Discussion on Greek political, financial issues + new elections

[removeduser_487563287433]

Will it save capitalism? Nope!

Capitalism is slightly bigger than a bankrupt balkan state of 11 million people. Capitalism isn't to blame for Greece's situation, nor is resorting to extremes and pretending you can abandon it the solution. Greece's problem is corruption and an irresponsible public, plain and simple. You evade tax, you accept ridiculous political bribes. That's it.

And why is that exactly? The Greek government runs a primary surplus and the current account of the Greek economy is positive. Staying in the Eurozone offers Greece no benefit whatsoever, but on the contrary it comes along with the requirement to run huge primary surpluses in the next 20 years (between 7-10% of the GDP) in order to pay off the bailout package, which even if feasible would simply equate to the rapid destruction of capital accumulated domestically. Thanks, but no thanks.

Back when there was the last serious discussion of Greece leaving the Euro it was assumed that would result in Greece reverting to a worthless drachma. Helpful in some ways - greater competitiveness for exports and industry, greater control over monetary policy, but if you think austerity has been hard for individual Greeks, this would have been several times worse. Greek salaries would have had next to no purchasing power, Greeks would not have access to many luxuries, even more Greeks would have been compelled to emigrate than have done. To say the Eurozone gives no benefits really is sticking your head in the sand.

I am willing to bet that the only thing that happens next is a further "shaving off" of the Greek debt. I'm sorry I do not have a source in English but even google translate will not fail you here. The cost of Grexit would be around 75 billion while reducing the debt from 175% to 90% of the GDP will cost around 40, so that is exactly what is going to happen. Not that Greece can support the debt even with that reduction. However the new center-left government will hail it as a "victory" over the EU and the situation will stay exactly as it is today. Add a few populistic and quasi-social measures to offer some nominal relief which will stretch the budget and will make any surplus disappear. And that will be all.

Nothing else will happen.

I'm inclined to agree.

[Knight of Heaven]

Greece's problem is corruption and an irresponsible public, plain and simple. You evade tax, you accept ridiculous political bribes. That's it.

I think it is a litle more than that. Tax evasion, and political bribes happens everywhere all the time... Also from my experience Greek public isnt much diferent then the rest of european public.

Public is Anxious and don't trust their politicians or even their honesty, regardless of party or ideology, and all see a bleak economic future and don't think their leaders will deliver... A majority are also against immediate cuts in government spending the observer poll sugests... This basicaly paints the European public, the majority anyway.
The greeks arent any diferent. In fact untrust on national goverments has been increasing substancialy over the last few years, not only in greece but most european countries. On south european countries it is more substancial, but the same trend has been seen in northen countries as well.

Point being when the people dont trust their goverments, usualy the votes go in another way, it is how it goes. I dont find the democratic process inherently irresponsable btw.
http://one-europe.info/eurographics/...an-governments
http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-...itical-leaders

Despite the fact that both the German and the Greek conservative governments present the current bailout programme as a "success story", most analysts around the globe agree that it has actually failed. Six years of continuing recession have resulted in a loss of 25 percent of GDP and a rise of unemployment to 27 percent.

Greek debt is well over 170 percent of GDP now and according to Troika estimations it will be no less than 120 percent by 2020.

These facts translate to two things. Firstly, there can be no development under austerity policies for the majority of the population, even if the Eurozone fixes its competitiveness problem and exits deflation and the Greek economy starts developing at a growth rate of over 4 percent - which is highly unlikely.

Secondly, there can be no functioning democracy so long as Greece is not given choices other than poverty, degrowth and exclusion. Greece is in the state of protectorate at the moment, bound in a bailout agreement that strips its ability to produce and reject different solutions.
And it isnt only Greece. The point being all this story reeks of political blackmail, look all the ruckus that goes when there is an election and the possibility of a change in policies....( wich arent that radical to begin with.... but whataver.
Portugal is due elections this year as well btw.

"Jean Claude Juncker's Commission has been issuing exhortations to the Greek electorate not to vote for SYRIZA and German finance minister is openly saying that there is no alternative for Greece, no matter which government comes in office."
Amazing....

