I don't understand this comment. What about this article makes you think the Greeks can't make decisions for themselves? Is their land unsuitable for farming, and manufacture, and services? Did someone setup an embargo against them?

Furthermore, the idea of needing to overhaul things at a global level makes many assumptions. For example, that anyone has the authority and intelligence to tell the entire world how it should function.

Decisions for themselves? Hah. It's not in the article, but Schäuble and the other EU finance ministers have set out to make an example out of Greece, or the apparatchiks just don't like the radical lefties that got into power. Paul Krugman has mused, before, EUcrats could tell government officials what to do, and when they follow them, even if the country fails and they get voted out, they'd get cushy EU jobs. But the current Greek government don't want cushy EU jobs, they want to save the population. That and other things (domino effect, if Greece gets forgiveness, the other countries would want it too) mean it is in the EUcrats' best interest to see Greece fail.

Meanwhile, Schäuble's policy of Austerity über Alles mean the Greek government has been forced to abandon policies that might've rebooted the economy, and be forced to cut spending in hopes that the "confidence fairy" shows up. Even the IMF has said this policy is stupid...

I don't know, all I see is a goverment that tries to perpetuate the old system, only with their people in place. The recent TV spectrum fiasco is a good example. A SYRIZA-friendly construction mogul got a large loan to bid on a license, with no real guarantees except from a pasture whose ownership wasn't even clear. The subsequent findings showed that the bank essentially gave him "free" loans ever since SYRIZA came into power and put their people into various positions in the bank.

The entire system is fucked, and I would consider booting everyone out of the parliament and becoming an EU protectorate a better option for the future of Greece, austerity or no austerity.

This is a really good talk that will give some valuable insight into how Greece has been bullied. (YANIS VAROUFAKIS | NOAM CHOMSKY, NYPL, 26 April) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szIGZVrSAyc

More than 90% of the bailout money went to banks, not to Greece. Bank recapitalization via the back door while blaming Greece.

Greeks don't have complete sovereignty in the EU. They've repeatedly voted for that arrangement (I happen to think it's a terrible one).

But the parent comment alleges a breakdown of the international system meriting, as I read it, global revolution. Given that we're in something of a golden age of humanity--what with record-low rates of per-capita violent-death rates, relative economic prosperity and technological advantage--the claim needs more than a First World country experiencing hardships around paying property taxes.

Just so I'm clear, you are claiming that the finance ministers are purposely rigging things so that Greece will fail -- that all those loans and such were part of a plan to make an example out of them.

First I've heard of this, but I haven't been following it. It sounds quite far-fetched though. I must be missing something.

That is the generally accepted view of the Greek crisis in much of Europe

- The Euro hid huge debts in the same way securitised debt did in US. People would lend (via bonds) to risky countries (Greece and Spain) at the same EuroBond rate they lent to less risky countries (Germany, and well just Germany).

And Greece took this and spent - at first on good infrastructure but slowly on low performing roads to nowhere and a lot on non capital spending (social welfare) And particular Greek social Problems made it far worse (a political class removed from the populace, etc)

As the crisis hit Greece could not repay these huge debts and could not devalue their currency (the Euro was not theirs). And they got loans from Germany (cos a lot of German banks owned the A rated bonds) and paid interest with the loans thus doing nothing to solve the problem. After a few years of this the Greek people voted in a whole new radical party. The goal was to cancel the impossible to pay debt and follow sensible Keynesian rebuilding. The cancelling of the debt (spearheaded by charismatic economist Yanis Varoufakis) was not insane but it would mean all other countries in similar problems would also follow suit. So the Big players in Euro (Schable being the biggest) opposed it everyway they could. The Greeks took it to the brink but the PM could not plunge Greece into leaving the Euro and not being able to keep hospitals open backed down

No solution - and we end up here

Total outsider and novice here, but from what you're describing, it seems that Greece has to leave the Euro and default on its debts. If people are electing leaders who have no control over finances, there's no democracy at work. Horrible thing to have happen in the birthplace of democracy.

The EU was sort of a beta version of a United Europe. They weren't as luck as the U.S., where a highly educated but small group of people tried to come up with the simplest thing they could that wouldn't fail. Instead it looks like quite a bit of architecture astronaut syndrome going on. If I'm right, and I'm just a passerby, the sooner they start down the road to refactoring the better it will be for everybody.

