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[Ukrainian Ranger]

EU should sell Greece to Turkey.  It solves all problems!

[Helgoland]

Hollande suggests a Eurozone parliament; Schäuble agrees, and wants a European minister of finance.

I told you guys, this crisis is about politics, not economics. Any solution must be a fundamentally political one.

[Loud Whispers]

Hollande suggests a Eurozone parliament; Schäuble agrees, and wants a European minister of finance.

I told you guys, this crisis is about politics, not economics. Any solution must be a fundamentally political one.

YES
FREEEEEEDOM

[Antsan]

Hollande suggests a Eurozone parliament; Schäuble agrees, and wants a European minister of finance.

I told you guys, this crisis is about politics, not economics. Any solution must be a fundamentally political one.

Economics and politics are separable how?

[Helgoland]

I dunno, but mainiac appears to believe they are - why else would he continue pushing for an economic solution to a political problem? I'm not claiming that politics and economics are independent of each other, mind you, but surely you would agree that there is a difference between the two.

[XXSockXX]

Huh? Double post...

[XXSockXX]

It's clearly an attempt to delay the issue to keep Greece in the Eurozone at all cost and it is generally not seen as a great victory for anyone. Next negotiation tournament is going to start within the next 3 months probably.

I dont know if this is a language/cultural thing like the "debt" means "guilt" in German but "massive structural reforms in a short timeframe" and "delay the issue" are very different concepts in American english at least.  Cuz massive structural reforms is what Greece just agreed to for the third time.  It's true that these aren't as massive as the previous two but that's like saying the Baltic isn't as massive as the Pacific and the Atlantic.

"Delay the issue" would in fact have been far more generous then what Greece was asking for.  Delay the issue would be giving Greece another six month punt without any demanded reforms.  And here's the funny thing, if Germany had delayed the issue over and over again for long enough, the problem would have gotten a hell of a lot more manageable.

What I meant is just that, whether you believe that the measures are insanely hard or way too lenient, it should seem very unlikely that a) Greece will actually go through with the proposed measures and b) that these reforms will solve the problem. Therefore this deal just delays the question if Greece should stay in the Eurozone or not. I guess that pretty soon Greece will need more money or the EU will be unhappy with the state of the reforms or something else will come up and we'll be back where we were before the deal.

And no, by "delay the issue" I certainly didn't mean an unconditional bailout. That seems completely unfeasable politically, even with a limited timeframe. Not only for Germany (as Krugman & Co love to imply) but also for the Netherlands, Finland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. Oh, and the UK.

Hollande suggests a Eurozone parliament; Schäuble agrees, and wants a European minister of finance.

I told you guys, this crisis is about politics, not economics. Any solution must be a fundamentally political one.

That should be fun. All the people who complain about the Greek referendum being more or less ignored would be pretty unhappy with a democratic referendum in the rest of the EU about a transfer union.

[Owlbread]

The UK's youngest MP gives her maiden speech at 20 years old. Unfortunately I find the audio goes out of sync in places but I can't really find a better video of it. My apologies in advance.

[mainiac]

I told you guys, this crisis is about politics, not economics. Any solution must be a fundamentally political one.

Spain is in an economic situation that is literally unprecedented.  The majority of the Euro is in deep shit.  The only political problem is that Europe refuses to do anything to solve the economic impossibilities underpinning the situation.

The problem is that even when Europe puts on its nice face:
http://meansquarederrors.blogspot.com/2015/07/euro-summit-statement-glimmer-of-sanity.html

... they still aren't actually addressing the problem.  This proposal would be a nice humanitarian aid to greece in the sense that it would offset some of the loss in income of greek citizens (not actually costing or helping 35 billion due to details about shuffling money around).  While it would help greece it would in fact make the underlying imbalances even worse.  So unless Europe wants to subsidize Greek consumption to the tune of maybe 15-20 billion euros a year for the next decade it's not a solution.

Europe has an imbalance that helps some parties a little and hurts others a lot.  The only political problem is that they just fired the last guy to say "yo, let's fix this imbalance".

Yeah, even I am starting to think Belgium should leave the Euro before its too late, and Im suppsoed to be the starry-eyed Eurofederalist.

