lol largeham

I'm thinking of copy pasting TC's rants on the conservapedia article for Greece and simply state it as coming from a trustworthy conservative source.

@Tettleton
Well, if we're going to imagine what happens if a certain country will have a default on its debts. The most likely country to be in that position, is the US. With Congress being divided as it is, the debt ceiling(?) won't be raised. If that ceiling is not to be raised before the end of 2012 -which it probably won't- the US will default if next year's deficit will be of the same order as this year's deficit -a very likely assumption.
The fact of the matter is there'll be another massive bail-out for European banks and countries -via a sketchy construction- who invested in Greece. Either way, I'm happy to live in Europe, here we have some sovereign states that actually do grow (economically). Especially the Baltic states are doing a really good job, though they do not issue the euro, they are in the EU, which connects their economy to some extend to the others' (though with a low leverage). Large EU economies (Germany, the Netherlands, France, the UK) are massively cutting their deficits, which seems to lower the economic growth to 0 to 2 %.
Unfortunately for the US, China is his loan shark, judging the Chinese behavior, I doubt they'll warn again (even if the ceiling is raised). At some point they'll quietly slow down the rate of buying US bonds, just enough to take down the US economy in a controlled way. Of course, without affecting too much of the world economy and in a positive way for China (at least).
Well, Tettleton, I think the US is in a much larger problem than the EU. If not alone, most of our debts are to eachother (Germany to France; France to UK; UK to Germany), not to mention the shift in moving to more durable jobs (starting in the EU in the 80's) really starts to pay off nowadays. I think you'll be hit harder by economic melt-down in the US in, say 10 to 20 years, than you'll be in Europe right now, independent of Greece' default.

yeah, discussion number 5 shut down because of my input, I'm liking it more every day.

Greece's bondholders may have to settle for a cut of more than 60 percent in what Athens owes them, the head of the eurozone's finance ministers has said, the first open admission that such a drastic move is being considered.

Jean-Claude Juncker, who is also prime minister of Luxembourg, was quoted late Monday by Austrian state broadcaster ORF as saying that eurozone countries are "talking about more" than a 50 to 60 percent haircut for Greece.

This is what happens when you loan lazy Greek liars money.

I wonder if Greeks are even smart enough to realize what kind of interest rates they are going to have to pay for the next generation? Look at Argentina.
You don't get that kind of information at the Oracle of Delphi which is where the Greeks probably went for answers since they obviously live in the past.
It's about all you have when you are Greek.

Is it just me, or are TC's comment sounding quite racist? Of course, this could just be the charge of the PC brigade.

Well, they certainly border on racism and are quite culturally insensitive and rude.

But then again, TC usually seems to say things like that - though hopefully not in RL.

Spain is the latest victim of the credit rating axe as Standard & Poor’s cut the beleaguered European nation’s sovereign rating one notch to AA-.

High unemployment, tighter financial conditions, and an external debt-to-GDP ratio of about 50%, and the likely economic slowdown of Spain’s main trading partners were the main causes of the downgrade.

The American credit rating agency noted that the “economy” variable in its credit rating equation was the one responsible for the downgrade. Spanish GDP, S&P notes, will probably grow about 0.8% in 2011 and around 1% in 2012, weaker than the 1.5% estimate S&P made back in February.

Spain’s banks provide another risk, with S&P having recently downgraded the “financial system[s] asset quality,” especially given the high levels of external leverage in the economy. Shares in Banco Santander, Spain’s largest bank, are down more than 20% thus far this year.

S&P said that Spain is still at risk of another downgrade if the situation worsened.

Moody’s has just downgraded Spain’s credit rating two notches to A1.

Moody’s put Spain on under review back in late July, Fitch cut Spain’s rating 11 days ago, and S&P cut it last week.

The European socialist model is broken.
The European system that rewards people for being unproductive and penalizes people for being productive is disintegrating right before the world's eyes.

