Hacker News Reader

Comment by 4gotunameagain | Hacker News Reader

Probably worth adding that a hefty number of scandals involving corrupt Greek politicians had huge German companies involved (Siemens, HDW, Rheinmetall..)

Plus Germany benefited greatly from the introduction of import based economies in the Eurozone, and the financial crisis.

It is no wonder they like corrupt politicians in power.

View on HN

Or maybe you are mixing up cause and effect: Greek politicians demanded hefty bribes to do business in the first place.

Yes, Germany is a real winner in bailing out Greek and all the southern European economies than cannot pay their bills. You are aware that exporting stuff to countries that take a loan and don’t pay it back is like not exactly “beneficial”.

Greek should never have been in the EU in the first place. They lied about their financial situation and deliberately stole money from their European neighbors.

You know that all the money sent to the Greeks were only used to bail out European banks, right ? And that they framed it that way because they had already bailed out said banks ?

Anyway, of course I don't know exactly what's going on. I'm just a rando with no skin in the game

In particular, the money was used to bail out a bunch of German banks, who as far as I can understand it ended up with all that debt because Germany was running a trade surplus with Greece directly enabled by the structure of the Eurozone without any corresponding fiscal transfers that would balance it out, and that in turm directly benefitted Germany as well.

Maybe Greek should have paid taxes after all: https://www.businessinsider.com/corruption-in-greese-hamperi...

But the funny thing is: Greek themselves find their country too corrupt and bloated that they aren’t willing to pay for it with THEIR OWN money…

Much of Greeks debt problem would not have existed had the Greek citizens paid taxes like the rest of Europe.

That whole bit caused me to rethink the fiscal transfers between regions in the US. So California sends a bunch of money to the feds who turn around an give some to Mississippi? Okay fine because that's way better than what the EU did to the schmucks living in Greece. Or if the banks fail in Texas it's the FED that's not on the hook not random Texans.

The underlying thing is in the US states give up being able to use monetary policy to balance trade. In return the Fed's backstop a lot of stuff and transfer money around. Overall that's fair.

In the EU states give up being able to use monetary policy to balance trade. In return no fiscal transfers. And the EU backstop's French and German banks by squeezing poorer states. That's not fair at all.

Germany is the biggest contributor to the EU: https://www.statista.com/statistics/316691/eu-budget-contrib...

Contributing 18x as much as Greece.

As I said before: Greece should be able to balance their trade deficit with their own funny money currency. THEM LYING in the process of joining the Euro sealed their economic doom in a sense.

> Contributing 18x as much as Greece.

2.2x, when adjusted for population.

0.92x when adjusted for GPD. So Greece actually pays more ;)

I suggest you start having alternative sources for news and geopolitical issues my fellow angry German.

Yes, and Greek are also the hardest working… We all know that.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2012/05/30/stereoty...

You couldn't have found a worst article than that. You've actually disproved your own point.

> Greece does actually work the longest hours in Europe, as this graphic of OECD data shows.

I pay my taxes. My taxes were used to pay for excessive irresponsible spend if a foreign country (Greek government) that lied about its finances to its partners.

Grow up a little. Your racism stems from your governments vile propaganda against the Greek people themselves IN ORDER TO GET PEOPLES CONSENSUS ON THE EXTREME AUSTERITY THEY IMPOSED ON GREEKS. αντε μαλακα

I think you should just take a more American view of the situation.

Greece is like the poor US southern states. The richer states fund them (no loans, just give them money, never get it back), because "we're all Americans". You could call it stealing, or you could call it the way things are.

It's a good thing for Europe to have Greece within the EU (and probably even within the eurozone). Asking them to be financially self-sufficient might be as silly as asking the same thing of Alabama or Mississippi ...

They can be in the EU. They can screw up their budgets. But there is no need for them to be bound to the Euro. Plenty of countries that are part of the EU but don’t have the Euro. I’m happy to do business with them and I’m happy to let them have their way. But I won’t tie the stability of my savings and my currency to their falsified financial statements and unsustainable economic model… :-)

Never understood why we wanted them in the Euro. They should have their own Greek currency they can devalue every couple of years by 50% or so to stay competitive

Which is exactly what they used to do regularly pre-Euro. You seem to believe the German banks were hoodwinked into lending to the Greek government but that’s just not supported by the well known economic history of the country. The real reason they were willing to lend, ignoring the history (since independence, Greece had failed to repay international debts and debased its currency numerous times), is that the banks knew that the Euro governments would cover the losses on the basis that they couldn’t afford for the EU to fail.

And they were right.

