[blackshoe]

 mikeh, on 2015-July-15, 16:43, said:

Yes, look what happened under Bush, when the US government decided to allow Wall Street to run with much looser rules. Can you imagine how much MORE fun 2008-2012 would have been had the rules been eliminated completely, and the government had been forbidden to intervene? Wow.....utter economic ruin except for the brave, intelligent men (and they are always men in your favourite novels, aren't they?) who saw their way to riches, and didn't give a damn about how the masses suffered. If people aren't rich enough, smart enough, and sociopathic enough to triumph, then they don't count, do they?

Nice philosophy* you have there, Blackshoe

* cue the attempt to claim that his philosophy is being mis-represented, lol.

Straw man.

[mikeh]

 blackshoe, on 2015-July-15, 17:22, said:

Straw man.

You like to use that word, but it seems to me that you don't understand that describing an argument as being a 'strawman' argument doesn't make it so...you need to have an argument, not merely a (misused and maybe misunderstood) word that you think makes you sound intelligent

[Vampyr]

 mikeh, on 2015-July-15, 17:41, said:

You like to use that word, but it seems to me that you don't understand that describing an argument as being a 'strawman' argument doesn't make it so...you need to have an argument, not merely a (misused and maybe misunderstood) word that you think makes you sound intelligent

LOL!

[blackshoe]

 mikeh, on 2015-July-15, 17:41, said:

You like to use that word, but it seems to me that you don't understand that describing an argument as being a 'strawman' argument doesn't make it so...you need to have an argument, not merely a (misused and maybe misunderstood) word that you think makes you sound intelligent

 Vampyr, on 2015-July-15, 17:58, said:

LOL!

I hope you two are having fun.

[mike777]

 mikeh, on 2015-July-15, 17:00, said:

Clinton started the process, as far as I know, but the process gained momentum under Bush, especially in terms of the ratios by which the financial firms could leverage their assets....my understanding is that the SEC greatly loosened the rules/enforcement and that this was likely politically influenced. In any event, the point I was trying to make wasn't where to place the blame but to reflect on the real-world result of having government attempt to allow the market to govern itself to a greater degree than had been seen, after the Depression, as being a good idea.

Interestingly, the Canadian banking system arguably survived the 2008 meltdown as well as or better than the banking systems of any other industrialized country, precisely because our federal parliament years ago enacted legislation that, in combination with regulatory rules, greatly limited the ability of banks to leverage assets or weaken lending rules. The Canadian experience was so well-perceived that the Bank of England hired away the head of the Bank of Canada, who was treated in Canada as almost a rock star.

So the real world experiments of the last few years, altho admittedly the Canadian economy is dwarfed by that of the US, suggests pretty strongly that government not only can but should have the power to manage. Obviously it is possible to mismanage, but the evidence seems to suggest that governments, if not overly ideologically driven, won't do as much harm as will naked, unrestrained greed, which tends to dominate in the absence of such governmental management (assuming a functioning, largely free-of-corruption society).

INTERESTING.

It would nice to know what leverage rules and lending rules Canada imposes compared to the USA and why Canadian rules worked better.
Also what other rules Canada imposes to restrain greed. I hope no poster is calling for zero govt rules and wants "naked, unrestrained greed".

"Milton Friedman - Greed
In his book "Capitalism and Freedom" (1962) Milton Friedman (1912-2006) advocated minimizing the role of government in a free market as a means of creating political"
Here is a short video.

https://search.yahoo...an%20on%20greed

It should be noted there is a large amount of corruption in the USA so we do not seem to meet this one test.

[nige1]

IMO, a strawman argument misrepresents an opponent's position in an attempt to refute it. I'm afraid I do that, sometimes (by mistake). A few seem to do it, more often.

[kenberg]

The Greek leadership has made it completely clear that they will not be working cooperatively in implementing this plan. They will sign what they have to sign to get the money they need, and that's it. I would call this a bad situation.

[mike777]

 kenberg, on 2015-July-15, 20:24, said:

The Greek leadership has made it completely clear that they will not be working cooperatively in implementing this plan. They will sign what they have to sign to get the money they need, and that's it. I would call this a bad situation.

