- Mar 7, 2014
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What did Greece show? It showed no more than what Puerto Rico is showing today in the U.S. Greece is a tiny percentage of the EU economy.
See this ... then tell me how a long-term propping-up of an economy even as small as Greece's (.. never mind larger economies, such as Portugal's !) can be tolerated anything like indefinitely within the EU .. and, for that matter, why Member States should feel obliged to be a part of this crippling status quo ....
IMF tells EU it must give Greece unconditional debt relief
The International Monetary Fund has called for “upfront” and “unconditional” debt relief for Greece as it warned that without immediate action the financial plight of the recession-ravaged country would deteriorate dramatically over the coming decades.
In a strongly worded assessment, the IMF said that there was no prospect of Greece meeting the draconian terms of its current bailout plan and that interest payments on the soaring national debt would eat up 60% of the budget by 2060 in the absence of debt forgiveness.
The debt sustainability analysis by the Washington-based Fund said Greece should have longer to pay, have the interest rate on its loans fixed at 1.5%, and that its creditors should make debt relief automatic once the bailout programme ends in 2018.
The Fund admitted its proposals for easing Greece’s debt burden would not be easy for some countries to accept, because it would involve member states making a commitment to compensate the European Stability Mechanism – Europe’s bailout fund – for any losses occurred from fixing interest rates at 1.5%.
Greece should never have been allowed into the Euro. Portugal and Spain are different, I've seen first hand the changes in Spain, the benefits these countries are getting and the development. They're still weak because they lacked the infrastructure, they have major migration issues to the three big regions, Catalonia, Madrid and the Basque Country, and unemployment is a big problem. However things are changing, slowly, but surely.