inb4 retard

No, that was mean to people with mental disabilities. TC, over your period here, you have never once explained how either large government or Europe is socialist.

You'll note that I'm not arguing against your point that socialism is collapsing in certain countries. My argument is that you can't just reflect that upon the citizens of the countries involved and thereby insult them.

If you take the last sentence out of context, maybe it could be racist... but come on now, it's blatantly obvious his quarrel is with "European socialism", not "you Frenchmen" (sincere statement, no sarcasm intended)

The real cause of the failure of course is financial, too many benefits paid too many by too few workers.

The failed math of the financial package put together in a doomed attempt to prevent a Greek default tells the story.

The bailout package was $2 Trillion. This is half of the GDP of Germany and France combined. This is what is needed just to cover a 50% default on Greece alone.

Europe is out of money dear ones.

Investors realize this completely. On October 18 the interest rate on a one-year Greek Bond was 183%.
Greece couldn't borrow money if t here was any money to lend.

The most pitiful thing about Europe's solutions is that literally the Europeans are attempting to deal with a sovereign debt crisis by issuing more sovereign debt.
Europe not only has no money left, but they have no credit either.

If the Europeans were capitalists and not socialists they would have a simple solution, anyone and everyone who owns Greek bonds would lose 100% of their investment as the Greeks broke their word which was never worth anything to begin with because events have exposed the Greeks as bald-faced liars.

So capitalism would punish the bond holders as an example of what happens to bad investments.

The Europeans aren't capitalists though. So European governments will keep shoving massive amounts of "proposed" bond sells of more and more sovereign debt to deal with the collapse of Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Spain, and ultimately France.

It is deja vu 476 C.E. all over again for Europe.

One thing we can be sure of is an endless barrage of disgusting self-pity from a European culture that brought the two World Wars and three genocides-The Armenians/The Holocaust/and Bosnia- in the last century.

Taking responsibility for one's actions is definitely not European you see.

Okay, disregard my previous post, because *now* we're getting racist...

Don't go down this path dude... you have some pretty valid arguments some times... this'll soil all that...

Europeans call themselves a "race" now?

I guess that is the kind of irrationality once stands behind when confronting the truth of Europe's last century of existence

Two World Wars and three genocides.

Europe is a "culture" you idiots.

Someone better tell the Spaniards that they are the same "race" as the French.
Ditto telling the French that they are the same "race" as the Germans.

Race is an outdated category anyway. Any modern sociologist worth their salt relies on ethnicity as a descriptive category.

Race relies on visual biological characteristics to define human populations.
Ethnicity relies on cultural characteristics to define human populations- language/diet/dress/marriage customs/inheritance/etc.

Of course claiming someone espousing the truth you don't want to confront a racist is exactly they type of destructive self-pity and refusal to deal with reality that characterizes Europe today.

Lol, Europe is a culture. Did you ever learn geography in school?

To any and all Europeans even bothering to read this inbred's tripe:

PLEASE don't take this pitiful excuse for a sentiment as emblematic of how Americans feel about England, Germany, France, or any European nations...

And also please realize that MOST Americans DO recognize Europe is a continent, NOT a country or unified culture...

And most of us have more productive things to do than belittle people 5,000 miles away who are our only allies left in the world.

(I'll admit to not caring for the French too much, but oh well...I don't get the imnpression they'd care for me, so there we are...)

"Europe is a "culture" you idiots."

Riiiiiiiiight..........

And I'll bet you think Amerikuh is a continent, right?

(Not that you can hear my, I was one of your first mutes...bit I take that as a compliment, you pig-headed fool.)

I think I'm a mute too, so this obviously won't be heard by TC, but thats not necessarily the point.

The damage Greece's debt crisis is causing is not necessarily the fault of European Socialism. I am inclined to think that it is the over enthusiasm of the legislators who moved ahead in the creation of a European currency without thought for government policy. Obviously this cannot be proven, but I think that with greater integration of sovereign policy, especially relating to financial matters, this crisis might have been averted or at the very least minimized.

And Europe is neither completely united culturally, racially or ethnically, as I would sincerely hope you all realize. Although personally, I would like it to achieve a greater degree of cultural unity.

The main problem is that the Euro Zone countries were not allowed to increase their debt by more than 3% of GDP in a year and are not allowed to have a total debt of more than 60% of GDP. Unfortunately not one of the Euro Zone countries stuck to the rules! Even Germany broke them, but Greece really went to town!

Since Roman times "The People" have always voted for Bread and Circuses and the politicians know it. It was Spend Spend Spend all the way to Ballot Box. They bought election after election with borrowed money and nobody said "No!" or "Stop!" or anything.

