What's at stake is not just the debt of Greece, but also Italy, Spain, and possibly others. Forgiving Greece part of its debts sets a precedent for those countries, raising the stakes greatly.
Greece is unlikely to pay back more than a small percentage of its current debt (it will default eventually, no country can lose a quarter of its GDP and then suddenly have surplus budgets). The current scheme is about turning Greece into an example for Portugal, Spain and Italy (who are all playing around with austerity with varying degrees of success). What this all comes back to is that many of the loans should never have been made and banks made loans for stupid and unprofitable projects.
One of the core problems in all of this is that neoliberal political thought is forcing collective responsibility for what was poor commercial and economic management of a few companies, banks and governments on taxpayers in both creditor and debtor states. Responsibility is being enforced through tax dollars going into both debt forgiveness and service cuts. Poor due diligence and risk management on the part of creditors and reckless borrowing is burdening the populations of both "Germany" and "Greece" (where Germany and Greece are the creditor and debtor nations) with the costs.
It is a hard problem. Forgiving the debt once is likely the right thing to do, but if you keep doing it, what is to prevent countries from just never paying at all?
The sorts of restructuring plans that are put into place are designed to solve this problem, but I think whoever designed them is a sadist.
It is said you cannot spend your way out of a recession (and I'd agree that one off projects that don't kick start a continued source of income don't work), but you also cannot make so many budget cuts that no one in the country has a job, or a house, or a support network of any kind. Zero tax revenue does not make for a stable government.
(It does make for a really corrupt one though, and a much worse type of corruption than what Greece had before)
If debt is forgiven or defaulted upon, then it becomes harder to borrow in the future (i.e. they must do so at higher interest rates to account for the risk). If countries never paid their debt then no one would loan to them or would loan only at astronomical interest rates.
So Greece will be forced to accept conditions that prevent her ever paying her debt and why? So that other countries will be too terrified to follow in her footsteps?
Is this brutal and bleak blunt instrument really the most sophisticated strategy that we can muster in the 21st century? Can we really do no better?
Well, what is the alternative? Germany admits they've juiced their export driven economy via an artificially depressed currency, then either (1) leaves the euro themselves, or (2) agrees to permanent support to the less-productive peripheral countries inside the currency union?
> Germany admits they've juiced their export driven economy via an artificially depressed currency, then either (1) leaves the euro themselves, or (2) agrees to permanent support to the less-productive peripheral countries inside the currency union?
Yes. Shouldn't the German national ego be counted less important than making everyone's accounting add up?
now what's your strategy on bringing germany around to that pov? Because their politicians are poisoning the environment so that you can't even start that discussion.
Regarding that GDP: it's important to note that borrowing money (and spending it) pretty much directly increases GDP. So saying that austerity is causing a decline in GDP is only half the story: Greece borrowing too much money was one reason it was high in the first place.
Or it would signal that ending austerity is actually impossible for Greek politicians. If several parties in a row had promised to double the number of moons, they would also have had to renege on that promise.
The main difference is, of course, that it wasn't clear that it would be impossible to end austerity, with some thinking that the Troika would give in. But that doesn't mean the end of democracy.
>Or it would signal that ending austerity is actually impossible
It basically signaled that the Troika will cajole, threaten, blackmail and generally do everything in their power to keep the austerity train going.
Ultimately, though, that's the way to destroy the currency union. An economic policy based upon wage suppression and privatization of monopoly industries is nice for some people, but it isn't sustainable.
Of all the comments so far on this, this is maybe the coolest. You can really see how Office on OSX has shaped up (if you follow the beta; identical Windows and OSX support on launch day instead of OSX getting it 2 years later like it's been for the past decade), but I'm surprised Android also shares a significant amount of the code base.
It cuts down on bugs, and also makes sure the bugs that are on the desktop are also the same ones on my phone (principal of least surprise at work).
In a lot of professional services fields, the reputation of working for free or cheap tends to bring in really bad customers that tend to be more trouble than they are worth.
i think many people are missing this key point. this isn't a "i need this right this very millisecond" its more of a "i need this later today if its early enough or tomorrow would be fine" button. which a single press of a button would wake up the device, connect to what ever configured network connection it is assigned to, send some data to an API end point, go back to sleep. that could make the button last many years.
I used the word probably to convey that I personally have not done the research. But the TM people have done an extensive amount of scientific studies (some funded by governmental and military sources).
The reason why I wanted to share it was because of my own experience with TM results despite being a life-long an East Coast skeptic.
The mantra repetition is a very simple thing but it does actually have the ability to alter brain wave activity and I believe it has something to do with the cyclical nature of the repeated thought.
You can check out http://www.tm.org/ and other TM related sources for more on the scientific research that they have completed.
Also there are plenty of other reports from successful, creative people who have made TM a part of their daily lives, some for decades e.g. David Lynch, Jerry Seinfeld, Howard Stern, etc.
In addition, in my personal experience there has been a "lucid dreaming" or "inner hallucination" component to my meditations which are sometimes quite visceral in nature....all from just repeating a simple phrase.
That along with its other benefits that I have experienced personally prompted my belief that a mantra based practice is worth trying.
