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Comment by fuj | Hacker News Reader

What about forging documents to get accepted in the eurozone? Forging documents to get more loans? The rampant corruption on every level of the Greek society? [1] Obviously this is not politically correct, so downvotes are expected.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_evasion_and_corruption_in_G...

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Politicians from parties who now get 3-4% of the vote lied years ago (to the Greek public as well as EU bankers), so let's take Greek workers' pensions, crush their unions, slash their social services, and offer no jobs or future to 60% of Greek young people. The bankers may not get their money anyway, since the debt is still increasing, but at least the Greeks* will get what they deserve!

*may not apply to the elites who actually bankrupted the country, who don't rely on government services and can keep their money in Swiss accounts

This is vastly mentality problem and consequences that comes with it. Simple fact is, southern european countries have laid back attitude which is nice to enjoy and so on, but doesn't perform well and has more drawbacks in long term, as we can see. The st had to hit the fan hard, and it did for people to wake up.

What do you expect - full pardon on all mistakes? It won't happen next time, we promise? You know, one of life's lessons is - you pay for all your mistakes, and youth is no excuse for them. Sometimes, in a very hard way.

We all have crappy politicians in one or other way, but guess what - unless vote was rigged, they were elected by majority. I do agree with notion that in democracy nation has leaders that it deserves, exceptions will even out in broader average (either location or time based).

One generic example - when there was massive tax evasion, people should have outsted it's government for closing an eye on it. They didn't. Now they face consequences for what every sane moral person must have felt is wrong.

"one of life's lessons is - you pay for all your mistakes"

This isn't true though. The people with the most direct responsibility for crashing the world economy, like those with the most direct responsibility for bankrupting Greece, haven't paid at all.

Also, I think the "citizens of democracies are responsible for the crimes of their leaders" moral principle is one you probably don't want to consistently apply. To try a reductio ad absurdum, I assume you're not in agreement with Bin Laden's reasoning for the WTC attacks, for example.

I am from South Europe but I agree with most of stuff you say. Nobody complained when we were receiving more than we were giving back. And worse, we got used to it.

Everybody is guilt here. Man up.

Out of interest, where do you think the money to pay for pensions, social services and create jobs for young people will come from in Greece in the future?

Surely these all have to be set at a level that is actually sustainable by the Greek economy?

Greece is what I might call cashflow positive - its government is taking in more money than it's spending in its business of running the country. It's only the bond repayments that are pushing it down.

Government spending should be countercyclical - and smart creditors (which, sure, a government beholden to populism can't always be) would realize that. Prop up the economy now, get growth up again, and then cream off some "repayments" when times are good - I'm sure a contract could be structured to specify that they'd repay their bonds in proportion to e.g. growth above 3%. Running Greece into the ground benefits noone, not even Germany. But sadly, decades on, politicians are still ignoring Keynes.

Or they could have simply defaulted. It's worked out pretty well for Iceland. The argument as I understand it for every nation being perpetually indebted is that it ensures outsiders have an interest in that country being successful - if you own Greek bonds you're less likely to invade Greece. But if your bondholders are forcing a lot of suffering on your country, maybe the costs outweigh the benefits.

"Jobs for young people" is not something that's supposed to cost money. The value of what employees produce is supposed to exceed their salaries.

If they stop making interest repayments that will free up a lot of Euros.

Additionally, if you don't pay for pensions, social services and create jobs then people don't have any money. If they don't have any money they don't spend. And not spending isn't sustainable for any economy.

Well, I'm a bit of a radical, so I could give a lot of answers to that question. But even in conventional terms, and even after all the economic destruction of austerity, Greece has been running a primary surplus since 2013. At this point they're borrowing just to pay debt.

See, a friend of mine owned some of those bonds (Icelandic in that case, but similar). He saved money to support his family in case where they'd need it. The money evaporated when Icelandic banks defaulted. The money that was used to prop up Greece came from people that worked for it - some directly, some indirectly. Why should their money be taken from them? Why should German social services be slashed because the EU still needs to funnel more money into Greece? [1] I totally agree that Greece needs help, but I don't have a good answer for those that need to pay for it.

[1] we had a major slashing of social services with the Hartz4-laws. Things are certainly not as ugly as in Greece, but Germany has the highest percentage of low-wage labor in Europe. Germany as a country is rich, but a lot of Germans pay the price.

Would be better to take this money from the Greek oligarchs and keep some level of social safety net. But isn't it up to the Greeks to make that happen?

Oh well, we did on Jan 25 ;)

Yup, and I'm rooting for them.

These things are not solely responsible for the ruinous state of the Greek economy, which can be proven very easily:

Every periphery economy suffered from the same economic malaise caused by a housing boom, a crash, a bailout of their banking sectors and austerity imposed from above (all actions ordered by Brussels).

Yet Greece was the only one that played silly games with Goldman Sachs to get accepted (for which nobody has been punished except the Greek people).

What about working with Goldman Sachs to hide the true level of debt that Greece had from Eurostat?

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/greek-debt-crisis...

Legal at the time. Same thing the Italians did.

Not to justify the practice, but pretty much every periphery country fudged the numbers in order to be admitted to the Eurozone because none of them had a strong enough economy then to be let in. One did it, then the next looked at the last one and said "If them, why not us?"

Greece is pretty corrupt though.

>Not to justify the practice, but pretty much every periphery country fudged the numbers in order to be admitted to the Eurozone because none of them had a strong enough economy then to be let in. One did it, then the next looked at the last one and said "If them, why not us?"

The real fun starts when Greece defaults and Italy/France/Spain/Ireland/etc. go...

If them, why not us?

The conspiracy theorist in me suspects that's the reason Greece is being forced to go through painful austerity measures even though everyone knows they won't work. The system survived a Greek defaul^H^Hvoluntary restructuring, but it wouldn't survive every country doing that, so the Greeks have to be seen to suffer.

That's not really a conspiracy theory - it's pretty much all in the open. The ECB and European Commission (even the IMF!) don't pretend that austerity works, they just pretend that there's no alternative and periodically tell us that the seeds of recovery have sprouted.

Why they do it is another matter. Theories I've heard:

* (like you said) They want Greece to be an example for the other periphery countries. * It is used as a pretext to chip away at Greek sovereignty and give the (unlected) European commission additional powers over the country. * The core banks' insolvency becomes totally apparent if Greece defaults, so they pressure the ECB to keep up the charade that it's all necessary. * It's used as an excuse to sell off valuable Greek state assets on the cheap to politically connected individuals and companies. * Or all of the above.

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