OT: A more insightful analysis than one might have expected

[John Rumm]

[pamela]

Varoufakis's lack of repentance is always great value although primarily for entertainment.

One of his central arguments seems to be that Greece's voracious appetite for German motor cars (made possible by exceedingly generous EU grants and financing) should somehow be blamed on the German car producers who made a profit. It was not just cars that the Greeks gorged themsleves on but other goods too.

The truth is Greece got easy money by faking statistics about the state of its economy (and the EU conveniently looked the other way) which it wasted by riding high on a hog for years until one day the party was over. What did Greece think it was doing? Did it really think it had a near infinite bank loan at giveaway rates to further ingulge itself and prop up its widespread corruption and its addiction to tax avoidance.

This was all made worse when Varoufakis miscalculated that the EU could not afford to let Greece leave the EU. Accordingly he put his game theory notions into action to create his bizarre (but highly entertaining) negotiating strategy based largely on brinkmanship which only ratcheted up Greece's misery.

His Paris Match photo shoot displaying a comfortable life style didn't exactly help either. :-)

Our days would be cloudier without him.

[newshound]

Glanced at it, but it started to make my brain hurt. Have filed away on Google Drive to look at in periods of insomnia.

[John Rumm]

Indeed - there is no getting away from the fact that they got way to happy with the cheque book!

That however is far more worrying.

Its the reported comments from the ex German banker about the eurozone lending policy, and the follow on bail outs that are quite revealing though.

They probably figured that all the time they could create (at least apparent) growth that exceeded their rate of debt growth they were "safe". Shame no one thought about what happens when recession or an unexpected "shock" to the system comes along.

Yup, that was rather novel....

EU: Here Greeks, have a really bad deal Varoufakis: Nope we are not prepared to accept that EU: You must accept it, or the shit will really hit the fan! Varoufakis: Nope still not playing EU: OK the shit has really hit the fan, all we can offer you now is an even worse deal! Varoufakis: That will do nicely!

Yea well, that's (some) socialists for you...

Not sure that's true for the Greeks mind.

[pamela]

On a separate point how has Greece (which in ancient times was the cradle of Western civilisation and gave birth of Western thought) end up so hopelessly decrepit today? The place looks like dust bowl and the food is terrible too.

By contrast, after a bit of a blip Ancient Rome bequeathed us the Rennaisance and the subsequent rise of Italy and Europe which is maintained to this day.

Maybe the voluble Mr Varoufakis also has an answer to this. :-)

[The Natural Philosopher]

Good grief!

[David]

Scary stuff.

I read it through in several chunks.

Makes me glad that we are out of the Euro, and sorry for Greece.

The central premise seems to be that the so called Greek bail out was in fact all a subterfuge by Germany to inject money into their failing banks without breaching EU rules.

How long can they keep doing that?

Cheers

Dave R

[tabbypurr]

Politics has been that way since it began 10s of thousands of years ago.

NT

[Tim Watts]

And why did they want to?

To my mind, and I expect to be called a racist by some lefty, but here's how I see it:

1) If the EU had remained as the EEC, it would have been simpler;

2) Barring 1, if the EU had had minimum economic criteria for membership, it would have been better. Something like:

a) If you have an economy on parity with the UK, France, Germany, then you can join as a full member with full freedom of movement.

b) If not a) then you can join EU-Lite, which gets you:

i) Preferential trading with the Club;

ii) Limited movement - eg VISA and work permit free movement for 30-60 days per year, after that you need to have a work permit from a job you managed to secure. This rule is at the discretion of the home nation and the employer's nation.

3) No Euro. Or if they really must have, then full members only.

4) Absolutely no making laws across the bloc. If they want to ban Glyphosate for use on crops destined for EU wide trading, fair enough - but if the nation wants to use the product at home, or on crops not destined for EU trade, they can.

========

We could have had a lot of the advantages without the side effects.

The biggest single mistake is letting countries with weak, or basket case, economies and governments join with strong countries.

I have no problem with trying to help small nations develop with loans and good trading terms (eg Eire, who did quite well) - but they don't get to join EU-Full until they've proved themselves.

I think that would have solved a lot of the problems.

Of course, it's completely at odds with Expansionalism!

[Tim Streater]

And then they wrapped the sodding Euro around the mess, thus making it shitloads worse.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Its just a huge ego trip - look at us we are so Important.

In fact the barely achieved a trade deal, ruined the economny, and all they have done is throw money at their supporters

Total wankers.