The Greeks Have Done It !

[mikey4444]

The European Commission blinked first apparently !


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-33503955

[Khandro]

birdie; It is now estimated that on top of the 345bn€ owed by Greece, they need a further 82 to 86bn€ (£60bn)
Trying to get my brain around these astronomic figures it occurs to me that the world population is nearly 80bn therefore to comply with this extra need alone would be the equivalent of handing 1€ to every man, woman and child on the planet!!!
The Population of Greece being 11million, with little industry or exports, no oil or gas and an abysmal record of collecting taxes. Isn't this economics of the mad-house?

[Gromit]

Khandro,

The population of the world is nearer 6 billion.

[Gromit]

I have been saying all along that Greece cannot afford to pay back this Debt, and it will have to be rescheduled or defferred. Today, the IMF have said this...

// The International Monetary Fund has set off a political earthquake in Europe, warning that Greece may need a full moratorium on debt payments for 30 years and perhaps even long-term subsidies to claw its way out of depression.
"The dramatic deterioration in debt sustainability points to the need for debt relief on a scale that would need to go well beyond what has been under consideration to date,” said the IMF in a confidential report. //

[Old_Geezer]

Perhaps the IMF wll wish to pay the creditors and write off the debt themselves then.

No doubt there will be more concessions but it is unlikely to a country that seems unwilling to try to turn their economy/behavior around. Needs to show willing first.

[sevenOP]

Khandro, thank reality that they cannot just loan people into existence, as they do with money.

This fiatsco is far from over.

https://pbs.twimg.com/tweet_video/CH7x272WUAAlSv4.mp4

[Khandro]

Sorry, I meant of course 8bn not 80, and its actually 7.2bn and rising fast;
http://www.census.gov/popclock/
Which means we could give everyone approx. 10€ (£6:00) ! isn't that correct? -I'm no mathematician.

[birdie1971]

Khandro - "... birdie; It is now estimated that on top of the 345bn€ owed by Greece, they need a further 82 to 86bn€ (£60bn)..."

I know. It's utterly insane. They will never ever be able to service this debt. This bail out is the EU's last ditch attempt to prop up their failing currency experiment.

As I write this the Greek Parliament has agreed to the terms of the bail out. Of course they have. What choice did they have? On the one hand - tough, brutal austerity measures - on the other - massive civil unrest, the breakdown of society and possible civil war. The terrible inevitable reality is that in another few months time, maybe even another year, they'll be right back in the same position being unable to service the debt and the cycle will repeat itself yet again.

Eventually they'll have to leave the Euro and address the awful reality of massive devaluation. I'm not a religious man as you know but God help them when this happens.

[Khandro]

birdie; Quite!
I put my above question to the mathematically-minded on 'Science' and got the answer that the current €86bn if equally distributed between every man, woman and child on the planet, each would receive €11.8

[Svejk]

Go back and ask them what everyone in Greece would get. ;)
When Icelanders refused to 'honour' their* debts, I read they (every man, woman and child) owed some ridiculous figure like $150,000 each.
*When I say 'their' debts, of course, it wasn't the average Icelander that ran up or got much out of said debt. As modern capitalism seems to work, private profits/public loss.

[Khandro]

^ €7,818 each if it was just restricted to the Greeks (and that's just the €86bn)
This is of course on top of the €345bn

[whiskeryron]

As has been said many times on A/B this is a ridiculous situation & all because Europe is determined to try & prove that the single currency works. OK then let the originators clear the mess up, as we know Greece will NEVER be able to pay back the massive sums borrowed so why don't Germany & France between them clear the debt & then start again from scratch with some sort of sensible ( ??) plan.

[Svejk]

They have come up with a new plan, Ron. We have to pay for it. ;o)

[Hypognosis]

I have said it before and I will say it again - Socialism is small scale: a handful of farms; a hippy commune; a kibbutz. When wealth is redistributed, it never travels much further than you could walk and you will likely know the famil(y/ies) who receive that. It was never designed to redistribute wealth thousands of miles away to complete strangers you neither know nor care much about. We pay into EU, some highly targeted subsidy comes back (eco projects etc) but, mostly, it goes to improve everything from the roads to the lifestyles in countries which we might never visit (my passport is long-since expired, at any rate).

@birdie
Thanks for confirming that. I always assumed you are USA based, so I'm curious about your interest in EU. Most USAnians would be bored witless by this whole business, unless of Greek extraction. ;-)

[Khandro]

Hypo; //It was never designed to redistribute wealth thousands of miles away to complete strangers//

Nowhere is even the slightest suggestion that this is a proposition, the analogy is simply to help me (firstly) and maybe others to understand the enormity of these figures bandied about by politicians, and has a scientific basis as a well-practiced method of comprehension of large numbers pointed out by Jim Al-Khalili, (though I can't remember who he said invented it) like saying; a teaspoon contains so many grains of sand, so many teaspoons fill a cup, so many cups fill a bucket, so many buckets fill a swimming pool, etc..
I can only think your distorting my image as though it was a proposal is mischievous, others on this thread understood the analogy.

[Hypognosis]

@Khandro

actually, I was responding to "we have to pay for it ;o)"

//

Svejk
They have come up with a new plan, Ron. We have to pay for it. ;o)
09:08 Thu 16th Jul 2015Report
//

Off of me not to address it. It always bugs me when people make pointed comments and then don't name who it is aimed at.