They lied about their finances when asking for money. I know that “American banks” are also often viewed as evil for selling crap (knowingly) mortgage backed securities to German banks and we often tend to just go easy by stating “banks are evil” and that’s where the story end. However: it was American households that lived beyond their means for decades and lived in houses they could not afford and lied on (unverified) loan applications; the US government mandated more homeowners, banks provided the means and took a cut. So, more differentiated and in those “evil bank discussions” we tend to forget it was often a significant number of “poor ordinary citizens” living well beyond their means (e.g., not paying adequate taxes in Greek, having fatter pensions than others in Europe etc.)

You’re expecting ordinary citizens to be aware of their actions on the broader economy when their own governments are lying to them. Leaving aside the fact that most people have neither the knowledge nor the power to live other than as their system allows them to, why then doesn’t your logic apply to Germans? Why shouldn’t we blame them for continually voting in governments that kept bailing out irresponsible German banks? Stop looking for scapegoats. It takes two to tango.

I think it is a cultural thing to be honest. Germans are obsessed with their tax filings, they love to do them to the euro etc. Walk into a German restaurant or any shop and observe tax receipts.

Then look around in Greek or Italy.

Germans fundamentally believe taxes are due and should be paid and the government can “mostly be trusted”.

Greek seem to be more hesitant about that…

Greek voted their government into place. Hence they are responsible for the actions.

I’m not looking for a scapegoat. Just stating what it is: if you aren’t trustworthy, stay out of a currency and system requiring trustworthy partners.

The Greeks are hesitant about taxes because they know from experience that their governments (of any flavour) have invariably been historically corrupt. The Germans experience (post-war at least) was not that. I doubt very much if the Germans of the Weimar republic were too fussed with their taxes.

To your last point, if I'm not trustworthy, don't let me in. Are you familiar with the story of the scorpion and the frog?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog

… so the Greek government is made up of non-Greek !? Or the Greek politicians suddenly transform into unethical beings? Governments reflect societies.

Dude, you said it’s the banks faults to trust the Greek; when I counter that I don’t trust them and wouldn’t have because they are untrustworthy you throw around fables!?

> Greek politicians demanded hefty bribes

How come that it was usually a German company willing to pay the "hefty" bribe? Maybe because "until 1999 in Germany, bribes were a tax-deductible business expense, and there were no penalties for bribing foreign officials"? [1]

Cause and effect.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens#2005_and_continuing:_w...

So Greek became corrupt and went bankrupt because bribes were tax-deductible in Germany until the 90s?

How far back should we turn the wheels of time? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_bribery_scandals

And what does that have to do with the Greek government falsifying their statements to join the EU and take on debt? https://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/23/world/europe/greece-admit...

Probably zeeee Germans bribed zeee Greek to force them join zeee EU.

Greek f**d up, lied, covered it up, lied more, covered up more and then had to face the consequences.

You and I are neighbours. I ask to borrow your chainsaw. You lend it. Next month you come knocking wanting it back. I point to the corner where it lays broken and shrug.

Some time later I ask to borrow your lawn mower. You give it. When you ask for it back I regretfully explain that I had to hock it to pay off my bookie.

Later still, I ask to borrow your Mercedes. You look at my front yard where a beat up old Toyota is sitting on blocks. I swear on my mother’s grave that I’ll look after your car and treat it just like my own. You then hand over the keys.

There is (or should be) a moral hazard attached to lending irresponsibly. It was an open secret back then that the books were cooked to let Greece in. Certainly nothing in the history of the modern Greek state gave any confidence it would be different. Yet you would have us believe that Deutche Bank [0] were utterly naive and blind to history. That they were poor, unsuspecting, honest fools who didn’t have a clue what they were getting into.

[0]. https://www.dw.com/en/deutsche-banks-5-biggest-scandals/a-46...

Greeks lied about their finances and took loans they couldn’t pay back. I don’t see how they are the victim in this discussion. Deutsche Bank or anybody else giving money to Greek is stupid imho. Lacking “street smart” for sure. Still I paid for this bullshit w/ my taxes and could t do anything about it.

Do I dig this entire “oh poor Greek got screwed by Germany and Greek is the victim” nonsense? No.

Greek lies and screws over their neighbors and then threatens to tank the entire EU / Euro over their bankruptcy: not a victim. Not to be trusted.

Thats what you imply with your post: don’t trust the Greek, they lied in the past, they will lie in the future. No sympathy from my end.

