French elections, and France in general
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Monday, August 31, 2026 18:13
VIEWED: 16063
PAGE 10 of 19
There was actually an interesting discussion going on, which was
Quote:
"Austerity" is just a way of bleeding the Greek people to pay German, Dutch, and Finnish banks for the loans that a corrupt Greek government took out. This is no different than imposing "austerity" on Brazilians for the loans that the military government took out, or any of the other austerity measures imposed by the IMF on many places in the world. It is the typical upward-directed money-conveyor that the wealthy get to set up for their own increased wealth and power. - SIGNY
Honest question: how should those loans be repaid? Without a doubt, this is one of the worst things that can happen to a people, a nightmare scenario, having their government be so corrupt or inept that they rack up huge debt they cannot pay themselves. But if they cannot pay, then whom? Where does that responsibility lie? Were there other viable options? I don't think there's a bankruptcy option for countries. - G
Look at the Icelandic response to financial collapse.- SIGNY
There's the default option. - KIKI
Here's the Iceland solution - which involves making those PRIVATE banks pay the price of failure in capitalism, instead of endless government bailouts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%932011_Icelandic_financial_cr
isis
There is also the concept of "odious debt". - SIGNY
-----------
"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake
THUGR, JONESING FOR WWIII
All those guns 1kiki, are pointed towards your beloved Russia. All those cyber capabilities, pointed right at Russia. Thanks Putin, and get ready to duck.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
So the first question is not whether there are mechanisms for a nation to repudiate sovereign debt .... there are several .... but whether or not nations SHOULD be able to default, from either moral or practical considerations.
Part of the answer lies with the nature of a loan. One of the reasons why lenders charge the interest that they do is to mitigate RISK. What is that risk??? Well, it's the risk of not being paid back. As far as I can tell, there is NO SUCH THING AS A RISK-FREE LOAN. I know the ECB, IMF, and EC (Troika) have written the rules to make their loans risk-free but that's as much of a distortion as making loans obligation-free. If the initial terms of the loans weren't sufficient for the lenders at the time (not enough collateral for example) revising the rules after-the-fact is cheating. If the lenders didn't perform their due diligence to ensure that the borrower was financially sound-enough to pay back the loan, that's still their problem.
What the Troika is insisting on is that the Greek government TAKE OUT MORE LOANS TO PAY BACK THE OLD ONES. What does that remind you of? Loan sharking???
Fin Min Varoufakis was actually willing to default, EVEN WITH the attendant difficulties of having to quit the Euro currency and go back to the drachma (which I think is a sufficiently high barrier to prevent casual default). But PM Tsipras pretty much stabbed his supporters in the back by conceding to new Troika loans on even worse terms.
==========
Just in case you think this is a tragic but irrelevant case of corrupt governments sticking their population with unpayable debt .... just imagine where the USA is with its trade, public, and private debt. We have peddled out asses... er, assets ... and owe everybody everything. So far, the institutions that have lent us money are willing to take "dollars" for payment, but if "dollars" should devalue, what will the collection procedure be?
-----------
"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake
THUGR, JONESING FOR WWIII
All those guns 1kiki, are pointed towards your beloved Russia. All those cyber capabilities, pointed right at Russia. Thanks Putin, and get ready to duck.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:There are much worse things than new loans. There are reasons to believe that if Greece had defaulted on its loans and left the euro, the Greek generals would have overthrown the government and brought back a dictatorship.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Varoufakis was actually willing to default, EVEN WITH the attendant difficulties of having to quit the Euro currency and go back to the drachma (which I think is a sufficiently high barrier to prevent casual default). But PM Tsipras pretty much stabbed his supporters in the back by conceding to new Troika loans on even worse terms.
