looks like Tsipras has folded

[traininthedistance]

key news today is Eurogroup may not accept the deal.  rumor is Merkel wants to reject it and the French want to accept it.  the Germans smell Tsipras' weakness and are going for the full out kill.

Schauble is even talking some nonsense about a "temporary 5 year Grexit"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11733260/Greece-news-live-Germans-tout-plans-for-five-year-temporary-Grexit-after-Europeans-warn-reforms-are-too-little-too-late.html

Instead of a five year exit they should get a permanent exit from the euro currency.

Also there needs to be a way to force their bond yields to never go below 15% for the next 10 years so they can't think they can just borrow themselves to growth.

So you want Greeks to starve on the street.  Good to know.

[traininthedistance]

key news today is Eurogroup may not accept the deal.  rumor is Merkel wants to reject it and the French want to accept it.  the Germans smell Tsipras' weakness and are going for the full out kill.

Schauble is even talking some nonsense about a "temporary 5 year Grexit"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11733260/Greece-news-live-Germans-tout-plans-for-five-year-temporary-Grexit-after-Europeans-warn-reforms-are-too-little-too-late.html

Instead of a five year exit they should get a permanent exit from the euro currency.

Also there needs to be a way to force their bond yields to never go below 15% for the next 10 years so they can't think they can just borrow themselves to growth.

So you want Greeks to starve on the street.  Good to know.

lol, forcing greeks to live within their means = wanting them to starve.

Look, this is something that reasonable people could have disagreed on until today.  But the fact that Tsipras has completely folded and acceded to the Eurogroup's demands– presumably on the theory that Grexit would in fact lead to people starving in the streets and he doesn't want that– and yet Germany along with associated other Northern Europe countries have decided to shift the goalposts at the last minute, and kick 'em out anyway, proves that this is all about the "forcing" and not at all about the "living within their means".  It's Discipline and Punish, it's moralizing sneering in place of humanitarian imperatives.

I would refer you– and ag, and all the other anti-Greek posters here– to this post that was making the rounds recently and, IMO, deftly demolishes the hypocrisy of creditor moralizing here.  Allow me to quote the money grafs:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

But, really, the whole thing is worth everyone's time.

I'm sympathetic to the idea that some of the earlier hard-line Tsipras posturing was all ideology and all bumbling, that he's not the hero Greece needs, but after today it's crystal clear that even that is preferable to the sadism of Northern Europe.

[traininthedistance]

Also, the idea that doing as the creditors wish will help Greece "live within its means" is utter nonsense:



Doing as they say hasn't helped them "live within their means," it's just systematically destroyed their means with which to live. 

[traininthedistance]

Also, the idea that doing as the creditors wish will help Greece "live within its means" is utter nonsense:



Doing as they say hasn't helped them "live within their means," it's just systematically destroyed their means with which to live.  

If your "means with which to live" involves borrowing tons and tons of debt and expecting other to forgive you when they question whats that funny thing going on in your balance sheet, then your a hopeless country.

Greece needs to get kicked out and forced to live within their means which involves the EU not giving them any money until they learn to do so.

A) They just put forward a proposal that was everything the creditors had been asking for and more, and yet the response is still just "kick you out!  We don't care about the human consequences!"

B) Every piece of evidence we have has proven that the policies desired by Greece's creditors has backfired– well, assuming that economic growth, structural improvement, and a sustainable base from which Greece can actually be physically able to pay back its loans is anything close the goal.  How are they supposed to pay people back if they're being plunged into permanent depression?  This isn't "living within their means" (as if that was a magic mantra with which to justify any deprivation), this is forcing them to sell the seed corn.

Sickening.

[traininthedistance]

2. I support the structural reforms that are being proposed.

so. basically, you support the ability of creditors to force unpopular policy on a population because that population is "insolvent".

Most certainly, I do. Especially in this case.

Of course, Greeks always have the option of doing it alone. Of course, the outcome would be even less popular. But, in every Aristotelian sense, they are given a choice.