Hubris, for Italy, France, Spain, Portugal and many others to assume they can force/demand great economic change on others when they are unable to change themselves.

The Greeks will indeed act/live their future the way they choose.

[Trinidad]

 kenberg, on 2015-July-15, 20:24, said:

The Greek leadership has made it completely clear that they will not be working cooperatively in implementing this plan. They will sign what they have to sign to get the money they need, and that's it. I would call this a bad situation.

There is a significant difference between the previous packages and this one: In the previous packages they would get the money because they promised to start reforms. In this package they will need to show reforms first and they get money for reforms that are implemented. No implementation means no money.

Rik

[mike777]

 Trinidad, on 2015-July-15, 23:47, said:

There is a significant difference between the previous packages and this one: In the previous packages they would get the money because they promised to start reforms. In this package they will need to show reforms first and they get money for reforms that are implemented. No implementation means no money.

Rik

no

In fact they need and I bet get 7 billion Euros or much more by Monday.

Greece will always always get money...the problem is they need 995 billion not 95 billion for starters

YOu guys need to give Greeks more, much more.

See Sugar Daddy


1) before greek vote 50-60 billion
2) after greek vote 95 billion
3) how many more votes do you need?

[kenberg]

 Trinidad, on 2015-July-15, 23:47, said:

There is a significant difference between the previous packages and this one: In the previous packages they would get the money because they promised to start reforms. In this package they will need to show reforms first and they get money for reforms that are implemented. No implementation means no money.

Rik

Right. And I continue to hope for the best. I guess I was hoping for something like 'These terms are harsh, we were hoping for better. But we really need to make this work, our future depends on it, so we need to all get behind the only plan that is on the table". I am not so sure that they are there yet.

[y66]

Masterful Mario Joins Calls For Greek Debt Relief

Quote

Most of the questions at today’s press conference focused on Greece. Draghi threw his considerable muscle behind calls for Greece to receive debt relief, echoing the IMF, the US Treasury, and Athens, of course.

But the beautiful thing about Draghi’s intervention, is that he made it sound like the most natural, obvious thing in the world:

“It’s uncontroversial that debt relief is necessary and I think that nobody has ever disputed that. The issue is what is the best form of debt relief within our framework, within our legal institutional framework.

I think we should focus on this point in the coming weeks.”

Not, I suspect, what Angela Merkel wanted to hear a day before she asks a restless Bundestag to vote on the package.

Draghi also calmly declared that he expects Greece to repay the ECB on Monday, suggesting that it will get a bridge loan (perhaps even today).

Criticism of the ECB’s actions were swept to the boundary, with Draghi insistent that the governing council has simply followed its mandate. The drip-drip-drip of criticism that he’s been “asphyxiating” the Greek banking sector may have hit home.

Criticism has been “quite unwarranted”, he declared, explaining that the ECB had steered a sensible course between fuelling a bank run and crashing the whole system.

Draghi dealt just as firmly with suggestions that he could be more skeptical of Alexis Tsipras’s government, and its ability to do its job. That is hardly the role of an independent central bank chief (indeed, Berlin has already got this role covered).

There was mixed news for Greeks who can’t access their banks. Capital controls are going to be around for a while, until the threat of a bank run has receded.

But on a happier note, Draghi hinted that Greece could soon share in the ECB’s QE programme, if it sticks with its latest bailout programme.

In the meantime, we’ll: “continue to act on the assumption that Greece is and will ... remain a member of the euro area.”

And that won’t be shaken by any talk of ‘temporary Grexit’ from the likes of Wolfgang Schäuble.

In short, it was a picture of a central banker dutifully following his mandate, and quietly steering the eurozone through a mess that is not of his making.

[y66]

The Guardian's live coverage of recent and current events is impressive.

[kenberg]

Maybe I am just feeling good this morning but I wish to thank contributors to this thread for helping me better understand the dimensions of all of this.

I thought the referendum to be a mistake. Holding it was a mistake, regardless of the outcome. On this I think I was right. The referendum seemed so bad that I speculated that Tsipras really wanted to get Greece out of the Eurozone but he thought that the only politically feasible way to do it was to have the EU kick Greece out. On this I was wrong. Apparently he really wants to keep Greece in but he is simply out of touch with reality. He thought that the referendum would strengthen his hand. His political future does not look bright to me.

