As a European, I'm somewhat puzzled by why a Greek default has been out of the question.
Why is it considered a huge threat to the euro, while in America, large public entities like Detroit and Puerto Rico can apparently default without endangering the USD? Is that just because dollar stands apart as a global currency?
In a reasonable world, the parties who loaned Greece all that money for ridiculously low interest rates in 2000-2007 should have suffered the losses. They're the ones who miscalculated the risk, after all. But that ship sailed when the Euro countries bailed out most of that toxic debt with public funds. I just can't understand why.
Merkel was in power back then, Tsipras wasn't. Hence I have some sympathy for him.
It's never been out of the question. In the years that they have been kicking the can down the road, all of the EU financial institutions have been preparing for this exact thing. You can expect Greece to exit the euro with little to no effect. The euro will of course rise, because the caliber of the remaining countries are much stronger.
The real issue is contagion. The EU doesn't want Italy or Spain to go down as well, because the markets/bond vigilantes love to pile on when there is blood in the water. Look at what happened during the Asian currency crisis, it was mass contagion throughout Asia that caused the subsequent problem.
That's also what, afaict, is keeping the problem from just being solved. Greece is small enough that it's quite possible to restructure their bonds into some workable package rather than kicking the can 6 months at a time. The IMF, for example, was floating a €50 billion debt haircut, which is not a ton of money in absolute terms. Alternate proposals would cap repayment in line with GDP, e.g. 1% of GDP per year, which would in effect amount to writing off a few tens of billion € per year (by letting it inflate away). But the EU is worried about setting a precedent that might impact a much bigger country with bigger debts, like Spain. (The other issue is just pure political constraints. Many EU countries currently have strong populist-right parties either in government or with an influential position in the government, like True Finns and Dansk Folkeparti. These parties are obviously against anything that looks like being "soft on Greece".)
IIRC, the effects of the late '90s Asian crisis didn't last this nearly this long though... The Greek tragedy/farce double feature has been going on for over five years now.
It's like Greece has been frozen into a creeping state of crisis. This can destroy an entire generation. A rapid shock might have been preferable all along.
The EU has already said that the referendum is about staying or leaving the EU.
Leaving the euro would be the best thing for the country. You can't rehabilitate your economy if you don't have control over your own currency (dropping the exchange rate, encouraging and influx of foreign money, etc). Look at Iceland, only a few years after their banking crisis, they are thriving.
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Some of this has to do with faulty investor logic. The euro was sold to investors in a way where they believed that once in the currecny there was no exit. So they tried to price all of the components the same, rather than pricing in soverign risk for each state. Or, in other words, if any investors pricied in sovereign risk others would be there to arb it out of the system.
I think for that there should be some mechanism to let the investors take the hit. The issue is whether or not the cost to bail out greece would be cheaper than to deal with the incremental risk premium on the rest of the eu debts. At some stage the tradeoff between economic logic and incentives (moral hazard) needs to be dealt with more transparently.
I don't know why just a default would be such a big deal, really. I can't remember ever really hearing any particularly convincing argument why a default must cause a grexit.
The reason for the original bailouts was to save the banking system. National governments took on their own banks' bad debt and the export countries lent money to the import ones. All bad debt, public and private, essentially ended up as inter-governmental debt. Whether the rest of the economy could somehow have been insulated from a banking crash at a lower cost than needed to bail out the banks is unclear. The way the banks were bailed out is, shall we say, less than uncontroversial.
Because other EU countries were in trouble, too. If Greece defaulted back then, investors would have lost their bounds and countries like Spain would have had big problems to sell their bounds.
It is much harder to consolidate your finances if you have to pay higher interests than already solid countries.
Before the Euro countries had a mechanism to tackle this: They could just print more of their own money. Italy was an example for that. They just weakened the Lira while Germany did not weaken its Deutsche Mark, so it was easier for Italy to export and harder to import goods.
The US entities that default do not have this problem, because there is always the state and federal governments that can step in after the default and help finance them. The Euro group did not had any entity that could help before the crisis. Now there are two mechanism ESM [0] and EFSM [1], but these two are essentially just fonds + some rules and can help only to a certain extent. They are too small to save a country like Italy or Spain if it defaults totally, let alone several of them. There is no entity above like the US federal government except the ECB itself, which does not have the mandate to do stuff like that (even if they do it anyway [2]).
Another reason is of course that state bonds are considered safe, so French and German insurance companies and the like invested in them, which would have needed to be bailed out later on anyway.
I think if Spain, Ireland etc. would not have saved their banks back then, it would have been safer to let Greece default. But we do not know what would have happened instead and it is always easier to say would should have been done afterwards.