Fun fact: one of these conditions is that Greece change its laws so that shops stay open on Sunday.  But, of course, Germany has some of the strictest rules against opening on Sunday on the continent!  Medicine for thee, but not for me.

(And, of course, there is the little question of whether that medicine is effective or toxic. Some things I imagine I would support if implemented in a democratic, non-cocercive manner– but others are almost certain to do more harm than good, and this masquerade has been in practice anything but "democratic and non-coercive".)

[traininthedistance]

2. I support the structural reforms that are being proposed.

so. basically, you support the ability of creditors to force unpopular policy on a population because that population is "insolvent".

Most certainly, I do. Especially in this case.

Of course, Greeks always have the option of doing it alone. Of course, the outcome would be even less popular. But, in every Aristotelian sense, they are given a choice.

Fun fact: one of these conditions is that Greece change its laws so that shops stay open on Sunday.  But, of course, Germany has some of the strictest rules against opening on Sunday on the continent!  Medicine for thee, but not for me.

I would, most definitely, support foreigners forcing the German government to let the stores open on Sunday - and on Christmas Day, for that matter, as well. Unfortunately, there are no creditors who could do this. And it is not worth fighting WWIII over. Though, it is, most definitely, a more deserving cause than whatever started WWI.

The funny thing is that yes, in a vacuum would be one of their more sensible proposals.  Stores should be open on Sunday!  But the fact that it's coming up as a non-negotiable demand is enough of a show of hypocrisy to make one conclude that perhaps it's not just the Greeks who are untrustworthy here.

Yes, it's not worth WWIII over.  It's also not worth plunging the Greeks into semi-permanent depression over.

[traininthedistance]

You know, Athens has parts of the Parthenon and London has the rest. Arguably, there is value involved in having it all together. Given the circumstances, it is pretty clear that it should be Greeks selling the Parthenon to the Brits, and not the other way around. I am pretty sure Greeks could get a decent price for those stones. But, for whatever reasons, they do not offer to sell it - and I find that stupid.

This is the sort of thing that should actually go in your "How do economists think differently" thread.  Like, I know a little bit about the discipline and I genuinely respect many of the insights it has to bring to the table of human experience... but at the end of the day there are some things you cannot put a price on, and shouldn't even try.  I guess that makes me not an economist.

[traininthedistance]

Bergen County, NJ– a large inner-suburban area just across the Hudson from NYC and home to almost a million people– still has on the books one of these "blue laws" that closes most stores on Sundays (restaurants, gas stations, and 7-11-type convenience stores are excepted).  This long past the point which the religious motivation matters.  Repealing them is sometimes floated and always contentious: a lot of people would like to be able to shop on Sundays, and businesses would like to have another day of the week to stay open and make money; but other folks oppose it because they think it preserves the area's suburban character and cuts down on traffic or whatever (the county of course is home to several large shopping malls which always become the focal points of this discussion, both pro and con).

Of course, all the people who live there then just shop in neighboring counties anyway, so I'm skeptical of that last point.  In any case, it doesn't seem to do a whole lot of harm but that's only because they're the only part of the metro that has such a rule: if shops were closed on Sunday everywhere, or worse if the ban extended to those excluded categories... it would not be pretty.

...

In any case, while I do think Sunday closings are actually really dumb that doesn't make the undemocratic method by which the Troika is fighting them any more palatable, nor does it really redeem eating-the-seed-corn measures like selling off $50 billion in assets and the electric grid.  The one thing I do genuinely agree with the Troika about is Greece's lack of up-to-date and usable code of civil procedure.  That's something where their demands are actually kind of reasonable.

[traininthedistance]

Ultimately, Germany owes a lot to the Eurozone. It allows them to have a weak currency and boosts their exports. You'd think they'd be interested in making sure it sticks together...

If Germans wanted a week currency, they would have found a cheaper way of doing this without giving up the Mark. It seems pretty obvious they do not want a week currency.

Of course the Germans don't want a "weak currency", to do so would be to blaspheme against their de facto national religion.

This does not, however, mean that a "weak currency" is a bad thing for the Germans– quite the opposite, in fact.