Comparisons with the reparations imposed on Germany by the Versailles Treaty had of course occurred to me and to practically everyone, I suppose. Same with the Marshall Plan. I was unaware of this debt restructuring in the London agreement of 1953. I think all of these matters are useful if looked at carefully.

Will part of the Greece debt need to be written off? My guess is yes, but no one thinks I am an expert. Does Greece need to make some fundamental changes in policy? Again my guess is yes, with the same caveat about my lack of expertise. These negotiations are tough. It is natural for intelligent well-intentioned forces to disagree, and it would be naive to think that self-interest never will play a role. So good luck to them all.

But I repeat. This thread has been very helpful to my understanding.

[Zelandakh]

 kenberg, on 2015-July-17, 08:17, said:

Comparisons with the reparations imposed on Germany by the Versailles Treaty had of course occurred to me and to practically everyone, I suppose.

How about comparisons with the reparations that Greece had agreement to obtain after WWII but that America successfully wrote off (along with 50% of the German debt across the board) by a clever use of language? Greek reparations were tied to a peace treaty with Germany but the USA chose to call the agreement something other than a peace treaty.

The funny thing is this. The current Greek government, the one everyone in Northern Europe seems to hate so much, has done more to reform the economy and lessen corruption than any Greek government since the war. The only sensible course is for the debt to be restructured, probably somewhere between 30 and 50 cents in the Euro. And if the creditors (Germany) refuse, I doubt the repercussions of defaulting, as bad as they will be, will be worse for Greece than the current situation. They need to do it now though, before Germany gets to buy up all of the assets they are forcing to be privatised.

[Al_U_Card]

 Zelandakh, on 2015-July-17, 09:25, said:

How about comparisons with the reparations that Greece had agreement to obtain after WWII but that America successfully wrote off (along with 50% of the German debt across the board) by a clever use of language? Greek reparations were tied to a peace treaty with Germany but the USA chose to call the agreement something other than a peace treaty.

The funny thing is this. The current Greek government, the one everyone in Northern Europe seems to hate so much, has done more to reform the economy and lessen corruption than any Greek government since the war. The only sensible course is for the debt to be restructured, probably somewhere between 30 and 50 cents in the Euro. And if the creditors (Germany) refuse, I doubt the repercussions of defaulting, as bad as they will be, will be worse for Greece than the current situation. They need to do it now though, before Germany gets to buy up all of the assets they are forcing to be privatised.

Exactly. Then Greece COULD reform their financial system to suit their needs (and not the eurobank's) but then again a coup and military junta would HAVE to be installed... SWEIN?

[y66]

Greece and Europe: Is Europe holding up its end of the bargain? by Ben Bernanke

Quote

This week the Greek parliament agreed to European demands for tough new austerity measures and structural reforms, defusing (for the moment, at least) the country's sovereign debt crisis. Now is a good time to ask: Is Europe holding up its end of the bargain? Specifically, is the euro zone's leadership delivering the broad-based economic recovery that is needed to give stressed countries like Greece a reasonable chance to meet their growth, employment, and fiscal objectives? Over the longer term, these questions are evidently of far greater consequence for Europe, and for the world, than are questions about whether tiny Greece can meet its fiscal obligations.

Unfortunately, the answers to these questions are also obvious. Since the global financial crisis, economic outcomes in the euro zone have been deeply disappointing. The failure of European economic policy has two, closely related, aspects: (1) the weak performance of the euro zone as a whole; and (2) the highly asymmetric outcomes among countries within the euro zone.

In late 2009 and early 2010 unemployment rates in Europe and the United States were roughly equal, at about 10 percent of the labor force. Today the unemployment rate in the United States is 5.3 percent, while the unemployment rate in the euro zone is more than 11 percent. Not incidentally, a very large share of euro area unemployment consists of younger workers; the inability of these workers to gain skills and work experience will adversely affect Europe's longer-term growth potential.

Currently, the unemployment rate in the euro zone ex Germany exceeds 13 percent, compared to less than 5 percent in Germany. Other economic data show similar discrepancies within the euro zone between the "north" (including Germany) and the "south."