Friend, firstly please don’t conflate Greeks with Greek governments. Secondly, yes Greek governments lied with some great help from Goldman Sachs. I promise you the Greek people found that all prices rose when the Euro was introduced. Finally, if German banks did the wrong thing, then perhaps your beef should be with them and with the German government that chose to bail them out and not let them fail. Because the “Greek bailouts” were indeed bailouts of the (mostly) German banks. As I said in another post, DB gambled, confident they would be bailed out - there was no moral hazard attached to their actions. They were right.

In a democracy, 60 years of electing corrupt politicians mean Greeks or the Greek society or whatever you want to put it are guilty too along with all their corrupt governments. It runs deep in the society. I am Greek.

Ok. But that works both ways. The Germans then are culpable for their government’s actions as are the Americans for theirs.

I still bear the consequences of the German government’s action three generations ago - as the Greek keep reminding my country on a regular basis…

Next time an invading force in your country, murders all civilians, starves the rest to death, maybe you'll have different opinion. Greece has the highest death toll on WW2 in normalized to the total population.

If you really want to turn the wheels of time, Siemens has been consistently involved in corruption in Greece since the 1920s. Governments and political alignments change. The constant factor is the bribing company.

Also, FYI, the 2004 admission by finance minister Alogoskoufis was a total joke. Sadly for Greece, world politics is not the right place for this kind of jokes.

The newly elected at the time ND government wanted an excuse to get a carte blanche to apply their financial agenda, so they invented one: Alogoskoufis ordered a retrospective "audit" where they switched from the standard Eurostat practice of budgeting defense contracts at the time of delivery to budgeting them at the time of signing [1].

This essentially shifted future expenses (many of them payable during his mandate) to the past, in order to make the previous PASOK administration appear disingenuous. Alogoskoufis essentially brought the country to world disrepute, so they could score a few cheap political points internally. And he was naive (stupid?) enough to believe that this would somehow only affect his political opponents and not the whole country [2].

[1] https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/84157/1/Greece%20%20a%20crisis%20i... [2] https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/27649/alogoskoufis-expe...

Seems it's in principle tax deductible in the US as well:

https://www.justia.com/tax/corporate-tax/business-tax-deduct...

And without penalty at least until 1977.

Switzerland ended tax deductions for bribes in 2022. https://www.energyvoice.com/oilandgas/europe/278815/switzerl...

In Greece, btw, they were deductible until 2006.

I meant: should not have been part of Euro. EU membership makes total sense.

EU membership requires adoption of the Euro, at least theoretically - some countries officially state they will adopt it but somehow never get around to it, and excepting states that were grandfathered in as special exceptions.

I do not believe a shared currency for countries with such vastly different economical situations and dynamics makes sense. A joint economic union - absolutely. But a shared currency is probably an ideologically motivated step; not a rational or smart step…

Same with Romania and Eastern Europe in general. Western EU countries criticize them immensely for corruption in the public eye, yet their governments, banks and major corporations profit immensely from the business deals corruption there enables them to do, and so they have a vested interest to keep just enough corruption there so they can keep profiteering, while maintaining enough rule of law so that their investments there are safe and ensures the free flow of profits back home.

This is boilerplate conspiratorial nonsense. West European countries would benefit far more from East European countries being free from the economic drag imposed by endemic corruption. The EU internal market overall would be much richer and stronger, and those banks and corporations would have a better quality consumer and labor base. Banks and corporations can make plenty of money in high-trust societies just as in low-trust ones, and they get more regulatory certainty as well.

Most corruption cases benefit the German companies, so no, they would not benefit more, otherwise they would just lobby their local governments for fiscal transfer to the poorer countries. The opposite happens, the German constitutional court can veto foreign budgets if they don't pay the Danegeld (i.e. not wasting all european funds buying goods and services from Germany).

The litmus test is this: can a EU country use european funds to create a new carmaker to compete with central european carmakers? Hell no. But you can spend all european funds buying cars from Germany, that's never wasteful.

The EU has no policy to enrich the entire union, only the central countries. The EU funds are basically a workaround for direct transfers of money from the German government to German companies, via foreign countries.

I'm not from a Eastern European country, but I do live in a poor Eastern European economy, it's the same dynamic.

>This is boilerplate conspiratorial nonsense

It's not though. EU wide corruption scandals prove this.

Western EU companies routinely pay bribes to dump plastics and toxic waste in Romanian landfills under the disguise of "recyclable material". This way those private companies save a few bucks to stay competitive, and their countries keep getting to call themselves "green" by exporting their environmental damage across the border.

IKEA, plus Austrian and German wood companies routinely paid bribes in the Romanian timber industry to be able to perform mass deforestation.

