Greece...

Gavin234

Quote Originally Posted by jrphilps View Post
I hope greece withdraws from the eurozone, they are getting a raw deal. The IMF are a bunch of greedy @#$%suckers.
Yes and no. Unfortunately it's more complicated than that.

Yes, they are debt slaves, but they dug their own hole. They did enter into a deal with the devil, because they wanted to have their cake and eat it too--they wanted something for nothing.

Almost all countries deficit-spend, but Greece really takes the cake for how much they do. In Germany, the normal (full pension) retirement age is 67 (about to be raised to 69), and the early (partial pension) retirement age is 65. In Greece, the normal retirement age is 65, but you can retire with an 80% pension at only 58 years old! (Only Italy has more generous terms--normal retire is 60, early is 57. Wow!)

All that early retirement wouldn't work in Europe with your standard American-style Social-Security Ponzi scheme, as there aren't nearly enough new workers to pay the non-workers (much of Europe has negative population growth). So deficit spending is necessary--lots of it. This would lead to very high inflation, if each country were printing its own money. (I remember visiting Italy in the '80's and spending 10,000 Italian Lire for an icecream cone--is it any surprise how that situation came about?)

So the big spender countries made a deal to enter the Euro-zone: give up the ability to directly print money, in exchange for greater monetary stability by "socializing" or diluting, or averaging out all of Europe's inflation. There were strings attached though--they had to start reigning in some of the spending. Well, the can got kicked, and kicked, and kicked, until all the loans to make ends meet were no longer making ends meet. They could no longer apply for another credit card to pay the minimum payments on all their other credit cards.

So is this the IMF's fault? Somewhat, as I believe they knew going into the deal that they would end up foreclosing on Greece's assets. But Greece also bears plenty of the blame. The root cause of the entire mess is that both the debtors and creditors wanted something for nothing. And at the end of the day, since there is no such thing as a free lunch, the Greek people will end up with nothing for something.

seven-day-weekend

Absolutely agree with Gavin234 although I feel so sorry for the Greek people.

seven-day-weekend

remorseless wrote: »

if they're queuing at the ATM, they must have a card. Unless Greece has its own system (doubt) it must work on Cirrus/Maestro, etc - so the same system used to pay by card in stores, not using debit/credit.

Businesses may not like it cause it's harder to undeclare income for taxes, but that could be well the reason for shortage of money.

I [personally] DISLIKE when I go in places where I cannot pay electronically and usually take my business elsewhere.

Pensioners with non card, I understand, that it's a different story and they wouldn't be queuing at the ATM.

When I lived in rural Spain (from 2004-2011), very few of the local businesses would take cards, including one of the filling stations we used. The bigger chains would, but not the smaller independent ones. Our friends even had to pay for their new car in cash (local Peugeot dealer) and we bought our white goods from a local electrical goods retailer and had to pay cash for those too. We bought a new scooter and had to pay by cash or cheque (however we could not take delivery of the scooter until the cheque cleared ).

It's a whole different world.

vivatifosi

Gavin234 wrote: »

Almost all countries deficit-spend, but Greece really takes the cake for how much they do. In Germany, the normal (full pension) retirement age is 67 (about to be raised to 69), and the early (partial pension) retirement age is 65. In Greece, the normal retirement age is 65, but you can retire with an 80% pension at only 58 years old! (Only Italy has more generous terms--normal retire is 60, early is 57. Wow!)

Apologies for going off topic, but I read this and chuckled at the irony of our being told to eat a Mediterranean diet as it keeps you fit and helps you live longer.

remorseless

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Seems the European members of the IMF tried their best to surpress the IMF report from yesterday stating that Greece needed debt relief.

Was the US (again) who forced the release. Hence why we only knew about what they really thought yesterday when the date of the report was the 26th June.

Why is the US so keen in our (EU) affairs? The size of Greece is fairly small, surely the US has their own affair *Detroit*?

I think Fidelity summary of Greece is realistic enuff:


Or are they just !!!!ed the crisis is pushing the EUR low against the USD?

remorseless

Gavin234 wrote: »

Almost all countries deficit-spend, but Greece really takes the cake for how much they do. In Germany, the normal (full pension) retirement age is 67 (about to be raised to 69), and the early (partial pension) retirement age is 65. In Greece, the normal retirement age is 65, but you can retire with an 80% pension at only 58 years old! (Only Italy has more generous terms--normal retire is 60, early is 57. Wow!)

Italy has reformed already, to retire you have to be 66 years old and 3 months (they do like those odd dates!) + min 20 years of pension contributions OR earlier if there are 41 years and 6 months of contribution or 42 for men (I suppose to cater for older folks who started work real young?)

It is slightly generous than other countries but just!

Froggitt

Telegraph today - some Argentinian geezer from their default in the 2000s says Greece would be better off taking the medicine rather than defaulting, where pensions and currency would devalue more than any austerity would.

remorseless

seven-day-weekend wrote: »

Absolutely agree with Gavin234 although I feel so sorry for the Greek people.

Why do you feel sorry? Because they can now only withdraw EUR1800 (60*30) a month or because their pension paid 14 times a year has been slashed to just 12?

I do not recall seeing many demonstrations in Greece before this schmozzle went real bad asking to be reformed, taxed, etc so that balance sheets could be restored...

till they could milk the cow, there were little problems right?

Do you feel sorry about fellow Slovakians or Latvians or Lithuanians? Their pension is often barely 1/3 of a Greek one...

seven-day-weekend

remorseless wrote: »

Why do you feel sorry? Because they can now only withdraw EUR1800 (60*30) a month or because their pension paid 14 times a year has been slashed to just 12?

I do not recall seeing many demonstrations in Greece before this schmozzle went real bad asking to be reformed, taxed, etc so that balance sheets could be restored...

till they could milk the cow, there were little problems right?

Do you feel sorry about fellow Slovakians or Latvians or Lithuanians? Their pension is often barely 1/3 of a Greek one...

I feel sorry for them because the present situation is not of the ordinary person's doing. Most people don't understand economics, they just took what was offered.

Same applies to any ordinary people in any country.

lvader

seven-day-weekend wrote: »

I feel sorry for them because the present situation is not of the ordinary person's doing. Most people don't understand economics, they just took what was offered.

Same applies to any ordinary people in any country.

There have to be consequences for voting in governments that don't keep public finances in check and more importantly decades of excess can't be wiped away by voting in the silly party.

Greece is a very sobering lesson for all countries.