[removeduser_487563287433]

I think it is a litle more than that. Tax evasion, and political bribes happens everywhere all the time...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_eva...ek_tax_evasion

Would you find me another EU state where half the population were active in evasion? Where the self-employed alone evaded taxes equal to a third of the deficit? This is the problem I'm talking about, Greeks totally unwilling to accept the extent at which the Greek public just weren't contributing.

[Timoleon of Korinthos]

Back when there was the last serious discussion of Greece leaving the Euro it was assumed that would result in Greece reverting to a worthless drachma. Helpful in some ways - greater competitiveness for exports and industry, greater control over monetary policy, but if you think austerity has been hard for individual Greeks, this would have been several times worse. Greek salaries would have had next to no purchasing power, Greeks would not have access to many luxuries, even more Greeks would have been compelled to emigrate than have done. To say the Eurozone gives no benefits really is sticking your head in the sand.

Back when there was the last serious discussion of Greece leaving the Euro it was 2012 and the Greek government was still running a primary deficit and the current account was negative. As of 2014, however, things have changed, because Greece does have an actual primary surplus and the current account is positive. So everything we import today we will be just as able to import if we revert to a national currency and there is no reason to assume the new drachma will be worthless. In fact, if current monetary conditions were to continue after the transition, we would actually see an appreciation of its value if left to float freely, even though government policy would definitely shift it towards a gradual depreciation.

As for the austerity and its repercussions, I strongly doubt that currency had any effect on it. The outline of the problem was that back in 2009 Greece had a primary deficit of 24 billions (that was like 10% of the GDP, really huge for our standards) and that deficit was bound to be at the very least nullified one way or the other, either immediately because we were compeltely cut off from the financial markets or stepwise over a period of 2-3 years, because it was so dictated by the bail-out agreeements. Ultimately, though, the end effect would have been the same: we lost that inflow of 24bn, which due to the deficient structure of our economy that revolves heavily around the public sector was amplified into a GDP fall by ~50 billions. That's what has caused unemployment and poverty to soar and I don't see why any of these would have been different, for better or for worse, if we had defaulted on our debt and been expelled from the Eurozone.

What is different is that if Greece had defaulted back in 2010 or 2012, we would not be expected to produce annual primary surpluses of an average 9 billions after 2016 for two decades, as is the case today. We all know that we can't accomplish that no matter what we do and everybody suspected it all along. We were led to believe in the EWG of November 2012 that once we had pulled ourselves together by at least balancing government budget an OSI would ensue at some point. That point has come and nobody in the Eurozone is willing to have a discussion about it. So as long as there is no restructuring our debt, especially considering that because the Troika creditors take precedence over the private sector we are greatly impeded from refinancing that part of the debt by borrowing from the markets, we are left with no choice but to default on it, at least partially, and that means exiting the Eurozone. The alternative, if feasible, is worse than a transition to drachma has been at perhaps any point since the crisis started and definitely so today.

[Knight of Heaven]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_eva...ek_tax_evasion

Would you find me another EU state where half the population were active in evasion? Where the self-employed alone evaded taxes equal to a third of the deficit? This is the problem I'm talking about, Greeks totally unwilling to accept the extent at which the Greek public just weren't contributing.

That doesnt explain everything. Im all for battling tax evasion, but the causes for the sovereign Greek debt are far more profund then mere sympthoms.
For instance some of them

Dellas and Tavlas draw two main suggestions as to why this happened to Greece.
First, the durability of a monetary union is crucially dependent on the existence of a well-functioning adjustment mechanism.

• In Greece, there was no mechanism to adjust money and credit growth, causing it to run large current account and fiscal deficits without taking remedial policy measures. This behavior resembled that of the Latin American countries and of European countries (such as Greece) that were not members of the gold standard.
• Under the gold standard, European peripheral countries ran current account deficits, but the size of those deficits was small relative to those experienced by Greece under the euro.
• They were small because fiscal shocks were smaller and, more importantly, because the adjustment mechanism while imperfect, worked to mitigate the buildup of external imbalances.

Second, adherence to a hard peg is no panacea and cannot be sustained without the support of credible fiscal institutions.

