Merkel: I got your debt payment right here.
Posted on 07/06/2015 10:04:32 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
They had already changed this practice since December and the citizens have been howling ever since. They cling to their hoarding, insistence on maintaining the largess for which they voted and are adamantly and vehemently against actually being personally responsible for that largess (debt) via confiscation of their money.
I’m only hoping Obama doesn’t increase the Greece allocation for immigration to a million or something.
Britain is paying off its WWI debt this year. That's been questioned though. How do you separate out one part of a massive national debt and attribute it to one specific loan period?
Merkel: I got your debt payment right here.
They ended up paying the Soviet Union with half their women.
“RE: Germany Makes Final WW1 Debt Payment
Are they liable to pay anything for WW II?”
German reparations for World War II
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_reparations_for_World_War_II
After World War II, both West Germany and East Germany were obliged to pay war reparations to the Allied governments, according to the Potsdam Conference. Other Axis nations were obliged to pay war reparations according to the Paris Peace Treaties of 1947.
London Agreement on German External Debts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Agreement_on_German_External_Debts
The total under negotiation was 16 billion marks of debt resulting from the Treaty of Versailles after World War I which had not been paid in the 1930s, but which Germany decided to repay to restore its reputation. This money was owed to government and private banks in the U.S., France and Britain. Another 16 billion marks represented postwar loans by the U.S. Under the London Debts Agreement of 1953, the repayable amount was reduced by 50% to about 15 billion marks and stretched out over 30 years, and compared to the fast-growing German economy were of minor impact.
Some of the agreement included debts to be paid after the reunification of Germany. Over decades it seemed unlikely to transpire, but in 1990 another 239.4 million Deutsche Mark of unpaid coupons were revived. On 3 October 2010 the last payment was made of 69.9 million euro.[4] This is considered to be the last payment by Germany on all known debts resulting from both world wars.
In 2014, countries are still paying off debt from World War One
http://qz.com/290183/in-2014-countries-are-still-paying-off-debt-from-world-war-one/
Germany
On Oct. 3, 2010, Germany finally paid off all its debt from World War One. The total? About 269 billion marks, or around 96,000 tons of gold.
The reparations were part of many humiliating clauses imposed by the Treaty of Versailles following Germany’s defeat in 1918, mainly by France, which suffered so much during the war and was also fearful that without the weight of such repayments, Germany would rise again quickly as a military power and attack it.
The UK sent a certain economist, John Maynard Keynes, as the principal representative of the British Treasury to the Paris Peace Conference. He resigned in June 1919 in protest at the size of reparations. “Germany will not be able to formulate correct policy if it cannot finance itself,” Keynes said. All very prescient, as Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party seized on popular hatred of the Versailles treaty to take power. Following the Great Depression in 1929, Germany’s debt was cut to 112 billion marks, payable over a period of 59 years. Not that it mattered—Hitler suspended reparation repayments in 1933.
In 1953, following the end of the Second World War, West Germany agreed at a conference in London to pay off its debts from before World War II, and in return was allowed to wait until reunification before paying €125 million in outstanding interest owed from 1945-1952. In 1990, the Berlin wall fell and Germany started paying off that interest—the very last of which was paid in October 2010 on the 20th anniversary of reunification.
One of the lessons of World War Two was the consequences of lumbering a losing nation with huge debts. “After WWII, they decided to hang the leaders but not to punish the nation,” Mark Harrison, an economics professor at University of Warwick, told the BBC. “But in WWI, it was the other way around.”
Does Germany Really Owe Greece A €trillion In War Reparations? Probably Not, No
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/09/12/does-germany-really-owe-greece-a-etrillion-in-war-reparations-probably-not-no/
(excerpt)
This is a lovely story that has been doing the rounds for a while now. The idea that Germany owes Greece some vast amount in reparations for WWII. An amount sufficiently large that Greece would have entirely a get out of jail free card from its debt. It’s all quite fascinating and while there’s a certain truth to it it’s most unlikely that the larger claims are true.
But as you can see, even that is problematic. There’s rather a Catch-22 situation there. If they can show that the money was stolen then it doesn’t have to be paid back. If it’s a normal credit then, well, inflation of a zero interest loan has been such that Germany could pay it all back tomorrow without breaking a sweat and without improving the Greek situation more than only the tiniest amount. That’s a tough needle to thread in a legal sense: proving that it was a simple commercial transaction but then arguing that it was under duress which is why no interest was charged.
