An Ol' Broad's Ramblings
Bad Behavior
Greece to get $170B bailout, reduce debt
After more than 12 hours of talks, the countries that use the euro reached an agreement early Tuesday to hand Greece euro130 billion ($170 billion) in additional bailout loans to save it from a potentially disastrous default next month.
The deal is expected to bring Greece’s debt down to 120.5 percent of gross domestic product by 2020 — that’s around the maximum that the International Monetary Fund and the eurozone consider sustainable.
The euro surged as the news of a deal broke early Tuesday. The accord should take some pressure off the 17-country currency union that has been battling a serious debt crisis for two years.
Without the deal, Greece was facing a potentially calamitous default next month and possibly being forced from the eurozone. The talks stretched into the early hours of Tuesday as ministers wrangled over how to cut Greece’s debt to a level that it could eventually pay back while not raising their own commitments.
What we have here is rewarding bad behavior. Again. Honestly, the European Union was a real bad idea from the start, and it’s not getting any better. The socialistic tendency of Europe have increased to the point where they are complete unsustainable. Do they really believe the Greeks who have been burning businesses, destroying streets and behaving like spoiled children are going to change? I seriously doubt it. The best thing they, or any such entity could, and should, do is let Greece succeed or fail, on their own merits. Obviously, the rioters aren’t concerned about the country as a whole (kind of like our socialist ‘occupiers’). They just want to continue their gimme behavior and to hell with everyone else. Well, Greece has run out of ‘other people’s money’, and now, it’s time to pay the piper. Why should anyone else pay ‘him’? We’ve seen some of this right here in the U.S. with the bailouts of car companies, banks, etc., and we, the taxpayers are on the hook for billions and BILLIONS because of weasel behavior. Oakland is already burning. When will the rest of the country go up in smoke?
Translation: “If the revolution will not happen peacefully, then it will happen violently. Anarchy!”
(Glenn Beck in front of a warning from Greek anarchists. Photo by Mark Mabry)
Who gets helped????
“The funds that are coming in are not staying in Greece, are not being invested in Greece, are not here to help the Greeks get out of this crisis,” Constantine Michalos, president of the Athens Chamber of Commerce and Industry, told the BBC, “It’s simply to repay the banks, so that they can retain their balance sheets on the profit side.”
Anastasis Chrisopoulos, a 31-year-old Athens taxi driver, saw no reason to cheer the bailout. “So what?” he told Reuters, “Things will only get worse. We have reached a point where we’re trying to figure out how to survive just the next day, let alone the next 10 days, the next month, the next year.”
The BBC have presented the Greek “bailout” as if it were two entirely separate transactions: a new €130 billion loan from the EU/ECB; and an agreement with private creditors (i.e. private holders of Greek government bonds) that they will reduce their claims to 53.5% of their face value of €200 billion-odd.
That makes it look like Greece comes out with €227 billion of spare cash, which is patently untrue, the net figure is more or less zero. Then there are the “austerity measures” which are a separate issue – they relate to future spending plans and not existing debts.
Actually, Mr Michalos has it spot on, there is no intention for very much of that €130 billion to go into “the Greek economy” (to the extent they still have one).
The only way they are going to survive is with a LOT of reorganization, and the unions/communists don’t seem to want to cooperate. Granted, I haven’t paid a whole lot of attention to Greece, other than what I’ve read, or seen on the idjit box, but it appears to me that handing them another bailout, when they didn’t make the tough choices last time around, is just flat out stooopid!