Greece votes OXI/No on more Austerity measures

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85%? I thought it was 90%. Did they change that when I wasn't looking?

EDIT: They did, in 2012. Sneaky German government.
 
Xando said:
ESM percentages:
CJqOo5yWEAAPY88.png


You need 15% to block emergency clause.
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wait portugal subscribe 17 billion? why?
 
Real talk: Varoufakis is prolly watching this and pissing himself with laughter right now. "You thought i was the radical one? bwhahahaha shower of cunts"

Uzzy said:
That 'de-politicising administrative tasks', is that basically just saying we want to bypass the Greek government, to ensure any new government can't demand changes?
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Dunno, i read that as "privatize everything".
 
Twist: this was all a ruse by Tsipras to cause a "real emergency" situation und thus unlock that ESM rule that lowers the barrier to 85% in case of such an emergency.
 
ItWasMeantToBe19 said:
Some were speculating that Finland's politicians got super pissed about Greece trying to get help from Russia. Is there any truth to that or is it just idle speculation?
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Well, Tsipras called Puttin as one of the first things after the referendum. Though Russia made it pretty clear that they aren't interested in helping Greece.
 
The saddest thing is that if they're planning to use the emergency ESM voting system, then basically the system is "Germany decides", because German, France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, plus Greece's own share, is enough to make 85%, and France, Italy, Spain and Portugal are all in favour of helping. Conversely, without Germany's assent, even if every other nation agreed, it couldn't go through.

I mean, this is absolutely horrific. There is no European Union right now, it's the "help Germany get the monies" union.
 
I hope they approve the bailout, partially because I'm getting tired of all these Euro conferences. They block one of the streets I pass.
 
the irony is that those "reforms" violate European Constitution as well, were they to be applied to Greece! Not that Greece's Constitution hasnt been violated already, both from within and outside
 
PdotMichael said:
17 billion on paper. In reality Portugal paid only 2 billion. Greece is in the same ballpark.

Germany also takes the risk for Portugal, Spain, Greece, Italy and Ireland completly.
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How does this work? Practically Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Ireland got loans to contribute to ESM?
 
Coriolanus said:
You can look at examples in recent history of countries defaulting and see what happens. The only one where things went as bad as in Greece with its adoption of austerity was Zimbabwe, and that place has the same idiot running it for three god damned decades.
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My understanding is greece didn't successfully implement austerity measures. I'm not an expert on any of this, but couldn't that be one of the reasons greece is a complete basketcase right now? And this is one of the reasons greece has so many credibility issues for a 3rd loan right now.
 
Xando said:
The real news here is that the plan has actual countries supporting it.
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Real news here is if this was to go through, Spain, Italy, Portugal, whoever will go down this road, because it basically puts in a place a mechanism to deal with such countries and a precedent. You basically get Exit of all southern Europe confirmed.
 
PopcornMegaphone said:
My understanding is greece didn't successfully implement austerity measures. I'm not an expert on any of this, but couldn't that be one of the reasons greece is a complete basketcase right now? And this is one of the reasons greece has so many credibility issues for a 3rd loan right now.
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chart-2.svg
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They did plenty of austerity. And that is the problem because Austerity is complete economic bunk
 
PopcornMegaphone said:
My understanding is greece didn't successfully implement austerity measures. I'm not an expert on any of this, but couldn't that be one of the reasons greece is a complete basketcase right now? And this is one of the reasons greece has so many credibility issues for a 3rd loan right now.
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Even if you look at the success stories to which it is usually compared (spainportugalireland), their gdp is still fucked, their unemployment is still higher than it was pre-crisis and their debt is way the fuck higher. Which then leaves those that argue for austerity trying to defend that "those bubbles, they was insustainable" and hoping that no one looks at what happened to the US with its "let's partially spend ourselves out of a crisis" approach.

You can always go the "different countries need different kinds of austerity" route, however, but good luck trying to form a good plan to determine such things.

As for the confidence bit, that is mostly related to its current administration, which, until very recently, was the least corrupt in Greece's recent history. Which puts things in kind of an odd contrast, since the EU quite liked to deal with the previous, grotesquely corrupt administrations that consistently failed to implement reforms properly, if you choose to entertain that particular brand of thought. I mean, it aint syriza that's been fucking up for five years.
 
KingSnake said:
I don't know, Merkel was praising the hell out of the previous government last year.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303873604579495000051938112
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I'm referring to this post from the IMF:

Critique 3: Growth-killing structural reforms, together with fiscal austerity, have led to an economic depression

-Given the dismal productivity growth record of Greece before the program, a number of structural reforms were seen as necessary, ranging from a reform of the tax administration, to reduced barriers to entry in many professions, to reforms of pensions, to reforms of collective bargaining, to reforms of the judicial system, etc.

