrial complex spends billions on things we don’t need, as well as other institutions that don’t do their jobs but they are very good at spending money.
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  BKTexanMarkYuban
  7/13/15 1:41pm
  You really thought this was a great write-up? I agree that collection needs to be a priority, but even if they are able to collect, their spending levels are still far too high to sustain. The author ignores that fact and places the majority of all blame on the lenders I don’t understand what he thinks the end game should be.. just give Greece free money for as long as it needs it?
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The Once and Future KingHamilton Nolan
7/13/15 12:28pm
How long until Golden Dawn engineers an Ouzo Hall Putsch?
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  flamingolingoThe Once and Future King
  7/13/15 3:54pm
  This is the point that needs to be repeated everytime this conversation comes up. A hopeless, impoverished populace that feels like it’s been made a pariah state is ripe for the spread of rightwing radicalism. Yet the Germans seem determined not to learn from history.
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ericinsfHamilton Nolan
7/13/15 1:00pm
What I find interesting is the avidity with which so many commentators buy the establishment version of this story, which Hamilton ably debunks. Why so quick to side with the banks and against a nation on its back? What is it in our culture that inspires such slavish devotion to corporations [as people] versus actual people?
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  BKTexanericinsf
  7/13/15 1:50pm
  For me, it’s not about siding with either. It’s about the basic principles of fiscal responsibility. If we, collectively, encourage spending well above their means without consequence, it leads to a society of unsustainibility. What HamNo is proposing doesn’t help Greece. Free money will not help them, structure and some cutbacks will. They may feel some pain in the short term, but in the long term establishing a stable country with solid financials is far more important.
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  alphashadowericinsf
  7/13/15 2:51pm
  While I agree that the solution Hamilton proposes is the correct one and that austerity doesn’t work, he doesn’t “ably” debunk anything. Instead he couches the solution, devised by much smarter people, within his own ideology. I usually agree with Ham, crazy as he can be, but all he’s really doing is wondering why people aren’t blaming the lenders too. This opens up a few alternate possibilities which he doesn’t touch on for two reasons: 1) they don’t matter, because they didn’t happen and 2) they probably wouldn’t have been better for Greece.
  
  Consider if sometime in the 90s, creditors public and private alike had just stopped lending to Greece. No ability to borrow anything, from anyone. The two things that could have resulted would be
  
  a-favorable) Greece gets its act together as a result of being basically sanctioned by the international community. Reforms its tax and social programs. Experiences magical growth and avoids collapse, rejoins the card-carrying community of the countries with good credit ratings.
  
  b-unfavorable) Greece collapses in short order.
  
  If both of these things had happened, Ham would be yelling instead about how either outside forces used financial institutions to coerce a country into reforming on their terms, probably calling it economic terrorism; or how the Europeans and rest of the world watched a country fall when there was plenty of money to lend them.
  
  I’m not an apologist for big banks and certainly they should be called to account for helping Greece cook their books in the series of dicey loans that followed the early rounds, but that’s not the argument being made. The price banks pay for making bad loans is maybe not getting their money back, and nothing else. One can have all sympathy for the average citizen, who had no idea probably what was going on above their heads, without absolving the country of any wrongdoing (or else what would change?) I fail to see how that equates to siding with the “corporations”.
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