But that makes it no less the bankers losses that were covered with public money.
No, the debts will not go away. Everyone loves to crap on big banks but in this case Greece owes money to EU nations.
Unrelated side note: Bringing up the second world war makes Greece sound even more petty. What's wrong with you people?
Only because the private debts were nationalized in the last bailout round, which was basically a joint bailout of Greece's public finances and German/French banks, all of which were on the brink of insolvency. The bonds were previously mostly held by French and German banks, and the agreement did two things: 1) Greece was given a big chunk of money on the condition that most of it be sent back north to pay off a portion of their bonds; and 2) much of the remaining bad debt was shifted to public books, in the process being restructured with more generous terms. Greece has a large part of the fault in this whole saga, but they are not the only reason these originally privately held debts have now ended up on public books.
I do think from a realpolitik perspective Greece is playing hardball at the wrong time: they had a much stronger negotiating position in 2010 than they do now, when much of the "contagion" problem has been contained. But the government at the time stupidly agreed to a set of terms that solved the German/French problem while containing but not solving the Greek problem. Few serious economists at the time believed the package was a workable one for Greece, unless you thought some extremely optimistic projects of Greek GDP growth were realistic; it was seen as at best kicking the can down the road. But by 2015 when Greeks realized that and voted in a government willing to play hardball, they are no longer in a good negotiating position.
Syriza wants to be forced out of the Euro so they can continue to play the xenophobic game and blame Europe, or rather Germany. The rest of the EU wants Greece to decide to leave, so they don't have to go to their voters and say "we tried everything, they didn't want help ..." and avoid admitting that the critics of the bailout were right all along.
In this game, time is on Greece's side, because as long as nobody blinks, all that sweet EU money is still raining down on Athens.
Moving bankers bad investments onto public books is a monumentally poor decision for everyone, and the effects of the decision should be undone.
However, if France and Germany have no appetite for holding their bankers responsible for their poor investments, and if they can honestly convince their citizens to pay for the bankers poor investments, then that is a (poor) decision they can make (and have so far made). The better decision is to require repayment of bonusses, let the losses materially affect banks shareprices, and let bank-shareholders lawsuits handle the rest.
On the other side, pushing the financial burden of a bankers bailout onto the greeks is counterproductive to everyone (who is not a banker) in the eurozone, and is morally disgusting.
While this is a consistent position that has historically been held by some, it's incompatible with any modern economy. In particular it is incompatible with the modern concepts of old-age pension, health insurance, unemployment insurance etc.
The german and french bankers should not have bought greek government bonds at the prices they did considering the greek levels of public debt.
Anyway, what is deemed risky is highly subjective and easy to see only in hindsight.
What is ugly is when foreign states impose non-sensical demands of another country as part of a move to bail out their own banks.
The real question is: why is Greece not going the democratic way of defaulting on its external debt? And the answer is, as you know well, that Greece wants to continue receiving all that sweet EU money. Why stop a good thing?
... impose non-sensical demands ...
Iceland (the country, the government) was not in much debt and did not default. Icelandic banks did default and went bankrupt. The banks (Kaupthing, Glitnir and Landsbank) were split so that Icelandic debts and assets were moved into new surviving publicly owned domestic versions of the banks, and the foreign remnants of the banks were placed into receivership and liquidation.
Russia, the country, actually defaulted. Russia is today not known as a safe place for investments (though the history of a default is just a small part there; in Russia's assets, it has huge energy reserves, and in its liabilities, it has kleptocracy, corruption and an arbitrary justice system).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_default#List_of_sove...
It's a great decision for the banks, and the politicians that got their cut. It's (only) a bad decision for you and me, the tax payers, who are being raped.
You can make the argument that the other EU countries taxpayers had to cover Greek debt to banks (including Greek banks) with their own taxpayer money - but that is something that only the other EU countries could complain about!
And there was very clearly a shifting of "bankers losses onto public books" when Greece was pushed to repurchase bonds from banks at values far above their market value with money lent to Greece for that express purpose.
And yes I think that we exactly agree that other countries could cover the losses that the banks incurred on their bad investments in greek bonds. But I, very clearly, think that the other countries should not cover those losses on bad investments, but rather demand payback of bonuses paid 2000-2008 to anyone responsible for the greek government bond investments.
(I wrote "part of" because there was a haircut involved for the private lenders. They /did/ take a loss.)
Edit: tpyo.
Now there is a crisis, and the unsustainability of the public debt of country A is undeniable to everyone, so no-one will buy the bonds, well maybe for 5 EUR. However, through lobbying etc. a deal is struck so that Country B lends Country A 60 EUR to buy the bonds for the artificially high price of 53 EUR, thereby allowing the banks to escape the full writedown from 100 EUR to 5 EUR, but pushing 48 EUR of unrealized bankers loss onto the public books of Country A (debtor) and Country B (creditor).
Nevermind the theoretical principles involved, the actual numbers are quite different from what you probably believe: All in all, around 200 Billion Euros of private creditor debt was restructured:
1) 107 Billion Euros were simply written off
2) 62,4 Billion Euros of old private bonds were exchanged into new private bonds
3) Only 29,7 Billion Euros were paid out to private creditors and shifted onto the books of other Eurozone governments.
I don't see we disagree about the numbers? Of the 200 Billion, only about half of the losses were realized. The rest was pushed onto public books (as new bonds or as bailout-loans).
Yes.
> Are you aware that that situation would have meant MUCH bigger cuts to public spending than those requested from the so called Troika?
No, I am not, that's because this scenario is nothing but fear-mongering without any base in reality. It is always put up when an alternative to the current course is discussed but is nothing but hot air. If you are "aware" that your scenario would have happened provide a proof.
There is no mathematical proof for what I'm saying, but even the economists who suggested that Greece should have defaulted and left the euro were saying (I would say they were aware) that things would have become much worse before they became better.
That is as certain an economic forecast as one can be - the point some economists were/are making is that in the long run Greece will come out better from a fresh start with a default and outside the euro, with a devalued Dracma that would make Greeks poorer but more competitive internationally. But there is no guarantee that Greece would actually recover from an event like that and come back to the first world - especially if it alienates the whole EU in the process.
All those factors will help Greece rebuild but it is a very unpleasant way of reforming a country that has had an urgent need for reforms for decades. Unpleasant as in: people will die.
A smarter country with better voters would grab the chance it has been given to do those reforms in a slower and more orderly fashion and say "Thank You!" to the IMF and the EU. And then spend the next 30 years apologizing :)
Even if current Greek debt was wiped out overnight, the government would still need loans just to pay day-to-day bills. It's hard to tell how much since lying about government spending is a Greek institution (for example, they've "revised" the 2009 deficit number 3/4 times since then) but conservatively a few billion a month would be required even if they had no debt.
The unfairly vilified troika not only gave Greece the money to pay off all their loans at very reasonable rates but also promised to continue to lend money to give Greece some time to sort out their primary deficit (deficit without interest payments). No Syriza is telling the rest of the EU that they will reverse the moves to fix the primary deficit but that the EU must continue to pay for it.
Edit: yes it was a partial default, so what I meant is defined as "disorderly default".