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DarkCrawler
Apr 6, 2009

by vyelkin

Namarrgon posted:

Calling Timmermans a socialist should be a crime against humanity. In the Netherlands his party has been happily marching along with the right-wing liberals for the past 4 years (but really, much longer) and are now suddenly surprised why they are no longer popular.

Also it's probably a translation error but only demographic Jyrki Katainen, aka. The complete piece of poo poo who quit being Prime Minister because he got a cushier job in Brussels, is "popular" with are complete pieces of poo poo.

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GaussianCopula
Jun 5, 2011
Jews fleeing the Holocaust are not in any way comparable to North Africans, who don't flee genocide but want to enjoy the social welfare systems of Northern Europe.

Raspberry Jam It In Me posted:

Since there are actually knowledgeable people reading this thread, I would like to hear an answer too. Aside from obvious dumpster fires like Greece, what is keeping austerity parties and austerity in power in Europe?

Well, developments such as this

https://twitter.com/TobiasBuckFT/status/833628047903428608

for example.

Additionally austerity is good politics in a lot of European countries, where politicians otherwise would have to explain to their voters, why they have to pay for the lifestyle of other countries.

Ardennes
May 12, 2002

Le Pen usually has struggled to get past the mid 40s, but that said...you also have 40-45% of the country interested in voting for FN which should be terrifying. Trump himself got 46.2% of the vote.

Ol' Jean-Marie only got a pretty miserable 17.8% back in the day.

YF-23
Feb 17, 2011

My god, it's full of cat!


Raspberry Jam It In Me posted:

Since there are actually knowledgeable people reading this thread, I would like to hear an answer too. Aside from obvious dumpster fires like Greece, what is keeping austerity parties and austerity in power in Europe?

There's a lot of countries, Germany included, which are wealthy enough that they can run social services at a reasonable level even with a budget surplus. So the short answer would be that austerity is not always as catastrophic as it was in the case of Greece. That said, every time it's brought up I hear that Germany's budgetary surpluses come at the long-term cost of infrastructure that is starting to fall into disrepair and which badly needs to have money spent on it.

MiddleOne
Feb 17, 2011


I think we're about 1 terrorist attack away from Le Pen getting elected.

MiddleOne
Feb 17, 2011

GaussianCopula posted:

Well, developments such as this

https://twitter.com/TobiasBuckFT/status/833628047903428608

for example.

Additionally austerity is good politics in a lot of European countries, where politicians otherwise would have to explain to their voters, why they have to pay for the lifestyle of other countries.

Spain his not an example of austerity working. The economy is recovering in spite of it, not thanks to it. :psyduck:

forkboy84
Jun 13, 2012

Corgis love bread. And Puro


MiddleOne posted:

Spain his not an example of austerity working. The economy is recovering in spite of it, not thanks to it. :psyduck:

Austerity in the rest of Europe works fine for Germany & that's the extent of what GC cares about.

9-Volt Assault
Jan 27, 2007

Beter twee tetten in de hand dan tien op de vlucht.
Spain recovers a bit when the world economy improves. Amazing, another austerity success story.

Ardennes
May 12, 2002

9-Volt Assault posted:

Spain recovers a bit when the world economy improves. Amazing, another austerity success story.

A big part of is probably due to the fact that Spanish wages have completely flat-lined and probably has lost versus inflation since 2009-2010. In a rough comparison, Spanish average wages are roughly half of that of German wages.

Notably, Spanish imports are still less than what they were in 2007-2008.

GaussianCopula
Jun 5, 2011
Jews fleeing the Holocaust are not in any way comparable to North Africans, who don't flee genocide but want to enjoy the social welfare systems of Northern Europe.

Ardennes posted:

A big part of is probably due to the fact that Spanish wages have completely flat-lined and probably has lost versus inflation since 2009-2010. In a rough comparison, Spanish average wages are roughly half of that of German wages.

Notably, Spanish imports are still less than what they were in 2007-2008.

So they did exactly what the doctor ordered by becoming more competitive (wages didn't increase) and reducing the trade deficit by importing less while exporting more. Everyone should be happy.

YF-23
Feb 17, 2011

My god, it's full of cat!


GaussianCopula posted:

So they did exactly what the doctor ordered by becoming more competitive (wages didn't increase) and reducing the trade deficit by importing less while exporting more. Everyone should be happy.

I guess the people whose wages stagnated do not qualify as human beings to your eyes.

lost in postation
Aug 14, 2009

I hate to be rude, but I find this consistent narrative that all Euro countries were basically third world shitholes living above the means provided by their productivity (except Germany, who was "paying for their lifestyle") and should now accept that they're comparably poorer a bit off-putting, regardless of the respective merits of austerity policies / stimulus packages.

lost in postation fucked around with this message at 15:13 on Feb 20, 2017

Cat Mattress
Jul 14, 2012

by Cyrano4747
About Spain exporting more, I'd like to know where they're exporting more: inside or outside of the Eurozone?

Because I think that the Quantitative Easing bringing the euro back from the German-desired levels making exports impossible outside of luxury products to something closer to parity with the dollar would be a much likelier explanation.

Edit: alright. If I don't read this wrong, "ratio of extra-EU exports of goods to extra-EU imports of goods" means that the higher the value, the more the country exports outside of the EU, and therefore of the Eurozone which is basically a subset of the EU (plus Andorra, Monaco, San Marino, and the Vatican; but let's not worry about them). I'm sure if I'm wrong it'll be pointed out lightning fast.

Anyway, let's see these stats:

Spain's extra-to-intra export ratio increased from 49 in 2006 to 82 in 2015, showing that the country is increasingly dependent on extra-EU exports, meaning that yes the weakening of the Euro currency is benefiting them.

And now, for the opposite ratio: intra-EU exports of goods to extra-EU exports of goods

From 2003 to 2015, Spain lost 10 points, showing a lessened dependency on intra-EU exports.

Cat Mattress fucked around with this message at 15:50 on Feb 20, 2017

Pluskut Tukker
May 20, 2012

Raspberry Jam It In Me posted:

Since there are actually knowledgeable people reading this thread, I would like to hear an answer too. Aside from obvious dumpster fires like Greece, what is keeping austerity parties and austerity in power in Europe?

Austerity isn't necessarily politically damaging, because it usually hits the poor the most, and they are anyway less likely to vote. Wealthier voters may approve of austerity because it will eventually lower their taxes, and ofcourse people may approve due to their ideology. Voters may also be clueless, like the large numbers of Americans who keep voting for Republicans even though it should be clear that they're all about destroying the government and wiping out the big social insurance programs.

Politicians can also (justifiably or not) shift the blame for austerity elsewhere: "it's the fault of the evil Germans/EU" , or they can justify it with the logic of "there is no alternative" or Swabian housewife economics: "we must all live within our means". Avoiding the blame can also be done by obfuscating the magnitude of the cutbacks/ making them less visible, restricting negative consequences of reforms to certain segments of the voting population), or compensating some of the losers in another way*. Politicians may also delegate the responsibility for cutbacks somewhere else - e.g. in the Netherlands,, the responsibility for in-home care was shifted from the central government to the municipalities, ostensibly because they are closer to their citizens but effectively also because the blame for cutbacks could now also be shifted there.

(this analysis large thanks to: Giger, N., & Nelson, M. (2011). The electoral consequences of welfare state retrenchment: Blame avoidance or credit claiming in the era of permanent austerity?. European Journal of Political Research, 50(1), 1-23.)

And, finally, the constraints of the Euro system mean that austerity is the only thing on the menu for some euro area member states - ending austerity means borrowing more as long as GDP isn't rising, and that wouldn't be feasible for most of the European South even were it allowed under the Stability Pact rules. So voters may not choose austerity, but parties gaining power find themselves with no other option but to implement it anway.

Fados
Jan 7, 2013
I like Malcolm X, I can't be racist!

Put this racist dipshit on ignore immediately!

lost in postation posted:

I hate to be rude, but I find this consistent narrative that all Euro countries were basically third world shitholes living above the means provided by their productivity (except Germany, who was "paying for their lifestyle") and should now accept that they're comparably poorer a bit off-putting, regardless of the respective merits of austerity policies / stimulus packages.

It's more off putting coming from the mouth of someone whose country is benefiting from the joint devalued currency, which on the other over hand robs these 'lazy' countries of several mechanisms of regaining competitiveness without simply desmanteling their welfare state and destroying their middle class.

And even more off putting still because this is supposed to be a union where a rising tide should lift all boats, not a gently caress off and die and thanks for being lovely, cause that kinda helps me, tia.

That's why some guillotines should be in short order again...

Phlegmish
Jul 2, 2011



Ardennes posted:

A big part of is probably due to the fact that Spanish wages have completely flat-lined and probably has lost versus inflation since 2009-2010.

Is there any part of the Western world where real wages have increased significantly in the decade since the financial crisis?

LemonDrizzle
Mar 28, 2012

neoliberal shithead

Phlegmish posted:

Is there any part of the Western world where real wages have increased significantly in the decade since the financial crisis?

This chart has a lot more bars above the zero line than below it:

redmedicine
Mar 7, 2015

Pluskut Tukker posted:

And, finally, the constraints of the Euro system mean that austerity is the only thing on the menu for some euro area member states - ending austerity means borrowing more as long as GDP isn't rising, and that wouldn't be feasible for most of the European South even were it allowed under the Stability Pact rules. So voters may not choose austerity, but parties gaining power find themselves with no other option but to implement it anway.


Yeah, this is interesting and points to some of the reasons for disillusionment towards democratic politics in general. Due to globalization, transnational capital etc the wriggle room for shifts in policymaking has already been tightening for decades regardless of who's in power. Social dems submitted to this without bothering to inform their electorate about what was happening and are unsurprisingly bleeding voters now that they're largely indistinguishable from most of their rivals

double nine
Aug 8, 2013

LemonDrizzle posted:

This chart has a lot more bars above the zero line than below it:


I'm going through some of the eurozone countries and ... who's the joker who attached France's economy to a pacemaker?



source:http://www.tradingeconomics.com/france/wage-growth

what the hell is going on there? There's no countries that have that rhythm in their wage growth

GaussianCopula
Jun 5, 2011
Jews fleeing the Holocaust are not in any way comparable to North Africans, who don't flee genocide but want to enjoy the social welfare systems of Northern Europe.

double nine posted:

I'm going through some of the eurozone countries and ... who's the joker who attached France's economy to a pacemaker?



source:http://www.tradingeconomics.com/france/wage-growth

what the hell is going on there? There's no countries that have that rhythm in their wage growth

Looks like France has most wage increases in the first quarter of the year. Probably rooted in some kind of tradition/regulation.

Phlegmish
Jul 2, 2011



Probably state-enforced indexation mechanisms. You'd probably see something similar in Belgium; a large portion of employees get their salaries indexed in January.

lost in postation
Aug 14, 2009

France theoretically hasn't had state-enforced indexation since Mitterand, but the SMIC (mininum wage) is raised every so often based on purchasing power, and a lot of contracts contain an indexation clause.

Ardennes
May 12, 2002

Phlegmish posted:

Is there any part of the Western world where real wages have increased significantly in the decade since the financial crisis?

"Significantly" is rather debatable but there has been growth...when you take out inflation especially considering living costs it has generally flat lined or purchasing power has actually declined. Spain is even worse off since nominal wages have even budged while the cost of living has undoubtedly increased. I am sure it gets even worse when you start breaking down wages by class and age (people with zero power contracts being hurt the most).

As there is a fair point to make that Spanish exports have done better since extra-EU exports have increased, most likely due to Euro devaluation, which has further complicated the austerity narrative. What happens if Trump actually pushes a weak-dollar policy in 2018 when Yellen's term comes up?

LemonDrizzle
Mar 28, 2012

neoliberal shithead
uh-oh spaghetti-o's!

https://www.wsj.com/articles/europes-periphery-debt-market-welcomes-new-member-france-1487604548

quote:

Investors are once again selling the bonds of Europe’s peripheral economies amid political concerns. This time around, France has joined the club.
Some investors are selling French government debt, worried that the country will elect Marine Le Pen as its president, a candidate that has promised to take the country out of the eurozone. That has left French bonds behaving increasingly like their peers in the parts of Europe hit hardest by the 2011-12 sovereign-debt crisis.
It is quite a flip for Europe’s second-largest economy. After that crisis, French bonds traded with Germany’s. On Monday, a poll showing Ms. Le Pen comfortably in the lead for April’s first round of the presidential election drove yields on French 10-year bonds to jump to 1.064%. Yields rise as bond prices fall.
The spread with German bond yields hit 0.84 percentage points during the day on Monday, the highest in more than four years, before settling at 0.75 percentage points as European markets closed. Six months ago, this gap was only 0.22.
Also rising are Italian and Portuguese 10-year yields which are up by around 0.7 percentage points against Germany’s in the last six months. Greek yields have jumped.
The premium that investors demand for holding the debt of these nations over richer northern European economies like Germany and the Netherlands will continue to rise as a range of risks grow and the European Central Bank’s massive bond buying program buys less debt, investors say.

