Greece votes no (referendum).

[WC4Life]

bonzobanana said:

To keep the EU political and currency union going I guess while they were pushing Greece etc to kerb their spending and stop increasing their debt.

I don't see why Germany, France, UK etc should be criticised for this. Greek politicians just kept spending money they never had and now they are basically saying to those who lent them money its their fault. It's all a bit wierd. Greece lived beyond their means basically although I'm not saying the euro didn't have a massive negative effect on Greece. However it was Greece that chose to join the Euro so again their decision. 

I feel sorry for the french and german tax payers who basically will have to pay for Greece defaulting. I'm sure it won't be great for Greece either in the short term but at least they wipe the slate clean.

What is more worrying is how this is handled. It's not in Europe's interest to see Greece do well out of defaulting because then other countries may do the same. It needs to be seen that defaulting was the wrong decision so I wonder how Europe will achieve this. Maybe make exports from Greece difficult, push to make their currency as low value as possible. So that both imports are expensive and exports are more complicated. I can see the standard of living in Greece dropping like a stone.

Yes, to keep political and currency union going which exist only to benefit these big countries and their own interests. If someone keeps lending more and more money even knowing someone won't pay it is straight up their own fault. But in this case, hey let's ask all the "smaller" countries to help Greece so the "big" countries can get at least some of their money back. "Smaller" countries only have only lost in this Greece episode while "big" countries gained. That's what EU is for all of us.

 

Why is it not in Europe's interest to see Greece do well after defaulting? What if defaulting is right choice for other countries too? How come the right decision must be painted as the wrong one? Again, because it does not work towards the interests of these "big" countries. At this point, I think the existence of EU itself is the biggest problem for Europe.