Hey, Germany: You Got a Bailout, Too - Bloomberg

anabolic · 2012-05-24T23:49:12.987049+00:00

I don't think Germany would complain as much if Greece would implement the structural labor and business reforms and would get on with the privatisations.

WalkerEU · 2012-05-24T22:07:40.491777+00:00

"You won't get rich working in Europe" "You will not get good work in Europe"

My problem with this is that rich is a matter of perspective. Imagine you're a war torn refugee who is used to living on $1.00 per day. Moving to a rich western country and making minimum wage cleaning toilets might be a 100x increase in living standards. Plus thats another taxpayer to fund your pension.

WalkerEU · 2012-05-24T15:43:36.617995+00:00

I agree it's tough. I try to tell my more nationalistic friends that if you want more social security you should let in more immigrants to pay taxes into it.

WalkerEU · 2012-05-24T15:05:29.179879+00:00

When countries get rich they tend to stop having babies. So if you want a steady stream of taxpayers to fund your pensions in old age you need some way to grow the population.

We've been spoiled here in the U.S. with having a large poor country (Mexico) steadily increasing our population. But as they get richer and we get more xenophobic its going to get harder to persuade them to move here and fund our pensions.

But no one is kicking a bigger can down the road than Japan. They have the highest debt-GDP ratio in the world and they actually pay immigrants from places like the Philippines to go back to their own countries.

I predict that in around 100 years or so the richest countries on earth will actually try to pay poor immigrants to move to their countries because their fertility rates will be so low.

krattr · 4 days

But it seems that going forward Greece and the periphery is going to have to stop buying expensive German goods no matter what. Euro or not those countries just aren't as wealthy as they used to be when cheap credit was flowing around.

greenrd · 4 days

Sounds like your country made a bad investment. Iceland did the right thing by not rewarding it. Bad investments shouldn't be rewarded. Now your country will be much more cautious when lending out money.

krattr · 4 days

I'm an American so I don't really know that much about European culture but I'm beginning to wonder why Germany dosen't just go back to the D-mark.

My understanding was that Germans are extremely reluctant to assume any kind of leadership role in Europe because of the war. The German economy and especially the labor and export markets have proven themselves very adaptable and effective.

So why dosent Germany just abandon the Euro and let the uncompetitive economies sort out their problems themselves?

Dromerin · 4 days

Option-Select has a good glossary on the terminology.

http://www.option-select.com/strategy/article/?a=12

paz1994 · 5 days

If Joker was smart he would've set no character rules at all. We all know that what we really want to see is a Magneto face off. So if Joker said fanatiq could use anyone and fanatiq had tried to use team Knives then the community would be rallied against fanatiq not joker.

JB_UK · 6 days

Wow I suddenly feel a lot worse for the Greeks after reading this article. They will soon leave the Euro and have their living standards cut in half almost over night. Then they have a whole generation of economic stagnation to look forward to ~~if this guy~~ no matter who gets in power.

I always wonder about places like Venezuela, North Korea, Pakistan, etc. where the authorities are able to keep themselves in power by constantly blaming their citizens problems on the nation's enemies. Perhaps having a leader constantly stoking your national pride and validating your political prejudices is enough for some societies.

But I'm glad I'm not living there right now. All the best to the Greek citizens but I'll just say that while capitalism is by no means perfect I would be extremely wary of any leader campaigning on the idea that "our entire economy is in trouble because ordinary citizens have too much liberty in their ability to open shops, make products, and sell them at their discretion. We need to get rid of capitalism."

NonAmerican · 6 days

Human nature is weird isn't it?

NonAmerican · 7 days

Why is it so hard for to ask for structural reforms to the labor markets and removing barriers to entry in business while at the same time providing stimulus broadly to the Greek citizens?

It dosent have to be austerity or no austerity. We can have both.

arcadeninjasan · 7 days

I know it's not MvC related but I thought you guys might enjoy it anyway. If not feel free to downvote all the way to the Negative Zone.

whencanistop · 9 days

Go Estonia. Maybe 50 years from now they'll be the ones writing checks to bail out weaker countries.

whencanistop · 9 days

Terrible as in "whoever made these graphs dosent know what they're talking about" or terrible as in "wow the situation in Euorpe is really, really terrible"?

arcadeninjasan

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