Greece will default

Glaucus said:
6 months ago I helped a family from Iceland move to Winnipeg because Iceland was a wasteland as far as they were concerned.
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You haven't said anything here that I can disagree with. The fact of the matter is that Iceland IS a literal wasteland. On the other hand - at least it's not Greenland.

Iceland is just not naturally productive. Unless cutting cod-cheeks into a barrel is your idea of gainful employment (and I'm not sure that cod is still even viable there) then it's pretty tough to find something to do. This isn't because of the crisis but rather because Iceland has always been like that. Setting up financial casinos to scam money out of the rest of the world was great while it lasted but it didn't really do anything to help the real economy and in fact it distracted from the real economy.

However, because Iceland let the banks fail it looks like growth is set to be 3% in the next year. I admit that 3% of dick is probably less than squat but it's better than nothing while carrying the UK banks on you back.

You'll never get around the fact that Greece and Iceland are inherently unproductive and have no no-renewable resources to sell (the way places like Saudi Arabia and Canada do) - but once all the non-renewables are sold then every country is Iceland. Once we are all Iceland we find out that our lifestyle is an historical anomaly and surviving on what you can actually make yourself is tougher than you think.
 
redrumloa said:
How fast do you think Obama will have the FEMA concentration camps will be up and running?
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I'll doubt they will have the money to do it other then to feed the Federal employees and their families when the fecal matter hits the rotating air foil. Hyperinflation is going to cook us till we are begging for a new currency. If your IRA isn't in gold, your going to be left with nothing with hyperinflation. When crude oil reaches $150-$200 (hello inflation), watch the Euro collapse which will be quickly followed by the dollar going into free fall. http://www.bloomberg.com/energy/ and http://www.imf.org/external/np/pp/eng/2011/010711.pdf make for some interesting "where are we now" reading.

Oh, for those who love good old leftist Jane Fonda, from her 1981 flick Rollover, even promotes FDR who made the Great Depression longer then it needed.

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FluffyMcDeath said:
Greece defaults ... selectively.
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Greece never borrowed at 40%, the highest it's rates ever went were 13.5% before the EU stepped in with aid packages, and Greece as far as I know never borrowed at that rate either.

At any rate, this is probably a good thing for Greece. They now have a reasonable chance at paying back their debt while also having gone through some tough and much needed reforms they were unlikely to go through before. I'm hoping that 20 years from now Greece will have emerged as a much leaner and more competitive nation with less corruption - and not just at the government level, but throughout society. However, the only way they will ever get there is if they never forget how close they are to the abyss right now.
 
cybereye said:
I think the US defaults gloom and doom is way over blown.
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Maybe, but one has to asked then, if it's not going to be a gloom and doom, why are people so worried about small PIIGS countries defaulting? I mean they are going to hell and back for Greece not to default.

Now, the real fun part is the AAA bond rating that is going to go away even if we don't default in about 90 days according to S&P. Obama is paying an artificially low interest rate on the US national debt of 1.5% when we historically pay 5%-6% for the past couple of decades. Each 1% increase presents $100B in cost of serving the current debt or about $1T over a decade. That $28B monthly cost of the US budget will go to $96B or $1,152B annually just to service the debt.

Now imagine oil at $150-$200 @ barrel plus hyper inflation pushing up beyond that level. No one is going to lend the US any more money, China already said no thanks last year. Even if Congress lets Obama to borrow more money, no one is going to buy it, so where will Obama turn to to sell the worthless debt to? There is an answer! It's called, "Regressive Economics" by forcing US banks and US funds to buy US worthless debt and Feds will buy defaulted on debt. Can you imagine anything more clear of us going over a financial cliff then that happening?

That is why the US has to bring it's budget under control immediately. Not tomorrow, not in ten years, today.
 
Dammy said:
Maybe, but one has to asked then, if it's not going to be a gloom and doom, why are people so worried about small PIIGS countries defaulting? I mean they are going to hell and back for Greece not to default.
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To frighten people into accepting really bad deals. To justify more actions that will move wealth up. This is a strategy that has been used since Roman times.
 