Quote:www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/03/yanis-varoufakis-greece-greatest
I continue to believe Tsipras was right to climb down in the face of the EU’s ultimatum, and that Varoufakis was at fault for the way he designed the “game” strategy. For Tsipras – and for the older generation of former detainees and torture victims who rebuilt the Greek left after 1974 – staying in power as a dented shield against austerity was preferable to handing power back to a bunch of political mafiosi backed by a mob of baying rich-kid fashionistas.
-political-memoir
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Thanks Kiki for repeating some of my best, most insightful lines. It looks like you think when someone disagrees with you that makes them a troll? If you do I disagree with that. - GSTRING
GSTRING, if you don't know the difference between personally attacking someone (i.e. calling them names) and "disagreeing with them" I'll give you can example:
=======
DISAGREEMENT
G, there's large difference between disagreeing with someone versus personally attacking someone. When you disagree with someone you bring a different perspective to the discussion, but the focus remains on the topic. From your "most insightful lines" I can't even figure out what the disagreement might be about - clearly you've strayed far off-topic. No judge of debate or rhetoric would classify your quotes as anything resembling "disagreement".
PERSONAL ATTACK
Hey, you fucking moron, I can't believe there is anyone so morally bankrupt, dishonest, immature, mentally lazy, or evil as to pretend that calling someone a series of names is "disagreeing with" them. But I guess that anyone who would vote for Hillary would be like that! If you think that anyone here believes that, you're lying to yourself. So I'll keep it simple for you: here's an example that anyone with a half a brain should be able to understand. Now we get to see if you can stop acting like you have even less that half a brain, facefuck. Yanno, at least you get to go online and waste your time in your nice cushy office while getting paid for it, you brainless parasite. So get off the computer and get back to work.
=========
RU feeling the difference?
-----------
"Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor"- William Blake
THUGR, JONESING FOR WWIII
All those guns 1kiki, are pointed towards your beloved Russia. All those cyber capabilities, pointed right at Russia. Thanks Putin, and get ready to duck.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Progressive Moon Jae-in elected South Korea president
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
You have me at a disadvantage kiki.
Hmmmmm, let's see now...Trump did promise to "drain the swamp" didn't he?
So he fills his cabinet with Disney characters to help "drain" the country:
Tillerson
Mnuchin
Mattis
Sessions
Zinke
Perdue
Ross
Acosta
Price
Carson
Chao
Perry
DeVos
Shulkin
Kelly
Pompeo
Haley
Pruitt
McMahon
Mulvaney
Coats
Lighthizer
Hassett
And his gang of Good Samaritans:
Preibus, Bannon, Kushner, Bossert, Conway, Icahn, McGahn, Navarro, Spicer, McMaster,
Flynn and Puzder
What an amazing crew!
Need I say more. A veritable who's who of public conniving and corruption. Business
as usual, a changing of the guard in rampant "swampness."
SGG
Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
You think bankers are good guys? Did you learn nothing from 2008?
Care to try addressing the facts, again?
Or do you shoot nothing but blanks?
Originally posted by G:
"I coined the slogan "We Suck!"© many years ago."
G is an avowed Putin-loving, pro-Russian, anti-American troll.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Vive La jihad!
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Hackers came but the French were prepared:
Quote:
The National Security Agency in Washington picked up the signs. So did Emmanuel Macron’s bare-bones technology team. And mindful of what happened in the American presidential campaign, the team created dozens of false email accounts, complete with phony documents, to confuse the attackers.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/09/world/europe/hackers-came-but-the-f
rench-were-prepared.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0
Macron 1, Russia 0.
-------------------------------------------------------
"Objective truths are established by evidence. Personal truths by faith. Political truths by incessant repetition."
Russia's and Assad's War Crimes in Syria - http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=60278
Evidence the Syrian regime sponsors ISIS - http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=60521
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Oh yeah. The NYTimes, pusher of Chalabi fantasies.
Care to try addressing the facts, again?
Or do you shoot nothing but blanks?
Originally posted by G:
"I coined the slogan "We Suck!"© many years ago."
G is an avowed Putin-loving, pro-Russian, anti-American troll.
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME