It's the same problem as the US had that forced TARP - it's not the direct lending, but all the indirect consequences. A collapse by Greece, unless controlled, will destroy Europe. It would take down Italy and Spain, both of whom are already on the brink, and that will domino onward. It's the same basic interconnectedness problem that the US banks had - the collapse of a tiny firm in Lehman Brothers nearly took out the whole system. Beyond that, Germany and France have benefited enormously by having weak countries like Greece in the Euro - they serve to drag down the currency which makes Germany and France's economies far more competitive. Without the Euro, the Drachma crashes in value and the Deutchmark shoots up in value. In the longer term, that helps Greece and hurts Germany. So while all the talk is about saving Greece, these countries aren't doing it for any other reason than saving their own economies. The US saved our banks for the same reason.
Oh I'm aware. I'm just saying that German banks (like the other banks) are the beneficiary of the Greek bailouts. And those bailouts are largely being paid for with austerity (with some debt restructuring) As for your second point, the banks were stupid. The idea that the interest rate applied to German bonds should have been extended to the rest of the Eurozone was stupid. Greece never should have had access to such cheap debt. Greece most definitely lied about its budget numbers in 1999 when it applied to join the Eurozone but they had adopted European wide accounting standards after that. Everyone knew they lied about their deficit size as early as 2004 when the OECD did a retroactive analysis of Greek debt using proper European accounting standards. It makes zero sense that banks chose to just assume that the Eurozone as a whole deserved interest rates that were on parity with what Germany was getting. And just to be clear I'm not suggesting that the banks shouldnt have given loans to Greece. I'm saying they weren't using proper interest rates and were stupid for not doing so. It takes two to screw up this badly. Greece was wrong in taking out loans they couldnt afford and the banks were wrong for offering them the loans in the first place. Yet in the current environment, Greece is more or less taking the totality of the punishment and the banks are having a far easier time.
Whoops - quoted the wrong part in the last message. As to your latter questions, if the banks hadn't lent to Greece in the past, they could have stopped this problem much earlier and before it became this bad. So they probably wouldn't be facing the hell that is austerity (which is really just Europe saying "destroy your economy or else we'll destroy it by kicking you out") and that would be a good thing. They also wouldn't have been living the good life for the last decade, which could be a bad thing or good thing depending on the person. The banks were stupid in the same way US banks were stupid - they were greedy and chased high returns, but failed to consider the risks involved that the whole thing could come crashing down.
How would this look if it were done on origin or ethnicity of Americans? Whites, Hispanics, African Americans, Asian Americans, Indians, Native Americans?
And they were "too big too fail". And like the US banks, they are still that way. Accountability seems rare these days.
Which ones? Most hardworking, least hardworking, most corrupt, least corrupt? Or did you mean this one? The share of young Turks with no professional qualifications rose from 44 to 57 percent between 2001 and 2006. This figure alone -- 57 percent -- perfectly illustrates the sheer magnitude of the failure on both sides. http://www.spiegel.de/international...struggle-to-find-their-identity-a-795299.html
I see what you're saying. Qualifications = hard work. The local grocery guy must be lazy if he has no qualifications. Gotcha. Thanks.
Nope. That's not what I said. I was merely responding in kind to a dumb statement by you. But it's interesting that you seem to assume that Turks in Germany only work as local grocery guys. Prejudiced?