TC what do you think about the American Occupy the Wall Street movement?
Are they also stupid, are they European disguised as Americans or MAYBE you are the only one who's stupid????

btw have you noticed that noone else cares to respond to you?
that's because the whole planet muted you.
You are like to have me.

*lucky not like...

It's okay hellalt. I will have grown wings before TC can actually explain how Europe is socialist.

It's entertaining to read headlines that read "Greeks protest austerity" when of course an accurate headline would read "Greeks protest others refusal to loan them money the Greeks will never pay back."

Nothing quite like watching a society with a corrupt ideology self-destruct.

TC the Greek government will be thrown within the next days or weeks.
Then we ll exit the eurozone, return to national currency and tell the world there is no loan to be paid back, fuck germany, fuck europe and fuck usa
then I ll be laughing and you ll be eating shit.

Greek crisis is artificially manufactured by the Germans so they can get greater centralized control of their empire, I mean the EU. "Crisis" would end tomorrow if they issued Eurobonds.

This headline is misleadingly entertaining.

France Split With Germany on Crisis Emerges as EU Summit Pressure Mounts

If it was an accurate headline it would read, "French Slapped in the Face by Their Utter Lack of Political Influence and Financial Resources to Deal With the Crisis as Germany Alone has the Ability to Save the Greeks."

After losing two World Wars the Germans stand dominate over the European continent.

Money talks and BS walks. The poor French.

Another misleading headline.

"In Europe, new fears of German might."

If it was accurate it would read "Fiscally Irresponsible Europeans Fear German Insistence on Responsible, Common Sense Solutions."

Today the world’s public and private debt exceeds an incredible 300 percent of GDP.

A year ago, senior European officials never dreamed they’d be in their current mess. Greece represents only 3 percent of the Eurozone economy. Bailout tricks and clever central bank interventions were supposed to calm nervous markets. That happened, but didn’t last. A powerful global financial market brought officials to their knees.

The inconvenient thing for socialists is that when the truth that their pipe dreams are fiscally unsustainable they find democracy an inconvenient impediment to their need to see private assets they can't reach through taxation.

The larger danger is that ballooning debt reaches a tipping point beyond which financial markets conclude the debt cannot be repaid without instigating political chaos. That is Europe’s predicament today. Markets realize that the austerity policies needed to bring the debt under control are making the task of debt reduction impossible, as tax revenues plummet.

Debt suffocates growth, which destroys equity values (particularly financial stocks), which diminishes lending, investment, and consumption. Falling tax receipts lead to even more debt.

What the Greek situation has shown (debt 120 percent of GDP before the crisis and 170 percent today after reforms) is that austerity without a strategy for vigorous economic growth is a recipe for failure.

So socialists quickly turn to authoritarians and communists, or they watch their socialists pipe dreams crumble because the public won't allow the kind of asset seizure those models require to sustain them.

Greece is so totally bust that it required not only a fresh bailout totaling $185 billion but also a 50 percent “haircut” imposed on its creditors. In other words, if you lent the Greeks money by buying their government’s bonds, you lost half of it. (But don’t feel too bad—a lot of Greeks got to retire at 60 with pensions you paid for.)

The loss of confidence in Europe’s institutions moves from the periphery (Greece and Portugal, say) towards the core (France and Italy, say). If Greece can stiff its creditors and stay in the euro, might that not be a tempting option for other countries? Consider Italy, the third-largest economy in the eurozone, with a debt-to-GDP ratio over 100 percent. “Contagion” is the word for the presence of nervous thoughts like these in bondholders’ heads, and the only way to protect against its spread is to build a “wall of money” around the least reliable-looking debtors. Unfortunately, Europe is out of money. The only “wall of money” it can erect is a virtual wall of borrowed money.