I wouldn't say that Belgium should leave the Euro but I definitely would say that Belgium should keep it's powder dry and have the printing plates ready.  Greece is just the canary in the coal mine.  There was a hope that after Greece achieved primary surplus the Euro would stop being such a quagmire but those hopes didn't pan out.  It turns out that the Euro is structured in a way that whoever has the biggest trade gap gets burned on the pyre of hard currency.  In a way Greece was a blessing in disguise because their huge deficit let them act like a canary in the coal mine and gave fair warning to spain and italy.

[Helgoland]

That should be fun. All the people who complain about the Greek referendum being more or less ignored would be pretty unhappy with a democratic referendum in the rest of the EU about a transfer union.

Oh yeah, the often-ignored fact that Merkel, Schäuble, and many others would be completely ignoring their constituencies if they were any more lenient. If you hail the Greek referendum but would decry a German one, you should think about how you want politics to work...

[notquitethere]

The UK's youngest MP gives her maiden speech at 20 years old. Unfortunately I find the audio goes out of sync in places but I can't really find a better video of it. My apologies in advance.

Top stuff. Good call for oppositional unity.

[mainiac]

Oh yeah, the often-ignored fact that Merkel, Schäuble, and many others would be completely ignoring their constituencies if they were any more lenient. If you hail the Greek referendum but would decry a German one, you should think about how you want politics to work...

If Germany had a referendum to undo the transfer of wealth from Greek and German taxpayers to German banks, I would in no way consider that unfair to the Greeks.  Tell me, is such a referendum on the table?

[Helgoland]

You know precisely what I meant, mainiac. Quit being an ass.

[alway]

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2012/06/what-are-the-bankers-up-to/
An interesting perspective on things with the ECB from a couple years back.

[Mr. Strange]

From what I've gathered from Mainiac's posts, he has a background in economics. Give up while you still can, Mr. Strange. You will not win this one.

I assume he's doing news reporting on economy for Fox, from his arguments. 
Logical failures galore and you can keep loaning money infinitely without ever having to pay it back. Definitely background in economics.

And with a map dated 2009!  In a discussion of what happened between 2010 and 2014.  Joy!  I am learning so much from you!

Here, you again keep ignoring that Greece had economical problems before 2010 and try to frame the issue to only involve time after their problems became public and debt costs skyrocketed, and any even remotely painless method of fixing their debt without causing economic crisis like the one we have now became impossible. If you weren't doing that and admitted their deficit and debt issues (and other issues, like corruption and tax evasion cutting state income) predate 2010 you would learn from that 2009 graph more than from some biased charts using cherry picked data. Oh wait, you're ignoring that part.

Econ 101 pop quiz!

Ignoring the point I made to repeat what I had said earlier somehow proves me wrong? Alien logic...

I know, I know.  You are thinking "but these questions are so simple to a hotshot like me!  I'll just whip out the middle school math and answer in thirty seconds!"  But hey... if you have ten minutes to write an angry reply then you have thirty seconds to do the basic math of the situation, right?

Considering only one of us is writing angry rants here and ignoring third grade math questions, I'd say answer is Fox news logic: ignore the question and change the subject.


Seriously, your whole argument boils down to "it's so unfair" and "it's not working", and I'm not disagreeing with you on there, but you're acting like a kid throwing temper tantrum after you throw a toy on the floor and it breaks.
You said that

people are insisting that Greece didn't do what it did

and I told you what people insist Greece didn't do; specific cuts to social spending that Greece had agreeded to do that were requirement for the aid package and then refused to do, leading people to question Greek gov's intentions and ability to make further cuts demanded. You could post the whole Greek budget from last ten or twenty years here in full detail and it won't change a thing, Greece has that data, EU has that data, all the negotiators are going over those numbers arguing "what do". Greece could have done what they had promised to do and shove the results at troikas face to show them the result of their demands, but that's not what they did isn't it?
They weren't even some vague "cut spending X% in Y years" kind of thing but defined amounts in specific named areas like pensions, but Syriza and friends went "nope, were not doing that". That's what Greece was critised for not doing, but you keep denying it.
Tl;Dr: Greece promised to do a thing, Greece refused to do a thing.


This might seem like I'm being unnecessary anal about this but I'm not arguing that Austerity™ is a good thing, moral thing, or even a working thing. That sort of argument might be your fetish but not mine. Mine is that you're misrepresenting and ignoring facts of the Greece situation.
Of, and Fox news level arguments. Especially those.