• In the eurozone, the market's perception that Greek sovereign debt represented a safe investment -- probably founded on the expectation of a bailout by core countries -- suppressed the effect of sovereign credit risk on Greek interest rates.
• At the same time, low interest rates greased the wheels of fiscal expansion by sending the message that there was no price to be paid for the buildup of sovereign debt.
• Hence, while external imbalances were essentially self-correcting under the gold standard, they were self-perpetuating in the eurozone due to the perception of an absence of credit risk.

http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.or...cjv33n3-13.pdf

Another major one is the system of governance. that alowed things like bloated government bureaucracy, unreasonably generous pensions and health-care benefits, and the sclerotic labor market. For the left ( your stance in this case), Greece’s financial troubles could easily be resolved if people paid their taxes properly, and the wealthy were prevented from tax-evading so blatantly.
Poor management of public finances in Greece is not some generically inherent predisposition of the Greek people – rather it’s what happens when you have a bad system of governance. Even though an agreement was reached on how to reduce the government’s debt, and reform the economy to meet future debt obligation, doubt persists in Europe and around the world. Until the governance system is reformed, and everybody recognizes the connection between governance structure and policy results, Greece is bound to repeat the mistakes of the past. This is because certain systems of governance will always produce certain policy results.

I realize this is the same for Portugal, as i can draw alot of similiraties. And to be clear i dont mean democracy it self, but the process of governance. A parliamentary system of governance, where executive and legislative branches blend and tend to be dominated by the same actor, will often spend more, save less, and kick the proverbial can down the road. Such is the same with Portugal for example. Other european countries have diferent systems of governance, quite diferently from these countries, belive it or not.
Over the past 12 years, Portugal has been in a severe economic slump,growing less than the U.S. during the Great Depression and Japan during the Lost Decade, and that slump was mainly caused by the country’s inability to efficiently allocate the foreign capital inflows it received after joining the Eurozone, again an uneficient system of governance...Portugal was one of the fastest growing countries in the world during the 15 years after it joined the Economic Free Trade Area in 1959. The years after joining the then European Community in 1986 were likewise marked by great progress. Yet, joining the European Monetary Union came with a prolonged slump, in wich we are still living it.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

ecause Portugal was one of the first countries where the symptoms of the sovereign debt crisis were initially identified, it can help macroeconomists understand what has been happening in Europe more broadly. “Portugal did not have a housing boom like Spain and Ireland, nor as rampant an increase in public debt as Greece, nor does it have Italian political instability. Yet, since 2010, all five countries have been in a similar crisis,” he writes. Reis finds that Portugal is unique in that it was one of many countries that went through a sharp increase in capital inflows from 2000 onwards—but while those inflows led to a boom elsewhere, in Portugal, they actually triggered a slump. Reis argues the economic crash is due to two main reasons: underdeveloped credit markets in Portugal caused foreign capital to go to unproductive firms in the non-tradable (services) sector, in turn causing productivity to fall and the real exchange rate to appreciate, taking away resources away from the tradables (manufacturing) sector. Reis notes that in spite of the large increase in unemployment in Portugal—almost 17 percent at the end of 2012—labor costs have only recently started falling and only by 4 to 6 percent by now.
The other factor at play was tax policy, he writes. The Portuguese government continuously raised taxes from 2000-2007 due to generous past promises made for seniors’ pensions. Those higher taxes discouraged work as well as misallocated resources. The Euro-crisis post 2010 led to further increases in taxes to implement the austerity measures imposed by European authorities and the IMF, and this has further stalled the chances for Portugal recovering.
In addition, Reis suggests that Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain, all went through a similar path since 2000. Capital flowed in, was channeled into the services sector, which boomed at the expense of manufacturing, lowering productivity, raising wages and leading to losses of competitiveness. The particular failure of the Portuguese economy to allocate capital and the increase in taxes led it to slump, while the other countries were booming. All of them accumulated a large amount of external debt, so when the worldwide financial crisis hit, causing a sudden stop of capital flows, the consequences were devastating. The exodus of private capital flows is comparable to the deep crises in Latin America in the last two decades, he writes.
Looking at the financial sector, Portuguese banks have not been in a strong position to help the overall economy, he notes. Unlike American banks, the ones in Portugal are very large relative to the size of the country: in 2007, the three largest Portuguese banks had assets of up to two-thirds of the country’s GDP, making it difficult for the already cash-strapped government to rescue the banks in a serious financial crisis. In addition, Portuguese banks hold a large amount of Portuguese government securities, making them highly exposed to Portuguese government.

