This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Greece Has Spent A Half-Century In Default Or Restructuring
On Thursday, we highlighted the pitiable plight of Greek businesses which, facing an acute cash crunch and suppliers unwilling to provide credit ahead of the country's weekend referendum, are being forced to close the doors.
The country's banks are set to run out of physical banknotes "in a matter of days" according to a "person familiar with the situation" who spoke to WSJ and Constantine Michalos, the president of the Athens Chamber of Commerce, fears the country's stock of imported goods will only last for two or three more weeks.
Meanwhile, Greeks have resorted to scavenging for food and picking through dustbins for scrap metal and as we noted on Wednesday, this is hardly a recent development in Greece. High unemployment has plagued the country for years , becoming endemic and relegating many Greeks to a life of perpetual and severe economic hardship.
Indeed, as BofAML notes, a look back at the country's history shows that Athens has been in default or some manner of debt rescheduling for nearly a quarter of the past two centuries.
The bank goes on to make a rather unflattering comparison between the implied market cap of Greek stocks on Monday and a certain US-based bath towel supplier: "The announcement of a bank holiday & capital controls caused a 20% drop in the local equity market (as implied by ETFs), putting the market cap of MSCI Greece on a par with that of Bed, Bath & Beyond."
But Athenians are in no mood for backhanded humor, because as one 83-year old told WSJ this week, “Tsipras has turned this country into North Korea."
»
- 20681 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
loan shark victims
Ironically, Germany is a serial defaulter itself.
https://twitter.com/ronanburtenshaw/status/615517639448895488
No brainer, but it seemingly needs to be explained. Two WWs and getting stripped of every asset that wasn't bombed to the stone age, or having to deal with a Treaty of Versailles will do that.
But you know what the decisive difference is? Germany got off its arse and worked fucking hard to be where it is. It doesn't need to bum from "friends". Instead, its products enjoy the highest reputation world wide.
Apparently you never heard of the Marshall Plan. The US spent billions after WW2 rebuilding the economies of its former enemies.
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/marshall-plan
you do realise that the marshall plan represented a tiny fraction of that which was destroyed.? It's like saying well 95% of your indusrty is destroyed, we'll give you 10% worth to rebuild it. And that's what happened. BTW every western Euop. nation was part of the Marshall plan. guess some knew how to invest it.
And Greece's share of MP grants was disproportionately high (Per capita funding) compared to Germany. Of course that's true of most of the European states who weren't in the bag with the Germans.
A lot of private US corporate funding...precursor to the super national corporations.
the system is working exactly as designed
The Greeks never saw a fiscal deficit they didn't like.
Trouble is, these days the same is true of pretty much the entire Western world.
Whats with Sunday now ? I thought Greece was supposed to matter this Monday according to Kraut chief Merkel.
Sunday will probably pass, with a $20 up day on the DOW and a $5 down day in gold.
Germany, Austria, France, all worst records than Italy .. just saying (si, sono italiano)
and what about USA?
Well, Italy as a nation doesn't exist that long. 1861 as you should know.
Fascinated why people use anything that old as some kind of reference. As if it had any factual bearing on today's world.
Neither has Germany
true, somehow forgot about Germany. Even younger by 10 years.
Are we to take seriously a chart from someone that does not even know how to run a basic spell checker on the word defualts?
Is that French?
ZH and BofAML need an editor and badly.
Please stop embarrassing yourselves.
I am available and ready to help.
Really, I am.
Yeah, but you may be too busy running your city.
GET THE TRUTH, GO TO
TRUTHINACCOUNTING.ORG
THEN, GO OUT AND BUY ANOTHER GUN, MORE AMMO, WATER AND FOOD.
THE END IS NEAR.
NOW DEFINE "NEAR".
The end is not always like dropping off a cliff. Relatively speaking, the process can last for years...decades. We are in that process now as there is no one who will be willing to give up power to allow it to be reversed.
