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ductonius
Apr 9, 2007
I heard there's a cream for that...

KingFisher posted:

So explain to me how the "structural problems" of the EU/EZ forced the greek to borrow all that money?

The lack of direct wealth transfer mechanisms between EU/EZ nations, aka a proper monetary union, instead of just a common currency. This is not that loving complicated.

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KingFisher
Oct 30, 2006
WORST EDITOR in the history of my expansion school's student paper. Then I married a BEER HEIRESS and now I shitpost SA by white-knighting the status quo to defend my unearned life of privilege.
Fun Shoe

OwlFancier posted:

Won't someone think of the poor oppressed bankers!

I am not calling the bankers oppressed, that is non sequitur to my point entirely.

I am still waiting for your proof that the banks forced the greek to take loans.

Berk Berkly
Apr 9, 2009

by zen death robot

KingFisher posted:

I am not calling the bankers oppressed, that is non sequitur to my point entirely.

I am still waiting for your proof that the banks forced the greek to take loans.

We are still waiting for you to understand what the hell you are talking about.


Do you actually buy the "Lazy Greek" rhetoric?




Or the "excessive glut of government spending" bullshit?




But yes, they should have had a much better revenue base. They also should definitely have not adopted the Euro as their currency. The British had that part completely pegged.

Berk Berkly fucked around with this message at 05:24 on Jul 20, 2015

KingFisher
Oct 30, 2006
WORST EDITOR in the history of my expansion school's student paper. Then I married a BEER HEIRESS and now I shitpost SA by white-knighting the status quo to defend my unearned life of privilege.
Fun Shoe

ductonius posted:

The lack of direct wealth transfer mechanisms between EU/EZ nations, aka a proper monetary union, instead of just a common currency. This is not that loving complicated.

So there wan't any actual force is what you are saying.
There was no compulsion, no gun to the head of the greek government.

The greek took the loans of their own free will as the result of democratic inputs.

Had they had any sense after joining the EU/EZ they would have done the following

1. Refinanced all debts down to the lower rates afforded by the German credit rating.
2. Run an actual 3% deficit, with any borrowing being used to modernize the economy.
3. Adopted the IMF/ECB reforms during the good times so increase efficiency and productivity, any creative destruction would have been easily absorbed.
4. Brought the countries taxation, pension plans, and public firms into line with EU standards.

KingFisher
Oct 30, 2006
WORST EDITOR in the history of my expansion school's student paper. Then I married a BEER HEIRESS and now I shitpost SA by white-knighting the status quo to defend my unearned life of privilege.
Fun Shoe

Berk Berkly posted:

We are still waiting for you to understand what the hell you are talking about.

I am asking a very simple question.


Who forced the greek to take the loans which lead to the current crisis?

Can you answer my simple question?

KingFisher
Oct 30, 2006
WORST EDITOR in the history of my expansion school's student paper. Then I married a BEER HEIRESS and now I shitpost SA by white-knighting the status quo to defend my unearned life of privilege.
Fun Shoe

Berk Berkly posted:

We are still waiting for you to understand what the hell you are talking about.


Do you actually buy the "Lazy Greek" rhetoric?




Or the "excessive glut of government spending" bullshit?




But yes, they should have had a much better revenue base. They also should definitely have not adopted the Euro as their currency. The British had that part completely pegged.

Nice edit snipe.

I haven't said anything about how hard working the individual greek is though your chart shows just how inefficient the economy is, I haven't used the word lazy once.

Also your government spending chart is post crisis, my argument is the government spending was excessive before 2010 not after.


So given you are addressing 2 points I haven't even made, and which I agree with you entirely on, why are you responding like this??

Pohl
Jan 28, 2005




In the future, please post shit with the sole purpose of antagonizing the person running this site. Thank you.

IAMNOTADOCTOR posted:

Germany, Netherlands, arguably UK, Ireland, Iceland and Latvia . I know that Iceland is retrospectively often presented as the alternative to austerity but that is not true, if you look at the coverage in 2009-2011 the same groups that now point to Iceland as the shining example of non-austerity options for greece called Iceland a hopeless bitch made IMF follower of austerity. (hyperbole, but not too much)
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2009/07/icel-j14.html

(World Socialist Website) https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2009/07/icel-j14.html


What wikipedia has to say on the Iceland success:
I've heard people claim that the Icelandic austerity was more severe then the greek, but I dont have figures to back up that claim. What i can tell you is that the spending deficit decreased annually by 3% of the GDP.

Depends on who you talk to,

Simple Definition of Austerity: Austerity involves policies to reduce government spending and or higher taxes in order to try and reduce government budget deficits.

This is something most countries have done and is easily recognizable as "sometimes pretty sensible". If we go back to greece, I dont think Pohl or others would argue that austerity in this sense and thereby a decrease in the defecit of greek spending after 1995 would have been a bad idea. As far as I know there is no discussion what so ever that the greek crisis is in large part the result of a government overspending borrowed money. Austerity =/= austrian economics.

You severerly edited this post, because it didn't say anything like this at the original time you posted it. I'm doing some other stuff right now, but I will say this off the top of my head: None of those are examples of Austerity and success.

What is the World Socialist Website, and why are you posting it as a source? You then quote a wiki article on Iceland and ignore the fact that they said "gently caress you" to everyone and nationalized all their banks. Actually, that edit isn't worth anymore of my time because it is lol.

Sorry, I didn't mean to be so harsh.

