Real World Event Discussions

Is Greece so worthless that Putin doesn't bother invading?

POSTED BY: JEWELSTAITEFAN
UPDATED: Thursday, June 20, 2024 18:49
VIEWED: 3784
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Tuesday, July 7, 2015 5:46 AM

Throughout history, countries that insisted upon being the laziest and most worthless, most incompetent, like modern Greece, have always been overtaken by more zealous dictators, invaders, tyrants. Such a weak people have no defense, no method to defend themselves, even if they could generate a whim of caring for their well-being.
So why has nobody invaded them, killed off all their lazy asses? Is the country so worthless?
I do not recall Ukrainians being in any near realm of laziness as Greeks today. Yet their weakness resulted in (ahem - alleged) invasion, genocide.

I feel I am missing something. Something beyond how such Libtard utopians can threaten destiny with demise.

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Wednesday, July 8, 2015 8:21 AM

That'd be a good move for Putin. He could soak his bare chest with olive oil and participate in wrestling matches on the island of Lesvos.

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Thursday, July 9, 2015 12:07 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Throughout history, countries that insisted upon being the laziest and most worthless, most incompetent, like modern Greece . . .

I feel I am missing something. . .

Maybe this is what you missed. Take note that Brazil, for example, was not invaded when it could not repay its debts in the 1990s. And Texas was not invaded when it could not pay back the loans during the 1980s Savings and Loan Crisis. The crybaby cowboys of Texas got saved by FSLIC at the cost of hundreds of billions. Do the cowboys remember? They do not.:

Germans Forget Postwar History Lesson on Debt Relief in Greece Crisis JULY 7, 2015 www.nytimes.com/2015/07/08/business/economy/germanys-debt-history-echo
ed-in-greece.html


by Eduardo Porter

As negotiations between Greece and its creditors stumbled toward breakdown, culminating in a sound rejection on Sunday by Greek voters of the conditions demanded in exchange for a financial lifeline, a vintage photo resurfaced on the Internet.

It shows Hermann Josef Abs, head of the Federal Republic of Germany’s delegation in London on Feb. 27, 1953, signing the agreement that effectively cut the country’s debts to its foreign creditors in half.

It is an image that still resonates today. To critics of Germany’s insistence that Athens must agree to more painful austerity before any sort of debt relief can be put on the table, it serves as a blunt retort: The main creditor demanding that Greeks be made to pay for past profligacy benefited not so long ago from more lenient terms than it is now prepared to offer.

But beyond serving as a reminder of German hypocrisy, the image offers a more important lesson: These sorts of things have been dealt with successfully before.
The good news is that by now economists generally understand the contours of a successful approach. The bad news is that too many policy makers still take too long to heed their advice — insisting on repeating failed policies first.

“I’ve seen this movie so many times before,” said Carmen M. Reinhart, a professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard who is perhaps the world’s foremost expert on sovereign debt crises.

“It is very easy to get hung up on the idiosyncrasies of each individual situation and miss the recurring pattern.”

The recurring, historical pattern? Major debt overhangs are only solved after deep write-downs of the debt’s face value. The longer it takes for the debt to be cut, the bigger the necessary write-down will turn out to be.

Nobody should understand this better than the Germans. It’s not just that they benefited from the deal in 1953, which underpinned Germany’s postwar economic miracle. Twenty years earlier, Germany defaulted on its debts from World War I, after undergoing a bout of hyperinflation and economic depression that helped usher Hitler to power.

It is a general lesson about the nature of debt. Yet from the World War I defaults of more than a dozen countries in the 1930s to the Brady write-downs of the early 1990s, which ended a decade of high debt and no growth in Latin America and other developing countries, it is a lesson that has to be relearned again and again.

Both of these episodes were preceded by a decade or more of negotiations and rescheduling plans that — not unlike Greece’s first bailout programs — extended the maturity of debts and lowered their interest rate. But crises ended and economies improved only after the debt was cut.

In a recent study, Professor Reinhart and Christoph Trebesch of the University of Munich found sharp economic rebounds after the 1934 defaults — which cut debtors’ foreign indebtedness by at least 43 percent, on average — and the Brady plan, which sliced debtors’ burdens by an average of 36 percent.

“The crisis exit in both episodes came only after deep face-value debt write-offs had been implemented,” they concluded. “Softer forms of debt relief, such as maturity extensions and interest rate reductions, are not generally followed by higher economic growth or improved cred

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Thursday, July 9, 2015 3:20 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Throughout history, countries that insisted upon being the laziest and most worthless, most incompetent, like modern Greece . . .

I feel I am missing something. . .

Maybe this is what you missed. Take note that Brazil, for example, was not invaded when it could not repay its debts in the 1990s. And Texas was not invaded when it could not pay back the loans during the 1980s Savings and Loan Crisis. The crybaby cowboys of Texas got saved by FSLIC at the cost of hundreds of billions. Do the cowboys remember? They do not.:


Texas is not a sovereign nation, despite it's claims. It is a State within the Republic of United States.
Was Brazil in the middle of a war zone of the drug cartels during the 90's? I don't recall South America being all that attractive at the time. And at the time Russia was not in the position it is in now (China either), and America had not yet declined in power from the Reagan/Bush period.

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Thursday, July 9, 2015 5:13 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Throughout history, countries that insisted upon being the laziest and most worthless, most incompetent, like modern Greece . . .

