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To: C19fan

Leftist dictionary: Not giving unlimited money with no strings attached = “humiliating”.


3 posted on 02/06/2015 6:59:27 AM PST by denydenydeny ("World History is not full of good governments, or of good voters either "--P.J. O'Rourke)
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To: denydenydeny

who do you root for? stupid leftist A or stupid leftist B?


5 posted on 02/06/2015 7:08:01 AM PST by longtermmemmory (VOTE! http://www.senate.gov and http://www.house.gov)
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To: denydenydeny
Yes, SYRIZA is leftist and has remarkably counter-productive ideas about the relationship between the state and the economy and between the state and society. However, their program does not fit your cynical description. Prime Minister Tsipras in an "Open letter to German citizens" dated 13 January of this year wrote

In 2010, the Greek state ceased to be able to service its debt. Unfortunately, European officials decided to pretend that this problem could be overcome by means of the largest loan in history on condition of fiscal austerity that would, with mathematical precision, shrink the national income from which both new and old loans must be paid. An insolvency problem was thus dealt with as if it were a case of illiquidity.

In other words, Europe adopted the tactics of the least reputable bankers who refuse to acknowledge bad loans, preferring to grant new ones to the insolvent entity so as to pretend that the original loan is performing while extending the bankruptcy into the future. Nothing more than common sense was required to see that the application of the 'extend and pretend' tactic would lead my country to a tragic state. That instead of Greece's stabilization, Europe was creating the circumstances for a self-reinforcing crisis that undermines the foundations of Europe itself.

My party, and I personally, disagreed fiercely with the May 2010 loan agreement not because you, the citizens of Germany, did not give us enough money but because you gave us much, much more than you should have and our government accepted far, far more than it had a right to. Money that would, in any case, neither help the people of Greece (as it was being thrown into the black hole of an unsustainable debt) nor prevent the ballooning of Greek government debt, at great expense to the Greek and German taxpayer.
Actually, the critique of EU and ECB policy given in the sentence, "An insolvency problem was thus dealt with as if it were a case of illiquidity," shows a degree of economic literacy rare enough even on the right, and vanishingly rare on the left.

The notion that Greece was being "bailed out" by the EU, ECB and IMF is unsupportable -- what were being bailed out were the banks, private investors, governments, and (oh, did I mention) banks who had been foolish enough to lend money to the profligate Greek state in the first place. They all should have taken a haircut back during the first Eurozone crisis.

8 posted on 02/06/2015 7:44:54 AM PST by The_Reader_David (And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come, then you will know...)
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