Focusing on the symptoms of the Greek sovereign debt crisis, does no good to the either the people of Greece or others around the world who are trying to learn from this tragedy. What Greece is going through right now is the result of bad policies of course, but these policies could be inevitable considering the system of governance in place. At least some of them. And this is a EU problem as well. A problem that wont go away anytime soon.

Governance matters, and process (how laws are made and policies are set) is just as important as the content.

[removeduser_487563287433]

Back when there was the last serious discussion of Greece leaving the Euro it was 2012 and the Greek government was still running a primary deficit and the current account was negative. As of 2014, however, things have changed, because Greece does have an actual primary surplus and the current account is positive. So everything we import today we will be just as able to import if we revert to a national currency and there is no reason to assume the new drachma will be worthless. In fact, if current monetary conditions were to continue after the transition, we would actually see an appreciation of its value if left to float freely, even though government policy would definitely shift it towards a gradual depreciation.

You seem to believe that a budgetary surplus equates to the Greek economy being recovered, healthy and sure to improve, and none of that is accurate, and it's premature to even talk of a budget surplus - this is only a projection for 2015, Greece's spending plans have not been reviewed by the troika, the troika are projecting a 3% budget deficit rather than the Greek Government's 3% surplus. It is absolutely not a declared and inspected budget surplus for 2014 as you appear to believe.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/greece-e...015-1416567297

The point of all this is you are taking a very shaky statement and running with it as if it is gospel. It's not.

That's what has caused unemployment and poverty to soar and I don't see why any of these would have been different, for better or for worse, if we had defaulted on our debt and been expelled from the Eurozone.

Well you'd have probably had more unemployment, and those who were getting paid would be paid in a worthless currency and struggle to meet the cost of living for starters.

[Stavroforos]

I am willing to bet that the only thing that happens next is a further "shaving off" of the Greek debt. I'm sorry I do not have a source in English but even google translate will not fail you here. The cost of Grexit would be around 75 billion while reducing the debt from 175% to 90% of the GDP will cost around 40, so that is exactly what is going to happen. Not that Greece can support the debt even with that reduction. However the new center-left government will hail it as a "victory" over the EU and the situation will stay exactly as it is today. Add a few populistic and quasi-social measures to offer some nominal relief which will stretch the budget and will make any surplus disappear. And that will be all.

Nothing else will happen.

I seem to be going back and forth between your view and paranoia over what might happen if SYRIZA wins. I'm simply worried about the reaction from international markets and the like, because I'm fairly certain SYRIZA will be forced to follow similar measures even if they present some more of those populistic measures.

[Ludicus]

"Jean Claude Juncker's Commission has been issuing exhortations to the Greek electorate not to vote for SYRIZA...Amazing....

Amazing, indeed.Juncker, the godfather of the Luxembourg haven.

I think it is a litle more than that. Tax evasion, and political bribes happens everywhere all the time

Much more than that.Tax evasion exists because of the political influence that wealth buys.Tax havens, Luxembourg scandal, etc...there is no economic or moral justification for tax havens/tax evasion. In doubt, ask Juncker.

Secondly, there can be no functioning democracy so long as Greece is not given choices other than poverty, degrowth and exclusion

That's absolutely certain.

[neoptolemos]

I am willing to bet that the only thing that happens next is a further "shaving off" of the Greek debt. I'm sorry I do not have a source in English but even google translate will not fail you here. The cost of Grexit would be around 75 billion while reducing the debt from 175% to 90% of the GDP will cost around 40, so that is exactly what is going to happen. Not that Greece can support the debt even with that reduction. However the new center-left government will hail it as a "victory" over the EU and the situation will stay exactly as it is today. Add a few populistic and quasi-social measures to offer some nominal relief which will stretch the budget and will make any surplus disappear. And that will be all.