I do somewhat but not wholly agree with this part; there are a lot of complicated issues involved that you didn't even talk about. I give you credit for trying:

quote:

Simple Definition of Austerity: Austerity involves policies to reduce government spending and or higher taxes in order to try and reduce government budget deficits. (This is really simplistic, but we can work with it in this context)

This is something most countries have done and is easily recognizable as "sometimes pretty sensible". If we go back to greece, I dont think Pohl or others would argue that austerity in this sense and thereby a decrease in the defecit of greek spending after 1995 would have been a bad idea. As far as I know there is no discussion what so ever that the greek crisis is in large part the result of a government overspending borrowed money. Austerity =/= austrian economics.

Pohl fucked around with this message at 05:58 on Jul 20, 2015

Berk Berkly
Apr 9, 2009

by zen death robot

KingFisher posted:

Nice edit snipe.

I haven't said anything about how hard working the individual greek is though your chart shows just how inefficient the economy is, I haven't used the word lazy once.

Also your government spending chart is post crisis, my argument is the government spending was excessive before 2010 not after.


So given you are addressing 2 points I haven't even made, and which I agree with you entirely on, why are you responding like this??

Really, you're playing the "I didn't ~specifically~ say _word_ game? You're the one that posted THIS tripe:

quote:

You see Greek is like a household.

The Greek household has many members, the ~old~ people who get allowances, the young who are unemployed, and a few working age adults that bring in the income to support household.

Here is a simple analogy to explain what happened with Greek.

1. A new neighborhood association was created called the EU/EZ, this neighborhood had strict requirements to join.
2. The Greek people all voted for politicians who would allow them to move into the new neighborhood, since the Greek don't pay their bills they knew the corrupt uncle who had been running the family for 30 years.
3. In order to do so the corrupt uncle went to a bank called Goldman Sachs, to borrow a large amount of money every year for several years, this allowed the Greek to lie to the neighborhood association covering up the fact they were running a 15% deficit and not a 3% deficit.
4. The Greek was able to trick the EU/EZ into letting them in.
5. The Greek household was issued a new credit card with low low German rates, they immediately used this credit card to throw a big party called the Olympics, they then used it to get a big cash advance and pay off their old debts.
6. Unfortunately the Greek household kept using the credit card, the deficit never shrunk below 15%, and the households debt grew to be 125% of the value of the whole house and all the household's income.
7. What did the Greek spend the money on? Well they let some of the workers retire early, they gave them better allowances, they hired many family and friends to sit around and watch TV all day, everyone in the household forgot how to work, tend the garden or even do their own laundry. Most importantly many corrupt deals for the friends of the corrupt uncle were made to pay for things the Greek household didn't need like new cars and such.
8. The neighborhood economy had a crisis and the bank which issues the credit card to Greek realized that Greek would be unable to make the payments on the card as reliably as Germany.
9. The rate on the card went up and the Greek was now unable to use it at the pay day loan store to roll over all their old debts, let alone keep a 15% deficit going in the family budget.
10. Greek told his neighbors he would have to leave the association if they did not help him pay his bills, they responded with giving the Greek lots of money to help, in return the Greek had to make a few changes so the money the household earns would be enough to support the Greek household.
11. The Greek took the money but did not make the changes, so things got worse, another set of loans was needed, these loans were even better as they let the Greek lower his rates and extend the term on his old credit card bills.
12. Again the Greek did not make the changes needed to live on what he earns, in fact he chose new head of household specifically who would tell his neighbors that he demands free money and doesn't want to make any changes or he would burn down the neighborhood.
13. The neighbors offered another sensible loan with changes needed to allow Greek to live within his means, the Greek said no, then the whole household had a family meeting and they all voted no.
14. The Greek went to the bank to get monies, and his card didn't work, only now did the Greek realize that he should have been making changes to his lifestyle over the last 5 years so he could live within his means.
15. The Greek finally accepted a new loan from his friends to let have enough to eat, and promised to finally make the changes and get rid of the of the many corrupt uncles he had let come live in his house.

16. Will the Greek keep his word this time?

The Greeks did not initiate or exacerbate this crisis. They are simply a focal scapegoat the EU is using to try and resolve the horrible financial mess their investor/rich has put them in. There was a bit of finicial crisis that rocked the world just before it reverberated back into the EU and what shook out was suddenly "look at these nasty Greek eating all of our precious moooney" bullshit.

Berk Berkly fucked around with this message at 05:36 on Jul 20, 2015

KingFisher
Oct 30, 2006
WORST EDITOR in the history of my expansion school's student paper. Then I married a BEER HEIRESS and now I shitpost SA by white-knighting the status quo to defend my unearned life of privilege.
Fun Shoe

Berk Berkly posted:

Really, you're playing the "I didn't ~specifically~ say _word_ game? You're the one that posted THIS tripe:


The Greeks did not initiate, start, or exacerbate this crisis. They are simply scapegoat the EU is using to try and resolve the horrorible finicial mess their investor/rich has put them in.


The greek caused the crisis by borrowing to much, this was made worse by all of the above described problems with the greek political and economic structure.
Can none of you freely admit that excessive borrowing is the actual cause of the crisis?

The entire thing would have been avoided had the greek people had some sense of restraint with regards to spending via the democratic process, or some scruples about how the government and economy was run.


I agree with you, the greeks with jobs work very hard, they are not lazy, they are unfortunately wildly unproductive and elected a government to paper over this problem with debt rather than a sensible budget and reform during the good times.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

Not sure Greece caused the recession because I have it on good authority that was the Labour Party.

Also, it's a bit weird to blame something on excessive borrowing rather than excessive lending.

