Should Greece remain in the euro-zone after they default?

AFAIK Greece joined the Euro under false pretenses in the first place. So now accusing the rest of Europe being the only guilty ones for their problems is a bit daring. Of course one could say the people who checked Greece's numbers and didn't consider them fishy have a part guilt of allowing them into the Eurozone, but obviously Greece thought it was a good idea to join the Euro at that time despiting having a sufficiently stable economy.

Anyway, before Greece actually address their inherent problems like widespread tax evasion and the "fakelaki" culture (i.e. bribes are pretty much necessary for everything), it will be really tricky for them to get anything going.

By the way, a really big problem in that respect is the Greek health system at the moment where patients often have to wait for months for necessary treatments unless they can offer the doctors some "small envelopes" with big money. Tsipras did promise to clean this up as one of his promises to get elected, but right now the state of the health system has become even worse. (And that's not the only thing he promised and didn't deliver, of course).

Oxi to Greece!

To Drachma dreamers:
Greece is HEAVILY import dependent. If they return to Drachma 2/3 of their population will suffer of what we call nowadays 'a humanitarian catastrophe' because the basic necessities would sky rocket price wise. In other words, the country would be a ticking time bomb. Their military is well equiped by the way..

A weak currency is only good for export related activities which is basicaly 0 in Greece. They can't even manage to extract olive oil themselves before exporting them. They sell them for cheap, I mean very cheap to Italy for Italy to extract the oil from them and to sell further. The profit is marginalized.

As someone said, socialists prosper so long until they ran out of other people's money.

^ If Greece are heavily dependent on imports, but export very little, how can an economy like that survive in the first place? Tourism will not cover everything. In such a case, it's better to force a change, force more domestic production that will lessen the import burden and increase the export chances = move to the drachma.

Art Morte wrote:^ If Greece are heavily dependent on imports, but export very little, how can an economy like that survive in the first place? Tourism will not cover everything. In such a case, it's better to force a change, force more domestic production that will lessen the import burden and increase the export chances = move to the drachma.

That wouldn't work unless Germany and France cut a significant amount of the debt. The debt is in euro which is a hard currency. If they move to drachma the debt and its interests will get even harder to pay back. If they decide to not pay then they wouldn't be able to get credits from anywhere. The country would collapse.
The best solution is to cut a big chunk of the debt and in exchange ask them to leave the euro by themselves. That would be better for both parties.

Greece is much better off without EU but they are the outpost of the EU at the same time that's why no one wants instability in that region. Let them go, cut them some slack debt wise and at the start help them to introduce drachma as their new currency.

I don't think the Eurozone countries want to forgive Greece their debt as long as they're in the euro. It would be poisonous for the Eurozone to set a precedent like that. It would make the rules unclear and people would start, rightly, asking questions that "can our debt be forgiven, too, if we threaten to leave the euro? Can we trust each other any more when lending money?"

If Greece moved to the drachma, it would become politically much easier to forgive Greece some of their debt and make arrangements that only require Greece to start paying back in a few years' time, when the drachma has had a change to stabilize.

This is the 3rd bailout Greece are in need of. Enough is enough. Greece has a "lifestyle" that they've been only able to afford with the strong bailout euros. And they are still strongly (61% of voters) opposing the reforms and austerity that are required to correct the ship's course. Let them default and move to the drachma, that will force them to change. In the long-run, it's better for themselves as well, I believe.


Ps. When it's time to start talking about China?

Arte,
actually, most people don't know why Germany likes EU that much. It's not because the country wants to control all of Europe like some lunatics think (WW2 comments).
If a country is economicaly very stable and exports a lot like Germany then people go and exchange everything for their currency, euro, which makes euro rise in price (high demand). In return, the export products become more expensive which slows down the growth of the strong economy because less amount of people abroad are able to afford the products afterwards. By having many weak economies in  the balance in Europe the value of euro is kept in low regions. A dream come true for exporting countries and a nightmare for countries like Greece.
So yeah, we profitied the most from euro.

