During 2000s... which they financed the government with too much debt.
Once again in 2013, they had the largest government in the whole Europe. They are hovering in the top these days.
"These days"
Who cares what they are now?
They already crashed...
Yes, they have crashed because of too much debt financing...
And they will never recover as long as the government takes such a huge chunk of the economy.
"as the government takes such a huge chunk of the economy"
If only it did
August 6, 2015
The most important misconception is that the Greek state is “too big.” This is taken to mean that it either spends too much or that it employs too many, or both. These problems plagued Greece in the 1980s, but they don’t today. Insisting on them now only worsens the situation.
Despite all the recriminations, Greece’s public expenditures were
below the EU average during the 2000s, hovering above average in only a few years.
I just posted the actual chart with the actual numbers.
It's 4th largest government in Europe currently. In 2013 it was the largest.
Is chart too difficult for you to read? That was over a decade ago!
The Greece state is way too big for them to ever recover...
Nobody cares what Greece was in 2013, because they were already crashed at that point.
Your logic is like seeing a man die while drinking water and concluding that water killed the man
No, the man was cancer, and cancer sucked the life out of him bit by bit, year after year
You need something called "historical" data to be able to do analysis of this type of situations
Since too hard for you to click on the link in my post, i will post the chart here;
As seen here, Greece was around the average for the years she was going into a default
So you are repeating a pretty common misconception, but thats fine...
I think all of you that are arguing about what percentage of GDP the government was spending.... are all a little nuts.
Those statistics are nice at some intellectual ivory tower somewhere, to have calculator nerds mull over after drinking too much coffee on a Friday night.
None of it though, actually matters.
Here is what matters....... Do the people who lend money, think you are a worthy borrower?
If they do not..... all your little statistics and numbers, and calculator crunching, doesn't mean diddly jack. All your charts and graphs are absolutely pointless.
Let me give you an example. So you are an executive at a major tire factory, and you want to borrow $100,000 from the bank. You walk in, ask for the loan, and bank president starts looking over your stats.
Hmmm... Stock in the tire company. $300,000 a year income. The bank may give you the loan. But what if the bank looks at your company records and finds, the company itself is deeply in debt, sales have been falling year over year, and there is new people in the market from cheaper competitors.
You may not get the loan. Why? Because all those millions in stock, will be worth zero if the company closes. And your income which is $300,000 today, could be zero after your unemployed.
One stat... Government expenditure as a percent of GDP... is not the only stat in the world that matters. It's not even the most important state.
How much were the Greek government future liabilities? How much were future pension payments expected to be? How is the Greek economy doing? Going strong? Or were there systemic problems?
I'm not going to buy a Greek bond that pays out in 10 years, based on a single statistical number that only reflects on today. Greeks Gov to GDP %, could be only 10% today. Doesn't matter. What's it going to look like in 10 years, when they are supposed to pay me back my money with interest?
And the fact is, all that BS about they were below, above, the same as the OECD doesn't matter. What matters is, the lenders deemed Greece risky. That's all that matters. Greece decided to borrow until people were no longer comfortable with how much they owed. All your "this chart shows".... doesn't matter.
Lenders don't care about your chart. So why you guys are bickering about it, I don't know. Completely irrelevant. They borrowed too much money, and lenders were not comfortable with it. Period.
This is why we in the US need to stop borrowing before that switch flips for us, and we end up in a crisis.
