Rtrorkt

I agree, we had Saddam contained and it cost a fraction of what the War cost. I'm more or less a Republican/moderate but I voted for Clinton twice. I thought he did an OK job, even if it took Newt Gingrich to drag him to the table to balance the budget ONE year.

BTW, the Clinton "surplus" for ONE year would not have paid off the debt. It "might" have paid off one year of interest on the debt.

large portions of the already WAY TO WEAK law have already been rolled back ...

False - with the 2000 recession, the "surplus" was already gone. And the TOTAL spent under Bush on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars was around $1T. The rest was from simple over spending. The over spending accelerated under Obama.

When?

With Dodd-Frank Rollback, The Big Bad Banks Are Back - Forbes

GOP is aiming at the volker rule next.

Meh - they can invest in derivatives. Most derivatives are currency hedges.

Does that Clinton surplus include paying off the SS and Medicare Accounts Payable Trust Fund debt as well? That obligation was accrued by governmental overspending since 1968. That was the way the government hid deficit spending for decades or didn't U know that?

Yep, knew that. You may not adhere to the manner in which the government accounts for the money, but stone cold fact is the republicans single handedly put us in the crapper by foisting a war on us with no purpose other than ego enhancing for the cabal that dreamed it up in the first place. Medicare/Medicaid aside. There is a way to solve that problem which the administration started with the ACA.

Oh and let's not forget the repubs absolute confidence in the market to correct itself. There should be no limits on wonderful folks on Wall Street who all have our best interests at heart.

Hugh, it was signed into law July 2010 along party lines.

I could type forever, but just google "Republicans Dodd Frank" kind of says it all. You can sum up Dodd Frank in one letter: K, easily found on Google Maps.

https://www.google.com/#newwindow=1&safe=off&q=republicans+dodd+frank

Dodd-Frank is a joke and at least one of the sponsors (the one from Massachusetts) should be in federal prison for his complicency in what went on just prior to, during and after the 2008 crash.

We had an opportunity to enact real reform and the best our "leaders" could puke out was that? We ought to be ashamed and outraged. We should have gotten so much more in terms of putting us on secure, stable fiscal footing but we got diddly squat and more of the same - in fact we seem to have doubled down on some of it.

The biggest banks, and the largest corporations, are run by Democrats. To suggest otherwise is disingenuous.

OK, back to Greece.

Looks like the Greeks have been doing a remarkable job at extracting Euro's from their banking system, about 100 billion euro's (or around 11,000 euros per person) since 2010.

Now, this will not be evenly distributed and of course a chunk of it will have been consumed on goods and services, but there is a decent chance that there is much of this floating around in the form of cash or deposited in non-Greek financial institutions.

So, this is about 1/3 of their debt (not that has anything to do with the price of tea in China), but it could be the recipe for refloating the drachma if that was repatriated.

Needless to say, it will be the bottom 3 quartiles who pay the price, they will have most of the cash and the greatest options for taking wealth out where they need to and I am wondering why they need to?

Dennis

What the fk rock did you crawl out from under? This post is just vile putrid Liberal HATRED of anything that stinks of being Republican. THIS QUALIFIES FOR BEING A HATE CRIME,

Grexit? Did the EU leadership finally grow a pair (between them all).

Greece debt crisis: Eurozone 'gives Sunday debt deadline' - BBC News

Dennis

Like it was yesterday

2010
Goldman Sachs Shorted Greek Debt After It Arranged Those Shady Swaps - Business Insider


http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/02/25/banks-bet-greece-defaults-on-debt-they-helped-hide/


Greek Debt Crisis: How Goldman Sachs Helped Greece to Mask its True Debt - SPIEGEL ONLINE


2012
Goldman Secret Greece Loan Shows Two Sinners as Client Unravels - Bloomberg Business


2015
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-06/who-biggest-winner-greek-tragedy

Post 2016 and it'll double. If anything, save the brass and DIY reload. :rolleyes:

The EU is unraveling, it was never a question of "if?" but when? and how?
Greek goes on de facto parallel currency using IOU's and now we have the "when" and some of the "how".

Greece is (likely) leaving the euro currency, not the European Union. How Greece fares will influence other countries' behavior. If Greeks' default and exit from the euro is painless, that will encourage similarly-minded parties in other heavily indebted euro countries. If the Greeks suffer deeply, that will discourage them. Greece will be used to send a message to the Spanish, etc.

EU and the Euro will not disappear soon. There are too many advantages, traveling without borders and the same currency everywhere is only the start.


But: it blows my mind that the EU is now talking to Albania about joining the EU. REALLY? What do they have of interest for the EU? Sorry, but adding every country to the EU is wrong. Some countries just dont qualify. And some are easy to spot.

