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Greek elections

The Economists Tom Nuttall :

but also

ETA: the link is to this
CHzLRgeUYAApD1M.jpg
 
agricola said:
It will be absolutely awful, Grexit will inevitably follow and the next year will be a disaster for many people in Greece and elsewhere as the economy adjusts..
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I'm not even so sure how painful it would be. The economy is already in freefall. It's already a desperate situation for loads of people. Grexit would inevitably involve devaluation so effective reduction in wages (and more importantly pensions - pensioners will hurt). But home-produced goods will come down in price too as wages decrease. It doesn't have to mean that basics become unaffordable.

Point is that the last five years within the euro have already been a disaster.
 
happie chappie said:
Of course they've got bank cards - just no money to put in the cash machines.
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I'm not talking about bank cards for withdrawing cash. I'm not talking about cash at all. Most money these days is not in the form of cash anyway, and in some countries physical notes are increasingly being replaced by digital transfers. For example, the M-Pesa:

M-Pesa (M for mobile, pesa is Swahili for money) is a mobile-phone based money transfer and microfinancing service, launched in 2007 by Vodafone for Safaricom and Vodacom, the largest mobile network operators in Kenya andTanzania.[1] It has since expanded to Afghanistan, South Africa, India and in 2014 to Eastern Europe. M-Pesa allows users to deposit, withdraw, transfer money and pay for goods and services (Lipa na M-Pesa) easily with a mobile device.[2]

The service allows users to deposit money into an account stored on their cell phones, to send balances using PIN-secured SMS text messages to other users, including sellers of goods and services, and to redeem deposits for regular money.
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happie chappie said:
Outside the Euro there will be the real possibility of a rapid and complete breakdown of civil society.
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I doubt it - being in the Euro these past three or four years has already ruined many people, and for all the horror of Grexit they would still be in the EU, still be in NATO, and still get help from the rest of Europe. It would be bad but signing up to what this deal represents would be much worse (if for no other reason than it wont actually solve the problem at hand).
 
littlebabyjesus said:
Point is that the last five years within the euro have already been a disaster.
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Bigger point, to me, is that another two, three, five years of what's been would be allowing a whole people to be de facto enslaved to a bunch of uncountable, unelected financial interests harder to get at even by a more functional EU (if there was no Luxembourg there would still be Bermuda, Cayman, etc).
 
cynicaleconomy said:
I'm not talking about bank cards for withdrawing cash. I'm not talking about cash at all. Most money these days is not in the form of cash anyway, and in some countries physical notes are increasingly being replaced by digital transfers. For example, the M-Pesa:
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Why did you mention bank cards if you're not talking about them?

I can't keep going through all the reasons why suggestions such as these simply will not work in the current circumstances.
 
More from Krugman

http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/krugman/2015/07/12/killing-the-european-project/

Suppose you consider Tsipras an incompetent twerp. Suppose you dearly want to see Syriza out of power. Suppose, even, that you welcome the prospect of pushing those annoying Greeks out of the euro.

Even if all of that is true, this Eurogroup list of demands is madness. The trending hashtag ThisIsACoup is exactly right. This goes beyond harsh into pure vindictiveness, complete destruction of national sovereignty, and no hope of relief. It is, presumably, meant to be an offer Greece can’t accept; but even so, it’s a grotesque betrayal of everything the European project was supposed to stand for.

Can anything pull Europe back from the brink? Word is that Mario Draghi is trying to reintroduce some sanity, that Hollande is finally showing a bit of the pushback against German morality-play economics that he so signally failed to supply in the past. But much of the damage has already been done. Who will ever trust Germany’s good intentions after this?

In a way, the economics have almost become secondary. But still, let’s be clear: what we’ve learned these past couple of weeks is that being a member of the eurozone means that the creditors can destroy your economy if you step out of line. This has no bearing at all on the underlying economics of austerity. It’s as true as ever that imposing harsh austerity without debt relief is a doomed policy no matter how willing the country is to accept suffering. And this in turn means that even a complete Greek capitulation would be a dead end.

Can Greece pull off a successful exit? Will Germany try to block a recovery? (Sorry, but that’s the kind of thing we must now ask.)

The European project — a project I have always praised and supported — has just been dealt a terrible, perhaps fatal blow. And whatever you think of Syriza, or Greece, it wasn’t the Greeks who did it.
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MochaSoul said:
Bigger point, to me, is that another two, three, five years of what's been would be allowing a whole people to be de facto enslaved to a bunch of uncountable, unelected financial interests harder to get at even by a more functional EU (if there was no Luxembourg there would still be Bermuda, Cayman, etc).
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Yes, certainly. But the idea that the euro has been anything other than a disaster for Greeks is flying in the face of the reality of the last five or six years. Why ask for more of the same but on even worse terms?

Fuck it, this drug isn't working. The patient's getting worse. Must mean that the dosage isn't high enough! Up the dosage. Balls, that hasn't worked. Patient's declining dangerously. Must mean that the dosage isn't high enough! Up the dosage...
 
Lurdan said:
Those excitable Greek chappies are dead certs to start eating one another and kissing fascists arses in the street.

#muppet
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It's nothing to do with the supposed or otherwise characteristics of Greeks. It could happen in any society when there is complete economic, political and social chaos.
 
happie chappie said:
Why did you mention bank cards if you're not talking about them?
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You are aware that it's possible to buy stuff from shops with a bank card, aren't you?

I can't keep going through all the reasons why suggestions such as these simply will not work in the current circumstances.
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Convenient, considering one of your main objections to Greek exit from the Euro is that they lack printing presses. If your reasons don't stand up to scrutiny, maybe you should accept you're wrong.
 
frogwoman said:
Why???
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Free movement of people within the EU.
The removal of internal borders a la Schengen.

eta: this is tending to break down national differences, although this is happening much less and much more slowly than I would like because language is still an effective barrier to movement.
 
cynicaleconomy said:
You are aware that it's possible to buy stuff from shops with a bank card, aren't you?



Convenient, considering one of your main objections to Greek exit from the Euro is that they lack printing presses. If your reasons don't stand up to scrutiny, maybe you should accept you're wrong.
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Because I've already go through them several times on this thread. I'm not going to respond to every cut n paste.

I could well be wrong. We'll see.

But I'm not sure I want to be lectured to by someone who though the solution to the Greeks' problems is to get Greeks businesses to pay their taxes in Drachmas!!
 
happie chappie said:
Because I've already go through them several times on this thread. I'm not going to respond to every cut n paste.

I could well be wrong. We'll see.

But I'm not sure I want to be lectured to by someone who though the solution to the Greeks' problems is to get Greeks businesses to pay their taxes in Drachmas!!
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Heaven forbid a country issues their own currency. Such a thing has never been done before!
 
happie chappie said:
Because I've already go through them several times on this thread. I'm not going to respond to every cut n paste.

I said a lack of printing facilities is the FIRST hurdle, not the ONLY one.

I could well be wrong. We'll see.

But I'm not sure I want to be lectured to by someone who though the solution to the Greeks' problems is to get Greeks businesses to pay their taxes in Drachmas!!
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weltweit said:
Free movement of people within the EU.
The removal of internal borders a la Schengen.

eta: this is tending to break down national differences, although this is happening much less and much more slowly than I would like because language is still an effective barrier to movement.
Click to expand...

And this means there won't be war how??
 
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