hmm. judging from the comments I heard so far from Berlin, I don't see how Merkel can push another bailout package through the german parliament. Some members of her party already voted against her in the last rescue packages. This time they might desert her en masse.
honestly don't know what options she has left, besides "pulling the plug".

You're right. Germany is strictly organized in form of a representative democracy. This is on purpose to overcome the flaws of the Constitution of the German Reich, which made it possible for Hitler to get elected simply by revolutionizing the people. All direct democratic decisions are prone to propaganda and rabble-rousers and especially nowadays driven by mass- and social-media. While I'm not happy with every political decisions here, it's still better than to be ruled by the uneducated mass.

It would be hyperinflation of either the IOUs or the drachma (whichever way they end up going). If they try to stay on the Euro for a while but start issuing IOUs (due to not actually having the Euros to pay people), then while an IOU may say it's worth 20 euros, the actual value people will accept it as depends on how confident people are that it can actually be redeemed for the face value. That confidence will be pretty low to start with, and is likely to only fall with time, which will be reflected in what people actually value the IOUs at, hence hyperinflation. In the other scenario, that Greece fully leaves the Euro, brings back the drachma, then fires up the printing presses, you'll just have hyperinflation in the traditional manner. Ultimately it comes down to the fact that Greece doesn't have enough Euros to pay people, so they'll be whipping up some sort of funny money, and that's going to undergo rapid inflation.

I'm reading that that pretty much everyones stance on the matter is weakening (it's a report from polish corespondent, so probably not much use to you, but that's what I've got). The thing is, everyone in Europe is afraid of doing anything drastic, of any serious change, there are no leaders willing to really stand firm and make drastic decisions. And it's not just about Greece, it's every major crisis. Ukraine, Georgia before that... Everyone has gotten so comfortable in the peacefull status quo of the last two decades, they're just doing everything to postpone risky decisions and drastic changes untill it's someone else's job to deal with them.

Depending on which sources you read, the cost of the UK banks bailouts was in excess of £850 billion to the taxpayer. UK banks then paid their bosses of RBS that helped sink the country to its knees a further £1.5 billion.

The consequence is that the country went in to recession and hundred of thousands of people lost their jobs. A proportion of those then had houses repossessed by the very banks that started the crises. RBS is now apparently in a position to be privatised at a cost of £10 billion to the taxpayer.

How is this being paid? By austerity measures that tax the lowest earners and most vulnerable of society.

Greece is telling the EU to go fuck themselves and we in the UK should follow suit, quickly followed by our own protests against the crippling austerity measure imposed here.

Year or post?

If you could only keep your word we might be able to believe in change. Please be an inspiration to us all. Make us believe a better future (for this thread - at least) is possible.

Well, it looked like you are no longer here and it's possible to have a say without having to put up with trolling. As it turns out I was overly optimistic after all :)

Συγχαρητήρια , Ελλάδα!

Thank you, my greek friends, for showing the world that dignity is more important than money and that an entire nation can speak up against being humiliated when "the Big Ones Up North" seem to forget their own "economic miracle" only happened because the troika of the time (US, UK and France) downright forgave them more than two thirds of their debt.

The greek people are obviously aware that this means rough times ahead, for what will probably be decades, but you've shown no fear and, not ironically, you let *democracy* speak in the birth place of democracy itself. I congratulate you and so does the vast majority of the portuguese, you've shown way more backbone than our government and our Prime Minister, who seems to be Merkel's personal cheerleader, these days.

Greece asks for and wants and needs help. But what they got all this time was pity and condescence. To all of you out there saying Greece's critics are celebrating: trust me, they aren't. No one wants Greece out of the Eurozone and out of the EU; there's no EU without Greece in it. Heck, the very word 'Europe' is a greek one. The negotiations that will now resume will have to take into account the result of this referendum, and the greek people have spoken loudly and with no fear.

If Portugal has to go next, at least I hope we go down as proudly as Greece did, with our heads held high and our dignity intact.

Pointing out hypocrisy is not trolling. You reiterating your already known position to everyone on the other hand...is.


Two articles worth reading for those that bother to inform themselves of the issue in the historical context:

Thomas Piketty w/Die Zeit:
https://medium.com/@gavinschalliol/thomas-piketty-germany-has-never-repaid-7b5e7add6fff

Editorial from the Guardian from over 2years ago:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/feb/27/greece-spain-helped-germany-recover

so greece vote "no" let's try to guess what will happen.
but in the end we greeks must change

Give Greece some of its own medicine?! Every member of the eurozone should start a referendum and ask its citizens if they want to give Greece more money. The question they ask could be something like "Do you want to waste your hard earned money to fund Tsipras next election campaign?" oO

Said someone from Spain...
http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org/debtclock/spain
The only difference between your country and Greece is 5-10 years.

I'll go one better. How about putting a referendum to every member state of the Eurozone and ask the people of each country whether or not they support the creeps running the IMF and the ECB. I don't remember Draghi ever being democratically elected to anything. Maybe instead of asking people what team they support in the playoffs, maybe people should be asking why a bunch of un-elected bankers are somehow now running the show. Come on guys, where's a good working class revolutionary when you need one?

What's happening in Greece is only a sign of the times. Not the end of the world as we know it, but an end to the way things were. Greece is down, but not out.

Look at the United States, once their budget was balanced but now it is trillions of dollars in debt, especially having forgiven many other countries for theirs.

The only thing that can make or break a country is its people; I believe in Greece, I think they have just as much a chance as any other country to survive financial crisis.

I could be wrong, but I'm trying to be optimistic.
You're not supposed to talk about ***** ****.

The referendum has a clear result NO and I already wanted to start saying encouraging words, but it is not clear to me what the NO means eactly. This is confusing me.

I thought that with a NO Greece will exit the euro immediately (which would be the best for economic recovery too) and defaults but it seems to just mean that Greece wants to wait for a better offer which might never come. And while you wait the situation might even get worse.

More days of uncertainty to come and I still don't understand what's so bad about temporarily leaving the euro, devaluating, lowering unemployment and work your way up again. I think this is the best solution for a quick recovery and minimized financial losses for all involved. Everything else will just be prolonged suffering.

Well, let's see what happens.