The left ascends to power in Greece, creating uncertainty and hope

Sound pretty much what Syriza probably wants. They strongly want to start taxing the Greek elites. As far as government spending they are against waste and fraud, though they are certainly against the substantial government spending programs you enjoy in Germany.

 

I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, but I think what they really want is to continue to get handouts from the EU or wherever, because that is literally the only way they can even make a fraction of their promises to their voters come true. Their economy certainly cannot sustain what they promised.

 

Varoufakis in remarks addressed to the "hard working German taxpayers" stated that Greece had been given too much, not enough money by the international banks and the EC. They should understand that 90% of this money never came to Greece, but was essentially routed to international bankers, knowing full well that Greece could probably not be squeezed enough to ever pay the money back. Essentially a scheme to keep the banks from paying the price for their irresponsible acts.

 

Your man crush on Varoufakis is remarkable .

 

You missed the part where Greece already spent it

 

Non responsive, and also ad hominem, but I guess that is all you got.

Try to respond to the Greek election, austerity etc. in terms of economics/business, not ordinary household morality, your obsession on whether they support Zionism or hate the Russians sufficiently.

 

Well who spent it and on what? How much did the EC bankers and elite benefit vs the Greek population. Who bought the fancy homes?

Also how did squeezing the Germans react when similarly squeezed to pay WW I debts?

If austerity economics actually works how come the EC seems to be abandoning it?

 

They spent it on corruption, pensions, and cushy government jobs. This is well documented.

If austerity economics didn't would the US works be in recession right now

 

http://greece.greekreporter.com/2013/02/17/corruption-costs-greece-10-of-gdp/

Corruption Costs Greece 10% of GDP

Washington, D.C.-based prestigious think tank the Brookings Institution estimates that corruption is costing Greece some 20 billion euros ($26.7 billion) which, combined with lost revenues from the country’s notoriously tangled and inefficient bureaucracy, is crippling efforts to reform the debt-crunched economy.

The General Inspector of Public Adminstration Leandros Rakintzis said, “Both combined make up about 30-32 billion ($40-$42 billion). If for 10 years, we could this or part of this, we might not have had all this public debt or all this crisis.”

That’s nearly equivalent to 10 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) leaving Greece to have to borrow $325 billion from international lenders, who have demanded austerity measures in return.

According to research from the agency Transparency International that one of Greece’s Members of the European Parliament, Theodoros Skylakakis, recently presented, Europe loses 120 billion euros ($160.3 billion) annually to graft. At the same time, the government has failed to go after tax evaders who owe $70 billion.

Most of that is in health care, followed by tax departments, police, urban planning, customs and justice. “There’s extensive corruption that remains unpunished even in countries such as Germany. Greece isn’t the worst country. In Europe, we’re below middle, but not the worst,” Skylakakis said. Transparency International however, rated Greece the worst in Europe.

http://greece.greekreporter.com/2013/02/17/corruption-costs-greece-10-of-gdp/

And an older article (from 2010):

Tragic Flaw: Graft Feeds Greek Crisis

ATHENS—Behind the budget crisis roiling Greece lies a riddle: Why does the state spend so lavishly but collect taxes so poorly? Many Greeks say the answer needs only two words: fakelaki and rousfeti.

Fakelaki is the Greek for "little envelopes," the bribes that affect everyone from hospital patients to fishmongers. Rousfeti means expensive political favors, which pervade everything from hiring teachers to property deals with Greek Orthodox monks. Together, these traditions of corruption and cronyism have produced a state that is both bloated and malnourished, and a crisis of confidence that is shaking all of Europe.

A study to be published in coming weeks by the Washington-based Brookings Institution finds that bribery, patronage and other public corruption are major contributors to the country's ballooning debt, depriving the Greek state each year of the equivalent of at least 8% of its gross domestic product, or more than €20 billion (about $27 billion).

"Our basic problem is systemic corruption," Greece's Prime Minister George Papandreou said after he took office late last year, vowing to change a mentality that views the republic as a resource to plunder. He later berated the chief of public prosecutions, saying Greeks believe "there is impunity in this country." The chief prosecutor said that wasn't so. (...)

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303828304575179921909783864

And if you missed it before:

New Greek finance sham: 120,000 families claiming 'ghost pensions' for relatives who died years ago

Almost 120,000 ‘ghost’ pensions are being claimed by Greek families who continue to pocket the money even though their relatives have been dead for years.
The wide-spread scam has cost the Greek government hundreds of millions of euros, a damning report on the country’s pension funds found.
And the bungling authorities claimed they had no computers that could check the ages of people receiving the money – even though many would have been well over 120.

(...)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...am-120k-families-claiming-ghost-pensions.html

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But: Evil banks. And crusades. And Israel. And George W. Bush.
Signed: glynch

 

FWIW, much of Syriza's campaign was an anti-corruption campaign alongside the anti-austerity one. They've talked a lot about broadening the tax base and fixing the institutionalized corruption and things like that. We'll see if they are serious about it and if they can pull it off, but one of the benefits of Syriza is that they aren't connected to the power brokers of the past. It really does seem to be a grass-roots based movement that is not connected at all to the elites of the country, which gives them an opening to tackle all that stuff. But that's the carrot they can offer to the EU in exchange for debt forgiveness/etc.

 

Yes, this is correct. The problem, however, is that what Greece really needs is not only to fight corruption and the mentality of the previous elites, but it also needs to build up an entrepreneurial economy, one in which there are incentives to building real businesses. And that's what socialists have never been good at. Even if they succeed at containing corruption, that still doesn't make their economy a sustainable one.