Nothing else will happen.

while I too agree with yours and article's point of view, any measure for social, economical and healthcare relief are absolutely needed populist or not.

[Ludicus]

while I too agree with yours and article's point of view, any measure for social, economical and healthcare relief are absolutely needed populist or not.

It's a "populist" measure for the right -wing austerity politics, it's a moral necessity for the people.
-------
Forgive the debt or earn the wrath of its victims -December 29, 2014

A moralistic perception of creditors as virtuous and debtors as sinners blocks a solution.
The spirit of Scrooge hangs over the eurozone. More than seven years after the onset of the credit crunch, austerity prevails and the threat of deflation looms. Any cost-benefit analysis of post-crisis fiscal stringency is dispiriting. Government debt continues to rise.

The paradox of the German view on debt is that Germany has been the biggest developed world beneficiary of debt forgiveness in recent memory. In the postwar London Debt Agreement, German external debt was substantially written off or deferred. The West German economic miracle was thus launched from a clean balance sheet while the Allies remained heavily indebted.

Just as Germans are obsessed with the consequences of the Weimar inflation but put less emphasis on the unemployment that brought Hitler to power, many cite the Marshall Plan as an act of American generosity, while the Allies’ larger act of macroeconomic mercy on debt has disappeared from political consciousness.
One result of all this is the rise of extremist anti-immigrant parties such as the French National Front and the Sweden Democrats, along with opponents of German-inspired austerity such as Syriza in Greece. The political consequences of a rise in extremism resulting from the moralistic German view of debt could be profoundly disturbing.

-----------------------------------
Eurozone debt: still time for Germans' generosity to prevail January 1, 2015

John Plender’s wise warning to Berlin (“Forgive the debt or earn the wrath of its victims”, December 30) did not mention that the Allies’ post-1945 “act of macroeconomic mercy” towards west German debt sprang from lessons painfully learnt after the first world war.

[Timoleon of Korinthos]

You seem to believe that a budgetary surplus equates to the Greek economy being recovered, healthy and sure to improve, and none of that is accurate, and it's premature to even talk of a budget surplus - this is only a projection for 2015, Greece's spending plans have not been reviewed by the troika, the troika are projecting a 3% budget deficit rather than the Greek Government's 3% surplus. It is absolutely not a declared and inspected budget surplus for 2014 as you appear to believe.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/greece-e...015-1416567297

The point of all this is you are taking a very shaky statement and running with it as if it is gospel. It's not.

I am by no means suggesting that a budgetary surplus equates to a healthy economy and I did not refer to a budgetary surplus overall, I am aware that we didn't have in 2014 and won't have in 2015 either, but I did refer to a primary surplus, which we do have.

My point is that because the Greek current account is now positive, and because the current account is what determines the value of a currency and how it evolves against other currencies, a new drachma would not be worthless at all, if it were to be reinstated. It would be a rather decent currency that would allow for implementing monetary policies by choice rather than necessity. The fact that the current account is positive also means that we wouldn't have any trouble keep importing what we do now, because reverting to a national currency does not its own affect the status of the current account. What might affect it is the possibility that in the short term large monetary outflows would occur due to widespread lack of trust in the new currency -not justified rationally on the basis of current indices but still capable of functioning as a self-fullfilling prophecy-, which would require capital controls for a period to deal with.
I also mention the fact that the government runs a primary surplus, because that shows Greece resorts to borrowing to refinance existing debt, so if negotiations about restructing fail (or do not commence at all) we have the option to abandon the bailout-program and the Eurozone alltogether. We didn't have that option that back when we had primary deficits and essentially relied on loans to pay for schools and hospitals. The fact that the government runs a primary surplus also shows that if Greece were to be expelled from the Eurozone and default on public debt, then there would be room for tax-relief or increase in welfare spending (by the equivalent of about 3.5bn Euros, if the projections for the whole of 2014 are correct), before any government would consider starting to print money, which is the slippery slope for creating uncontrollable inflation.