It's sort of the bank's job to figure out whether it should lend you money or not.

Pohl
Jan 28, 2005




In the future, please post shit with the sole purpose of antagonizing the person running this site. Thank you.

OwlFancier posted:

Not sure Greece caused the recession because I have it on good authority that was the Labour Party.

Also, it's a bit weird to blame something on excessive borrowing rather than excessive lending.

It's sort of the bank's job to figure out whether it should lend you money or not.

It wasn't even that, people bought up that debt after the banks realized there was a problem and dis-invested themselves from it. Like, people seriously looked at the situation and saw a way to make money, so they bought unstable and unbacked debt, then demanded that the EU continue to prop up the Greek economy and collect their debt after their lovely investment failed. Then they demanded a huge return on their investment, many times the original amount that they payed for that debt. The whole thing is just :suicide:

The system was in theory put in place to prevent banks from making these horrific loans, which sort of worked, since banks ran from Greece debt when it became known they were a bad investment. As far as I can understand it, someone bought those debts up and then demanded that they be repaid, which led to Greece getting even bigger loans through International means, backing the debt that had already been bought. So the investors that bought that debt for profit were able in a way to demand that Greece was fiscally ruined on the promise that their lovely investment would someday be repaid. Like I said, :suicide:

Pohl fucked around with this message at 05:50 on Jul 20, 2015

KingFisher
Oct 30, 2006
WORST EDITOR in the history of my expansion school's student paper. Then I married a BEER HEIRESS and now I shitpost SA by white-knighting the status quo to defend my unearned life of privilege.
Fun Shoe

OwlFancier posted:

Not sure Greece caused the recession because I have it on good authority that was the Labour Party.

Also, it's a bit weird to blame something on excessive borrowing rather than excessive lending.

It's sort of the bank's job to figure out whether it should lend you money or not.

By placing the blame on the banks you are removing all agency from the greek, you are making my argument for me, that basically they would take any money given to them regardless of their ability to repay it.

You see this is far more infantilizing then my household narrative screed above don't you?
I mean I know you can't personally behave this way and max out your credit card every month because you know the *banks* wouldn't have given you that credit limit if you couldn't afford it.

It just proves the greek are unfit to rule themselves, or be left alone with matches.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

No I don't max out my (non existant) credit card each month because if I did that once then the credit card company wouldn't let me do it again until I paid it off.

Given that Greece now apparently owes more money than it can physically produce, because people keep throwing money at it to pay off its previous debt and demanding ever higher returns, then whinge at Germany when it doesn't get paid, possibly someone on the creditor end did something a bit wrong somewhere along the line?

If an individual does this they declare bankruptcy long before this point and their debt is written off, because beating a dead horse is considered unproductive.

Berk Berkly
Apr 9, 2009

by zen death robot

KingFisher posted:

By placing the blame on the banks you are removing all agency from the greek, you are making my argument for me, that basically they would take any money given to them regardless of their ability to repay it.

You see this is far more infantilizing then my household narrative screed above don't you?
I mean I know you can't personally behave this way and max out your credit card every month because you know the *banks* wouldn't have given you that credit limit if you couldn't afford it.

It just proves the greek are unfit to rule themselves, or be left alone with matches.

Man, this whole 'Predatory borrowing' rhetoric reminds me so much of the "HOW DARE THESE UNWORTHY POORS TAKE THESE INNOCENT LENDER'S MONEY" arguments we heard during the US Housing bubble burst analysis.

Its a claptrap of course. The lenders were banking on sovereign governments bailing their asses out of the fire and oops, too big to bail.

Berk Berkly fucked around with this message at 05:57 on Jul 20, 2015

paragon1
Nov 22, 2010

FULL COMMUNISM NOW

KingFisher posted:

By placing the blame on the banks you are removing all agency from the greek, you are making my argument for me, that basically they would take any money given to them regardless of their ability to repay it.

You see this is far more infantilizing then my household narrative screed above don't you?
I mean I know you can't personally behave this way and max out your credit card every month because you know the *banks* wouldn't have given you that credit limit if you couldn't afford it.

It just proves the greek are unfit to rule themselves, or be left alone with matches.

By your own logic then, aren't you doing exactly the same thing to the Germans and anyone else who loaned Greece money? Wouldn't their lack of agency that you've just implicitly admitted to mean said lenders are unfit to control a currency, or to be left alone with matches?

paragon1 fucked around with this message at 05:56 on Jul 20, 2015

ColoradoCleric
Dec 26, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Man if you're going to bitch about austerity then you're really barking up the wrong tree trying to defend greece. The anti austerity arguments really work better on countries than can devalue their own currency.

Voyager I
Jun 29, 2012

This is how your posting feels.
🐥🐥🐥🐥🐥
I can't read his posts because every time he starts going off about lazy Greeks it just starts to sound like some racist screed about the perfidious Jews or thieving Gypsies or something equally inane.

Can you maybe not use nationalities as a pejorative like that, because it makes you sound like an even bigger shithead than the content of your arguments.

Pohl
Jan 28, 2005




In the future, please post shit with the sole purpose of antagonizing the person running this site. Thank you.

KingFisher posted:

By placing the blame on the banks you are removing all agency from the greek, you are making my argument for me, that basically they would take any money given to them regardless of their ability to repay it.

You see this is far more infantilizing then my household narrative screed above don't you?
I mean I know you can't personally behave this way and max out your credit card every month because you know the *banks* wouldn't have given you that credit limit if you couldn't afford it.

It just proves the greek are unfit to rule themselves, or be left alone with matches.