> Greece has to leave the Euro and default on its debts.

pretty much

> architecture astronaut syndrome

Not really. It started well. The Euro currency was the great achilles heel, as it meant there MUST be fiscal harmonisation between countries that were arguing over the amount of meat in a sausage. That said the more I learn about USA and the states, especially the southern states, the more I realise we need things like TIPP and TPP and the WTO. The states generally hate being in a federal system.

I would try and listen to Yanis Varoufakis stuff online. (https://yanisvaroufakis.eu/ is his blog but there is a lot there with little organisation)

Is in favour of defeating Pikkety with UBI:

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/basic-income-fu...

It seems kind of weird to me that you agree than a common currency without a political union is doomed, then go on to support a political schism.

> claiming that the finance ministers are purposely rigging things so that Greece will fail

> First I've heard of this

I suggest listening[1] to Yanis Varoufakis talk about his negotiations with the rest of the EU's finance ministers. He talks about the rigged process, and the ultimatum they gave him when he pushed for a saner refinancing plan. Schäuble's response, according to Mr. Varoufakis, was "Elections cannot be allowed to change the economic policies applied to Greece!"

For background on how this situation was created, see Mark Blyth's very nice discussion[2] of the Greek situation and how it fits in with the larger Euro problem.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihVcrnFag1s#t=672

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6vV8_uQmxs#t=778

I wouldn't go as far as the OP: I think Heinlein's razor comes into effect here. There is a clear solution to the problem, which is debt forgiveness. The troika has known this since the crisis began. The problem is that it's politically untenable. So instead they kick the can down the road, do nothing, and hope everything gets better on its own. They've caused a depression in Greece. They've also turned me into a euroskeptic.

Very much worth noting too that the bailouts ensure banks (mostly German banks) get paid back. Bankruptcy or debt forgiveness means the banks don't get paid back. And now when EU taxpayers get pissed about paying for the bailout, the EU bureaucrats can point at those darn lazy greeks as the problem.

At the end of the day, it's the banks' job to assess risk, they lent money to Greece, and they're only getting paid because of this bailout. What's greece paying in interest, again? Some kind of huge risk premium, probably?

I don't know if it's a "plan", but it's definitely a rigidity and "it's our way or the highway", because they can afford it.

The current measures are beyond stupid. They've crippled the country's economy, shut down a large majority of businesses, made the climate hostile to new businesses, and generally ensured that the country doesn't recover.

I don't think we've still seen the worst of it, because the economy has shut down almost completely, and it's still getting worse. The effect of this much deterioration on such a large system will take years to show, and what we're seeing now are the results of policies five years ago.

I'm pretty confident it will get even worse in the next half-decade. Very much to blame for this is the leftist mindset of the average Greek, who thinks "bosses are the devil" and that making the country friendlier to entrepreneurship and investments is anathema.

Not quite like that, or at least the "rigging" part. Yanis Varoufakis, former finance ministers of Greece, has talked about how the finance ministers were pushing for the "failed policies", all through I don't remember what the reasons were.

It's not about Greece or the people of Greece or its economy, it is about existing creditors of Greek assets having time to limit exposure and fallout to the broader financial system, as well as provide a framework of deterrents for other large European countries that are practically insolvent

> But the current Greek government don't want cushy EU jobs, they want to save the population.

The current Greek government doesn't seem to want anything other than line their pockets. They've gone back on every single big promise they made before getting elected, and are spreading lies and propaganda to try and keep their positions, even while being wildly unpopular.

> But the current Greek government don't want cushy EU jobs, they want to save the population.

Well, they saved me by forcing me out of the country, so +1 there.

Current greek government is far from left.

Just like everyone else, Greeks want to buy Samsung and Apple and Sony and VW and Facebook ads and materials and services from all over the world.

It's the way our system works - I want avocados now, even though I'm thousands km away from an avocado tree. One solution would be for me to give up on the avocado, but then the world needs me to buy it, otherwise the balance of avocados in the economy will move and the futures will go down and everyone panics and now maybe I will say no to mangos too ... sell, sell, sell!

This is how it works - not because someone conceptualised, thought through the whole complexity - it just ended up being like this..

> For example, that anyone has the authority and intelligence to tell the entire world how it should function.

I'm not getting my hopes too high for a global change - in fact I think this can't happen without some sort of global crisis or conflict preceding it.

It's very easy to see that the system is broken - much harder to fix it of course.

A very reasonable response. Thank you.