Cat Mattress
Jul 14, 2012

by Cyrano4747
There's good news from France too:

http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-eco/2017/02/20/97002-20170220FILWWW00005-stagnation-des-dividendes-mondiaux.php

TL;DR: while the global trend for shareholders' dividend payout is stagnating, in a few countries it's climbing; and France is the country where dividends have been paid the most: a near 12% increase compared to the previous year, representing over 54 billion dollars.

Other than that, though, France's economy is disastrous and in great need of a lot of austerity, as well as tax cuts for these poor little corporations who just can't compete.

icantfindaname
Jul 1, 2008


double nine posted:

I'm going through some of the eurozone countries and ... who's the joker who attached France's economy to a pacemaker?



source:http://www.tradingeconomics.com/france/wage-growth

what the hell is going on there? There's no countries that have that rhythm in their wage growth

probably yearly wage increases agreed to through tripartist labor relations that have been eliminated by the scourge of neoliberalism everywhere else

GaussianCopula
Jun 5, 2011
Jews fleeing the Holocaust are not in any way comparable to North Africans, who don't flee genocide but want to enjoy the social welfare systems of Northern Europe.

Cat Mattress posted:

There's good news from France too:

http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-eco/2017/02/20/97002-20170220FILWWW00005-stagnation-des-dividendes-mondiaux.php

TL;DR: while the global trend for shareholders' dividend payout is stagnating, in a few countries it's climbing; and France is the country where dividends have been paid the most: a near 12% increase compared to the previous year, representing over 54 billion dollars.

Other than that, though, France's economy is disastrous and in great need of a lot of austerity, as well as tax cuts for these poor little corporations who just can't compete.

Hint: increasing dividends mean fewer investments - I have no clue why you would use it as a benchmark for a whole economy

Cat Mattress
Jul 14, 2012

by Cyrano4747
It mostly says that companies are making mad dough.

I don't think investment in France is suffering:
http://www.economywatch.com/economic-statistics/economic-indicators/Investment_Percentage_of_GDP/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/428086/total-investment-private-equity-markets-france/
And also, foreign investment is okay, fluctuating as always but on an upward trend for these five years of Hollandism.

orange sky
May 7, 2007

So basically austerity makes the rich richer. Okay, seems to be working after all. Crazy coincidence that most of the huge companies in Portugal got bought by the french and the chinese, a big part of it newly privatized. They need the money, not us!

breadshaped
Apr 1, 2010


Soiled Meat

orange sky posted:

Yeah how the gently caress is austerity still a thing when it's been proven to not work again and again?

The mechanisms of how the Euro (currency) works make it literally impossible to do anything else.

A Euro using country has no freedom to enact monetary policy other than contracting their economy (austerity) or borrowing to cover the deficit (Schäuble says no).

edit: there's the nuclear option of leaving the euro

Fados
Jan 7, 2013
I like Malcolm X, I can't be racist!

Put this racist dipshit on ignore immediately!

orange sky posted:

So basically austerity makes the rich richer.
Yep, yes it does.
http://triplecrisis.com/the-slow-burn/

MiddleOne
Feb 17, 2011

Cat Mattress posted:

It mostly says that companies are making mad dough.

No it doesn't. Companies can be making insane profits and have no dividends. Shareholders can get their return from share buybacks and investments as well which can in many circumstances be more effective than dividends. That's not even getting into how company debts can play into dividends and :cry:

Basically, dividends in isolation actually tell very little.

Ardennes
May 12, 2002

Bedshaped posted:

The mechanisms of how the Euro (currency) works make it literally impossible to do anything else.

A Euro using country has no freedom to enact monetary policy other than contracting their economy (austerity) or borrowing to cover the deficit (Schäuble says no).

edit: there's the nuclear option of leaving the euro

The entire issue with leaving the Euro is that the central banks of those countries no longer have the considerable currency reserves they would need to defend their own currencies. Greece has something like 6 billion still in currency reserves, and while the ECB could help they...they aren't going to do.

