Simple Facts That Add UP TO Inevitable Greek Default

[JimBowie1958]

Guest Post: You Don

Greece effectively has no money, and its only access to capital is continued bailouts. There are four options for the country being discussed:

1) Austerity. Not only is this politically unpopular, it causes social unrest. People won’t stand for it… nor will they be able to pay enough police officers to beat them back with batons. The populist uprising will squash any meaningful austerity plan.

2) “Grow its way out”. Not possible. When you count public and private debt together (roughly 260% of GDP), Greece is spending roughly 15% of its entire GDP just on interest payments. That’s an incredibly high barrier to growth.

3) Inflation. Ordinarily, governments would just print their way out… but this isn’t even possible right now because Greece doesn’t control its own printing press.

4) Default. Result? Set off a chain reaction of banking failures and a derivatives meltdown. Utter financial carnage. Nobody wants to see this.

Germany is particularly focused on #4. Many German banks would suffer or fail as a result of a Greek default, sending a terrible ripple throughout the economy.

It’s understandable that politicians want to avoid this scenario and are willing to pay a high price to do it. Hence the bailouts. But they’re completely ignoring the fact that the other options (growth, inflation, austerity) aren’t even possible.

That is the most concise summation I have seen of this problem yet.

 

[editec]

This wouldn't be SO bad if the Greek people were also doing well.

Sadly for most young Greeks none of the profligate spending never reached their hands.

So now they'll be asked to pay the bill for a party they wren't invited to.

 

[JimBowie1958]

This wouldn't be SO bad if the Greek people were also doing well.

Sadly for most young Greeks none of the profligate spending never reached their hands.

So now they'll be asked to pay the bill for a party they wren't invited to.

Yes, the Brahmin class of proffessional politicians and corporate smoochers made off with the lion's share, including bankers getting their politician buddies to pay off their bad debts via government bailouts and nationalization in various combinations.

The people of Greece got totally robbed and their future indentured servitude is largely undeserved.

 

[editec]

This wouldn't be SO bad if the Greek people were also doing well.

Sadly for most young Greeks none of the profligate spending never reached their hands.

So now they'll be asked to pay the bill for a party they wren't invited to.

Yes, the Brahmin class of proffessional politicians and corporate smoochers made off with the lion's share, including bankers getting their politician buddies to pay off their bad debts via government bailouts and nationalization in various combinations.

The people of Greece got totally robbed and their future indentured servitude is largely undeserved.

There's a LOT of that going around these days.

In Greece the problem is just a lot worse than here or Ireland or Spain or Italy etc etc.

 

[JimBowie1958]

This wouldn't be SO bad if the Greek people were also doing well.

Sadly for most young Greeks none of the profligate spending never reached their hands.

So now they'll be asked to pay the bill for a party they wren't invited to.

Yes, the Brahmin class of proffessional politicians and corporate smoochers made off with the lion's share, including bankers getting their politician buddies to pay off their bad debts via government bailouts and nationalization in various combinations.

The people of Greece got totally robbed and their future indentured servitude is largely undeserved.

There's a LOT of that going around these days.

In Greece the problem is just a lot worse than here or Ireland or Spain or Italy etc etc.

At this point in time.

But given the speed of exponential growth and the fact that people are too comfortable to make the needed changes, it will probably get as bad for us before we do what we need to do.

But it will be too late for so many of us.

 

[sparky]

yuppy>

The world's gross domestic product (GDP) is only about $65 trillion, or roughly 10.83% of the worldwide value of the global derivatives market, according to The Economist. So there is literally not enough money on the planet to backstop the banks trading these things if they run into trouble.


Four US banks hold a staggering 95.9% of U.S. derivatives: The $600 Trillion Time Bomb That's Set to Explode

~S~

 

[editec]

The backstop is the world's government printing presses.

Those presses will start going full time to save the INSIDER BANKS.

We have ALREADY seen this happen in 2008.

That promise the FED and TREASURY has made to shore up those toxic assets has been enough so far.

But when something happens to force those governments to start printing up cash to cover the undercapitalized banks?

Molly bar the door!