Re: EU: Uncharted Territory

[Lenzabi]

Picketty has blasted the germans for their lack of ever fully paying debts off as they demand of Greece

[Kaere]

Who is Picketty?

[Lenzabi]

Who is Picketty?

He is the French economics expert that wrote a book that was stunning. Slammed the inequality conundrum in the head

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/07/08/1400314/-Thomas-Piketty-Germany-has-never-repaid?detail=email

ZEIT: So you’re telling us that the German Wirtschaftswunder [“economic miracle”] was based on the same kind of debt relief that we deny Greece today?
Piketty: Exactly. After the war ended in 1945, Germany’s debt amounted to over 200% of its GDP. Ten years later, little of that remained: public debt was less than 20% of GDP. Around the same time, France managed a similarly artful turnaround. We never would have managed this unbelievably fast reduction in debt through the fiscal discipline that we today recommend to Greece. Instead, both of our states employed the second method with the three components that I mentioned, including debt relief. Think about the London Debt Agreement of 1953, where 60% of German foreign debt was cancelled and its internal debts were restructured.

[Kaere]

Thanks

[Lenzabi]

Thanks

No problem!

[Rockhopper]

It's a lot deeper than this . Michael Hudson has written some fascinating stuff o the issues of Europe and the Euro.

Every nation has a right to defend itself against attack – financial attack just as overt military one. That is an essential element in the principle of self-determination.
Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy and other debtor countries have been under the same mode of attack that was waged by the IMF and its austerity doctrine that bankrupted Latin America from the 1970s onward. International law needs to be updated to recognize that finance has become the modern-day mode of warfare. Its objectives are the same: acquisition of land, raw materials and assets.
A byproduct of this warfare has been to make today’s financial network so dysfunctional that nations need a financial Clean Slate. The most successful one in modern times was Germany’s Economic Miracle – the post-World War II Allied Monetary Reform. All domestic German debts were annulled, except employer wage debts to their labour force, and basic working balances. Later, in 1953, its international debts were written down. The logic prompting both these acts needs to be re-applied today.
With specific regard to Greece, Syriza’s leaders have said that they want to save Europe. First of all, from the eurozone’s destructive economic irrationality in not having a real central bank. This defect was deliberately built into the eurozone, to enforce a monopoly of commercial banks and bondholders powerful enough to gain control of governments, overruling democratic politics and referendums.
Current eurozone rules – the Maastricht and Lisbon treaties – aim to block governments from running budget deficits in a way that spend money into the economy to revive employment. The new goal is only to rescue bondholders and banks from making bad loans and even fraudulent loans, bailing them out at public expense. Economies are obliged to turn to commercial banks for loans to obtain the money that any economy needs to grow. This principle needs to be rejected on grounds that it violates a basic sovereign right of governments and economic democracy.
Once an economy is fiscally crippled by (1) not having a central bank to finance government spending, and (2) by limiting government budget deficits to just 3% of GDP, the economy must shrink. A shrinking economy will mean fewer tax revenues, and hence deeper government budget deficits and rising government debt.
The ultimate killer is for the ECB, IMF and EC to demand that governments pay their debts by privatising public infrastructure, natural resources, land and other assets in the public domain. To compound this demand, the Troika have blocked Greece from selling to the highest bidder, if that turns out to be Gazprom or another Russian company. Financial politics thus has become militarised as part of NATO’s New Cold War politics. Debtor economies are directed to sell to euro-kleptocrats – on terms financed by banks, so that interest charges on the deal absorb all the profits, leaving governments without much income tax.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/07/08/71809/

Tim.

[Rogue]

Perhaps countries like people should live within their means.

[Stargate]

Perhaps countries like people should live within their means.

I agree with you Rogue, we follow without having some information about what we are following. We seem to want, without acknowledging there is indeed a price to pay to pay.
You never hear a tree telling you it owes you something, or the sun telling you it is going shine tomorrow. If we lived within our collective means, there would be no need for the Big Banks Bullies.