So I am not buying the "a new drachma will be worthless paper and you need to stay in the Eurozone" rhetoric, because there is no argument grounded on economics in it, just fear-mongering with a little bit of "the tyranny of the status-quo" thrown in the mix.

[alhoon]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_eva...ek_tax_evasion

Would you find me another EU state where half the population were active in evasion? Where the self-employed alone evaded taxes equal to a third of the deficit?

Yes! Your source mentions some.
Of course, those economies are also in trouble.

[Timoleon of Korinthos]

That was back in 2005, though, ten years ago. Today the self-employed pay taxes on deemed income, not real income, on "certificates" of standards of living, so to speak, which are highly arbitrary. Unjust and ineffective system, but it gets the job done.

I seem to be going back and forth between your view and paranoia over what might happen if SYRIZA wins.

Business as usual will happen. They will just go back on their word in a spectacular fashion like Samaras did in 2012. Other than Lafazanis' group, which is marginal, they don't have the determination to enter a course of collision with Germany and the ECB and they don't have the determination and the competence required to organise an orderly transition back to drachma, so they have no choice really. They will probably prosecute a few PASOK and ND members to appease the anger and frustration of the electorate as well as to make up for keeping up the same policies under a different name.

In fact, I am tempted to vote for SYRIZA myself, partly because of the amusement I will derive from the anger of those who buy into their rhetoric at their not living up to the expectations and partly so that we are done for good with the "the Left did not ever rule in Greece" line of thinking and the general fixation of the masses with statism. Perhaps then there might be a hope for (neo)liberalism to grow in influence. But then I again I can't bring myself to vote for advocates of illegal immigration, demilitarisation and abolition of our national consciousness, so I discard that idea.

[nemgod]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_eva...ek_tax_evasion

Would you find me another EU state where half the population were active in evasion? Where the self-employed alone evaded taxes equal to a third of the deficit? This is the problem I'm talking about, Greeks totally unwilling to accept the extent at which the Greek public just weren't contributing.

Then punish the individuals that did it. Don't punish those who did nothing wrong. It's pretty much simple, innocent people must never suffer for the acts of the few.

[Ludicus]

From the news,
SYRIZA's Tsipras Fends Off Grexit Suggestions

Tsipras...in his words, speculations of a Grexit were fueled by Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and the ruling coalition he is heading to prevent the leftist party's victory in the snap poll due on January 25

----------
nemgod

innocent people must never suffer for the acts of the few.

Indeed. Well, its another convenient myth.
Why Germany is the Eurozone's biggest free rider - Fortune October, 22,2014
Pavlos Eleftheriadis - Associate Professor of Law and a Fellow of Mansfield College at Oxford University,

The German government says that its own success and its neighbors’ failures are unrelated; that poor performance is due to poor decisions. Yet, even though the policy failures are real enough, this analysis is false...

...In some of the members of the Eurozone the main legacy of the Euro is economic implosion, rising inequality and widespread corruption. This is not the result of isolated domestic failures. It is a result of collective European decision-making that misfired spectacularly throughout the periphery. The relentless pursuit of an ‘ever closer union’ made EU institutions neglect the question of the quality of this union. It is time to change course. Unless Europe addresses the deep unfairness at the heart of the Eurozone, the crisis is not going to end.

[neoptolemos]

Then punish the individuals that did it. Don't punish those who did nothing wrong. It's pretty much simple, innocent people must never suffer for the acts of the few.

From the news,
SYRIZA's Tsipras Fends Off Grexit Suggestions


----------
nemgod

Indeed. Well, its another convenient myth.
Why Germany is the Eurozone's biggest free rider - Fortune October, 22,2014
Pavlos Eleftheriadis - Associate Professor of Law and a Fellow of Mansfield College at Oxford University,

Kudos my friends
Here is an interesting initiative, I don't remember something similar in the previous elections
http://www.with-the-greeks.eu/
http://www.with-the-greeks.eu/initial-signers/

[Platon]

Capitalism is slightly bigger than a bankrupt balkan state of 11 million people.