Austrian companies, like STR*BAG, paid bribes to Romanian politicians to get preferential juicy building contracts, sometimes using EU funds, for highways that never get completed due to various technicalities that got intentionally omitted from the contract so that the building company can just bail out from the deal without having built anything while getting paid in full. Basically, the EU taxpayer is paying for a western EU company to make bank in the east, all through EU funds funneled trough Romania, to build roads that never get built.

All this high level corruption benefits major western EU companies, and corrupt eastern EU politicians a lot. Western EU politicians also benefit from this as the major companies in their countries lobby for them to keep this corrupt system going so they can keep making bank.

The EU is a great thing, but it's also ripe with corruption that's costing the taxpayers tens of billions.

You're exactly right. In Croatia everything of any value is owned or being sold to German companies and they pretty much own the place (or at least what worth anyway). All of this is facilitated by the same government for the last 30 years or so. The same government has been completely and obviously corrupted to the core, but never, even much of a peep criticised by the EU.They are all friends there. As long as the public is not openly rioting, EU likes this arrangement.

Yes, in Czechia we have same corrupted politics and business. Since summer 2021 prices goes up around 30% on food, 50% for energy. Most ridiculous is that our power plants make enough energy for entire country and 15% are sold abroad, but... All energy is auctioned on the Leipzig Stock Exchange for 600% higher price than it is actually made (1 kWh cost around 1 CZK to made, it's sold for 6-7 CZK and rising. Now our gonverment need to cap prices from our taxes so state budget has this year recorded deficit since 70’s around 350 bilion CZK.

Trust in gonverment is very low, voter turnout was around 48% in regional elections.

Our politicians blame war in Ukraine, it's ridiculous.

I'm Czech, though somewhat disconnected from local situation/politics.

> Most ridiculous is that our power plants make enough energy for entire country and 15% are sold abroad, but... All energy is auctioned on the Leipzig Stock Exchange for 600% higher price than it is actually made (1 kWh cost around 1 CZK to made, it's sold for 6-7 CZK and rising.

Why is that ridiculous? We make something cheap, and sell it abroad for profit. Isn't it a good thing we're exporting? (I'd get it if your argument was against the coal power plants, I don't get why selling abroad for a profit is bad in general.)

When you import it back with that price, I find it immoral. Who decide to sell it back to country wher it came from with 6 time higher price?

It's called "lichva". Germans have cheaper prices and also 3 times more average income.

Also what's the point to make own people suffer and be poor by this business? It's absolutely ridiculous.

I can't follow your comment, apart from seeing that you're outraged about the situation.

It's a global world. If someone else is willing to pay more for the energy than us, we should sell it to them and use the money we earn to buy the things we value more, things we're willing to pay more for.

No, your logic of selling resources to the highest bidder doesn't work for basic necessities like food, water, energy and healthcare, especially not during an energy shortage. That's why @t0bia_s is so pissed about. It works for commodities or non critical resources not in short supply locally like in Australia's mining industry but not for resources your citizens need to survive.

What you're advocating for is economic colonialism where the rich countries can just buy everything they want and the poor ones are forced to sell while starving their people.

"Sorry Ghana, no drinking water for you anymore as Nestle, the US and Switzerland are willing to pay more for it. But you can use the money you get to buy bottled water back from us."

The unified EU energy market has been a disaster for the consumers in energy stable poor countries who saw massive price increases as they were forced to sell energy to higher bidders suffering a shortage, like Germany, with the profits going to the private energy companies instead of the governments. It's basically privatizing the winnings and socializing the losses.

I disagree as your theory doesn't account for the difference between buying power of citizens in different EU countries which varies greatly.

If my country (Croatia) is importing natural gas for cheap (and it is), and then selling it to EU countries, and then importing that same gas back to Croatia, but now with price increase in triple digits, which vast majority of it's citizens cannot afford, then I call this a scheme where government isn't working for it's citizens, it is working for someone else's. And this doesn't even account for extremely high profits some of the companies (and politicians) are making.

I would understand if you sell the extra gas (and there is plenty of that too) to EU market; but keeping your citizens poor and/or without heating so a better paying western european citizen can have plenty of gas is troublesome to say the least.

You may have a point that with that price difference while exporting gas the government has extra money. I'm not so sure if thats a great idea, as governments are just corrupted as hell (at least Croatian one is) and a normal citizen won't see a cent of it. One may argue that corruption and energy prices are two separate things, but I would argue that they are just two faces of the same coin and they go well hand in hand.

If your argument is global world, than why is average salary in Czechia 3 times lower than in our neighbors in Germany?

How can you apply same prices to different countries?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com