I would like to push back on one point of the top though, I don't think the world is so locked in to the consumption of a small nation or any small population. Indeed, panic would happen if America banned imports. But if many in Greece had to take a step back and dramatically reduce their IPhone consumption until they invented new ways to add value, I doubt anyone would notice. The panic of a Greek default seemed to more step from the many who invested there without expecting a collapse. Even now I think a Greek default would be pretty non-eventful given how much warning time everyone had. (Debt defaults of small countries being relatively common)

Where have you been for the whole decade

There is no self determination possible for Greece

Why the downvotes?

"Elections change nothing. There are rules." -- Wolfgang Schäuble (in reference to the election of a Greek government in 2015)

Do you suggest the new government should be allowed to disrespect the obligations and commitments of the previous one, just because it's newly elected?

[Well, in a way, they are free to do so -- at the risk of losing every bit of credibility as a debtor... What Schäuble pointed out is: if you want more money, respect your obligations]

Absolutely it does. There are good reasons why respect for the principle of equal rights among nations is enshrined in international treaties. Germany has been the biggest benefactor of that, and a German minister shouldn't ride roughshod over the will of the people of another nation.

> at the risk of losing every bit of credibility as a debtor

This mentality about debtor and creditor nations within the EU will eventually destroy the Euro.

It is astonishingly sad to me that the country from which Democracy was exported no longer has a say (or do they?)

Greece does have a say. They can choose to secede from the EU, drop out of the Euro, and default on their debts. And then they'll have to live with the consequences. But democracy doesn't mean they can vote to force other countries to forgive their debts.

> But democracy doesn't mean they can vote to force other countries to forgive their debts.

Bingo! Greece can do whatever it wants. If they want to stay in the Euro, then they can stay in the Euro but have to follow certain guidelines. If they want to do what they want to do then they can leave the Euro, but they should not complain when their overspending ways catch up to them and it all falls apart.

History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. Germany was in the same position wrt to the League of Nations after WWI.

The other problem is that the Economists who try to control it and debug it are terrible at understanding it. Every countries economy is subtly different, but they have a one size fits nobody, and doesn´t even have the right number of sleeves approach to it.

For example, Greece.

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/greece/money-supply-m3

Expand it out to the max - this is an old style, US Great Depression monetary collapse. Their money supply has dropped by about a third since 2009. Some of that is loan write-offs, a lot of it is money being withdrawn from the country, either by rich people who want their money in safer banks, or as debt repayments to european banks. Cost of being in the Euro, very hard to stop this.

Knowing that the money supply has dropped by 1/3, we also know that the lending supply has dropped by 1/3, loans create money etc. Knowing that credit influences prices, we know that property prices are dropping through the floor. Knowing all that, we also know that tax revenue has dropped, because there´s less money circulating to be taxed. (Well, it´s a bit more complex than that but not much.)

The big issue in this kind of monetary collapse is very simple. In a market based economy, most prices can adjust to changes in the money supply and production over time. The one exception is debt, which keeps its coupon value until people default.

Revalue Greece debt though, and there goes a whole bunch of European banks with greek debt on their books, and a GFC style cascade failure to who knows where in the system.

It probably could still all be sorted out if we put some decent computer scientists on the case, but I certainly don´t expect the economists to get there in time.

So I guess Greece will just have to invade Germany.

> Revalue Greece debt though, and there goes a whole bunch of European banks with greek debt on their books, and a GFC style cascade failure to who knows where in the system.

If that's true, then one possible solution would be to let the cascade failure happen while the ECB prints enough money to replace the losses in money supply (and then some) and distribute the money equally to everyone in the Eurozone.

The official answer to this that it would cause uncertainty regarding future decisions.

And I won't even start with devaluation, the geopolitical position of Greece or the chaos on the streets.

Uncertainty would be less of a problem if the ECB's stated goal would be to defend the money supply in the Eurozone through mass distribution.

There are many uncertainties. Like the one regarding the fact that you can get an absolution from the ECB if you cause enough havoc. Or the one where you shouldn't invest in any country that may even smell slightly endangered (which would actually cause that north/south europe contruct). On the other hand it may even lure in even more "evil" investments with the right insurance. All this with a fast devaluating Euro? Sounds pretty bad to me.

