Greece General Discussion

[ingemann]

I mean, we should not be making fun of the Greeks. The old parties screwed up badly - the voters had every right to run them out of town. Pity, they chose the Kool Aid crowd instead - but they took a long time to be pushed that way.

I agree, it's really hard condemn the Greeks for running Pasok and ND out of town. But beside that I think we should give the Greeks a chance before we see whether Syriza was the Kool Aid. Some of the structural changes to the ministeries look promising, and that's something which have been noted outside Greece.

One of the main reasons, for how hard the rest of EU have dealt with Greece, is the fact that the past Greek governments after the crisis have been unwilling to make any structural reforms. Which meant that the only medicine you could force on Greece was austerity. If this new government start structural re-organisation, which lower the Greek corruption, it's not impossible that Syriza may get some extra good will compared to the old government which no one trusted.

[ingemann]

So Greece swept in an inexperienced party with unseemly cultural-liberal tendencies, which then formed government with a party with very unseemly cultural-ultraconservative tendencies, for, essentially, nothing? Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.

First, no one had expected the Greek could have gotten more, at least no one knowing anything about the issue.

Second, the new Greek government seem to have made some institutional reforms which may have much more positive long term consequences than any deal with EU if they work (like strengthen the collective power of the government versus the individual ministers). Also if they begin to collect the taxes the Greeks owes, that will also have much greater effect. If Greece can get a real revenue surplus, and it's very possible as the payment of most of the debt including the interest have been pushed into the 2020ties, they will be in a much better position, at the next negotiations.