FluffyMcDeath said:
To frighten people into accepting really bad deals. To justify more actions that will move wealth up. This is a strategy that has been used since Roman times.
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I agree actually. I can see the end times for US as a key move for the global elites to seize what little wealth the middle class has left. That is what I fear the most, this is all planned and the outcome is guaranteed regardless if Washington returns to the US Constitution or not. But it's not all about money, it's about control. That is why the US dollar has to die and replaced with a one world currency, that will kill the US economy, and place the masses under unbearable taxation and interest rates for centuries to come. Thanks to those tax an spend bastards in DC, they sold us out with our own money.
 
Dammy said:
Maybe, but one has to asked then, if it's not going to be a gloom and doom, why are people so worried about small PIIGS countries defaulting? I mean they are going to hell and back for Greece not to default.
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I don't know why they are worry about it unless these are the people are living there or people who have invest their money there.
Now, the real fun part is the AAA bond rating that is going to go away even if we don't default in about 90 days according to S&P. Obama is paying an artificially low i
nterest rate on the US national debt of 1.5% when we historically pay 5%-6% for the past couple of decades. Each 1% increase presents $100B in cost of serving the current debt or about $1T over a decade. That $28B monthly cost of the US budget will go to $96B or $1,152B annually just to service the debt.
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The bond rating has nothing to do with the value of interest rates on the US national debt. The bond credit rating is just one point of view of how much is trust worthy, just like Experian, Equifax and TransUnion about credit card score. While the interest rate is low is a better time to trims the spending from the government before it default or raise the interest rates on the debt. I am sure the US Treasury will do anything to prevent from default. Even if the AAA bond rating drop does not mean it had default.

Now imagine oil at $150-$200 @ barrel plus hyper inflation pushing up beyond that level. No one is going to lend the US any more money, China already said no thanks last year. Even if Congress lets Obama to borrow more money, no one is going to buy it, so where will Obama turn to to sell the worthless debt to? There is an answer! It's called, "Regressive Economics" by forcing US banks and US funds to buy US worthless debt and Feds will buy defaulted on debt. Can you imagine anything more clear of us going over a financial cliff then that happening?
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If the hyper inflation hit, the FED won't buy the US Treasury. The Fed bought $1.75 trillion in Treasury bonds. The FED will sell the Treasury bonds to buy back the Dollars. Maybe the Treasury will raise the rate on bonds to get people to buy from the FED for Treasury bonds. If the FED did raise the interest rates then the Treasury bonds will be worst less and there will be less borrowed from the FED as well.

That is why the US has to bring it's budget under control immediately. Not tomorrow, not in ten years, today.
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I agree with you, but not reason for the FED, nor hyper inflation. The US Treasury will have to find a way to pay back to the people who bought the Treasury bonds on time to prevent from default.
 
I know most people's interest in Greece these days stems from their own personal well being, but the fact is that Greece has many other dangers to worry about these days: Cool-headedness and caution

This too is kinda interesting: High seas becoming dangerous waters

Greece needs to stay in the EU/Euro for a number of reasons and they'll do what ever they can do keep it going. If Greece fully defaults Greece will suddenly become very vulnerable.
 
[quote="Robert, post: 19718"It's also my understanding that Greece has a system that allows the rich to avoid paying a lot of their tax but not the poor. This is anytrhing but 'socialist'.[/quote]

With the exception of the likes of Buffet and other leftist billionaires, that is directly opposite of the US where the bottom 49% pay zero income taxes.

Back to Greece. If they can suspend payments of their loans for a coupe of years, they will have plenty of money to balance their budget, or are they living far exceeding their means like the US does?
 
As it stands they are living way above their means, and whilst on paper you may be right in regard to your figure of 49% tax rate, the reality on the ground is nothing like that ever gets paid - tax dodging is something of a national pastime as I understand it. And that applies at all levels, not just the super rich.

Unless they have a serious rethink about their tax system as well as a the population re-evaluate their own, no matter how much they cut it'll never be enough. A 2 year suspension might well, if the previous two factors come to pass give them the breathing room to sort themselves out. But without both happening, it'll only further delay the inevitable.
 
Are you seriously shocked Dammy? It wasn't four years ago when there was an active drive for the formal creation of a European superstate, complete with it's own national anthem.
 
To a certain extent that's what they've signed up for anyway, regardless of the EU - all your base are belong to IMF.
 
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