You have no loving idea what you are talking about. I don't think english is your first language, so I'm going to give you a bit of a pass, but you aren't arguing very well.

KingFisher
Oct 30, 2006
WORST EDITOR in the history of my expansion school's student paper. Then I married a BEER HEIRESS and now I shitpost SA by white-knighting the status quo to defend my unearned life of privilege.
Fun Shoe

paragon1 posted:

By your own logic then, aren't you doing exactly the same thing to the Germans and anyone else who loaned Greece money? Wouldn't their lack of agency that you've just implicitly admitted to mean said lenders are unfit to control a currency, or to be left alone with matches?

I agree with you, I think the greeks and the germans knew exactly what they were doing, that is lying to eachother about the credit worthiness of the greek, and that the germans knew that bailouts for all would be coming.
Thing is, the germans didn't *make* the greeks take those loans, the germans were always in safe position knowing that the bail outs were coming.

The greek on the other hand had far far more to lose, so the onus would be on them not to over borrow, since they were dealing with the collapse of an entire country, not just a bank bust here and there.
Since the stakes were much higher for the greek why weren't they more careful with the borrowing?


Also, I find it extremely telling that none of you have come up with an answer yet for who *forced* the greek to take those loans.

KingFisher
Oct 30, 2006
WORST EDITOR in the history of my expansion school's student paper. Then I married a BEER HEIRESS and now I shitpost SA by white-knighting the status quo to defend my unearned life of privilege.
Fun Shoe

Voyager I posted:

I can't read his posts because every time he starts going off about lazy Greeks it just starts to sound like some racist screed about the perfidious Jews or thieving Gypsies or something equally inane.

Can you maybe not use nationalities as a pejorative like that, because it makes you sound like an even bigger shithead than the content of your arguments.

The greeks are very hard working, I have't said they were lazy once, they are unfortunately very unproductive and are held back by a kleptocracy which survives on nepotism and clientelism.
I think the greeks placed into an better environment would do very well so long as they were not allowed to vote ad they have been acculturated to the very systems that lead to their destruction at their own hand.

Pohl
Jan 28, 2005




In the future, please post shit with the sole purpose of antagonizing the person running this site. Thank you.

ColoradoCleric posted:

Man if you're going to bitch about austerity then you're really barking up the wrong tree trying to defend greece. The anti austerity arguments really work better on countries than can devalue their own currency.

We know that, which is why we are talking about how loving stupid austerity is, and how this entire thing happened.

ColoradoCleric
Dec 26, 2012

by FactsAreUseless
Are we just going to ignore the fact that Greece has deep structural issues on that make it spend more money than it takes in?

Pohl
Jan 28, 2005




In the future, please post shit with the sole purpose of antagonizing the person running this site. Thank you.

KingFisher posted:

Also, I find it extremely telling that none of you have come up with an answer yet for who *forced* the greek to take those loans.

Their government did. Funnily enough, when the issue came up for a revote, they tossed those fuckers out and put some other people in power. Now, those other people said "gently caress you, we aren't bankrupting the entire future of this country on these stupid loans", but maybe the greek people haven't suffered enough to understand how they got hosed? Right? Maybe they do and they are just trying to squirm out of the debt they owe?

Maybe they got hosed by some people in their government and a bunch of financial fat cats fighting over debt that didn't really affect the average Greek person? Like, that load of debt never did a god drat bit of good for the average person on the street, it was all on paper. Fancy that. Then that debt was sold, chopped up and speculated on.

Who made the Greek people take out that debt? No one, because no one loving asked them.
Who wants the Greek people to pay that debt back? Why loving everyone that loaned them money, of course.


ColoradoCleric posted:

Are we just going to ignore the fact that Greece has deep structural issues on that make it spend more money than it takes in?

Yes, because those numbers are so drat small and workable that they are almost meaningless in the context of what we are talking about. We are talking about wide-scale theft of personal wealth on an international level, and you want to talk about corrupt or bad local government that doesn't even come close the same thing either contextually or numerically?

Pohl fucked around with this message at 06:19 on Jul 20, 2015

IAMNOTADOCTOR
Sep 26, 2013

Pohl posted:

You severerly edited this post, because it didn't say anything like this at the original time you posted it. I'm doing some other stuff right now, but I will say this off the top of my head: None of those are examples of Austerity and success.

What the gently caress is World Socialist Website, and why are you posting it as a source? You then quote a wiki article on Iceland and ignore the fact that they said "gently caress you" to everyone and nationalized all their banks. Actually, that edit isn't worth anymore of my time because it is lol.

Eeeh, i fixed the spelling 10 minutes after posting (2 hours before your post, were you painting it on a chapel wall?) and that's pretty much it. But good arguments put forth, well done, why on earth did i not think about lol, thank you for the discussion.

Lets pretend you are arguing in good faith but just grumpy: the world socialist website is relevant because it indicates that what is now put forth by some of the left leaning publications as a shining example of not doing austerity (Iceland), used to be a shining example of the horrors of austerity by the same or similar left leaning publications. I thought it would be most illustrative if i used the most left leaning publication, i could find others for you but seeing as your posting is lol and it is not the most important part of my argument it dont really feel the necessity.

quote:

You then quote a wiki article on Iceland and ignore the fact that they said "gently caress you" to everyone and nationalized all their banks.
How is the default and/or nationalization of the iceland banks opposed to also implementing austerity? Are you absolutely sure you know what the definition of austerity is? I'll restate a workable and commonly accepted definition here just to be clear for you:

quote:

Austerity involves policies to reduce government spending and or higher taxes in order to try and reduce government budget deficits.

