The European Debt Crisis and the Euro - Page 5

On March 02 2010 05:18 Intr3pid wrote:
Agreed citi.zen, I'm sorry for derailing the thread. I think the biggest problem is that the EU is growing to fast and accepting countries into the union it can not "digest". Realistically, Spain, Portugal, Greece and Italy have no place in the EU, let alone the east-european countries, which are still developping.

I think it was wise of the UK Sweden etc. not to join the monetary union, and It was because of reasons like this. Still, even if the Euro should fail, I don't think this has necessarily a downfall of the EU as a consequence. It would be a big hit though.

On March 02 2010 06:15 Undisputed- wrote:


Just found this thought it fit pretty well haha.

On March 01 2010 20:34 nothingbutzerg wrote:

problem is that Greece has been giving false statistics for some years now but the debt was created mostly by 1 factor.Bad management.
Some people here used financial support from the EU and became too greedy.Most of the money were given to politicians and its business friends.they took the money,gave them wherever they wanted,made no investments and then tried to cover the loss with false numbers.but you have to admit that EU inspectors for all those years said nothing and let the situation grow.let me remind you that although Germany knew the debt of Greece, was pushing local government to buy your Panzers spending billions of euros(1,6 if i remember correctly,which afterwards the fun part is that they were broken ).that is quite hypocritic if you ask me.but in the eurozone countries all they do is building alliances one making favours to another but nobody knew at the time that the crisis would bring countries to such a huge problem.
you have to remember that Greece is more expensive than most of the euro countries to live to but with the lowest salaries.
the point is that Greece really fucked up but at least (and dont get me wrong) dont bring ethics to the game.US owes China 800 billion $ all countries have debt.Greece is in my opinion as a guinea-pig for the times to come and how by using debt other countries can add taxes and laws to another regions.Interesting to see what will happen

On March 02 2010 06:55 polarwolf wrote:


I am German, so I will point out the German view on this:

Germans are enraged, why? Decide for yourself:

The Greek debt was caused by bad management, as far as German Media tells it, this is not true: Greece is deeply corrupt. You do not get served in hospitals without big bribes.
The Government employs way too many people at ridiculous high wages (13 or 14 wages a year), and people in Greece retire at the age of 55 - 59, while Germans now retire at the age of 67 by law.
Greece doesn't force its citizen to pay their taxes.
Greece gets a bigass amount of EU-subventions for olive-trees that do not exist (famers simply claim they have them, nobody verifies it), laughable detail: Greece gets Subventions for more olive-trees than would fit on the area of Greece.

Now Germany: There have been really deep cuts into social welfare during the last 10-15 years, the real?wages (Reallohn in German), basically wage-per-output, was cut dramatically, so employers' buying power went down quite a bit, while Greece was having a party.

There are voices in Greece claiming Germany never paid its debts for WW2. While this might be true or not, giving them money right now, would not do any good, the party just went on for a cupple of month and the money would be gone without any changes and Greece would face the same problems again.

Germany is quite a big weapon-seller, and nobody ever claimed our tanks were broken (Spain, Australia, Canada, Poland, Netherlands, Finland, Switzerland, Denmark, Turkey...) but Greece. Coincidence?

It is claimed that Germany benefits from the Euro because we can sell our products without customs etc, this might be true for German companies, but the average German employee doesn't get much of it (you can argue about this one, because it saves jobs).

Germany is already paying a lot for EU (subventions, administration, etc) but now paying for Greek debts would be just ridiculous, because they are mostly self-caused.

On March 02 2010 06:58 polarwolf wrote:
oh, and Greece was getting the Euro because they faked their statistics, and now it's our fault because we were cheated? What kind of ridiculous logic is that?
No one forces them to buy German weapons btw, Greece also has American and French aircrafts and ships.

On March 02 2010 07:31 paulinepain wrote:
Greece can't pay back his debt because they can't print their own money, this euro thing was a hold up from the beginning, all EU countries are slaves now of the European Central Bank. We didn't get anything good from this EURO, price rose like hell, and now what? I can go to Sweden or Germany with no need of passport only my ID card? Super...

All monetary reform intend to benefit banks and that's it.

Soon or later this is all Europe that couldn't pay back his debt. And by far France and Germany, we only live because of importations.

On March 02 2010 07:34 nothingbutzerg wrote:


no one forces small countries to buy weapons......you have got to be kidding me! Greek governments spend their money to please USA,Russia,Germany and France.
When they don't buy weapons from the "right " sellers problems with Turkey always occur?why is that really?

On March 02 2010 08:04 aqui wrote:

I wholeheartedly agree with you about the hypocracy. Countries like Russia, who are shamelessly shown as agressive actors, press their agendas far less agressive and not more ruthless than most of the west with the difference that they do not revel themselves in moral glory like the west does.
Bold that even countries like Greece are molested, i quite believe you when you say that poeple knew of the real state of your economy but wanted to press the juice out anyway. That countries like Egypt or as you descriped Turkey are used to do dirty handiwork for the west all the time really makes me cringe. The outsourcing of amoral means is even worse than using the means oneself.

There is no evidence that the UK and Sweden do fare any better

when you say eastern european does that include countries like Poland and Czechia?

On March 02 2010 03:20 Intr3pid wrote:

This is absolutely not true. Of course Chicago School and associates try to discredit it in favor of monetarism (which is very nice if you want a weak government and no or lower taxes), but I can guarantee you that monetarism's reputation in the economic world is by far smaller than you might think (at least it has very much decreased in the last 10 years. It is only so popular because it is very very strongly believed in by the financial sector, which we know how has been doing lately. I don't want to go deeper into that discussion, since it's clearly ideology biased, let me say that you can pretty much prove any economic theory if you have the "right" data. I just want to say that it was the government who bailed the companies out of their mess, but everyone wanted to abolish any regulation while they were bathing in their imaginary profits.

And I am disgusted because he has a very black/white and undifferentiated view on things, which I consider pretty lackluster. Fact is, the world is much more complicated and there is no absolute truth. Monopolies: yes, there are many government monopolies which are not run efficiently, but there are also many examples where this has been done far better by a government than by the public market, take as an example the railway in England, which has pretty much turned disastrous after its privatization under the Hatcher regime. I agree that it should be carefully selected where a monopoly should be constituted, but to say "monopoly = bad" is just wrong.

Sweden is not at all privatizing the health care system as a whole, it is possible that they adjust some things and make it "less public", which probably would make sense, still it has the best health care system in the world - and the people are happy and content with it. The Swiss healthcare system is ok, but it is really really expensive and not applicable in that form in every country.

Again, most things are personal taste, but some things are just wrong. Like saying the root of all problems is the government.

On March 02 2010 10:51 VabuDeltaKaiser wrote:
todays finance currency is private. a state loans and is in debt just by using a currency. eat that first. state has nothing to do with currency. most todays currency is worthless, it is a play money, the only reason it has worth is you take part.

private organisations like ecb or feb print money, mostly in computer, that has production worth close to 0, and rent it to states for 100% + interest.

you just dont need to say anything more why this system is bad for states. all states that will somehow have the luck to overcome this will live, other will die to illusion debts.

only problem for you to understand this will be how could ecb or feb are non state? easy all of the controll is private.

consider this facts and this complete discussion evolves.