I feel I am missing something. . .

Maybe this is what you missed. Take note that Brazil, for example, was not invaded when it could not repay its debts in the 1990s. And Texas was not invaded when it could not pay back the loans during the 1980s Savings and Loan Crisis. The crybaby cowboys of Texas got saved by FSLIC at the cost of hundreds of billions. Do the cowboys remember? They do not.:

Germans Forget Postwar History Lesson on Debt Relief in Greece Crisis JULY 7, 2015 www.nytimes.com/2015/07/08/business/economy/germanys-debt-history-echo
ed-in-greece.html


by Eduardo Porter

As negotiations between Greece and its creditors stumbled toward breakdown, culminating in a sound rejection on Sunday by Greek voters of the conditions demanded in exchange for a financial lifeline, a vintage photo resurfaced on the Internet.

It shows Hermann Josef Abs, head of the Federal Republic of Germany’s delegation in London on Feb. 27, 1953, signing the agreement that effectively cut the country’s debts to its foreign creditors in half.

It is an image that still resonates today. To critics of Germany’s insistence that Athens must agree to more painful austerity before any sort of debt relief can be put on the table, it serves as a blunt retort: The main creditor demanding that Greeks be made to pay for past profligacy benefited not so long ago from more lenient terms than it is now prepared to offer.

But beyond serving as a reminder of German hypocrisy, the image offers a more important lesson: These sorts of things have been dealt with successfully before.
The good news is that by now economists generally understand the contours of a successful approach. The bad news is that too many policy makers still take too long to heed their advice — insisting on repeating failed policies first.

“I’ve seen this movie so many times before,” said Carmen M. Reinhart, a professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard who is perhaps the world’s foremost expert on sovereign debt crises.

“It is very easy to get hung up on the idiosyncrasies of each individual situation and miss the recurring pattern.”

The recurring, historical pattern? Major debt overhangs are only solved after deep write-downs of the debt’s face value. The longer it takes for the debt to be cut, the bigger the necessary write-down will turn out to be.

Nobody should understand this better than the Germans. It’s not just that they benefited from the deal in 1953, which underpinned Germany’s postwar economic miracle. Twenty years earlier, Germany defaulted on its debts from World War I, after undergoing a bout of hyperinflation and economic depression that helped usher Hitler to power.

It is a general lesson about the nature of debt. Yet from the World War I defaults of more than a dozen countries in the 1930s to the Brady write-downs of the early 1990s, which ended a decade of high debt and no growth in Latin America and other developing countries, it is a lesson that has to be relearned again and again.

Both of these episodes were preceded by a decade or more of negotiations and rescheduling plans that — not unlike Greece’s first bailout programs — extended the maturity of debts and lowered their interest rate. But crises ended and economies improved only after the debt was cut.

In a recent study, Professor Reinhart and Christoph Trebesch of the University of Munich found sharp economic rebounds after the 1934 defaults — which cut debtors’ foreign indebtedness by at least 43 percent, on average — and the Brady plan, which sliced debtors’ burdens by an average of 36 percent.

“The crisis exit in both episodes came only after deep face-value debt write-offs had been implemented,” they concluded. “Softer forms of debt relief, such as maturity extensions and interest rate reductions, are not generally followed by

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Friday, July 10, 2015 3:55 AM

To be clear:
in 1953 Germany was not actively involved in or pursuing war actions or atrocities, which were what mostly got them into debt.

Today Greece insists upon continuing actions and pursuing the practices which precisely generated their current situation of fiscal insolvency. They still demand to be allowed to loaf and laze around, avoid any work or fiscal restraint, giving the finger to their creditors while demanding more lavish excess, and making it clear they have absolutely no intention of repaying any of the money, no matter how much the debt is erased or delayed.
Petulant children such as this have no need to wastefully splurge even more money if it was given to them.

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Friday, July 10, 2015 8:16 AM

Europe has to help Greece because Greece is part of Europe. They too experienced the horrors of Nazi occupation, but they didn't get much of the Marshall Plan pie after the war. I've been to Greece twice. It's a magical and beautiful country. The people there always treated us great.

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Saturday, July 11, 2015 2:37 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
Europe has to help Greece because Greece is part of Europe. They too experienced the horrors of Nazi occupation, but they didn't get much of the Marshall Plan pie after the war. I've been to Greece twice. It's a magical and beautiful country. The people there always treated us great.


I think I saw it in 300. Sparta and Thermopylae.

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Saturday, July 11, 2015 7:20 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Quote:

Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
Europe has to help Greece because Greece is part of Europe. They too experienced the horrors of Nazi occupation, but they didn't get much of the Marshall Plan pie after the war. I've been to Greece twice. It's a magical and beautiful country. The people there always treated us great.


I think I saw it in 300. Sparta and Thermopylae.


Nah. You saw CGI and a back lot in Burbank.

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Sunday, July 12, 2015 2:48 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
Quote:

Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Quote:

Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
Europe has to help Greece because Greece is part of Europe. They too experienced the horrors of Nazi occupation, but they didn't get much of the Marshall Plan pie after the war. I've been to Greece twice. It's a magical and beautiful country. The people there always treated us great.


I think I saw it in 300. Sparta and Thermopylae.


Nah. You saw CGI and a back lot in Burbank.


I forgot the wink emogee. And I wasn't sure if there was no iota of on-location filming.

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