Greece V - Alexis is the youngest, most handsome and successful PM in Europe

[Fragile Bird]

That title has been shortened a bit from the original suggestion. :P

I thought we needed yet another thread because I suspect Greece will be in the news again soon.

Carry on. :)

[Disturber of Peace]

Alexis is doing a lapdance.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

 

The real basic thing refered to is to the fact, what a loan actually is.

A loan creates artifical money.

Person A has a million.

Peson A gives a million to Person B and gets back a piece of paper that says Person B owns Person A 1 Million.

Now person A has a million (because the piece of paper is "worth" that much) and Person B has a million.

Out of one million became two millions. Should be quite simple till now.

 

Money in its own right is not worth anything (well, outside of coins anyway). The worth of money is due to the products behind it, which you can buy for it.

And thats the idea with the loan. Now, how it should work is, that for example B buys tools and for example starts making hats. B buys rare materials for lets say 10 and the hats will be worth 100. Now you add all the static costs and the cost of labour together and say there is a profit of 30 per hat in the end. Now, after a period of time B has produced enough "value" that the loan can be paid back. Which basically means, that the artificially created money was justified retrospectively.

Now, if you take a look at loans like for example in the american housing bubble, there was an entire system created around creating "unjustified" money. But at some point this is always exposed. It is said, the bubble bursts. Now, the comparism ain't perfect, because the major issue of this bubble is, that it is empty. So the second it bursts the outside is exposed to this vacuum. Normally and on small scale this would just suck in the debtor and the creditor. Unless the debt is spread around. Done so for example by Goldman Sachs. Then it starts sucking in everybody exposed. (And if you got far enough away it won't suck you in)

And it is basically the same with greece. Normally, yes it would have ended with the debtors taking a cut and greece needing to pay back the rest somehow.  But the entire eurozone was exposed to a similar problem. So if one would have steped away and had let it play out, there was a major concern that other bubbles around europe would have bursted. (France and Italy just to name the most scary once)

 

Ahum, no.

If Person A loans a million to person B it does not generate an extra milion. 

You know what gamblers, brokers and fraudsters say: You don't lose money, it is just in somebody else's pocket now. 

 

In your example person B took a loan from person A to finance his entrepeneurship. So person A is acting like a reasonable bank (assuming A checked before signing the check). Same with banks loaning out money to companies to buy better machines expand business. Still perfectly reasonable investment. The problems are less reasonable loans/investments. Loaning money to person c) to buy/lease a new car/house, with C not reasonably hoping to repay the loans, now that is actually a problem. If do that a lot of times: Subprime crises, aka the housing bubble in the US.  

 

But back to the money. Money is basically a more complex system of IOUs. I think on old British Pound bills there was still the statement written on those: The British Crown guarantees for the value equivalent to... (or something similar). Basically people buy into the promise made by the goverments, that the money has a worth.

The Gold standard means, the guarantee "the value of this bill equals the value of certain a mount of gold" (in some fixed exchange rate way). 

The drawback with the gold standard. Gold is a limited resource. So a central bank can't simply start the press and follow an easy money policy. Financial crises like the great depression are possible even with the gold standard applied. Historical sidenote, countries that did not hold onto the gold standard recovered faster (GB and Sweden) than countries still attached to the gold standard (France and Belgium). In an abstract way, the attachment to the Euro and the ECB is kinda equivalent to France and Belgium hanging on to the gold standard. So the Grexit might have been a road to a quicker recovery. But in all fairness the ECB has pumped quite a bit of money into the system, and is not as uncompromising as gold. 

 

And, yes. In a way money is only worth, what people believe it's worth. Or as the "yanks" so happily print on their Dollar bills. "In God we trust". How well that trust is placed, well from an Atheist perspective, that is kinda funny (at least in my opinion). How much trust people would have had in IOUs issued by a Greek goverment in case of a Grexit, that is a different question. My guess is: not much more than I have faith in God.

 

Anyway, going back to the gold standard, like Ron Paul proposed quite often, is ludicrous. Though a destructive part of me would kinda like the prospect of somebody like Soros simply betting against the US. 

[midi]

I can only take the title as sarcasm, seeing what an ugly mofo Tsipras is (and how epicly he and Varoufakis failed in the negotiations by antagonizing the creditors)

[IamMe90]

I can only take the title as sarcasm, seeing what an ugly mofo Tsipras is (and how epicly he and Varoufakis failed in the negotiations by antagonizing the creditors)

Honestly, he's pretty average looking.

[Guest]

Just because a couple of yahoos spoke words, let's have a look at some of the other PM's in Europe, shall we?*

 

*for the record, I am honored that my facetious suggestion became the actual title

 

French PM Francois Hollande

 

British PM David Cameron

 

(are Hollande and Cameron competing in some kind of strongest jaw contest?)