Granted, devaluation can be quite difficult for a country but many times it can be a mixed bag. Russia for example took a massive hit to its currency, and its value generally halved from late 2014 to 2016. However, prices reacted differently than what a lot of people assumed they would. Price for foreign goods did go up considerably but there was a considerable lag in this effect and domestic products rather quickly took up this "slack." Initially these products were usually of worse quality but over time they improved (this was especially in the case of cheese). When you go to a market now you see a litany of "European" or especially "Italian" sounding companies when in reality all of that cheese is made in Russia and most of those companies are entirely Russian owned. The quality is still not up to the standards of imported goods, but you can see a definite improvement as time went on.

We will see what happens when the Ruble steadily devalues but it maybe will be a permanent change.

MiddleOne
Feb 17, 2011

Ardennes posted:

Granted, devaluation can be quite difficult for a country but many times it can be a mixed bag. Russia for example took a massive hit to its currency, and its value generally halved from late 2014 to 2016. However, prices reacted differently than what a lot of people assumed they would. Price for foreign goods did go up considerably but there was a considerable lag in this effect and domestic products rather quickly took up this "slack." Initially these products were usually of worse quality but over time they improved (this was especially in the case of cheese). When you go to a market now you see a litany of "European" or especially "Italian" sounding companies when in reality all of that cheese is made in Russia and most of those companies are entirely Russian owned. The quality is still not up to the standards of imported goods, but you can see a definite improvement as time went on.

Well that's always inevitable when import prices go up if demand doesn't flatline. Things that aren't really geographically beholden to any one area either due to resource or human resource's will just stop being imported as domestic producers gradually take their place.

Ardennes
May 12, 2002

MiddleOne posted:

Well that's always inevitable when import prices go up if demand doesn't flatline. Things that aren't really geographically beholden to any one area either due to resource or human resource's will just stop being imported as domestic producers gradually take their place.

I think it is actually think it is a bit more complicated though. I think usually larger countries (or currency blocs) with more diversified economies have a easier time with devaluation, the physical and human resources available to replace imports are simply wider and more available. That said, populations will probably if anything became "localvores" and return to a more traditional goods, and if anything also have a more seasonal diet (assuming they have some type of agricultural production).

It is a big reason why devaluation usually hurts the middle class the most. The middle class actually has a savings to lose, money to travel and the cash to spend on higher quality imported goods and devaluation usually leads to lower quality of life.

Also, there are simply the issue of the diversity of goods/the economy of scale a much smaller country has to fight. Greece may struggle a bit in this regard, but it is debatable. Azerbaijan for example is struggling far worse simply because its domestic economy is so much smaller and undiversified. Their economy is simply not geared for import replacement, and it is abundantly clear even relatively basic foods (chickens, potatoes) have to be imported. Azerbaijani agriculture simply doesn't have the ability to supply a relatively basic traditional diet to its populace. Of course, Azerbaijan is also a relatively extreme example of a lack of production diversity.

Ardennes fucked around with this message at 12:13 on Feb 21, 2017

MiddleOne
Feb 17, 2011

Ardennes posted:

It is a big reason why devaluation usually hurts the middle class the most. The middle class actually has a savings, to lose money to travel and the cash to spend on higher quality imported goods and devaluation usually leads to lower quality of life.

I think we're far past the point were this concern applies for Greece. :v:

But yes I agree with most of what you said.

Junior G-man
Sep 15, 2004

Wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma


RE: Austeritytalk

quote:

Austerity was a bigger disaster than we thought

We now take a break from your regularly scheduled scandals to bring you some not-so-breaking news: austerity was as big a disaster as its biggest critics said it was.

That, at least, is what economists Christopher House and Linda Tesar of the University of Michigan and Christïan Proebsting of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne found when they looked at Europe's budget-cutting experience the last eight years. It turns out that cutting spending right after the worst crisis in 80 years only led to a lower gross domestic product and, in the most extreme cases, higher debt-to-GDP ratios. That's right: trying to reduce debt levels sometimes increased debt burdens.

Other than that, how was the policy, Mrs. Lincoln?

But let's back up a minute. This isn't something that's always true. In fact, it almost never used to be. Cutting spending, you see, shouldn't be a problem as long as you can cut interest rates too. That's because lower borrowing costs can stimulate the economy just as much as lower government spending slows it down. What happens, though, if interest rates are already zero, or, even worse, you're part of a currency union that means you can't devalue your way out of trouble?