Yes, they made foolish loans and it would be somewhat appropriate that they lose in this investment, however, the loans were made based on inflated Greek numbers (numbers which made the economy look stronger).
That said, reverting back to the drachma would probably be more fiscally painful to Greeks than the austerity alternative. It's a lose lose for both parties, so staying with the euro is desirable despite some of the bad medicine.
Goodbye, euro. Hello, drachma. The next 10 years are going to be uncomfortable for Greece. Not so much the rest of the Eurozone unless others follow suit.
manipulating currency is one of the way how politicians, bankers and other people in power f&ck regular people. Obviously, being f&cked by your own instead of by foreign politicians/bankers is the more preferable situation. I'm not joking - just look at all the wars there foreign invaders were enthusiastically fought against by the regular people even when their own governing regime was nothing to fight for.
What? The other way out would simply be to accept the reformations demanded by the EU. Greece would also need a new government as soon as possible. A government that does everything possible to help Greece to regain economic strength. Build new industrie, start-ups, let the tourism in this beautiful country flourish again. The EU has already agreed to give Greece a huge amount of additional money. But they obviously want to make sure that the money is not wasted and stolen by corruption as the hundreds of billions since 2010 [1]. History has proven that socialism doesn't work. You guys need another government, but only have a couple of pigs [2].
Considering that Greece is far less socialist than the European norm, I'm not sure how "socialism" is to blame. The closest Europe has to "socialism" is around here (Denmark), and it works very well. Greece has been an oligarchy for decades, with extremely high income inequality, a lack of even standard social-democratic welfare benefits like universal healthcare or minimum income support, and a corrupt government.
I don't know what you think socialism is, but we usually use the word to mean social collective control of the means of production.
On that basis we can say Greece's state owned industries and crony controlled companies with state mandated permits and monopolies make Greece more socialist than the First World typical.
Denmark is possibly the least socialist country in the world. (Some have the illusion that social insurance payments make Denmark more socialist but they impose little social control over individual choice, mostly redistributing cash from one person's young and healthy years to older less healthy ones and similarly from working years to schooling years.)
That was the entire idea of the bailout packages from the start. However, the government still has strong support and not likely to change. At this point, it's fair to say greeks don't want to save themselves.
Good. The conditions set by the troika were shit. Even though Greece's debt is significantly lower than 2010, their debt/GDP ratio is the highest it's been.
Europe was trying to influence the referendum with their hard line (ie. blackmail Greece into accepting their shit deal), but they'll backpedal, and maybe Greece can get a deal that's actually sustainable, and doesn't lead to another 25% contraction in the economy.
I don't see how the two main consitions of the treaty, having a VAT (sales tax) on the islands and
moving retirement age from 60 to 65, were unsubtainable.
First of all, more VAT will decrease tourist dollars spend. It will decrease economic activity. Decrease GDP.
Second, when you suddenly tell people who don't have a job (remember, unemployment is already high in Greece, especially among the youth) that they need to find one, it leads to a further strain on employment, and societal tension.
And remember, pensioners spend money. The money may come from the government, but it goes into the economy. If this money isn't going back into the Greek economy, the GDP decreases.
These measures will only increase unemployment and decrease GDP further. Exactly the opposite of what Greece needs. It may seem like a small thing, but on a macro scale, small changes add up.
I think it's fair for the islands to have the same level of taxation than the mainland. Greek islands shouldn't exist to be the gateway to tax evasion.
Pensions are money taken from the working classes and the capital, it doen't magicaly create GDP. Again, it feels fair that a country way poorer per capita than the US or Germany should at least match their retirement age to those country.
Corruption, red tape and over spending are the reasons why Greece is in bad shape.
Costs of doing business in the islands are higher than the mainland, transportation and all.
Under the EU program, money taken away from the working classes goes directly to creditors. Better to give to pensioners, who did 'earn' it, based on their understanding during their working years, and at least return it to the economy.
And no one should work as much as Americans.
And finally, you can't change society overnight. Corruption red tape and over spending exist everywhere, even the US. You can't simply crack down because then capital flight occurs. There's an entire category of economics that deals with this (development economics). It's always a balancing act.
There's many reasons for the Greek crisis, its all too easy to apply moral judgement to a very complicated issue.
Edit - the concept of 'fairness' also has no place in economics. That's for politics or religion. Economists try to achieve the best outcome, not try to decide what's 'fair'.
The debt/GDP ratio is not really important. The more important figure is the percentage used for debt/interest service in relation to the GDP. This figure is actually quite low since the loans handed out by the eurogroups are extremely favorable. They effectively constitute a haircut in all but using the word.