[These developments] pose serious medium-term challenges for the euro area. The promise of the euro was both to increase prosperity and to foster closer European integration. But current economic conditions are hardly building public confidence in European economic policymakers or providing an environment conducive to fiscal stabilization and economic reform; and European solidarity will not flower under a system which produces such disparate outcomes among countries.

The risks for the European project posed by these economic developments are real, no matter what the reasons for them may be. In fact, the reasons are not so difficult to identify. The slow recovery from the crisis of the euro zone as a whole is the result, among other factors, of (1) political resistance that delayed by many years the implementation of sufficiently aggressive monetary policies by the European Central Bank; (2) excessively tight fiscal policies, especially in countries like Germany that have some amount of "fiscal space" and thus no immediate need to tighten their belts; and (3) delays in taking the necessary steps, analogous to the banking "stress tests" in the United States in the spring of 2009, to restore confidence in the banking system. I would not, by the way, put "structural rigidities" very high on this list. Structural reforms are important for long-run growth, but cost-saving measures are less relevant when many workers are already idle; moreover, structural problems have existed in Europe for a long time and so can't explain recent declines in performance.

[mike777]

As many point out the purpose of the Euro was to prevent another France vs Germany war.


Now they expect Greeks to pay the price of peace.
------------

As Y66 pointed out in his posts, Europe needs a kindly old sugar daddy.

A sugar daddy that will demand and expect a few favors now and then but not that many as he is older and kinder.

In return Europe gets a Daddy.

[Al_U_Card]

Draghi was vice chairman and managing director of Goldman Sachs International and a member of the firm-wide management committee (2002–2005).

Like "one-time" Cypriot bail-ins, the cyclical nature of debt-service and wealth transfer is really what matters. It shouldn't be long now...

[Gerben42]

 mike777, on 2015-July-18, 00:00, said:

As many point out the purpose of the Euro was to prevent another France vs Germany war.


Now they expect Greeks to pay the price of peace.
------------

As Y66 pointed out in his posts, Europe needs a kindly old sugar daddy.

A sugar daddy that will demand and expect a few favors now and then but not that many as he is older and kinder.

In return Europe gets a Daddy.

The point of the European Union (not of the Euro) was to create a peaceful Europe. The Euro was sort of forced upon Germany as a demand for unification. At the time, especially in Britain, there was a lot of distrust in Germany, which is shown in the fact that Germany was forced to sign a document that it would recognize the Oder-Neiße border to Poland. I mean what kind of treaty is that? If someone like Hitler comes to power again, sure he'll say: "OK let's bring back Alsace back but for Pomerania I have this treaty here saying my eastern border is at the Oder". I doubt it.

Anyway for me as a Dutchman I would probably have supported the German reunion on the premises that if the most powerful country suddenly needs to incorporate a technically bankrupt and economically messed-up country (which was the case in East-Germany) that's fine. And in fact it did cost about a trillion Euro already and still the East is economically behind. Also no one is or should be complaining about this reunification, since it was the right way to go. There would have been no way to fix former East Germany to where it is now if it had remained an independent country.

When the Euro started, in fact it was the "north" that was most sceptical about the Euro, I mean not having to exchange currency when going on holiday is nice, but in the "north" we had nice stable currencies and were happy with them. Why risk pulling in some weaker candidates like Spain and Italy?

On the other hand, the "south" saw the Euro as great opportunity, and in the short term it helped them as they now had a currency much more trusted than Peseta or Lire. It was so attractive, that Greece (which didn't qualify) hired Goldman & Sachs to make it look like they did meet the targets. Also many European politicians thought it would be strategically helpful to have Greece in.

Then the Euro came, and the "south" was happy, and the "north" was sceptical. And rightly so. The "south" had all reason to be happy, since they could now lend money cheaply with a trusted currency. In the "north", not much changed except that we didn't have to exchange money anymore. In fact people remained sceptical as the perceived inflation increased. This is a psychological effect since people still perform the exchange in their head and their reference price remains stuck in the last century.

And now suddenly Germany is the bad guy, although it really was the rest of Europe who were worried about too much German dominance and wanted to reduce this with the Euro.