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Comment by vixen99 | Hacker News Reader

I'm just wondering what the heck Greece has done with the some half trillion Euros it's sucked in over the years and which hard-pressed taxpayers across Europe, many with standards of living below that of the average Greek, will now be helping to offset?

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> Less than 10% of the bailout money was left to be used by the government for reforming its economy and safeguarding weaker members of society.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/29/where-did-the-g...

That's completely meaningless nonsense, money is fungible.

Doesn't change the fact that the previous bailout was in practice a bailout of French and German banks and other private bondholders.

Another case of profits being privatized and losses being socialized.

> Only a small fraction of the €240bn (£170bn) total bailout money Greece received in 2010 and 2012 found its way into the government’s coffers to soften the blow of the 2008 financial crash and fund reform programmes.

> Most of the money went to the banks that lent Greece funds before the crash.

They money from the bailouts went to pay debts that Greece owed on pre-2008 loans, and was not available to the Greek government to be used for social or economic restructuring.

I'm not certain at all what your basis for your comment is.

Almost all of it was used for dept payments I believe.

Alas, this sort of thing (protect the interests of capital) is pretty normal. In the US, bankers got a bailout and homeowners lost their homes for example.

Of the bailout money, yes. But bear in mind that the bailout money (at least the initial tranche) was to take on debt that had already been spent. It most definitely is not that case that that money was spent on debt re-payments.

It's fair to say that a lot of subsequent additional money was primarily used to cover debt re-payments but that's because the original debt was so large (relative to the Greek economy).

Well the ECB could just print couple of trillion euro and hang them out divided to each country. We will have a little inflation and that's it. Greece will be debt free and there will be no burdens on the taxpayers.

Actually Greece has a printing press for Euros (apparently you can tell which euro notes are printed in Greece by the serial number). I have been half expecting Greece to solve all its problems by just printing.

They need authorization from ECB and the printer prints only 10 euros.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/06/return-drachma...

I think if you are going to run the biggest heist in history you are not going to ask permission :)

The Euro notes has codes for both the issuing central bank and the printer facility.

http://www.eurotracer.net/information/notes.php

Me thinks even the Greeks would not have too much problem putting the German code on their new notes. Of course this would be interpreted as a declaration of war by the eu so it would not be wise.

In the early 20th century there was a high-profile case in Portugal, where a forger managed to convice Waterlow and Sons (a currency printer in the UK, since bought by De La Rue and currently one of the Euro printers) to print batches of portuguese notes.

These were, of course, indistinguishable from real notes. The scheme ultimately failed when a mistake caused the printing of duplicate serial numbers already ordered by the state.

I doubt a scheme like this would work today in the slightest. If in an un-digitized world this didn't last long, in today's world it would quickly be discovered.

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

This is a bit different in that Greece has control over a real printing press. While it would be unlikely to be kept hidden, it should be possible for the Greek printers to avoid overlapping serials numbers.

In practice they could only start their own “unauthorised” printing if it was kept secret since if it leaked the ECB would just issue new notes. This would likely be highly disruptive to the ECB as it was to Portugal.

500 000 million spread over 10 million people for 20 years is only 2500 euros per person per year. Assuming a large chunk of this amount was interest then it makes a lot more sense where all the money went.

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