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Comment by SuddsMcDuff | Hacker News Reader

I think your argument is predicated on the notion that banks lending money is somehow a benevolent, charitable act. It isn't. In a fractional reserve banking system, making loans is precisely how banks make their money.

Unless of course they get greedy and start making ill-advised, unsecured bad loans. Then their greed is going to come back and bite them in the ass when the debtor can't pay.

Lets not forget the Goldman Sachs helped Greece to cook the books to get into the Eurozone in the first place.

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>Lets not forget the Goldman Sachs helped Greece to cook the books to get into the Eurozone in the first place.

Two possibilities exist: The EU knew what they were getting into and they deserve this mess, or they didn't know what they were getting into and they aren't qualified to run a multinational currency with zero flexibility.

^this.

Or a third option, they were manipulated into getting to this mess by a 3rd party who stands to make an awful, awful lot of money from it.

So if banks don't give Greece money to prevent it from turning into Mogadishu, then who do they expect to keep the country afloat? I mean they haven't been able to do that for 90 years. They need to keep taking out loans, and now suddenly the hand that was feeding them are the bad guys?

What kind of logic is that?

There's no good guys and bad guys in this. You must understand that unless a loan is issued with a zero or negative interest rate, it will always have a net negative impact on your balance. Where else does the money to repay the interest come from?

This is especially true with central banks, where every € you receive comes with debt attached. How do you repay the interest on those debts? You have to borrow more €'s from the central bank, which also come with more debt attached. And so your debt burden increases exponentially until you're crippled by interest repayments. It is mathematically impossible to repay debt in these circumstances.

It takes two parties to get into a mess like this. As the old saying goes, "if you owe the bank $50 thousand, you're in trouble. If you owe the bank $50 billion, you're in it together".

> There's no good guys and bad guys in this. You must understand that unless a loan is issued with a zero or negative interest rate, it will always have a net negative impact on your balance. Where else does the money to repay the interest come from?

Why the hell would anyone give out loans in first place if they are going to get zero to negative interest rates? Even Islamic banking takes equity or other ways of making sure that they are rewarded for lending money.

I'm just trying to see it from your view but you simply demonize EU and Banks because it gives the borrower a hard time without considering that it's also the lender's money and opportunity cost at stake here. It's not very convincing.

> "Why the hell would anyone give out loans in first place if they are going to get zero to negative interest rates?"

Good question, ask the ECB - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/jeremy-warner/115...

> "you simply demonize EU and Banks"

Wow, after all your Greece trash talk you accuse ME of demonizing? This is no longer a rational conversation.

There is no "hand that was feeding them". If it was such a bad deal then you would imagine creditors would stop lending at some point.

The most likely thing that would have happened is that at some point Greece would have entered a financial crisis, devalued its currency, and gone off as usual. As it's happened countless times in other places.

The banks are going to run out of money within days without emergency funds from EU. Who would they have to beg next to secure those funds if not EU? I'm genuinely curious. Print more money to pay for all the debt? How is that going to work out?

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