Claiming Iceland did not implement austerity is silly, both the IMF and the Iceland government clearly mention the burden of austerity and the troubles they went to go to a budget surplus. Here's an excerpt from the MFA paper, emphasis mine:

quote:

FISCAL POLICY
back on a sustainable path. A major milestone was
reached in 2012 when a primary surplus was achieved
(balance excluding interests). Further progress is being
made with the aim of reaching a surplus in 2014, a
sharp contrast with the deficit of 13.5% recorded in
2008.

• The fiscal measures have included rate increases for all
major taxes
while expenditures have been cut through
public administration restructuring and cost reducing
reforms in the health and education sectors.
• The 2013 budget foresees a central government deficit
of just 0.1% of GDP and in 2014 a surplus is forecast at
around 0.9% of GDP
Source :http://www.mfa.is/media/MFA_pdf/Fact-Sheet---No-1,-2013.pdf


At this point i think there are three options for this discussion to continue, all of witch need some effort from your part:

1. You agree that iceland is an example of austerity working, but that it isn't going to work in country x for reasons a,b,c,.
2. You agree that austerity was implemented in iceland, and that it is doing fine now, but that the economic recovery was despite the austerity as indicated by ...
3. Make a nice paint drawing of me wasting my time while you type lol whatever.

Pohl
Jan 28, 2005




In the future, please post shit with the sole purpose of antagonizing the person running this site. Thank you.

IAMNOTADOCTOR posted:

Eeeh, i fixed the spelling 10 minutes after posting (2 hours before your post, were you painting it on a chapel wall?) and that's pretty much it. But good arguments put forth, well done, why on earth did i not think about lol, thank you for the discussion.

Lets pretend you are arguing in good faith but just grumpy: the world socialist website is relevant because it indicates that what is now put forth by some of the left leaning publications as a shining example of not doing austerity (Iceland), used to be a shining example of the horrors of austerity by the same or similar left leaning publications. I thought it would be most illustrative if i used the most left leaning publication, i could find others for you but seeing as your posting is lol and it is not the most important part of my argument it dont really feel the necessity.

How is the default and/or nationalization of the iceland banks opposed to also implementing austerity? Are you absolutely sure you know what the definition of austerity is? I'll restate a workable and commonly accepted definition here just to be clear for you:


Claiming Iceland did not implement austerity is silly, both the IMF and the Iceland government clearly mention the burden of austerity and the troubles they went to go to a budget surplus. Here's an excerpt from the MFA paper, emphasis mine:

Source :http://www.mfa.is/media/MFA_pdf/Fact-Sheet---No-1,-2013.pdf


At this point i think there are three options for this discussion to continue, all of witch need some effort from your part:

1. You agree that iceland is an example of austerity working, but that it isn't going to work in country x for reasons a,b,c,.
2. You agree that austerity was implemented in iceland, and that it is doing fine now, but that the economic recovery was despite the austerity as indicated by ...
3. Make a nice paint drawing of me wasting my time while you type lol whatever.

Yeah, I had just woken up from a nap, so I was grumpy.
Maybe I just missed your post and thought you changed it completely, I apologize that happened.

1. Iceland was not an example of austerity working. I said before that your definition was flawed, yet workable in a set circumstance. Iceland is the perfect example of a country saying "gently caress NO" to austerity.
2. Go back to point 1. I do not agree that austerity was the reason that Iceland is doing fine now. I completely disagree with that.
3. Stop being so drat sensitive. You should have seen how nasty the original post was. I edited because I knew I was being unfairly confrontational.
I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings. You had some valid points and it seems like you are indeed trying to understand and study this issue. Good for you. Sorry, no lols.

Oh, I'm really sorry if I come across like a condescending prick. I truly mean that. I'll try to stop. I realize I do that and I don't like that I do it.


As for the paper you posted, Iceland nationalized all of it's banks. Those measures were put into place to save the banking industry, not bankrupt the country. They raised taxes and cut some costs but they also continued a ton of incredibly liberal social programs. They did all of that after they nationalized their banks and said gently caress Austerity. That is not an Austerity success story, it is the opposite of it.

If you are going to argue that Iceland was an austerity success story, then yes, lol. They were able to recover and achieve prosperity because they said gently caress austerity. If they had tried to follow the austerity path, they would have looked like what Greece looks like today. That paper does not say what you think it says.


This is the really important part of that paper:

quote:

Due to the devaluation of the króna
,Icelandic households and companies have experienced a great
increase in their debt through the widespread inflation
indexing of mortgages and use of loans in foreign
currencies.

Major debt restructuring has taken place
for individuals and firms. A form
alised process has been introduced
for writing down mortgages to 110% of the value of
mortgaged assets, subject to a certain ceiling and
meeting criteria on debt service capacity, which should
help most households with negative equity and debt
service diff
iculties.

The government increased the interest payment rebate
from 2009
-
2011 in addition to a special supplementary
interest rate subsidy and access
has been granted to third-pillar private pension savings. Total after-tax effect of pension withdrawals amounts
to over 2.5% of GDP for 2009-2012, with further pay-outs in 2013. • Corporate debt restructuring proceeded slower than
anticipated at first , in part due to the complicated nature of the problems facing the corporate sector and the
need for clarity on some loan agreements widely used before the crisis – including the legality of foreign
currency indexation of loans. • Restructuring of SME debt has been catalysed through a voluntary framework between the government, banks
and social partners.

