The Gaming Den

[Lago PARANOIA]

[DSMatticus]

Theye1, it literally does not matter how bad defaulting is, because the austerity measures put them there anyway, just slightly later rather than sooner. Greece cannot recover with the ECB demanding they cut apart their government for (partially) the exact reason you just specified.

[theye1]

[Whipstitch]

Nobody believes that so quit wasting everyone's time.

[theye1]

[Lago PARANOIA]

It's not hard at all -- in fact it's almost so easy it's cheating -- to return to pre-recession levels of production. Hell, if you're looking at cynical growth rates the further you fell the faster you climb.

If Chile of all places was able to have annual growth in the 6-7% range after disposing of Pinochet and the Chicago Boys, why not Greece? I mean, granted, the economy fell so far that even this explosion in growth left them behind their Latin America neighbors so it's hard to paint the entire debacle as a success story, but Frank isn't exactly going out on a limb here by predicting that it will only take a few months for Greece to start experiencing positive growth again.
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[FrankTrollman]

Greece GDP is like 15% down over the last four years. They would need several years of Chinese levels of growth to actually be recovered from their depression. That probably won't happen unless there is an actual bailout of grants rather than loans.

But the current situation they are in discourages private investment and ratchets government spending down every quarter and leaves the state still completely paralyzed by debt and gives the Germans plenty of leverage to force them to do bad policy. That is a huge clusterfuck, and it's "only" generating negative three percent growth. Shortly after that ends, of course growth is going to be positive! How could it not be?

The government has a primary surplus, the moment they right off their debt, they can do some counter-cyclic policy relative to what they are doing now even if markets won't lend them any money. Once the crisis is declared over, no matter how painful the default actually is, Greece will become a more attractive place to invest. If only because the net investment today is less than zero, and being more attractive than that is a very low target.

Positive growth is a ridiculously easy goal to set yourself. Technology continues to advance, so growth should be positive all the time. Only tremendous failures of policy can put growth at negative values for any serious length of time. To get negative growth for four years straight is a level of policy failure that four years ago people were literally saying it was no longer possible to have.

No one is saying that Greece is going to be fully recovered a few months after defaulting and leaving the Euro. We're saying that they will be having positive growth.

-Frank

[Josh_Kablack]

Not quite "temple of the fiscally irresponsible elves", but surprisingly close for a non-gaming article
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[RobbyPants]

Looks like 69% of investors agreed to restructuring of the debt
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First time:

tzor wrote:

OK FUCK THIS ALL ---- BYE BYE TGD I didn't come here to get ulcers ---- You idiots can rot in your own progressive hell forever.

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DSMatticus wrote:

People don't like realism in their fantasy games (unless it's the fighter, lol fuck that guy).

[Lago PARANOIA]

So what do you guys think of the conspiracy theory that Syriza and its backers intentionally limited the amount of gains that they'd do in this electoral cycle so that they wouldn't be in the hot seat when the moronic and omission bias'd voting public decided to lash out at the most visible symbols of their oppression rather than looking for proximate causes?
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This will not happen in D&D Next because Mearls is a hack-of-all-trades, a true renaissance man of fail. - rasmuswagner

[Ancient History]

Well, my first thought is "who gives a flying fuck about Syriza?"
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[FrankTrollman]

I think that there were 2 pro-bailout parties and four anti-bailout parties. The pro-bailout parties got 40% of the vote and the anti-bailout parties got 60% of the vote. The leading pro-bailout party got less than one percent more of the vote than the leading anti-bailout party, but because of the way Greek parliament seats are awarded (50 extra seats to the single biggest party, regardless of whether they are the biggest opinion bloc), the pro-Austerity parties got a slim majority of the seats. Nothing really surprising there. The surprising thing is that with only 2 establishment parties splitting the establishment vote and 4 anti-establishment parties splitting the anti-establishment vote, that Syrzia could come within 1%.

And yeah, if Germany wasn't threatening to throw a temper tantrum and destroy the entire Eurozone the next day if Syrzia had won, it's doubtful that New Democracy could have pulled it off even slitting their votes half as much as Syrzia. It really cannot be overstated how much the policies of the last four years have not worked.

-Frank

[Lago PARANOIA]

http://www.nationalmemo.com/greece-passes-new-austerity-deal-amid-rioting/
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This will not happen in D&D Next because Mearls is a hack-of-all-trades, a true renaissance man of fail. - rasmuswagner

[Ancient History]

Well, that entire government is going to be voted out. Next!
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[K]

US companies are preparing contingency plans for Greece leaving the eurozone, or even a full collapse of the eurozone.

It's kind of more disturbing to me that they have actual plans for a complete collapse considering the shockwaves that would go through the global financial system.

[Blasted]

I do believe that almost everyone has plans to limit their exposure to a grexit.
You'd be irresponsible not to, given the way most think that at least a Greek exit is inevitable, possibly followed by others, especially Finland.
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[Lago PARANOIA]

What the fuck happened in Cyprus today?

I've been hearing liberals like Krugman and Kevin Drum saying that the banksters have really crossed the line and are actively encouraging bank panics to protect the overclass. What gives?
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This will not happen in D&D Next because Mearls is a hack-of-all-trades, a true renaissance man of fail. - rasmuswagner

[sabs]

[K]

[K]

Looks like the people of Cyprus are already running on the banks.

Here's hoping that the rest of Europe doesn't do a run on their own banks and collapse the Eurozone.

[Morat]

Agreed, but I don't see an obvious stopping point. Of course, it'll peter out at some point, but since imposing idiotic economic policies and sustaining them in spite of all evidence that they're not working seems to be the hip thing in Europe these days, there's no rational reason for either Cypriots to think it'll stop after one shot or for the other shaky countries to think they won't be next.

Krugman, unsurprisingly, is right. Maybe the reaction will be muted because dealing with cash you keep in your mattress is super annoying, but at best it's pissing in the eye of financial ruin. Getting away with it this time doesn't make it a swift move.

[FrankTrollman]

I do not understand how or why the Germans and Belgians could think this was a good idea. They managed to announce it over a Cypriot bank holiday, which is an extra special fuck you to everyone involved.

But it also lets everyone in Cyprus or who has any money in Cyprus prepare to pull all their money out. If you have any money in a Cypriot bank, why wouldn't you pull your money out at this point? If everyone pulls their money out, the 13 billion Euro bailout is going to be chump change. The Bank of Cyprus has a quarter of the Cypriot deposit market and has €42 Billion in assets by itself. A simple back of the envelope calculation is that the bailout that the Germans are currently balking at isn't a tenth as big as what the country would need if a good old fashioned high speed bank run goes down. And that's if it stays confined to Cyprus, which there is absolutely no reason to believe it would.

A very dangerous and puzzling game. The only thing I can think of is that the Germans are betting that a bank run will destroy the country AND that the Cypriot parliament is going to vote the plan down. And then they'll try to use it as a stick to keep the Italians and Greeks in line by claiming "those guys didn't take the austerity deal, and now they are all on fire". But even with a lap dog press in the BRD I can't see that working Europe-wide. The fact that the terms of this insane deal were cooked up by the European Commission will be and already is obvious to everyone.

-Frank

[K]

World economy taking a hit because of the Cyprus bank run.

It's on. Who knew that the apocalypse would start in Cyprus?

[name_here]

[Stahlseele]

Schäuble is basically our republican/conservative i am afraid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Sch%C3%A4uble#Political_views
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