Don’t worry about vacationing in Greece. Especialy if you go the islands (Athens suck anyway). Italy/Spain/Portugal would be fine too of course (I’m in Sevilla now), but Greeks know not to screw with their tourists (figuratively speaking! I’m sure a lot of literal screwing of American tourists are going on - US tourist girls do have a reputation in Europe they work hard to maintain).
Except he didn’t just say Greece. He said “the south European countries cheapen the value of the currency”
Add up the respective populations of the poorer southern countries and you’re looking at a reasonable proportion of the entire EU, certainly enough to affect the price of the Euro. , and as a major exporter Germany will benefit from that.
How else would you explain close to full employment and record exports for a decade while most of Europe - inc. France - suffered.
FFS, until 2010 the value of German exports was greater than the USA, on 1/4 of the population. At the same time Spain’s unemployment had hit 20% and was rising fast. In the euro zone.
This is not remotely controversial. Aside from control of the European economies it is the most significant reason for the entire German/Euro project.
It’s sheer fantasy. I don’t remember the statistics, but I seem to recall reading that Greeks worked longer hours than Germans pre-crash.
It’s also vaguely producerist, if on false premises.
And it’s kind of racist, but the last time I said that on this board the racial essentialists were confused because they think white people can’t be racist against white people.
That’s just silly. The Euro is not some devious Teutonic plan to enslave Europe to a German export regime. It isn’t and never was a German construct. Mainly it was invented by France as a means to try to keep some control over a reunified Germany and reluctantly accepted by Germany to get French ok to the reunification.
Germany was actually doing pretty badly during the 90s, sometimes at the time referred to as the sick man of Europe. It was only with a number of fairly harsh labour reforms in the early 2000’s that they started to get into shape (although regions of Germany are still doing very bad). Germany’s success as an export nation isn’t dependent on the Euro, and the problem with putting strings on the German export machine for the benefit of France/Spain/Italy is that Germany is on the global market competing against the likes of USA and China. Denmark/Belgium/The Netherlands and other of Germany’s neighbors are all benefiting immensely as subcontractors from German industrial exports to the global market. France/Spain/Italy should be able to do the same. It’s not the Euro which stands in their way of realising their economic potential, it’s business, labour and tax reforms. The same goes for Greece which is still beat by the likes of Belarus and Botswana in the World Bank Ease of Doing Business index. When you’re doing worse than a wannabe communist dictatorship then it’s a pretty good indicator that there are still plenty of low hanging fruit to be plucked.
That’s a lot of ideology. Which aren’t going to help Greece any. The facts are that they don’t export very much, and what they do export are mainly tourism and Russian/Chinese transits – meanwhile they are extremely reliant on imports. Whether facts are fantasy, producerists or racist, they remain facts.
It’s success will certainly be influenced by the Euro exchange rate. You can sell a lot more Mercedes when they’re 20% cheaper due to a slide against the dollar.
Well, they can print the paper. The trouble is getting someone else to accept it.
I recommend some reading of history for an understanding of the drawbacks of simply printing up money to pay foreign debts, or read what Rune has posted.
It they were to inflate their currency, that amounts to a cut to all wages, pensions, and the value of all debt held in that currency.
IOW the creditors should learn their lesson, write off current Greek debt, and not loan them another Euro. Or perhaps they should have learned their lesson back when the Greeks defaulted on about half the loans last time.
A country can print all the money it wants. It provides good exercise for the citizenry (as in 1930s Germany, where you needed to cart your money around in a wheelbarrow to have enough to buy a few basic goods).
The referendum is still on.
It’s not a vote on the Euro.
It’s seeking a popular mandate to strengthen the government’s hand in negotiations.
He’s calling for a No vote.
Greece is still at the negotiating table.
It’s a move-by-move plan. Many are concerned about the unknown and god only knows the corporate media is intent on scaring them, of course he has to be seen to be trying everything possible.
They just have to stand firm, together. Fuck the Germans.
Lets hope the owners of capital/lenders finally get to learn the lesson that they are not indemnified from all risk by taxpayers.
Pretty much the point of interest is risk vs. return. It’s a business judgement, not a socialist back stop bail out scheme as Goldman Sachs conveniently believe.
Oh, I’m sure it’s part of a grand plan. So, he first qualitatively accepted (most) of the terms, then took two firm steps back by calling for a no vote which would negate them. Genius! I’m sure this will work out well for the Greeks…fuck those Germans!
So, he first qualitatively accepted (most) of the terms, then took two firm steps back by calling for a no vote which would negate them. Genius! I’m sure this will work out well for the Greeks…fuck those Germans!