I agree with all three sentences.
Clarkey told me has meeting a mate who was over from London.
But, but, but, but she lives in Dublin…
Clarkey went to Senna at 6.30 with your ex.
Clarkey went to the Foggy Dew with his ex and her fella at 9.
Clarkey gets himself into some funny situations when it comes to females. Only sometimes these situations aren’t that funny at all.
To the Personal Issues/Agony Aunt thread…
Fucking hell Clarkey thats messed up. You went for a drink with your ex and her fella :blink:
Ah not really an ex as such but we were romantically involved. It is probably a bit messed up but that said it was an enjoyable evening. Twasn’t just the three of us either - we were a party of six.
Where’s the post in the Personal Issue’s thread?
Why’s there an apostrophe in Issues?
And what’s a hypotenuse?
Are those my feet?
Ah - that’s shocking.
I can only apologise.
Excellent Greek-made documentary which advocates a “debt audit” (McWilliams has also written about this) and a default through the concept of “odious debt”. Uses Iraq and Ecuador as examples.
FFS.
what’s to audit?
they spent the fcuking money.
they may have spent it on ridiculous government projects the likes of the OPW is involved in here, (on a much smaller scale) but they did spend it.
everything was grand when they had drachmas and lots of them. can’t devalue their way out of this mess so an alternative solution to greek fiscal incontinence is required.
maybe a revenue audit would be a more productive idea.
Doesn’t solve the debt problem.
it’s a bit like the old joke about asking for directions. “I wouldn’t start from here if I were you”.
their tax base is worse than ours, with avoidance and undeclared income rife.
their spending is reckless, with pork barrel politics and largesse that would embarrass a healy-rae.
both income and expenditure need to be tackled.
the optics of at least attempting to raise western economic levels of tax would go a long way to softening the blow of the inevitable default. reading some of the stuff online, it’s as if they’re imagining a rather large reset button. simply press it, set the debt level back to zero, and continue partying like it’s 1999.
the same way as we have to start the cutting at the top, it won’t solve the problem, but it’s socially repugnant to attempt to avoid it.
Clearly they need to start collecting far higher levels of tax and to cut at the top, just like here. I don’t object to trying to balance the books, nobody does, but they should be balanced at the top. That requires a fundamental readjustment of society to a more equal one. The average Greek public sector salary is €14,400. Also as I stated on another thread they work the longest hours of any country in the OECD, around 700 hours more a year than the average German. Ordinary people in Greece are right to protest in such circumstances.
Don’t think anybody is saying that Greece should default on all of its debt, the whole concept of a debt audit is to forensically examine which debts should be paid and which shouldn’t. To do that you need a total change in the attitude and personnel of government. Which is fairly unlikely in any European country at the moment.
Just to go over some of the main points and some quotes I took down while watching the programme last week (sad I know, but this stuff interests me), so you can decide if it’s worth watching:
Odious debt:
In order to qualify a debt as odious, three prerequisites are required:
- The government receives a loan without the knowledge and approval of the people
- The loan is spent on activities not beneficial to the people
- The lenders know of this situation and play “possum”
The USA found themselves in need of the odious debt concept in 1898 when they won the Spanish-American war and annexed Cuba. The problem was that along with Cuba, they acquired the debt incurred by the Spanish colonial regime. That debt had been run up from 1492 until 1898 and was extremely heavy. The US simply refused to pay the debt. It was “odious”.
In Mexico a few decade earlier, when the Republicans overthrew Emperor Maximilian I, they decided that the debt he had incurred was odious. He had borrowed huge sums at excessively high interest rates to deal with the uprising against him. And since he owed a lot, mainly to the people of Mexico , he was sent to the firing squad.
It was the US that brought the concept of odious debt into the 21st century. When it invaded Iraq, it insisted that the new government should not have to pay the huge debts run up by Saddam Hussein’s regime.
But it did not want its use of the concept of “odious debt” to become public knowledge or used in the media.
The US called a meeting of G8 finance ministers three weeks after the invasion to announce that the debt was odious and that the new government should be free of the debt.
James Baker , under Bush’s instruction, said that Iraq had wasted it’s money on palces and arms. The US tried to prove Iraq owed billions of dollars to France and Russia for the purchase of Exocet missiles and MiG AND Mirage 1 fighter aircraft.
But what was so different about what Hussein did compared to Western leaders? They blow money on arms and blow money on Olympics and World Cups etc.
But America realised it had opened a can of worms. It had legitimised the concept of odious debt. So they tried to sweep it under the carpet as best as possible.
The other countries said: “we’ll cut 40% off Iraq’s debt through the Paris Club”. But the concept of odious debt would not and must not be used officially, because other countries might then claim the right to use it as well.
For example the DR Congo would repudiate Mobutu’s debt, the Phillipines would repudiate Marcos’s debt and South Africa would refuse to pay the Apartheid regime’s debt.
The odious debt concept WAS used but swept under the carpet.
The US continued to help Iraq to cancel old debts, but never wanted to hear the phrase “odious debt” ever again. So Iraq managed to write off a big portion of it debt effectively with help of an empire.
Ecuador: Rafael Correa literally threw out the World Bank and the IMF when he was elected. He told them they weren’t welcome on government premises anymore.
They had a “debt audit”. 18 individuals and 4 national organisations took part. They examined every debt contract from 1956 to 2006. They worked for 14 months.
“We examined the bond debt, debts to the IMF, World Bank and other international organisations, the debt to France, Germany, Japan etc, and Ecuador’s internal national debt.”