 

Dutch PM Mark Rutte

 

Italian PM Matteo Renzi

 

Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy

 

Danish PM Lars Rasmussen

 

Belgian PM Charles Michel

 

A sampling of European PM's.

 

Now, Greek PM Alexis Tispras

 

Rutte probably does pretty well as he is undoubtedly equipped with that legendary Dutch humor in addition to his nerd appeal, but the rest of that list won't exactly show up in Cosmopolitan any time soon. 

 

ETA:  Here's a fascinating thought-experiment for readers everywhere.  If God appeared before you and said "I decree that you must be reincarnated and will look like either Alexis Tsipras or whatever westeros.org boarder "midi" looks like in real life, but you must choose..." which would you take?  To be fair, we don't know what midi really looks like, but I hope and expect that the point of the exercise is clear. 

[ummester]

Dutch guy is the only one vaguely in the same physical attractiveness space.

 

Depending on what you think Russia is part of, the real life Stannis Baratheon from there could beat Alexis in the macho stakes :)

[The Iceman of the North]

Trisk, not to pick too much of a nit, but Hollande is not a PM, the French PM is Manuel Valls.

 

As for youngest PM, he's almost as old as I am, that's hardly young, there's plenty of younger PMs in Europe, like Irakli Garibashvili and Taavi Rõivas, both in their 30'ies.

[ElizabethB.]

 
As for youngest PM, he's almost as old as I am, that's hardly young, there's plenty of younger PMs in Europe, like Irakli Garibashvili and Taavi Rõivas, both in their 30'ies.

Who cares about the buffer zones and non EU? ; p

[The Iceman of the North]

Who cares about the buffer zones and non EU? ; p

The rich European non EU upper class?

[ElizabethB.]

The rich European non EU upper class?

Er... The Norwegians?

[Marcus Agrippa]

So much cringe. I'll write a whole thing on greece and the current issues of the euro- but it will take a while to get all the sources together- long story short- Greece shouldn't have gone to goldman,goldman sachs does it again, the germans should know better, the euro is badly put together, the british and american debt holders are jack asses, and the IMF has and will always suck.

 

Shouldn't have gone to goldman*

[ummester]

Er... The Norwegians?

 

Icelandic - richer in freedoms now, anyway.

 

It's probably that place where the hills are alive with the sound of money - you know, the surname of that dead actors name in a Knight's tale - Ulrich von Liechtenstein.

[Guest]

Trisk, not to pick too much of a nit, but Hollande is not a PM, the French PM is Manuel Valls.

 

 

Ha, thanks.  I should have known better.  But Hollande is their de facto leader, and he ain't pretty. 

[The Marquis de Leech]

 but the rest of that list won't exactly show up in Cosmopolitan any time soon. 

 

Politics is showbiz for ugly people.

[kiko]

I finally see what Krugman got wrong with the situation in Europe.

Krugman on the inevitability of Grexit: My guess is nothing can ever be certain but. either in the end they will get this sort of enormous debt relief that theyre not getting or they will have to exit. And I guess my money, in some currency or other, is on exit one way or another.

It's our money, isn't it? His money (in US dollar, no doubt) is pretty safe.

[Jon AS]

So, part of Alexis' backup Euro exit strategy was to [url=http://news.yahoo.com/nationalisations-german-probes-greek-contingency-plan-report-143411954.html]"step up corruption probes on prominent German companies active in Greece including Siemens, Lidl, Allianz, MAN and Hochtief"[/url]. So, is there another explanation for not doing that anyway than it being an attempt to ingratiate themselves with the Merkel government?

[Biglose]

So, part of Alexis' backup Euro exit strategy was to "step up corruption probes on prominent German companies active in Greece including Siemens, Lidl, Allianz, MAN and Hochtief". So, is there another explanation for not doing that anyway than it being an attempt to ingratiate themselves with the Merkel government?

Honestly? Because what would be the effect? Do you really think they could get any serious corruption charge out of it without putting half of their administration in jail?

The only thing it would do, would be stopping any bailout efforts.

[Jon AS]

It's funny that Greece's lack of enthusiasm for prosecuting criminal behaviour can be used as justification to put most of the blame for the crisis on the Greek people, while simultaneously acknowledging that actually cleaning house would probably cause some of their creditors to reconsider their involvement in the country.

[Biglose]

It's funny that Greece's lack of enthusiasm for prosecuting criminal behaviour can be used as justification to put most of the blame for the crisis on the Greek people, while simultaneously acknowledging that actually cleaning house would probably cause some of their creditors to reconsider their involvement in the country.

Funny. I assumed it was obvious that corruption accusation which will hit you more than everybody else, is not something which will actually have any effect. What would have been left from your two points would be nationalisation of some stuff. Which of course would make the eurozone reconsider giving anything.  Thats quite straigt forward.

So what would it establish? Screaming you have to bribe people to get things done in greece and in addition saying your stuff now belongs  to us.