Monday 6 July 2015

Greece is the word

If, a year or so ago, someone had suggested that we could see people starving in a developed European nation within the decade, they'd have not been taken all that seriously.

The left blame the bankers. The right blame the feckless spendthrift masses.

The people in my blogroll to the right of your screen have, by and large, a different take on things.

And so it begins. We live in interesting times.

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3 comments:

Pete said...

I am afraid I have to disagree with your comments on a factual basis.

1. Nobody is starving in Greece.

2. The right do not blame the feckless spendthrift masses, rather they blame a series of administrations dating back two decades for many serious failings in fiscal policy, in revenue collection, in wasteful, populist spending and in the falsification of government statistics. They absolutely blame the current administration in not towing the line in the long-term project which is the federal government of Europe.

May I urge you to go back and do some real research on this topic. It is not just a simple left vs right argument.

I feel the best option is for Greece to return to the drachma. Trying to have Northern Europe fix monetary policy and national governments on the edges of Europe fix fiscal policy when the two regions have very different economies is a very stupid idea and one that is bound to fail. And it has failed. The alternative option is for Greece to become a region of Germany and receive subsidies direct from Berlin, an idea that is unpopular both in Greece and Germany.

Paul said...

nobody is starving yet. When they're borrowing just to finance debt repayment, the writing is on the wall. When the credit they're obtaining to pay back the previous credit, plus interest has itself to be paid back with interest, how will the do it?

I'm well aware that this is not strictly a left-right issue, which is why I put it the way I did, rather than coming down on one side of the fence or the other. But you're mainly right in what you say about how the right view things.

Really though, what's happening in Greece now is just a precursor to what's happening in the wider world.

When economic growth cannot be generated through increased use of real resources, it's done on paper, through debt.

This is not a sustainable long term solution, and with very few exeptions, pretty much the whole damn world is in the same boat.

Like I say... Interesting times.

Paul said...

Just came across this piece by the way, which sums things up pretty well I reckon.

http://www.postcarbon.org/greece-diary/