“We have national commitments more urgent than international ones. We’ll fulfil our interntional obligations as soon as we are able. But our priorities are clear. Life comes first, repaying debts second” – Rafael Correa
The Ministry of Finance tried to resist. “The battle to access the data was tremendous. Myself and my associate, Alejandro Olmos, were personae non gratae”, said Hugo Arrias, head of the debt audit committee.
Despite the resistance, the debt audit committee managed to prove that a big part of the debt was illegitimate. The findings were made public by the state.
Ecuador could be one of the richest countries in South America, but all it has known is dictators, debt, poverty and economic hitmen.
John Perkins (former IMF employee and author of “Confessions of an Ecomic Hitman”: “My real job was deal making. It was giving loans to other countries, huge loans, much bigger than they could possibly repay. Let’s say a billion dollar loan to Indonesia or Ecuador, this country would have to give 90% of that loan back to a US company or US companies to build the infrastructure, a Halliburton or a Bechtel, and these companies would then go in and build an electrical system or ports or highways and these would basically serve just a few of the wealthiest families in those countries. The poor people in those countries would be stuk, ultimately, with this amazing debt that they couldn’t possibly repay”.
The IMF came to Ecudaor in 1982 – Ecuador had been borrowing more and more to fulfil its borrowing obligations. But it was being looted by the “North”.
From the 1980’s up to 2005, 50~% of the government budget was being used to repay debt, about $US 3-4 billion a year. Only 4% of the budget went on healthcare.
4 billion on debt, 400 million on healthcare.
“We were killing our own people” – Hugo Arias, head of Ecuador’s debt audit committee.
Rafael Correa said that 80% of the oil revenues should be used on healthcare, education and job creation, and only 20% channelled towards the debt. The World Bank said they wouldn’t lend to Ecuador under such circumstances. Correa resigned as Finance minister rather than accept outside influence.
“These callous, dishonest bureaucrats have to respect our country. This is why we threw out the World Bank delegate. We maintain the right to restore the damage done to our country and we declare our debt to the World Bank illegitimate” – Rafael Correa
Based on the findings of the debt audit committee, the government declared the debt illegitimate and declared cessation of payments on 70% of its bond debt. Those in possession of Ecuador’s debt sold bonds at 20% of their value. Ecuador also rid itself of interest it would have had to pay.
In Greece, the likes of Siemens bribed Government ministers for at least a decade in order to gain contracts.
Goldman Sachs helped the Greek government fiddle its books and made millions out of it.
“As Greece got on the heroin of borrowed money, Goldman was the crack dealer” – Mark Kirk, US Senator
There was cronyism. Goldman Sachs were retained by the Greek Government and paid with taxpayer’s money.
Greece appointed a Goldman Sachs employee to be the head of its public debt management agency. “It’s like appointing a bank robber to guard your house”.
Sara Wagenknecht, deputy chairperson of Die Linke, a German party: “When Germany was negotiating to support Greece in 2010, one of the conditions was that Greece would continue to import German arms. Greece should cut pensions and benefits etc, but not cut down on arms imports. This is indicative of the interests involved. Germany protects the interests of military equipment manufacturers and its export industry. Those people want to continue trading despite the crisis”.
Daniel Cohn-Bendit – President of the European Greens-European Free Alliance:
“We’re hypocrites! Last month, France sold six frigates to Greece for 2.5 billion euro. Also, helicopters worth 400 million and Rafale aircraft at 100 million each.” “Germany sold six submarines to Greece, worth 1 billion, We’re such hypocrtites. We give them our money so they can buy our arms”.
Right wing parties who promoted debt creation will be against a debt audit as it will show up their irresponsilbilty.
“The neo-liberal endeavour is a crime against humanity”
“Respect is gained by struggle, not by obeying one’s creditors” – Eric Toussaint, Committee for Abolition of Third World Debt
some nice stuff in there, i’ll chase it up later.
2 thing sjump out at me though:
-
i call shenanigans on the greek stats. half the problem is the crap they’ve been sending to eurostat since 2000 is fiddled.
new stats required pronto (not saying you’ve to provide them)
obviously the average pay, etc. comes into question because of this. -
there’s a load of headline quotes there i’d love to read up on regarding mainly south american countries and ex dictatorships.
however, unless a fair chunk of that greek debt was run up by the junta, i don’t think the comparison is valid.
the greeks are effectively looting the EU and IMF, not the other way around.
Greece should ask Germany to pay war reparations plus interest if the Germans insist on them paying everything back
Very intereting reading Sid. The world is run by corporations
Excellent stuff Sid. Some of that is just plain mental. Germany sold 6 subs to Greece? Why the fuck does Greece need submarines? In case Albania attack?
That’s a good read Sid.
The stuff about the Greek defence spending is particularly interesting. I went looking for recent figures on it a few weeks ago but couldn’t find any.
it’s a huge chunk (4% off the top of my head) of their GDP by european standards
blame the ongoing minor dispute with the turks in cyprus and the effects of 400-odd years of Ottoman rule.
In brief sid, I’d have absolutely no problem with a country repudiating some or all of its debt after it overthrows a dictatorship. In fact, I’d say it could be a great way to operate as it would make people think twice before they bankroll these guys. However, for a democracy to default is another matter altogether. Sure their governments were shit, and Goldmans certainly have a lot to answer for, but they were still the elected representatives of the people. On the other hand, it’s fairly clear that they will have to default in some way. There has to be some price to pay for that though, or else the moral hazard becomes huge. I’m just not sure what the price should be in this case.