Not quite sure how I feel about this. Greeks shouldn't have joined euro the first place. Surely someone has to be held responsible for falsifying the data? And the people of Greece now have to pay the price for the decisions they made in elections years ago. And unfortunately looks like not much has changed - people can protest against austerity but they should protest even more so against policies and lack of reforms/responsibility that got them in this crisis.
Arguably, the most damaging thing is the uncertainty. And with a No vote, that will persist. Yet, I am in favor of creditors, including European ones, taking responsibility and suffering losses. If for nothing else than as a lesson for future. Wishful thinking goes that banks not taxpayers would have to deal with this.
And I guess that a No vote might give Greece freedom to take actions that would not be possible otherwise to get out of this whole mess. Time will tell and it will definitely be interesting to see how everything plays out.
If they stay then the EU would have to give them additional billions without the legitimacy amongst their constituents to do so. EU politicians have to satisfy their base but this is contrary to what would be best for Greece or even the EU in the long run. Even if they would give those billions, then other countries that have financial troubles (e.g. Spain) would expect something as well. Both these things have already resulted in the EU demanding counter-productive things while giving Greece less than what was needed. On the other hand, the Greeks have been living above what they could afford for over a decade now and getting them out will force them to live with much less means than they have in the past. This would at least enable them to fix a lot of stuff they are currently doing to satisfy the EU's harsh demands.
Either way, the next 2+ years will be really shitty for Greeks.
At the amount of money we talk about here no one takes someones word for it. They might say to the press "we didn't know Greece falsified the data", but i have serious doubts that organizations like ECB or EU have no way to verify Greece's economical situation before accepting to Eurozone. I believe the responsible parties knew perfectly well that Greece's economy would crumble under Euro, but they did it anyway. I don't believe their intent was malicious, but more like, "yeah we'll figure it out down the line".
One of the theories I read about was very intresting. Normally when developing countries default on sovereign debt, austerity measures are imposed on them BUT a devaluation of their currency boosts their foreign trade, so they have a chance to recover in time. In 2010 they bailed Greece out and introduced the austerity measures but couldn't devalue EURO, for obvious reasons. So the austerity measures caused for the GDP to shrink, but there was no incentive for the foreign trade to balance it out. Most people who were against the bail out back then were hushed. This bail-out gave time to big investors to leave Greece without losses. If Greece was allowed to default back then only private banks would be affected, EURO might have lost some value, but overall it wouldn't be as bad as now.
Not quite sure how I feel about this. Greeks shouldn't have joined euro the first place. Surely someone has to be held responsible for falsifying the data? And the people of Greece now have to pay the price for the decisions they made in elections years ago. And unfortunately looks like not much has changed - people can protest against austerity but they should protest even more so against policies and lack of reforms/responsibility that got them in this crisis.
Arguably, the most damaging thing is the uncertainty. And with a No vote, that will persist. Yet, I am in favor of creditors, including European ones, taking responsibility and suffering losses. If for nothing else than as a lesson for future. Wishful thinking goes that banks not taxpayers would have to deal with this.
And I guess that a No vote might give Greece freedom to take actions that would not be possible otherwise to get out of this whole mess. Time will tell and it will definitely be interesting to see how everything plays out.
If they stay then the EU would have to give them additional billions without the legitimacy amongst their constituents to do so. EU politicians have to satisfy their base but this is contrary to what would be best for Greece or even the EU in the long run. Even if they would give those billions, then other countries that have financial troubles (e.g. Spain) would expect something as well. Both these things have already resulted in the EU demanding counter-productive things while giving Greece less than what was needed. On the other hand, the Greeks have been living above what they could afford for over a decade now and getting them out will force them to live with much less means than they have in the past. This would at least enable them to fix a lot of stuff they are currently doing to satisfy the EU's harsh demands.
Either way, the next 2+ years will be really shitty for Greeks.
At the amount of money we talk about here no one takes someones word for it. They might say to the press "we didn't know Greece falsified the data", but i have serious doubts that organizations like ECB or EU have no way to verify Greece's economical situation before accepting to Eurozone. I believe the responsible parties knew perfectly well that Greece's economy would crumble under Euro, but they did it anyway. I don't believe their intent was malicious, but more like, "yeah we'll figure it out down the line".
One of the theories I read about was very intresting. Normally when developing countries default on sovereign debt, austerity measures are imposed on them BUT a devaluation of their currency boosts their foreign trade, so they have a chance to recover in time. In 2010 they bailed Greece out and introduced the austerity measures but couldn't devalue EURO, for obvious reasons. So the austerity measures caused for the GDP to shrink, but there was no incentive for the foreign trade to balance it out. Most people who were against the bail out back then were hushed. This bail-out gave time to big investors to leave Greece without losses. If Greece was allowed to default back then only private banks would be affected, EURO might have lost some value, but overall it wouldn't be as bad as now.