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Re:Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from... by frandroid on Friday February 21, 2020 @10:47AM (#22383932)
It's been 5 years, and the Eurogroup destroyed the Greek economy. I don't think it's unfair to now reveal the contents of these discussions. It's high time to see if it was corruption, or compromise, which happened.
Re:Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from... by CarelessExpert on Friday February 21, 2020 @11:09AM (#22384153)
And that makes a lot of sense.

The idea that closed door deliberations must be made public after some moratorium period strikes me as a good compromise, as in the moment it allows politicians to have those private discussions that might allow compromise to occur, while not totally sacrificing transparency in the long-term.

And this isn't without precedent. The US declassification system essentially works this way (though it functions over the course of decades, which is probably too long).

Re:Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from... by rumanator on Friday February 21, 2020 @01:45PM (#22385589)
> The idea that closed door deliberations must be made public after some moratorium period strikes me as a good compromise

The eurogroup president is already tasked with the responsibility of address the press and report on the group's deliberation.

Re:Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from... by twistedpairs on Friday February 21, 2020 @11:34AM (#22384398)
> It's been 5 years, and the Eurogroup destroyed the Greek economy

That's not true. Greed which benefited Greeks at the time destroyed the Greek economy.

Re:Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from... by RobertoG on Friday February 21, 2020 @12:29PM (#22384891)
Many commenters here are missing the point. All the measures that were taken against Greece (for its own good, of course), were, theoretically, about improving the competitive of Greece and solve the problem of the public debt.

Nothing of that have happened. The public debt problem has not being solved and the Greek economy is a disaster. So who is responsible for those mistakes? They failed in their predictions and their failed in their goal (if what they say in public about their goal is the truth, of course).

It seems to me that if we leave all those politicians that decide to be "hard" on the Greeks without punishment we will have a clear case of moral hazard.

Re:Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from... by rumanator on Friday February 21, 2020 @01:42PM (#22385569)
> Many commenters here are missing the point. All the measures that were taken against Greece

Your assertion is absurd. No measure was ever taken to "keep the Greek man down". Greek governments spent years running up a monstrous debt and cooking their books to try to falsify the actual state of the country's economy and the state's finances, going to the extent of hiring private consultancy firms to help them commit accounting fraud, and once that time bombs blew in their faces there was no other alternative than to pick up the pieces and sort out the mess. The ECB/IMF/EC gang's role was to simply provide emergency financing to buy Greek government's some time to actually sort their state's mess. It might be politically convenient to fabricate an evil foreign boogieman to distract people from the true causes but the facts speak for themselves, and there is no way around it.

Re:Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from... by nutjob2 on Friday February 21, 2020 @01:10PM (#22385279)
The problem was that the Greeks had got themselves deeply, calamitously into debt. That the "solution" was awful or ineffective really is not relevant, since it's entirely a consequence of the former. At any time the Greeks could have said no to the proposed solution, but they didn't because they feared an even worse fate.

The responsibility for Greece's situation must stay with Greece, unless they forgo the freedom to make their own decisions (about lending money). Nothing else works or makes sense logically. Freedom and taking responsibility are two sides of the same coin.

Re:Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from... by JackFr on Friday February 21, 2020 @01:42PM (#22385568)
> The problem was that the Greeks had got themselves deeply, calamitously into debt.

To be clear then, any 'bailout' of Greece is truly a bailout not of Greece, but their creditors.

Re:Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from... by nutjob2 on Friday February 21, 2020 @05:20PM (#22387518)
Not at all, that's a side effect. If what you say were strictly true, then why would Greece bother? Let the creditors burn.

Of course the reason Greece agreed is that the attendant inability to borrow after the default would be much worse for Greece than the lenders. That really goes to the heart of the situation Greece had got itself into: default would not save them.

Re:Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from... by rumanator on Friday February 21, 2020 @01:33PM (#22385501)
> It's been 5 years, and the Eurogroup destroyed the Greek economy.

Reality and the facts contrast heavily with this rhetoric. The eurogroup/IMF/european commission only stepped into the picture way after Greece bankrupted itself and digged a deep economic and social hole. Complaining about the organizations that mitigated Greece's pending collapse is like complaining about the cast and crutches you had to use after breaking your leg just because your leg hurts.

Re:Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from... by DoingIsLearning on Saturday February 22, 2020 @11:00AM (#22391621)
The 'austerity' prescription that the Eurogroup and the ECB enforced on sovereign nations has been ample proven to be counter productive and flat out damaging.