Maybe you have missed the aftermath of the financial crash of 2008? Trillions injected by all major central banks, zero interest rates and still pathetic growth. Capitalism IS in crisis and it has absolutely nothing to do with Greece

Capitalism isn't to blame for Greece's situation, nor is resorting to extremes and pretending you can abandon it the solution. Greece's problem is corruption and an irresponsible public, plain and simple. You evade tax, you accept ridiculous political bribes. That's it...

I don't think anyone, and certainly no Greek, would argue against the corruption in Greece. But its really interresting that everyone (Merkel, Hollande, the 'markets', the IMF..) urges Greeks to vote for those same, totally corrupted, parties that ruled during the last 40 years.
And going through a depression for 2-3 decades to pay off unpayable debts is stupidity beyond imagination...

[removeduser_487563287433]

Yes! Your source mentions some.
Of course, those economies are also in trouble.

I don't believe it does. You've probably got overexcited and misread the % GDP of the black market bit.

Maybe you have missed the aftermath of the financial crash of 2008? Trillions injected by all major central banks, zero interest rates and still pathetic growth. Capitalism IS in crisis and it has absolutely nothing to do with Greece

I graduated in 2008. I interned for a year, partly because there weren't many grad jobs going, partly to go into a career I wanted. Since then I've become a head of department in an ad agency in control of a region of 10% of the world's population. Capitalism is thriving, and the 2008 crisis was not its first. No, I did not miss the aftermath. I just weathered it, like most people.

And did that crisis have nothing to do with Greece? Quite obviously that's not true. The excessive borrowing and economic mismanagement of Greece led to it coming perilously close to defaulting on its debt and exposing other nations to default themselves. Portugal and Ireland were most at risk, but there was a real possibility that it could have resulted in default for Italy, and then who knows? Ignoring Greece's mismanagement at the heart of this is absurd.

I don't think anyone, and certainly no Greek, would argue against the corruption in Greece. But its really interresting that everyone (Merkel, Hollande, the 'markets', the IMF..) urges Greeks to vote for those same, totally corrupted, parties that ruled during the last 40 years.
And going through a depression for 2-3 decades to pay off unpayable debts is stupidity beyond imagination...

Yes because those parties are the ones trying to push through the anti-corruption measures the troika requires. Duh.

Then punish the individuals that did it. Don't punish those who did nothing wrong. It's pretty much simple, innocent people must never suffer for the acts of the few.

This right here, this is the problem. "Oh, why do I have to do anything? Why can't we just scapegoat some bankers"?

No. Half of Greeks were tax evading. Professionals alone evaded a third of the deficit. For decades Greeks accepted gleefully every political bribe thrown at them. It is so boring hearing Greeks whine about the violation of Greek democracy when there's so little responsibility for actually running a country properly.

[Stavroforos]

Saying that the Troika will force and that the parties will enforce anti-corruption and anti-tax evasion measures has become a sort-of running joke, considering they've been saying it since the crisis started and aren't much closer to it. Tax evasion isn't being fought, just instead as Timoleon said other means of taxation are used in its stead. As far as the numbers of Greeks who evade taxes go, I think it's important to realize that the money lost by the "average Greek" tax evader pales in comparison to the money lost by the richest elements of society which also evade their taxes. I'm not even including the few giant families who basically run Greece, who can't be touched no matter what, but those who have high-paying jobs and high-rates of tax evasion.

[removeduser_487563287433]

Saying that the Troika will force and that the parties will enforce anti-corruption and anti-tax evasion measures has become a sort-of running joke, considering they've been saying it since the crisis started and aren't much closer to it. Tax evasion isn't being fought, just instead as Timoleon said other means of taxation are used in its stead. As far as the numbers of Greeks who evade taxes go, I think it's important to realize that the money lost by the "average Greek" tax evader pales in comparison to the money lost by the richest elements of society which also evade their taxes. I'm not even including the few giant families who basically run Greece, who can't be touched no matter what, but those who have high-paying jobs and high-rates of tax evasion.

With tax evasion going down in Greece I'm not sure how you can argue measures have been ineffective. I'm totally uninterested in the rich vs. poor scapegoating, too. With 50% of the population evading taxes and public workers receiving absurd, unsustainable payments, I don't see why poor Greeks should be immune from austerity.