I'm not sure how redistribution of wealth in case of a financial crisis counts as "absolution" from the ECB--if your 1000 person firm causes a 5000 Euro per capita loss in the money supply, your company is busted and everyone there ends up with 5 million Euros combined, which is small money by finance company/bank standards. It's not that much of a change from existing practice--all central banks defend their money supply to some extent. The only difference is that they would do so through every citizen in every country where the currency is official instead of only major banks, so the money actually gets spent instead of being hoarded and banks can't make massive profits through monetary arbitrage.

It's not redistribution of wealth when with every Euro you print, the currency gets further devaluated. This wouldn't happen. Ever. They'd rather separate it in North and Sourth Euro before somebody would even seriously think about that for a second.

The currency doesn't get devaluated in this case because the supply of Euros doesn't increase--the ECB is only replacing the money supply lost when the banks collapse.

But the supply is not "lost". It did not disappear in space.

>This is the rare case when refactoring just doesn't cut it, we need a complete rewrite of the whole thing.

Does anyone have access to the world government dev environment?

I mean the code may need re-writing but we could probably use the same infrastructure.

Well, you've got this amazing compiler that just likes to change things you write, they're known as politicians :P

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probabilistic_programming_lang... ?

>Does anyone have access to the world government dev environment

The banks with super admin privileges to create money in their databases do.

If everybody had an account with the central banks, sure. For now the SUs only have access to the major-banks sandbox, and playing around in this sandbox does nothing except cause asset inflation.

The 2008 bailout and subsequent legislation[1] indicates it is the major-banks (i.e. JP Morgan, BOA) which have the leverage to create money at will over the central-banks (i.e. the Fed). Hence the term "Too Big to Fail" -- de facto SUs.

Doesn't the major-banks' sandbox extend across the world to any person or government who accepts the dollar?

[1]http://www.businessinsider.com/congressional-budget-makes-ro...

By "sandbox" I meant that the central banks dealt directly only with major banks, who benefit and profit from being at the top of the money-creation chain.

That's what I thought, I was using it as scope of influence as well

I think faults in each country have one thing in common - socialism and excessive bureaucracy that comes with it.

Socialism is a spectrum. Are you talking about full-on soviet communism? The Scandinavian model? Venezuela? The national health service in the UK?

I'm don't really think that socialism == bureaucracy == failure is a cogent argument.

You can compare socialism to cancer. Some forms of it are terminal some are not, but it is not sustainable thing to have.

Its still extremely dangerous to give birth in the US when compared to Greece, our maternal death rate is 7x higher [1], on par with Iran, Hungary and Saudi Arabia.

[1] - http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?v=2223

What a horrible display of "Lies, damn lies, and statistics."

0,021% death rate is far from "extremely dangerous", and why the focus on this one specific chart? Amazing cherry-picking you've done.

Why do hundreds of pregnant women die every year in the US, but significantly less die in Singapore, Greece, Canada, Ireland, etc? This shouldn't be a thing, and we shouldn't be this far behind other countries on this, its not an impossible problem to halve or even cut into a quarter that death rate. This isn't even discussing complications of pregnancy or infant mortality, both of which we are not doing amazing at.

I am not contesting that the US could be doing better.

What I am contesting is that you are conflating absolute and relative measurements to try to make a point, and that you are reducing such a complex matter into a question of political ideology that governs the countries. Also, lots of weasel-wording there - e.g, "hundreds of deaths" in country of 320+ million people, comparing with countries that are 100x smaller? - which do show a lack of intellectual honesty.

At least that is the impression that it gives when I read your response as some kind of counterpoint to the comment from GP about socialism and the associated bureaucracy.

If I have read your statement correctly and indeed you meant something along the lines of:

    - The USA is doing worse than Greece in this one metric.
    - Greece has more Socialist/Welfare-state inclinations than the US.
    - Therefore if we want to improve this one metric we ought to adopt more Social-Democratic policies

Consider this: the best country in the list you provided is Estonia, the country with the "Most Competitive Tax System in the OECD"[1], which would basically be an argument that all countries should be like Estonia - a polar opposite from Greece.

But then again, I could have completely misread what you meant. Please correct me if I misinterpreted any of your statements.

[1]: http://taxfoundation.org/blog/estonia-has-most-competitive-t...

(Note to down-voters: do you really think that anything I wrote is so offensive or damaging to the forum, to the point that it deserves to be in negative mark? Gee, I know it is election season for most of you, but let's please keep a HN a place where people can have an honest discussion?)

You're the Delenda Carthago guy ?