Well, nothing good. House, Tesar and Proebsting calculated how much each European economy grew — or, more to the point, shrank — between the time they started cutting their budgets in 2010 and the end of 2014, and then compared it with what actually realistic models say would have happened if they hadn't done austerity or adopted the euro. According to this, the hardest-hit countries of Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain would have contracted by only 1 percent instead of the 18 percent they did if they hadn't slashed spending; by only 7 percent if they'd kept their drachmas, pounds, liras, escudos, pesetas and the ability to devalue that went along with them if they hadn't become a part of the common currency and outsourced those decisions to Frankfurt; and only would have seen their debt-to-GDP ratios rise by eight percentage points instead of the 16 they did if they hadn't tried to get their budgets closer to being balanced. In short, austerity hurt what it was supposed to help, and helped hurt the economy even more than a once-in-three-generations crisis already had.

That brings us to two final points. The first is that the euro really has been a doomsday device for turning recessions into depressions. It's not just that it caused the crisis by keeping money too loose for Greece and the rest of them during the boom and too tight for them during the bust. It's also that it forced a lot of this austerity on them.

Think about it like this. Countries that can print their own money never have to default on their debts — they can always inflate them away instead — but ones that can't, because, say, they share a common currency, might have to. Just the possibility of that, though, can be enough to make it a reality. If markets are worried that you might not be able to pay back your debts, they'll make you pay a higher interest rate on them — which might make it so that you really can't.

In other words, the euro can cause a self-fulfilling prophecy where countries can't afford to spend any more even though spending any less will only make everything worse. That's actually a pretty good description of what happened until the European Central Bank belatedly announced that it would do “whatever it takes” to put an end to this in 2012. Which was enough to get investors to stop pushing austerity, but, alas, not politicians.

It's a good reminder that you should never doubt that a small group of committed ideologues can destroy the economy. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

That's true whether you're talking about the European politicians who pushed for the creation of the euro itself — they ignored the economists who warned them that it might turn out just as badly as it has — or the ones who pushed for austerity a few decades later. After all, it shouldn't have been a surprise that trying to balance your budget when interest rates were zero would end badly.

Economists have known that since the 1930s. Politicians, though, still wanted to do it, either because they thought deficits were morally, politically, or economically bad, and there was no shortage of supposed experts who were willing to tell them that they were right.

These right-wing economists produced study after study showing that countries had been able to successfully cut spending when central banks could offset that by cutting interest rates, and said that this proved that the same was true when interest rates were zero like they were at the time.


You didn't need an economics PhD to know this didn't make sense, just a basic knowledge of economic history.

But no matter. Economists who had never bothered to learn this, or who had forgotten it, or who especially saw this as a good excuse to cut government spending they'd always wanted to kept saying it would work even as it kept failing.

That should be as big a scandal as anything else.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/02/15/austerity-was-a-bigger-disaster-than-we-thought/?utm_term=.c6f23f88460e

Or, you know, just watch Mark Blyth again.

But I'm sure GC will come by at any moment now and complain about lazy Greeks and Spaniards while the busy German worker bee stored for the winter, or some such morality fable.

Honj Steak
May 31, 2013

Hi there.
Just listened to some radio news where a Bavarian CSU politician was just hitting the phrases as if it were still 2010 or something. Paraphrased "We must stay tough with Greece and they need to be disciplined and everything will end up being fine. Anything other than that would destroy trust in the Greek financial sector."

That guy seriously sounded like a broken record.

Tesseraction
Apr 5, 2009

Junior G-man posted:

But I'm sure GC will come by at any moment now and complain about lazy Greeks and Spaniards while the busy German worker bee stored for the winter, or some such morality fable.

Which reminds me



German shirker bee more like.

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Ardennes
May 12, 2002

MiddleOne posted:

I think we're far past the point were this concern applies for Greece. :v:

But yes I agree with most of what you said.

Well my point was more general in that the middle class have more to lose than the upper class and maybe even the working class (somewhat country specific) from devaluation. Of course, Greece is a special case, it has been hit worse by austerity than the US during the Great Depression.

Granted, I can see why the CDU itself is a "broken record" at this point, they have dug themselves in a hole. The current situation benefits Germany, but even despite that "advantage" the CDU is sliding in the polls and the German public is progressively getting sick of the arrangement. Also, I don't think they want to openly face up to the public there is absolutely no way for Greece to even pay a portion of its debt and much of that debt has to be considered a near complete loss at this point.

Ardennes fucked around with this message at 13:22 on Feb 21, 2017

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