I sincerely doubt that the creditors will backpedal. One of the primary problems with getting a deal is that any deal they could get would need to be approved by the german parliament. The german parliament went into summer break at the end of june and won't return until end of august. The other problem is that the greek negotiation tactics burnt a lot of bridges. I sincerely support their cause, but I can't see them make any more headway than they did before. They're proclaiming results within 48 hours - if that's not delusional I don't know what is.
Italian here. I think what Greece is going through in economics terms is terrible and the main objective of any deal should be to get the Greece economy to grow once again and I don't think that taxes are going to help.
At the same time my country is exposed to Greece for ~40bn € and we did some reforms that nobody liked, like rising retirement age.
We should be ready to help Greece but they have to make real reforms, they have their own responsability in their situation and according to what I read they have big problems collecting taxes, corruption and mispending of public funds. They have to make so that in a few years they won't need anymore money from other countries.
What's next? I have a gut felling we are seeing the beginning of the end. The situation is not comparable with Iceland, as the whole country has shutdown. No export import.
Obviously things can't run like this. It will be interesting to see how they work it out.
Redditors (for what it's worth) said devalued drachme would worsen the situation. It seems that this referendum will be a dogmatic chimera, pleasing people for his promise, too strong economical forces may bring back Greece under negotiations.
German banks were stupid and lent money to Greece. 2008 Merkel saved German banks by moving Greek debt from private to public hands. They have been giving money to Greece just enough to cover the interest payments while pursuing a politics of austerity that devastated greek economy and employment.
Greeks got fed up and elected government to end austerity. Merkel was stupid [expletive] and refused to give real deal on the table - one that must include basic debt relief. Tsipras got case of no balls and asked greeks to vote instead of just choosing to default.
Greece is like an orphaned child who really likes eating candy.
Back in the 1990s, Greece was eating lots of candy, but it wanted to be adopted into a big and wealthy family, and the parents of that family had a rule that they would not adopt children who ate too much candy. Greece kept on eating lots of candy, but it made faces and pretended that some of the candy was actually vegetables; and because some of the other kids in the family had grown fond of Greece, the parents overlooked the continued candy-eating and officially adopted Greece in 2001.
Now, it's sometimes difficult for orphaned children to get their hands on candy, but if you're part of a big and wealthy family, it becomes a lot easier. Just like most children would, Greece started eating a lot more candy. Greece's adopted parents also had rules about how much candy their kids could eat (not just rules for children they were considering adopting) but Greece wasn't the only child who was eating too much candy so they pretty much forgot about those rules for the moment.
Then 2008 hit. Some children on the other side of the world started getting sick from eating too much candy, and immediately people started looking around at other children who were eating lots of candy and worrying about them. Greece, which was by this point very much overweight, came to the top of everybody's lists of children who had eaten too much candy. Suddenly nobody was willing to give Greece any more candy, and this made Greece very unhappy.
So Greece turned to its adoptive parents and begged them to give it some more candy. While they had ignored Greece's growing waistline earlier, they had also gotten worried about it recently; so they offered Greece a deal: They would give Greece more candy -- not a lot, but enough that Greece could still feel slightly good about itself -- if Greece promised to go outside and get lots of exercise.
This worked for a while, and by 2014 Greece was starting to lose weight; but it wasn't very happy with the situation -- Greece wanted to be playing Candy Crush, not running around outside. In January 2015 Greece finally rebelled and told its parents that it was sick of running around outside and wanted a new deal which would allow it to keep eating candy and to be allowed to keep playing Candy Crush.
Greece's parents were not very impressed by this, and promptly told Greece that this was not acceptable, and Greece was not going to get any more candy if Greece didn't start doing as it was told. Today, Greece thought about this, answered back with a resounding NO, and slammed the door as it ran away from home.
So what happens now? Well, Greece isn't going to be getting any more candy, for one thing. Greece is going to be hungry, but the only way it will be able to eat at all is if it goes out and works hard to get it -- which means it won't have much time to play Candy Crush either. Greece might change its mind and go back to its parents, but at this point they're pretty tired of Greece's rebelliousness and they're not likely to start handing out candy unless they see Greece start running laps first.
Roughly:
Greek economy in bad shape, to put it mildly.
Greece take loans from the IMF. Owes lots of money. Greece cannot pay it back. Will not pay it back.
Deadline was a day or two ago to deliver a payment of over 1 billion euros (which again, i'm not sure why they are voting for/against a deal that has expired a day or two ago but... well....)
Greece can now default on its payments, and as a result, leave the eurozone and the euro. Hello Drachmas.
Allegedly Greece's entry into the euro zone was made possible by some banks fudging some numbers to make their economy look appealing while in reality it was already in dire straights.
And here we are - the first country about to leave the EU. Hopefully this won't start a trend. I wish I could say "hopefully" with more conviction but I'm really not sure what is best any more. I guess I'm pro europe because I'm also a French national as well as British.