Art Morte wrote:
If Greece moved to the drachma, it would become politically much easier to forgive Greece some of their debt and make arrangements that only require Greece to start paying back in a few years' time, when the drachma has had a change to stabilize.

As I said the move to Drachma alone won't make sense unless there is a significant debt haircut. There is no exit clause in from the EU. A country can only leave by its own accord. A deal can be reached like exit for debt haircut.

Art Morte wrote:
This is the 3rd bailout Greece are in need of. Enough is enough. Greece has a "lifestyle" that they've been only able to afford with the strong bailout euros. And they are still strongly (61% of voters) opposing the reforms and austerity that are required to correct the ship's course. Let them default and move to the drachma, that will force them to change. In the long-run, it's better for themselves as well, I believe.

Greece has got 11 million population, 5.5 million pensions, 80% of the population lives in their own houses so no renting expenses. They get 14 pensions per year instead of 12 with 25% unemployment. I ask myself who does actually work there?

Art Morte wrote:
Ps. When it's time to start talking about China?

China is the REAL ticking time bomb. They keep Yuan artificially at a very low value and they aren't a mini country like Greece. Yeah, Arte, I'm very afraid. They could cause the collaps of the whole world economy.

They should move out, Holidays will be cheaper.

So, today is supposedly THE deadline. Although there have been so many deadlines for these Greece negotiations already, that I don't know is this the final chance.

Anyway, so, the referendum was completely pointless, then. 61% voted against tougher bailout terms... only for the Greek government to propose tougher bailout terms to its creditors a few days later. Convincing.

However, those terms weren't sufficient enough. Negotiations continue.

Meanwhile, several EU countries seem to be quite openly against agreeing a 3rd bailout for Greece now. Finland apparently the most strongly opposing that. France, Italy, Spain, Portugal apparently united to keep Greece in the euro. USA, too, is putting political pressure on the EU to agree a bailout, I wonder if that is quite right of them to do

I suppose it's in the balance whether Greece are given a new life line. Hard to see it happening today, though, there seems to be too much to do for one day.

They should be kicked out of Europe , them lazy bastards.

A deal has been reached.

They ended up with a worse deal than they rejected

RealGunner wrote:They ended up with a worse deal than they rejected

I really hope the Greek parliament will show its middle finger then Grexit will be done without much fuss about others.
Hoffnung stirbt zuletzt!

Grexit is out of the question now.

Greece know how stupid they have been in their shit attempt at being bold. The complete u-turn by Tsipras on his socialist policies is hilarious. Doubt he is ever getting elected again.

Doesn't matter how much EU try to deny it. This has been humiliating for Greece and their people. Purely because of Tsipras

But this also proves how much of a joke EU is.

Can't wait to renegotiate our terms with EU

I suppose in the end Tsipras & co. were just too scared of the short-term misery that would follow a Grexit. It's not a rosy deal for Greece - however, it's not great news for the Eurozone, either, they have to fork out another 80bn to Greece.

I think this has left the EU divided. Even if Greece stays in the euro, another crisis in the next couple of years - doesn't even have to be this big - can really rupture the union. They should re-think the EU, take a step or two back.

"TO HEAR Germany’s critics, one would think that the word and the concept of “austerity” was a dubious Teutonic gift to the world. In fact, Austerität is rarely used in German. It was borrowed fairly recently from English, which got it from French. The French got it from Latin, and the Romans took it from, of all sources, Greek: austeros means bitter.

What others call “austerity”, Germans call Sparpolitik, “savings policy”, which has a much more positive connotation. "

http://www.goallegacy.net/t9021p72-should-greece-remain-in-the-euro-zone-after-they-default

Fun fact of the day.

So what's going to happen now??? I guess there's not much to do withing the shoe-string budget, it will be mostly about how well they can manage the pain and (if possible) rebuilding. Have they said anything about how they intend to kick-start the economy???

BTW, how did PASOK managed to sink so low??? They used to be the second largest party.