I cleaned it up quite a lot, but the formatting is still a mess.

Pohl fucked around with this message at 07:14 on Jul 20, 2015

IAMNOTADOCTOR
Sep 26, 2013

Pohl posted:

Yeah, I had just woken up from a nap, so I was grumpy.
Maybe I just missed your post and thought you changed it completely, I apologize that happened.

1. Iceland was not an example of austerity working. I said before that your definition was flawed, yet workable in a set circumstance. Iceland is the perfect example of a country saying "gently caress NO" to austerity.
2. Go back to point 1. I do not agree that austerity was the reason that Iceland is doing fine now. I completely disagree with that.
3. Stop being so drat sensitive. You should have seen how nasty the original post was. I edited because I knew I was being unfairly confrontational.
I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings. You had some valid points and it seems like you are indeed trying to understand and study this issue. Good for you. Sorry, no lols.

No worries bae, <3

1. Okay so were still discussing the definition of austerity; could you give your definition instead of being mysterious and saying the one i provided is flawed? The one I posted is basically the textbook definition.

Wait scratch that, I'll give you the Paul Krugman(for lurkers, this is the main proponent for ending austerity in Greece and overall smart man ) textbook definition witch *suprise* is basically the same.

quote:

In economics, austerity refers to a policy of deficit cutting by lowering spending often via a reduction in the amount of benefits and public services provided. Austerity policies are often used by governments to try to reduce their deficit spending and are sometimes coupled with increased taxes to demonstrate long-term fiscal solvency
( All spelling mistakes mine)

https://books.google.com/books?id=U...sterity&f=false

Taxes were increased, agreed? Spending was cut, agreed? Deficit was cut, agreed? All three characteristics were met, under a program called "fiscal austerity". Can we both agree with the Icelandic government and its people that austerity was implemented for all commonly accepted definitions of austerity?

2 If so, we can finally agree that there is at least one country doing well after implementing austerity (the original point of contention) and continue to discuss whether or not the austerity contributed to this.

3.

quote:

Stop being so drat sensitive. You should have seen how nasty the original post was.
Okay, I'll try to contain myself, I often become very sensitive after waking up from a nap and overreact to missed posts. Honestly im fine with whatever mean things you had in your posts and everyone gets confused and lashes out now and then. The only part of your posts that slightly irks me is the complete lack of arguments and sources so far while giving me complements for trying, but i understand your busy right now so I guess its understandable.

I'm of to bed but if you'd like to continue this discussion friend i'm genuinely interested in your rebuttal to the above.

Edit: missed your edit, ignore any percieved snark above

Pohl
Jan 28, 2005




In the future, please post shit with the sole purpose of antagonizing the person running this site. Thank you.

IAMNOTADOCTOR posted:

Edit: missed your edit, ignore any percieved snark above

I was trying to keep the thread somewhat together/clean by editing my post rather than spamming ideas as they came to me.
I know that can make the thread and ideas difficult to follow sometimes. I think I covered a lot of your questions and concerns in my edits before you even posted, but I'll look back through it later when I have time.
Thanks for the talk.

paragon1
Nov 22, 2010

FULL COMMUNISM NOW

KingFisher posted:


Also, I find it extremely telling that none of you have come up with an answer yet for who *forced* the greek to take those loans.

I find it extremely telling that you haven't come up with an answer for who *forced* the Germans to make the loan.

Abner Cadaver II
Apr 21, 2009

TONIGHT!

paragon1 posted:

I find it extremely telling that you haven't come up with an answer for who *forced* the Germans to make the loan.

You don't seem to understand that the creditor has more money than the debtor so they're better people. Because capitalism meritocracy something something.

paragon1
Nov 22, 2010

FULL COMMUNISM NOW
People often mention Italy and Spain as being similar to Greece when these sort of debates kick up. Would anyone care to share if there is any validity to that comparison, and if there is, how those countries' situations do and do not differ from Greece's?

Neurolimal
Nov 3, 2012
Here's how Austerity works:

1. Through lobbying and privatization, leech the majority of a countries' value (normally over time, since pulling a Greece is super messy) via corrupt projects, contracts, straight up embezzling the funds, diverting relief aid, etc.
2. Once the country has hit a recession, implement Austerity
3. Through austere programs, sap the rest of the countries' value, the amount reserved for trivial things such as lower class bread, meats, housing, etc.
4. Leave the country before it falls apart.

Ta-Daaa~

Pohl
Jan 28, 2005




In the future, please post shit with the sole purpose of antagonizing the person running this site. Thank you.

paragon1 posted:

People often mention Italy and Spain as being similar to Greece when these sort of debates kick up. Would anyone care to share if there is any validity to that comparison, and if there is, how those countries' situations do and do not differ from Greece's?

Are you talking historical, or recently?
That is important.

EDIT: poo poo. I don't think I ever answered the question from iamnotacotor. What is austerity?
Does anyone have a good definition, because I don't off the top of my head. I hate to say it is like US porn and you know it when you see it, but that is where my brain is right now. You know it when you loving see it.

The US doesn't do austerity as a matter of fact, but some states do. Like Kansas. Kansas cut funding to health care, education and... well loving everything else, while cutting taxes. They didn't have a big deficit before that however, they created one. The idea was that lower taxes and better opportunities would grow the economy. That didn't work, obviously.

Oh, hi wisconsin.

The difference is, US states often have balanced budget amendments. They have to balance the budget, as per a lot of state laws. What does cutting taxes and cutting social benefits lead too... Cut benefits to the poor as you entire economy crumbles around you.