I wonder how this chart correlates to wars? There needs to be a timeline to understand why this matters other than a talking point.
Also, colonization. Independence does not necessarily mean a clean slate of debt to the colonizing nation.
It would also be interesting to know to whom these nations were in default. That list is certain to be a lot shorter.
Altogether, this chart means nothing without more information. Shame on the propagandists who made it up.
You mean the People of Color who not only can't build the machines, but can't repair or even run the machines, a/k/a Rhodesia and SA? BTW, HuffPuff, Greece was 'colonialized' by the Ottoman Empire for centuries. Do you mean a different "colonial" power by chance?
HuffPuff? Is that how you debate someone? Is that the first thing your pea brain can think of when you do not understand what someone says or you disagree with them? Fuck you.
You obviously have a problem with comprehension in addition to attributing some sort of racial bias into my comment when there is none. If you want to make a point, make it with your own words instead of creating new meanings out of something I wrote.
BTW, your comment, aside from being an insult to intelligence, is so cryptic I have no idea what you are trying to say. You must have some pretty deep-seated racial problems in your own mind and have difficulty expressing them. Next time you feel the urge to throw up on a thread, stay the hell away from me. I don't want to catch what you have.
... Greece might be broke because they can't even pay attention, but they will survive (and this, too, shall pass) ... remember Apple (AAPL) in 1996 when almost everyone gave it up for dead? >>> http://lowendmac.com/2013/beleaguered-apple-bottoms-out-1996-to-1998/ ... now, Apple is holding up the USSA's GDP ...
... to the Greeks: vote "No!"
... BRICS might just be waiting in the wings and would pounce at the right moment ... and Opa!, plate-smashing time again ...
All the more reason to cut losses and leave them adrift. They have another 48 years of debt restructuring and bankruptcy ahead of them. Failed state. Said it before and now the Greeks even see it - cough, North Korea, cough
NATO probably called them an Axis of Evil, since the Election put Communist in power.
USA/NATO have been fighting communism since 1947 in Greece.
Military Coup in the 1967 Era didn't help, probably backed by CIA & NATO. Then they didn't know how to hand the government & economy back to the people.
Who is to say NATO didn't put out the word to make sure the Communist fail by cutting off imports and exports as possible. Germany & Saudi Arabia figure large. Italy, Nederlands, France, Turkey, Cyprus.
Italy doesn't want trouble maybe they would cut off Greece with everyone else.
See? Its not always EU fault.
You mean the so called Greek Miracle didn't happen?
Wasn't it in WSJ, FT, and Bloomberg? oops 1950-1970 was before Internet.
Exact Phrase must have come from World Bank, OECD, Eurostat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_miracle
The country's economy was devastated by the Second World War, and the high levels of economic growth that followed throughout the 1950s to 1970s are dubbed the "Greek Economic Miracle" . Since the turn of the millennium, Greece saw high levels of GDP growth above the Eurozone average, peaking at 5.9% in 2003 and 5.5% in 2006.[42] The subsequent Great Recession and Greek government-debt crisis, a central focus of the wider European debt crisis, plunged the economy into a sharp downturn, with real GDP growth rates of ?0.2% in 2008, ?3.1% in 2009, ?4.9% in 2010, ?7.1% in 2011, ?7.0% in 2012 and ?3.9% in 2013.[43][44][45] In 2011, the country's public debt reached €355.141 billion (170.3% of nominal GDP).[46][47] After negotiating the biggest debt restructuring in history with the private sector, Greece reduced its sovereign debt burden to €280.4 billion (136.5% of GDP) in the first quarter of 2012.[48] Greece returned to growth after six years of economic decline in 2014,[49] but went into recession again in 2015.[50]
Note 42. "GDP growth rate". World Development Indicators. Google Public Data Explorer. 8 September 2013. Retrieved 14 December 2013.