-Many of these reforms were either not implemented, or not implemented on a sufficient scale. Efforts to improve tax collection and the payment culture failed completely. There was fierce resistance to open closed sectors and professions. Only 5 of 12 planned IMF reviews under the current program were completed, and only one has been completed since mid-2013, because of the failure to implement reforms.

-The decrease in output was indeed much larger than had been forecast. Multipliers were larger than initially assumed. But fiscal consolidation explains only a fraction of the output decline. Output above potential to start, political crises, inconsistent policies, insufficient reforms, Grexit fears, low business confidence, weak banks, all contributed to the outcome.
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Link
 
PopcornMegaphone said:
I'm referring to this post from the IMF:




Link
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IMF is laughing stock, they recognized many times they fucked up and their plans all failed the next day they say the opposite, the next they say the same of the first day, and so on. IMF should just be completely replaced by other institution that isn't bias towards right wing economic policies
 
KingSnake said:
Again, this was the job of the previous government which was praised in the past years. There's no complain from Merkel about them after the German federal elections and until early this year.
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I'm not referring to Merkel's comments, but to the effectiveness of the austerity measures themselves.

Please note - I don't think austerity has been good for greece, but the IMF post says they did a poor job implementing them. That could be one of the reasons they are in a deep depression right now. Additionally it's one of the reasons other countries are reluctant to give a 3rd loan.
 
Tugatrix said:
IMF is laughing stock, they recognized many times they fucked up and their plans all failed the next day they say the opposite, the next they say the same of the first day, and so on. IMF should just be completely replaced by other institution that isn't bias towards right wing economic policies
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The answer, it turned out, was that it wasn’t very good statistical work. A review by the IMF found that the methods Alesina used in an attempt to identify examples of sharp austerity produced many misidentifications. For example, in 2000 Finland’s budget deficit dropped sharply thanks to a stock market boom, which caused a surge in government revenue – but Alesina mistakenly identified this as a major austerity programme. When the IMF laboriously put together a new database of austerity measures derived from actual changes in spending and tax rates, it found that austerity has a consistently negative effect on growth.

Yet even the IMF’s analysis fell short – as the institution itself eventually acknowledged. I’ve already explained why: most historical episodes of austerity took place under conditions very different from those confronting western economies in 2010. For example, when Canada began a major fiscal retrenchment in the mid-1990s, interest rates were high, so the Bank of Canada could offset fiscal austerity with sharp rate cuts – not a useful model of the likely results of austerity in economies where interest rates were already very low. In 2010 and 2011, IMF projections of the effects of austerity programmes assumed that those effects would be similar to the historical average. But a 2013 paper co-authored by the organisation’s chief economist concluded that under post-crisis conditions the true effect had turned out to be nearly three times as large as expected.
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http://www.theguardian.com/business/ng-interactive/2015/apr/29/the-austerity-delusion

Well, even the IMF, or at least some portion of it, realizes that austerity is disastrous. I think it is pretty clear that Europe and Germany are driving this austerity clusterfuck.
 
Look at German ZDF's interpretation of Germany's temporary Grexit proposal:

22:12 Grexit auf Zeit?
Das Bundesfinanzministerium erwägt offenbar bei einem Scheitern der Griechenland-Verhandlungen, einen vorübergehenden Austritt Athens aus der Währungsunion vorzuschlagen. In einem Vorbereitungspapier für das Sondertreffen der Finanzminister der Eurozone in Brüssel sei als eine Option ein sogenannter Grexit für mindestens fünf Jahre genannt, bestätigten EU-Kreise einen Bericht der "Frankfurter Allgemeinen Sonntagszeitung". Die "Welt am Sonntag" berichtete unter Berufung auf Koalitionskreie, das Papier sei auch mit Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel (CDU) "diskutiert" worden.
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They state their proposal is only for the case the negotiations fail.
 
PopcornMegaphone said:
I'm not referring to Merkel's comments, but to the effectiveness of the austerity measures themselves.

Please note - I don't think austerity has been good for greece, but the IMF post says they did a poor job implementing them. That could be one of the reasons they are in a deep depression right now. Additionally it's one of the reasons other countries are reluctant to give a 3rd loan.
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The Greek government wasn't alone on the planet. They were under the supervision of IMF and Troika. The way IMF loans work is that if you don't stick to the plan you don't get the next batch. Guess what, they got all the money. If you come now and say that they didn't follow the plan, that means you were protecting them for political reasons. So it's bullshit.
 
Acorn said:
Any other good twitter people to follow, I'm following Paul Mason who seems to be on top of the story.
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If you want reporting, I would say Peter Spiegel, Bruno Waterfield or Yannis Koutsomitis are a good start. Paul Mason is Syriza's lapdog, TBH.

If you want different views, there's too many to mention.
 
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