Even in the UK, where we still have to good old British Pound, the Blair/Brown gov't joined in the fun. Towards the end, Brown was spending £4 for every £3 that came in. Even now, with all the painful cuts, the Tories are *still* increasing the amount of debt, just at a slower rate.

I have one word for you TC... Sweden.

The real indictment of the European socialist model of EU countries is how well countries like Poland are doing outside the EU.
Just compare Poland and Greece in the last two decades.
Poland embraced a market economy and left behind the utter ruin of the old Soviet block.
Greece embraced the European socialist model and is completely bankrupt financially and morally.
At least the disintegration of Europe's socialism has completely destroyed the credibility of socialism in the United States.

Just to let you know, but Poland is in the EU...

So what EU is Poland not a part of, but Greece is? It's certainly not the European Union, so what is it?

Poland is part of the European Union but does not use the Euro.
There are 27 European Union countries but 17 use the Euro 10 do not. It is not a requirement.

Just wanted to clarify that.

TC = yawn. If you don't feed the troll he will go away. If you want a real discussion, go for it, just don't try to argue with the troll.

I know I shouldn't, but I wanted to ask TC if he knew which of the following nations has the highest national debt, as measured by % of GDP - USA, UK, Germany, France.

Top 15 countries with the most debt as a percentage of GDP.
Ireland - 1,382% (Debt, at $172.3 billion, more than 10 times the national GDP)
United Kingdom - 413.3% ($8.98 trillion)
Switzerland - 401.9% ($1.3 trillion)
Netherlands - 376.3% ($2.6 trillion)
Belgium - 335.9% ($1.3 trillion)
Denmark - 310.4% ($626 billion)
Sweden - 282.2% ($1trillion)
Finland - 271.5% ($505 billion)
Austria - 261.1% ($867 billion)
Norway - 251% ($641 billion)
Hong Kong - 250.4% ($816 billion)
France - 250% ($5.4 trillion)
Portugal - 223.6% ($552 billion)
Germany - 185.1% ($5.4 trillion)
Greece - 182.2% ($580 billion)

http://www.canada.com/business/countries+with+most+debt/5628081/story.html

That's not even an answer to Pete's question. He asked for national debt, not external debt.

If you ask why that matters, my granny taking a loan from Belgian bank will be regarded as external debt, while ExxonMobil borrowing from New York bank won't. US external debt is 99%, EU is 85% (if we regard EU as a block in discussing international trade, why not external debt?). Luxembourg had external/GDP ratio at 3,443% in 2010 and they don't have to bother at all. External debt is important for balance of payments but is no measure of credit risk of a country.

Top 15 Diplomacy players with the highest percieved self importance as a percentage of their actual value.
Tettleton Chew - 1,456%
Putin - 935%
Sargmacher - 916%
Octavious - 755% (and rising daily ;) )

...I'd best stop before I mention someone easily offended :p

In all seriousness, though, is it really socialism that has created these problems? It smells more like what you get with capitalism when you put a bunch of complete muppets in charge of running things. Greece is more akin to TC's failing capitalist competitors that it ever was a socialist paradise.

can anyone explain me the difference between the external debt numbers TC is providing and the numbers called by wikipedia? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_external_debt

and maybe you should also take the opposide in mind? What are the external claims countries have?

But now i am falling in Tettletons chews trap, responding on one off his many factual misstakes, getting trapped in a flawed argumentation.

The real answer? It has nothing to do with Socialism, just with a clientelistic system full of patronage.
To cite one of my college sheets "Politicisation of Greek public sector is deep-rooted, age-old tradition. Does not vanish with some administrative reform. Rather makes reform vanish"

Someone is in charge of my life besides me Octavious? Someone picked up my mortgage payments or chose my lender for me? Someone pays my bills? Someone runs my business? Someone wipes my ass?

Here I thought you were an adult Octavious capable of taking care of your own life and those of your loved ones and it turns out your are just another whining socialist claiming victimhood and casting gray images of dark forces arrayed against you that makes you helpless.

The helpless part I can easliy believe. How pathetic can you get Octavious?

Poof, another idiot's useless drivel no longer capable of wasting my time or cluttering my forum board.

Hahaha. +1 Octavious. That was great.

"...I'd best stop before I mention someone easily offended :p"

You already mentioned 2 easily defended people. One of them has already had his raging rant, so now I'm waiting for Putin to bust into this thread ranting on about how he isn't self-important in that self-important sort of way.

Hey TC, I don't know what figures you've got, but they aren't the right ones. The correct answer to the question was, of course, the USA, which is somewhere in the mid-70 per cents. The big european economies are in the mid-60s.

Of course, the real issue that is that Greece should never have been in the Euro anyway

TC doesn't actually have any idea what national debt is. Or he used numbers he should have realized were obviously wrong. External debt is something else entirely.