It should be noted that such forced loans were not unusual under the Nazis. The best description of their financial policies that I’ve seen is “Hitler’s Beneficiaries” by Goetz Aly. As I recall it he uses the Greek events as an example of how the system worked more generally across many countries. There’s a good review of the book here
I think we might be able to make a moral case that Germany owes some amount to Greece for the depredations of those years. Not all that strong a one though, given that the Germans alive today just happen to be the people inhabiting that land, not the people who did the damage. I am tempted too by the idea that that forced loan might be due. Do note that these are entirely personal opinions though. However, I cannot see that there is any legal case to be brought. The war reparations seem to have been covered by various treaties over the decades. The forced loan, well, as above, if it was stolen then it isn’t repayable in law and if it was a commercial loan then given the no interest clause then it’s near irrelevant.
Indeed, what became the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) didn't get back to economic growth until the middle 1950's. Indeed, the decision to save Volkswagen proved to be a boon to the German economy as the rebuilt factory in Wolfsburg became a visible symbol of the rebirth of German industrial might.
Feasible terms? The private and bank holders took something like a 50% haircut. When the ECB, IMF and Euro governments took over the remainder, they stretched out the due dates to something like 30 years at an interest rate around 2%.
If the Greeks can't handle that, it might be related to their government spending close to 60% of GDP.
“However, it has frequently made other nations pay up, such as after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, when it demanded massive reparations from France and indeed received them. The French state suffered for decades under this debt.”
Well, the French were too meek to call their bluff and tell them where to stick their reparations. Probably still haven’t learned that lesson, to this day.
Correct, the ramblings of a socialist idiot. There is nothing brave about not paying ones debts. What Greece is doing is infantile.
Also, he's not real big on debt repayment in general. His attitude seems to be "If you have it, you don't need most of it."
Piketty is lying his ass off.
1. The Treaty of Versailles was not only vindictive, it demanded reparations from Germany and forbade Germany from running an export surplus with which to make the payments. The only possible way Germany could have complied with the terms of the treaty would have been to discover gold within its territory.
John Maynard Keynes wrote about this in his little book The Economic Consequences of the Peace. He didn’t get all the details right, but he was absolutely correct as to the effects of the treaty. France and England bear part of the responsibility for WWII because of that treaty.
2. We, the U.S., did not ratify that treaty and, after Harding was elected, made a separate peace with Germany and each of the other belligerents. Harding started, and the Coolidge concluded negotiations for the Dawes Plan to deal with the debt problem.
3. We, the U.S., would have none of the vindictiveness of Versailles following WWII. Instead, through the Marshall Plan, we sought to build up the democracies of Europe, including those of former enemies as well as those of former allies. We did not take any territory after WWI or WWII, nor make reparations demands after either. We’re a decent country that views wars as evil and the result of evil governments, not of the people of the nations. We view them mostly as victims themselves.
4. Greece does not have a debt problem because of war. It has a debt problem because of welfare socialism. Even if all its debts were wiped out, they’d still have a budget deficit to deal with and nobody in their right mind will “lend” any more money to them. Lending money to Greeks is like lending money to crack addicts. You’re not going to be repaid. Not ever. The modern country of Greece has never repaid its foreign debt and has repeatedly wiped out its domestic debt through inflation.
5. Greece’s foreign debt has already been reduced. Twice.
Piketty can’t be so stupid to not know these things. It must be that he is such an anti-capitalist and anti-American, radical left-wing progressive socialist that there is no connection between reality and what he says.
Hey, maybe he could be an advisor to Pope Francis.
We didn’t take any land after WWI or WWII. But we did acquire the Virgin Islands by purchase from Denmark during WWI, and we eventually acquired the Northern Marianas Islands (formerly a Japanese mandate from the League of Nations, and before that a German possession, purchased from the original colonizers, the Spanish), but that was as a result of a vote by the inhabitants in 1975. The Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands comprises 184 square miles of land (less than Guam). We didn’t take any land that belonged to our enemies—Germany, Japan, or Italy.
Book Mark
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