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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

I think you've responded to the wrong comment. I never claimed an 8-10% deficit.

Also: you haven't explained how Greece can support itself, minus the loans, while still running a deficit even before interest payments on those loans.

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You said there was no surplus, which I take to mean expenses == receipts. In that case, it's obvious how it will support itself (if you ignore the loans). Do you have sources for a deficit?

That was 2014. In 2015 they're apparently tracking towards an actual primary deficit.

The point of discussing the 2014 and 2013 numbers is to rebut the notion that Greece had somehow found stable footing, and were being victimized by punitive negotiations from the troika. I didn't introduce that idea to the thread, but I did object to it.

Yes, I think you will concede that 2015 is not a year to use for forward projections. The country has been paying loans without external help, the uncertainty means no investment incoming, tourism is hit, and people in the country are withdrawing cash from the banks and hiding it in their houses, not spending it.

As for the punitive Troika, they had 5 years to run the country and they failed in every single projection they made. Every memorandum was meant to be the last, and they had the governments of their choice. How many more years of full cooperation do they expect before they accept that yes, perhaps the system isn't working. But I refuse to believe they're idiots at this point. The programmes are meant to appease the average German voter and serve as a warning to the Spaniards and Italians. Basically, punitive.

Why would I concede that? 2015 Greece has begun privatization and should be feeling the impact of other reforms started in the preceding years. We're only talking about primary budgets, not debt service. Why would I think Greece in 2015 would have poorer intrinsics than in the preceding years?

It's not the intrinsics. It's the whole list of special one-off factors at play. By the way, Greece started privatization in the 90's, not in 2015.

When there's no external assistance and the government pays loans out of its budget, it means it's not paying something else internally, usually some business it owes money to. If you feel that that is a non-factor in economic destruction and therefore tax receipts, then sure, have your own numbers.

The question is how the country would fare if the debt wasn't there, but the rest of the economy was functioning properly.

As a disclosure, I am Greek and have intimate knowledge of facts of the ground. If we can't agree the past six months are not "normal" there's very little to talk about.

Whatever privatization they started in the 90s, there was a newsworthy spike in it after the troika negotiations started; here's the Reuters piece I was thinking of when I mentioned privatization earlier:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/28/us-greece-politics...

Another reason why you shouldn't take this year as idicative. However, you said "2015 Greece has begun privatization" whereas the article says the exact opposite. I'm not sure what point you're debating at this point.

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