Austerity isn't always about raising taxes, but it kind of is... Since Kansas just raised taxes on the poorest people in the state in order to balance their budget. They couldn't raise taxes, "exactly", but they could raise fees. You know it when you see it. Fee's don't equal a tax... so a lot of people raise fees and not taxes. The poor people pay fees... fees and taxes are different animals but we often call them both taxes.

Kansas is bleeding itself dry, none of this is working.


That was really allitertative, I hope it made sense.

Pohl fucked around with this message at 09:14 on Jul 20, 2015

paragon1
Nov 22, 2010

FULL COMMUNISM NOW

Pohl posted:

Are you talking historical, or recently?
That is important.

my understanding is that they were referring to recent events, so the past five years or so?

Pohl
Jan 28, 2005




In the future, please post shit with the sole purpose of antagonizing the person running this site. Thank you.

paragon1 posted:

my understanding is that they were referring to recent events, so the past five years or so?

Oh, you aren't talking about Germany borrowing money, you are talking about them lending money. poo poo, my bad.

Just for laughs, does everyone feel uncomfortable yet?

IAMNOTADOCTOR
Sep 26, 2013

Pohl posted:

Are you talking historical, or recently?
That is important.

EDIT: poo poo. I don't think I ever answered the question from iamnotacotor. What is austerity?
Does anyone have a good definition, because I don't off the top of my head. I hate to say it is like US porn and you know it when you see it, but that is where my brain is right now. You know it when you loving see it.

The US doesn't do austerity as a matter of fact, but some states do. Like Kansas. Kansas cut funding to health care, education and... well loving everything else, while cutting taxes. They didn't have a big deficit before that however, they created one. The idea was that lower taxes and better opportunities would grow the economy. That didn't work, obviously.

Oh, hi wisconsin.

The difference is, US states often have balanced budget amendments. They have to balance the budget, as per a lot of state laws. What does cutting taxes and cutting social benefits lead too... Cut benefits to the poor as you entire economy crumbles around you.


Austerity isn't always about raising taxes, but it kind of is... Since Kansas just raised taxes on the poorest people in the state in order to balance their budget. They couldn't raise taxes, "exactly", but they could raise fees. You know it when you see it. Fee's don't equal a tax... so a lot of people raise fees and not taxes. The poor people pay fees... fees and taxes are different animals but we often call them both taxes.

Kansas is bleeding itself dry, none of this is working.


That was really allitertative, I hope it made sense.

I hope you know that you are the only one who uses your definition of austerity? It's like debating communism and defining communism as the implementation of famine causing policies. Austerity is not always bad simply because it is a very basic and core economic concept that can be implemented in a social way (iceland for instance preferentially taxed the wealthy, as did ireland) or in the GOP kind of way as posted above. Equally important is the time of implementing austerity: keynes was not opposed to austerity during a boom, and I am not opposed to austerity during a sovereign debt crisis. To put it bluntly, you can use it right and you can use it wrong but the wrongness is not a key characteristic.

People itt, including you in my humble opinion, really need to accept the commonly accepted definition of austerity or that they've made up their own in which cases debate and discussion is pointless. I cant debate the merits of a program with you that is defined as : you'll know it when you see it. Especially when all the papers in support or opposed to our austerity use the commonly accepted definition. Basically, let everyone know when your making up your own new rules because at that point discussion in pointless.

IAMNOTADOCTOR
Sep 26, 2013

Maybe of interest, this graph shows which countries have implemented relative austerity in 2014 compared to 2009. Iceland and Greece clearly stand out, others less often discussed such as Romania also went through sizable austerity following an IMF loan.

asdf32
May 15, 2010

I lust for childrens' deaths. Ask me about how I don't care if my kids die.
Nice graph.

Friendly reminder: austerity means decreasing the deficit. For those who still don't get it but post in this thread.

GulMadred
Oct 20, 2005

I don't understand how you can be so mistaken.

IAMNOTADOCTOR posted:

Iceland and Greece clearly stand out
Iceland is a special case. They didn't exactly spend their way into crisis at the federal level - they were running modest nominal surpluses during the boom years (although households were certainly overspending, inspired by lovely price signals from unregulated banks). Iceland saw a too-big-to-fail bank failure. This event, along with uncertainty about the fate of foreign depositors and creditors (due to emergency capital controls), as well as the weakness of the central bank, restricted Iceland's access to credit markets and increased the costs to service its loans (which had already risen due to the ~50% fall in ISK/EUR exchange rate).

If you redrew that chart to show the period from 2008 to 2014 then Iceland would be hanging out with Sweden.

asdf32 posted:

Friendly reminder: austerity means decreasing the deficit. For those who still don't get it but post in this thread.
If you can cut waste and patronage projects out of your budget, then great - please do so! If you're a developing nation and Moody's shows up during normal economic times and says "shrink your deficit or eat a downgrade" then a few years of fiscal consolidation might be your best option. If you're an ECB technocrat in the mid-nineties, then you should absolutely be scrutinizing Greece's bullshit paperwork and screaming at them to stop running deficits.

In the here-and-now of the European periphery, the real issue is debt loads. If you engineer a 7% primary surplus during a recession by starving pensioners to death and convincing your youth to emigrate, and thereby shrink your GDP 5% annually, then you've made your long-term debt outlook worse. This new problem can, of course, be solved with :eng101: more austerity! :eng101:

Nobody is going to assess austerity as a successful policy if it leaves the enacting nation in perpetual crisis. The fact that it also produces human misery serves to promote its adherents from "misguided" to "possibly evil."