[Rockhopper]

Good point but can you name one country where they do live within their means?

Tim.

[Rockhopper]

A couple of discussions with Prof. Steve Keen:



And:



Common sense!

From your own experience as a Jamaican Star, has Austerity improved Jamaica?

Tim.

[Stargate]

Austerity already tells you that you have crossed the self sustainable level. As you say most countries go over the edge because it's easy, all you have to do is borrow.
I think Cuba made a pretty good attempt, you don't hear too many people saying they are going to close the bank in Cuba, maybe to renovate it. Jamaican people always bite off more than they can chew, and do not produce enough, even when they produce, they cannot compete.
The way I see it Tim, is if you live over your means, that is not realistic living, and most countries and peoples who practice that, ends up in trouble.

[Rockhopper]

Fair point Star.

The problem is in how it is defined. Those on the right define it like a family budget but we can't run a country that way, society is too complex.

When a family finds themselves in doo-doo they stop spending or it is forced onto them. When a country stops spending (forced or otherwise) it's economy shrinks which reduces spending even more. A shrunk economy has less to pay off it's debts and the cycle continues.

Greece is an example of that. There has been much discussion about they being a bunch of spendthrifts and tax evaders but they are no worse than France or even Germany. Both the latter countries have a serious problem with tax evasion in particular, something that they should sort out first before criticising Greece.

Tim.

[Stargate]

Tim, They know what is happening, although we should think they don't know. This problem started a long time ago when the so called co-ops in England began to ban together just as the aristocrat in Greece banned together to bring about minority rule. They forced the smaller businesses out by share volume, and began injecting robots.

I do agree with you that communities and countries have become so large it is impossible to do any kind of management, if not by computers.
The country cannot do well when the family structure is damaged or broken. The economy will do well when there is room for all, and harmony is in the market place. The common market (market for everyone)only crashes when it is overloaded. When things are too big to manage, we have to break them down and not let excessive greed cripple what we do .

Greece did what was expected of them. That is what they saw the France's, and the Germany's, and the British, do, they were fans of the misguided leaders.

[Lenzabi]

the signs of how rigged the game is is showing, and that the whole thing now is as shaky as a house of cards.

[Rockhopper]

Oh yes Len. Funny (not hahaha) how Goldman Sachs are floating around in the background too. They did the "Creative Accounting" for Greece when they joined into the Euro. Did the same for Italy, France and Spain.

Tim.

[Stargate]

There seems to be a lot of confusion out there, look at what Greece is doing against the backdrop of the referendum. They are offering the very thing the referendum rejected, if that is at all true. The EU cannot afford to let Greece go off on it's own and inveigle the others to do the same.

I think i see your point Tim, there is a pattern in terms of GS involvement.

[Lenzabi]

Sad how they do that to other economies so they profit. The Germans had a wipe of the slate in 1953, yet they give no such help to those suffering under their austerity program,,,,or is pogrom?

[Rockhopper]

The problem Star is the most of us don't understand just how modern finances work. Not a accident, which is why Bankers use confusing and irrelevant terms like "derivatives", "Leverages", etc.

This is a good short series on how it all works:



Tim.

[Lenzabi]

Now we have the present system of 1 dollar backing a multi-thousand dollar loan, so that they make you pay back a fictitious number with interest stuffing more money their way under false pretenses.

[Stargate]

Thanks for the video Tim, the animation always do a better job.

I am still at a point where I ask myself if there is not a question of logic and mind, considering the
the ability of the thinker. It is basic, I think, to understand in the flow of things, our main observation around us are circles. If we do not know that change is what we know on this planet, then who should know? One has to know, that if you change one thing eventually, you have to change everything.

The idea of money could be a good one, however the moment you start to hoard it, the more the system becomes blocked. The only remedy for such problems, as history has shown us, is to redistribute. Not racism, not wars, not terrorists, simple redistribute. The prevailing minds are not wired for that.

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