- Google's Public Data Explorer provides public data and forecasts from a range of international organizations and academic institutions including the World Bank, OECD, Eurostat and the University of Denver.[2][3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_Greece_and_the_Greek_w...
Greece's per-capita GDP grew quickly.[22] Greece’s growth averaged 7% between 1950 and 1973, a rate second only to Japan's during the same period. In 1950 Greece was ranked 28th in the world for per capita GDP, while in 1970 it was ranked 20th.
Note 22. http://www.cia.gov
This just came out today
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3148451/A-island-pretending-blin...
Enough said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvl9N9GdraQ
Probably should have found a different quote in Athens.
This 83 year old is senile or partisan as hell.
"But Athenians are in no mood for backhanded humor, because as one 83-year old told WSJ this week, “Tsipras has turned this country into North Korea."
Real GDP growth rates turned Negative in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 something about a Great Recession, US Financial Crisis, Accounting Control Fraud, Greek Government Debt Crisis, Worlds largest Private Debt Restructuring, and EU Recession.
- On 25 January 2015, Tsipras led radical left SYRIZA to victory in a snap general election, receiving 36% of the vote and 149 out of the 300 seats in the Parliament and went on to become the 186th Prime Minister of Greece.
- Beside who even on ZH would gauge a country on Stock Market Performance??
some experts from the Mises Institute believe that the US has defaulted on its debts at least 4 times since 1790
A Scandinavian firm looked at what the Greek governments spent all the loans on. The largest , representing $150 billion of the $350 billion was military defense. Fear of Turkey I suppose even though Turkey is also a member of NATO. The two did square off for a number of years on Cyprus though and have gone at it in times past. Anyway the French, German and American defense industries did some greast business even while the French and German governments were pressing for Greek austerity while simeultaneously pshing for more arms sales with the Greek governments. Cut your health care for the Greek people so you can but some more Heckler and Kosh sub machine guns....
Jesus beat the shit out of the money changers 2000 years ago, and they killed Him....Andrew Jackson did it and they tried to kill him..JFK did it and they blew his head off on national tv. Time to turn the tables.
. . . . and all the while the sheeple slept soundly unaware the banks/ lobbyists and Assorted Governments ass raped them.
The revolving door of banks to treasury dept. is only a phone call away.
Greece doesn't have any commodities to sell; just some olive oil. If they wanted to make any money, they would have had to develop their manufacturing capacity, or build up a tech industry, or even provide a locale for a corrupt financial industry. But they haven't done any of those things. Where is any money going to come from? Even without debt they cannot afford the medicines and technologies that they want from the outside world; it doesn't pencil out. Individual Greek islands used to be self-sufficient; it can be done (albeit at a low technological level). I guess the whole country could possibly do that - but they want the fruits of the 21st century. They have to produce something that someone else wants, and I don't see them working on that. It's strange, because the Greeks I know in the U.S. are very hard working. Maybe the incredible corruption there makes it impossible.
Yes! The answer is yes, Greece is going to default.
Indeed, as BofAML notes, a look back at the country's history shows that Athens has been in default or some manner of debt rescheduling for nearly a quarter of the past two centuries.
When viewed in the light of a "properly managed Medium of Exchange (MOE)", all governments are in DEFAULT. No government ever keeps its trading promises. They just roll them over ... and a rollover "is" a DEFAULT on an old trading promise and creation of a new trading promise.
In a properly managed MOE, INTEREST would be collected (assessed against the next trading promise to members of that actuarially determined trading class) equal to this DEFAULT.
All governments would actuarially be in the same trading class ... propensity to DEFAULT = 100%; INTEREST assessed ... 100%. Result: Trader (government) rejected by the marketplace.
It's the natural negative feedback loop for a properly managed MOE. Governments would have to exist on taxes and fees alone. They could no longer exist on their self created INFLATION.
The governing relation is: INFLATION = DEFAULT - INTEREST = zero.