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Comment by tormeh | Hacker News Reader

Just a heads-up that the concept that the creditors must accept risk is a very anglo-saxon perspective. The German view is that debts are to be paid back, period. If you don't pay them back you're a morally deficient scoundrel. If you're ever bankrupt then the legal system will permanently brand you. German economics is a mix of Austrian school economics and strict morals.

It doesn't excuse the largely international banks a la Deutsche, but it does explain the Germanic outrage.

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just like germany paid off its debts post ww1 and ww2?

Half of the country got to suffer under the yoke of the USSR for half a century. The debt is paid.

There shouldn't have been /any/ debt after WWI (except to Belgium, who didn't ask to be a battle field in the self defense of Germany).

Russia, France, Britain, and the US should have paid reparations to Germany, not the other way around.

Why? Because Germany /didn't/ start the war. It just ended up as one of the losers.

Germany had huge territorial losses after both wars, parts of Germany were under forceful occupation for a long time afterwards, and they paid heavily in terms of manufacturing equipment and money afterwards. I'd say they paid.

Germany declared war on Russia and France, on August 1st and 3rd respectively. Not sure what you mean by:

> Why? Because Germany /didn't/ start the war. It just ended up as one of the losers.

It also didn't blame Germany for starting the war but for the damage caused by German troops.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_231_of_the_Treaty_of_V...

>Just a heads-up that the concept that the creditors must accept risk is a very anglo-saxon perspective. The German view is that debts are to be paid back, period.

It's neither Anglo-Saxon nor German. It's a creditor perspective.

The same perspective that brought us debtor's prisons, and even (in Roman times), the notion of bankruptcy meaning "selling yourself into slavery".

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