Pohl
Jan 28, 2005




In the future, please post shit with the sole purpose of antagonizing the person running this site. Thank you.

IAMNOTADOCTOR posted:

I hope you know that you are the only one who uses your definition of austerity? It's like debating communism and defining communism as the implementation of famine causing policies. Austerity is not always bad simply because it is a very basic and core economic concept that can be implemented in a social way (iceland for instance preferentially taxed the wealthy, as did ireland) or in the GOP kind of way as posted above. Equally important is the time of implementing austerity: keynes was not opposed to austerity during a boom, and I am not opposed to austerity during a sovereign debt crisis. To put it bluntly, you can use it right and you can use it wrong but the wrongness is not a key characteristic.

People itt, including you in my humble opinion, really need to accept the commonly accepted definition of austerity or that they've made up their own in which cases debate and discussion is pointless. I cant debate the merits of a program with you that is defined as : you'll know it when you see it. Especially when all the papers in support or opposed to our austerity use the commonly accepted definition. Basically, let everyone know when your making up your own new rules because at that point discussion in pointless.

I'm willing to fully admit my take on Austerity is complicated. I think that simple definitions of austerity actually excuse it or defend it, much like fascism. It is a complicated issue and you can't just break it down into something like a 3 part definition; sorry if that doesn't satisfy you.
Here is my take on it:

I'm going to link a paper that talks about austerity being, at it's core, the cut of state spending.
This is the big thing with austerity. Something we can all certainly agree on, I would guess.
Cutting state spending when state spending is too high, is a good thing? RIght? Also, how much is too much?
But what are we talking about exactly? That is the important question.

quote:

At the core of austerity measures are cuts in state expenditure. The outcomes (reduced benefits, wages, pensions and state services) have been severe for the more disadvantaged in society, who have experienced a
significant fall in living standards and growing insecurity. There are profound differences –of geography and generation, gender and ‘race’ as well as class – in how austerity is experienced. These inequalities are increasingly taking on a spatial dimension, with the socialzoning of cities and the disparities between regions becoming more pronounced . The south-east of England is becoming increasingly distinct, though is itself the locale of deep and growing inequalities.


asdf32 posted:

Nice graph.

Friendly reminder: austerity means decreasing the deficit. For those who still don't get it but post in this thread.

That is a simplistic and simple idea that is, well, rather dumb. That may be the ideal goal of austerity, but does that by definition even loving work? Hell, the point is, are the ideas included in austerity even loving civilized?

Here is the paper I was referencing, IAMNOTADOCTOR. Maybe that will help you understand why I can't just give you a few defining features of what Austerity is.

http://www.gbz.hu-berlin.de/downloads/pdf/hugh-mackay-sociological-perspectives-on.pdf

Some highlights:

quote:

2.
Much of this work is by those who are concerned with the cuts to the welfare state. In the light of benefit, health and social services cuts ,they are exploring the impact on the poor –who are bearing the brunt of the cost of bailing out the bankers. For example, there is research on the growing stigmatisation of benefit claimants (Baumberg et al,2012); on the growth of pay-day loans (Packman,2014); and on howthe banking crisis has allowed the Conservative
-Lib Dem coalition government to pick up Thatcher’s agenda in ways even she never dared – to roll back further the boundariesof the state.


gently caress it, I'm going to just link it and hope you read it, because I have to format everything I post: http://www.gbz.hu-berlin.de/downloads/pdf/hugh-mackay-sociological-perspectives-on.pdf

When we say austerity, I think we all know what we are talking about, and getting bogged down in the minutiae of definition at this point is counterproductive. Iceland was an example of the public rebelling against austerity, while Kansas, as a state the very definition of austerity. We should be able to agree on those things, if we can't, then there is no discussion to be had.


quote:

Nobody is going to assess austerity as a successful policy if it leaves the enacting nation in perpetual crisis. The fact that it also produces human misery serves to promote its adherents from "misguided" to "possibly evil."

I wanted to highlight this post^^^.

Also goddamnit, Iceland did not do austerity, stop saying it did.
And why are we cutting spending when spending is fine? Why are we doing that? Because business will increase and income will increase in that vacuum?? Austerity is loving bullshit.

Pohl fucked around with this message at 19:26 on Jul 20, 2015

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Pohl
Jan 28, 2005




In the future, please post shit with the sole purpose of antagonizing the person running this site. Thank you.

IAMNOTADOCTOR posted:

Equally important is the time of implementing austerity: keynes was not opposed to austerity during a boom, and I am not opposed to austerity during a sovereign debt crisis. To put it bluntly, you can use it right and you can use it wrong but the wrongness is not a key characteristic.



Raising taxes in Iceland on the wealthy was their way to fight austerity. Like I said before, austerity usually has some sort of "fee" system included, or tax if you want to call it that. You can call it raising taxes, because it really is. What it does is raise fees and taxes on the poorest people in a country or state, which makes no sense. Not if you want economic growth anyway. The rich people aren't suffering these "fees" or taxes, but suddenly the economic growth has stalled and no one can figure out why.

No poo poo keynes said that, Adam smith also said to not gently caress over the poor because it would be bad for business.


I'm going to quote this again:

quote:

Equally important is the time of implementing austerity: keynes was not opposed to austerity during a boom, and I am not opposed to austerity during a sovereign debt crisis.

Because you have no loving idea what you are talking about. That quote is talking out of the both sides of it's mouth. Keyens is rolling over in his grave. You can't use his quote in that context to justify your lovely opinion.

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