European banks hold a lot more sovereign debt (government bonds) than U.S. banks do. If some of that is going to get paid back at 50 centimes on the euro, then these banks are neither as wealthy nor as stable as they appear to be. That means banks are going to have to revise their business models. What European authorities insisted on this week was that they raise their capital ratios to 9 percent. There are two ways banks can do this. They can either hold more money or lend less. Europe’s leaders pretend they’re going to hold more. But since Europeans have already tapped every domestic source of capital, there is no place to get more. That means banks are going to lend less. Which in turn means the risk of recession has just risen significantly.

Bond yields in most European countries fell in the immediate aftermath of the agreement, but not in Italy. Italy has the third-largest bond market in the world—almost $3 trillion—and over the summer the European Central Bank bought tens of billions’ worth of Italian bonds to keep Italy’s borrowing costs down.

Europe has reached the point where its only route out of bankruptcy is this kind of vassalage. To escape a debt crisis, an economy needs to be capable of growing. It is far from clear that Europe can do that. It has two problems. One is technological. Much of Europe lacks the technological wherewithal to claim an ever-increasing share of the world economy. Spain, for instance, during its long, construction-based boom, developed a good deal of national expertise in .  .  . what? Pouring concrete?

A second problem is demographic. Italians have one of the lowest birthrates known in any society since the dawn of time; what it will look like in 40 years is anybody’s guess, but one fairly conservative demographic projection shows its population decreasing by 10 percent, to 54 million, at midcentury. Debt, alas, is contracted on a per-country, not a per capita basis, and this kind of population loss (especially when accompanied by rapid aging) can render debt impossible to pay down.

Europe’s leaders are welcome to congratulate each other on finally resolving their debt crisis. They will likely have many more opportunities to come up with such “final resolutions” in the months and years ahead.

I think it's the computers that caused all these problems. I say we go back to this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_rule

and this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MONIAC_Computer

to make our decisions.

Reagan was a Keynsian, and that's good enough for me!

The problem with giving the Greek lenders a haircut is that now those lenders (and their insurers) know that Eurozone will not prop up an ailing partner. This directly led IMHO to Italian borrowing costs increasing to over 6% which will lead their massive debt to become unsustainable and the vicious circle continues.

Eurozone has got to let greece fail and any other economy that borrowed to much and then rebuild - the banks that but sovereign debt will be a lot more cautious in future and such excesses will not be allowed to build up in the future.

Maniac, I agree with your post completely. Excellent points throughout.
Those who fail should be allowed to fail and not be propped up.

TC, it's your faulty brain that has failed.
Like I said about a million times in countless threads we (the Greek) actually want to FAIL so that we can get out of EU, return to national currency, declare bankrupt and therefore pay 0% of the debt.
It's France and Germany that won't let us out (plus the Prime Minister who is a puppet of them and a USA puppet too).
So get off your ignorant ass cause if some day a communist party takes charge of Greece you ll find out that any penny you invested in loaning Greece will be just lost.
muaahahahah

Not to mention that the Greek debt is just 1/5 of the money Germany owes us for WW2 atrocities...

"Interestingly Japan has the highest by some margin. That surprised me."
Japan is actually second to Zimbabwe, which hardly counts given that its GDP/capita is $400.

Japan's massive debt is actually a really good example of the financial problems that result from a debt crisis.

Back in the early 1990s, there was a real estate bubble that popped in Japan, (much like America in 2008).

The result was something known as stagflation, which some countries in Europe are starting to see the effects of. The concerns of stagflation are the mix of High unemployment and massive inflation. Only one country in history has been hit by stagflation for a prolonged period. And this is something many economists feel is about to hit America and Europe.

So given that Japan had this crisis we are currently dealing with right now, the question arises what did Japan do to get out of this crisis. The answer: They didn't. This period of Stagflation recently hit its 20th year, and Japan not only has a massive debt, but has little confidence in the economies both private and public sector.

The economy is an issue partially responsible for the fact that Japan has had 17 different primeministers over the past 20 years, and 6 over the last 5. The number of resignations from executive offices in Japan is massive, and has been for 20 years.

What ever Japan did, obviously was the wrong thing to do, so what is the right thing?