Much like the 'quantitive easing' ideas, they all had a theoretical basis that were vastly proven wrong. These countries only recovered when stimulous measures were applied.

Lagard herself admited that austerity was a mistake but never apologised for the suffering and deaths that it precipitated.

I remind you that elderly unable to afford medication and hospitals struggling to keep stock was a reality in Greece during this period.

Re:Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from... by rumanator on Tuesday February 25, 2020 @04:52AM (#22411996)
> The 'austerity' prescription that the Eurogroup and the ECB enforced on sovereign nations has been ample proven to be counter productive and flat out damaging.

Your personal assertion is flat out wrong. Although hindsight shows that the outcome was not optimal, the overall outcome of all bailout processes were highly successful. Although all states that requested bailouts were bankrupt by 2011, it took only a few years to get them back to eco omic growth and reducing their sovereign debt. Look for example at Portugal, who was arguably in the same situation as Greece but for about half a dozen years now it got back to economic growth,residual unemployment, a deficit close to zero, and lowering its sovereign debt. This turn of events coincides exactly with the last year of it's bailout process.

Who in their right mind speaks of failures when all states who underwent bailout processes and actually tried to follow the program ended up recovering from bankruptcies in record time?

Re:Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from... by DoingIsLearning on Tuesday February 25, 2020 @06:03PM (#22418490)
> Your personal assertion is flat out wrong.

The assertion of the former IMF chief (now ECB) Lagarde:

"Ms Lagarde said eurozone countries should not blindly stick to tough budget deficit targets if growth weakens more than expected. She argued that they should allow "automatic stabilisers" - higher welfare spending and lower tax revenues- to kick in if the economy deteriorated.

https://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/11/business/imf-lagarde-scha...

> the outcome was not optimal

"The report says that as part of the bailout conditions, Greece’s total healthcare expenditure (public and private) fell from 9·8% of GDP in 2008 to 8·1% in 2014. An article published by the Lancet concurrently with the paper notes that, under pressure from the Troika, the Greek government cut public healthcare expenditure to 6% of GDP."

...

"Greek mortality has worsened significantly since the beginning of the century. In 2000, the death rate per 100,000 people was 944.5. By 2016, it had risen to 1174.9, with most of the increase taking place from 2010 onwards."

"…adverse effects of medical treatment, self-harm, and several types of cancer stood out as consistently increasing in Greece across all ages… Within specific age groups, other causes are apparent, with rapid increases in deaths due to neonatal haemolytic disease and neonatal sepsis in children younger than 5 years, and prominent increases in self-harm among adolescents and young adults. Greek adults aged 15–49 years had increased mortality due to HIV, several treatable neoplasms, all types of cirrhosis, neurological disorders (eg, multiple sclerosis, motor neuron disease), chronic kidney disease, and most types of cardiovascular disease"

Newborns actually died of preventable conditions so that German Bank lenders would get there money back. Let that sink in for a second.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/francescoppola/2018/08/31/the-t...

"The International Monetary Fund admitted it had failed to realise the damage austerity would do to Greece as the Washington-based organisation catalogued mistakes made during the bailout of the stricken eurozone country."

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/jun/05/imf-underes...

> Look for example at Portugal, who was arguably in the same situation as Greece

I am Portuguese and I am part of the diaspora of young people who emmigrated after the 2008 crisis.

> it got back to economic growth

Mostly due to tourism and foreign real-estate investment (not austerity)

> residual unemployment

Due to government spending on sponsored coop/internships and "retraining" programmes that all help to dillute the unemployment stats (But again not because of austerity)

> deficit close to zero

Due to injection of extra revenue from the 'golden visa' programmes for Chinese citizens. Tourism boom revenue. Tax incentives and tax domicialiation of retirees from all across northern and central Europe. And austerity

> and lowering its sovereign debt. Due mostly to paying off their old debt with newer debt at a much lower interest rate now with central negative interest rates (Not because of Austerity)

> This turn of events coincides exactly with the last year of it's bailout process.

No comment.

> Who in their right mind speaks of failures when all states who underwent bailout processes and actually tried to follow the program ended up recovering from bankruptcies in record time?

Who in their right mind does not see that these bailouts are not Sovereign bailouts but German and French Bank lender bailout?

Who in their right mind can be allowed to believe that it is ok to create a healthcare calamity with real, physical, measurable deaths, by holding a sovereign nation hostage so that, space forbid, Banks don't have to face a loss?