@ ShockTrooper

You know, I actually think it is very difficult to offend Putin. He has a habit of taking every opportunity to act offended in order to justify a full on rant in one of his arguments, but underneath it all I have a feeling he's quite calm. I find it hard to believe that you can be an easily offended and outspoken Communist living in New York without going quite, quite mad.

None of these statistics on debt, be they real, imagined, relevant or missleading, matter one jot to the ordinary man on the street. All we can realisticly do is make an effort to elect people who seem reasonably competent and decent to the top jobs and make sure we personally don't live beyond our means. Too many Greeks failed to do this, which is why they have been hit so hard by the global financial cock-up.

Poor Don Corleone, those numbers really got his panties in a bunch. He can't refute them, but he can sure throw an ignorant moron fit.
Poof, gone like a fart in the wind.

Pete, How could you be so stupid to not know what figures I posted. I gave you a link to the webstie. You offer no numbers of your own except for vague opinions with no facts to back them up. You're treading on this ice with me. Post intelligently with facts or be gone.

TC - a link to pictures with numbers that don't line up with the actual debt figures for the countries isn't really a source - and as there's no link to the primary source, it's pretty much useless. The Uk debt, at a tad over £900 billion, is significant, but not a patch on the US figure of north of $9 trillion. The link to wiki has been given - care to explain the disrepancy?

The figures you have appear to conflate government debt with private debt - which is going to distort the figures (my mortgage commitment is signifiantly larger than my share of the UK public debt for example, and I don't have a particularly large mortgage). And many countries ahve different patterns of home ownership, the numbers are going to be different. Govt debt is the best measure, and there the USA has a higher level (as measured by %age of GDP) than the major euro economies. Which is why that economy is the one that isn't AAA rated any more

And really, you shouldn't be lecturing others on how to post intelligently.

Wow Pete are you dumb or what. Thanks for the laugh. You don't even know how to work a slide show, read captions or understand sovereign debt. Thanks for self-identifying as an idiot so quickly. You are definitely not alone on this board.

Thanks for not providing a link to any information whatsoever and for being so utterly ignorant of Britain's sovereign debt that you don't understand you are on the hook for internal as well as external government debt, and that external debt is by far the more crucial.

In the end I'm just wish you good luck because you'll need it, and good bye!

welcome back tettleton, I missed having 400 threads from you in the opening page.

"The 20 countries with the most debt

With the recent spotlight on the debt crisis in Greece and other European nations, we take a look at the countries that are most in debt, calculated by the World Bank's data on gross external debt as a percentage of the GDP. The top ranking nations may surprise you.

United Kingdom - 413.3% ($8.98 trillion)
Switzerland - 401.9% ($1.3 trillion)
Netherlands - 376.3% ($2.6 trillion)
Belgium - 335.9% ($1.3 trillion)
Denmark - 310.4% ($626 billion)
Sweden - 282.2% ($1trillion)
Finland - 271.5% ($505 billion)
Austria - 261.1% ($867 billion)
Norway - 251% ($641 billion)
Hong Kong - 250.4% ($816 billion)
France - 250% ($5.4 trillion)
Portugal - 223.6% ($552 billion)
Germany - 185.1% ($5.4 trillion)
Greece - 182.2% ($580 billion)"

http://www.canada.com/business/countries+with+most+debt/5628081/story.html

From the courtesy of wiki:

"External debt (or foreign debt) is that part of the total debt in a country that is owed to creditors outside the country. The debtors can be the government, corporations or private households."

"Government debt (also known as public debt, national debt, sovereign debt) is money owed by a central government...Government debt can be categorized as internal debt (owed to lenders within the country) and external debt (owed to foreign lenders)."

As you can see, part of sovereign debt is classified as internal debt (money owed by government to residents) and the other part as external debt. However, external debt also entails loans resident companies and households took from non-residents. So as you can see, providing a table of synthetic account (external debt) provides very little information about an analytical account (sovereign debt).

@TC re your earlier comment

"If the Europeans were capitalists and not socialists they would have a simple solution, anyone and everyone who owns Greek bonds would lose 100% of their investment as the Greeks broke their word which was never worth anything to begin with because events have exposed the Greeks as bald-faced liars"

This is a credible argument but is it a failure of socialism or a failure of capitalism? Banks from the US, UK (which is not socialist), Japan and Switzerland are all exposed to Greek debt. They lent, as capitalist should, with a profit motive. Each individual decission to lend may have been correct but the nett result is bankruptcy for Grece and possible consequences for other countries and several financial institutions. Capitalism does have the capacity to tear itself apart and that can happen regardless of a country's system of Government.