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Re:Editorial board of Index and more than 70 staff members r... by oneplane on Friday July 24, 2020 @12:47PM (#23941654)
Giving money in exchange for reforms seems like help to me. You're helping when you teach a man to fish, not when you just hand him a fish to only eat for one day.
Re:Editorial board of Index and more than 70 staff members r... by ivalm on Friday July 24, 2020 @01:36PM (#23942247)
Except the reforms were not reasonable. More like telling a man to cut off an arm to get a fish. Doesn’t teach you to fish in the future and creates lots of suffering in the present.
Re:Editorial board of Index and more than 70 staff members r... by oneplane on Friday July 24, 2020 @03:44PM (#23943665)
I wonder who would be suitable to decide what is reasonable. Is it:

a) a country with a record of mismanagement and debt it cannot pay back

b) a set of countries that do not have a record of mismanagement and have the ability to help out a country that is in debt

If we take your metaphor we could say the choice is:

a) do not accept the terms and starve to death

b) cut off your arm and live with rules to live by to prevent the scenario from repeating

Re:Editorial board of Index and more than 70 staff members r... by phs318u on Friday July 24, 2020 @08:46PM (#23945961)
Let me rephrase your first (b).

b) a set of banks who were willingly ignorant that they were lending to a state with a history of bankruptcy over many decades, because they believed/knew that when push came to shove the EU (taxpayers) would bail them out (which they did. You realise that the Greek "bailout" was a bailout of the EU banks that lent to the Greek state).

Re:Editorial board of Index and more than 70 staff members r... by dash2 on Friday July 24, 2020 @04:31PM (#23944098)
I think it is widely accepted that the terms imposed on Greece were unreasonable – not just because they caused very high unemployment and poverty, but also because they were based on a completely unrealistic assessment of the country’s ability to pay back its debt. A good book on the topic (and much else) is Adam Tooze’s Crashed.
Re:Editorial board of Index and more than 70 staff members r... by Hamuko on Friday July 24, 2020 @01:43PM (#23942347)
>Except the reforms were not reasonable.

So the optimal option would've been to leave Greece to its own devices?

Re:Editorial board of Index and more than 70 staff members r... by fauigerzigerk on Friday July 24, 2020 @01:49PM (#23942433)
The optimal option would have been to demand root and branch reforms in exchange for very substantial debt relief.