The EU is a great idea executed poorly. It was compromised into a unsustainable business model.
The different tax rates and different payouts but having the same value currency?
Loans to countries that have no way ever to pay them back?
Like so many things, It could have been so good and could have worked, but It will not in the present form.
In best case scenario, It will be a shadow of what it is today, In worse case we will be back to Pre-EU with even more trade tariffs and government protected trade to prop up weak economies.

This thread makes me think I should be getting in touch with the good folks at Dillon

I wonder how much profit the top three banking institutions have taken in the last 10 years or so...

Looks like we are in end stage, let the real stupidity begin.

My impression is that the EU is determined to ignore the fundamental issues such as:

1. Greece is bankrupt, no amount of additional loans will fix the situation. First rule of holes...stop digging.

2. The Greeks are right, they need a portion of their debt to disappear, via whatever means you can imagine as they are insolvent and further austerity measures are just flogging the dead horse one more time.

3. The Euro without common political will is a fiction, and the unity of the disparate cultures into a single political union has all the chances of a drunk virgin in a brothel, it may be fun, but no chance of preserving the purity.

4. Open discussion is forbidden as there are too many agendas and too little will to take on the real elephant in the room....the EU as it stands is unstable, unworkable and is successful only in comparison to the states in conflict that have given us the last two world wars.

5. Sovereign debt continues to be an issue....the lending countries for the most part cannot afford to lose their stakes, neither can they politically sell their own increase in debt/exposure when their own balance sheets are overstretched.

....I doubt there is a ball between them....anywhere.....

Dennis

Greece should never had been admitted to the EU. They cooked the books to present favorable balance sheet to Brussels and the voting bloc of the EU. Sure some accounting/finance firms helped them do it, AIG for example. But the Politicians in Greece KNEW the books were cooked. And the voting EU members may have gotten snookered, but that is their fault as well. They should have not so blindly voted them into the EU.

Loans have risks, and the EU is going to have to take a haircut on them. I wouldn't keep loaning money to someone who kept wanting to borrow more, with no concrete plans on repayment of what they had already been loaned.

What is Greece's main source of foreign currency, tourism and a little agriculture. Greece will soon be a very cheap place for a vacation.

Goldman Sachs and others stood to make too much money for Greece not to be admitted. It was a forgone conclusion. Who do you think cooked the books Hugh?

Goldman Sachs cooked the books, but the EU understood the books were cooked. They WANTED everyone in.

There are allot of problems with Greece long before the Germans, WWI and WWII. There are cultural issue..............

My grandparents came to USA in the early 1900's. Both of my grandmothers, who are from the same village, came to the USA for several reasons:

The couldn't go to school past the 6th grade. The verb is couldn't!
There was no opportunity
Women were 2nd class - there was a dowry system.

None of the women went back to the old country whereas 50% of the men did. They couldn't make it here. Both sets of my grandparents never, and I mean never, wanted to go back. There was nothing there. My father, who was born here, told me stories of how there was so much corruption, inflated money and general backwardness (tractors rusting) and animals were still used for agriculture.

Don't confuse the Greece's golden age with the current state.

There is enough blame to spread. I just read this on Huffington Post. I have attached it. I'm no Tina Fey fan but she nailed this as it reflects my opinion and those who parents and grandparents immigrated to the USA in the great wave in the 1900's and again in the 70's.

Greek-Americans Share Concern For Greece, But Disagree On Solutions

I went from primarily Lee equipment to Dillon. I feel like I spent more time with the Lee stuff fixing it, and I spend more time with the Dillon stuff just using it.

And the Greeks wanted in, it was a win. win, win for everybody until the bills came due.

They (EU/Greece/banks) might be able to kick the can a little farther down the road once again, but will of course have an even bigger debt/problem with a worse economy when the money runs out again in a few years.
Unfortunately Greece is the first of the Nations that will face this reality. The other Nations are watching how this plays out so they know what to do for their turn.

Just like drug addicts, rock bottom has to be met before a fix can really be implemented. Hopefully that will not be violent. just really uncomfortable.
"Free" money is the drug of economies, it will poison them till they shake the habit and stand on their own.

OK, I will declare my colours.

I hope the Greeks say 'eff off to the EU, the proposals now on the table according the media (not a reliable source admittedly), essentially demand giving up sovereignty over their lawmaking and finances to outside parties.

Never, never, never would I as a citizen ever countenance that degree of oversight and interference in my sovereignty....I would rather fight to the death than allow this.

Heaven knows they caused their own problems, the deceitful being drawn in by the incapable, but at this point, the horse has fled the barn and it is time to move on.

...and yes, my sympathy for the lenders is the square root of dick-all.

Dennis

One problem the Greeks have never had... They've always been on the right side of history.

How many nations in Europe can claim that?

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ai43B588_co" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

AIG, Goldman Sachs, et. al. cooked the books, the Greeks knew it, and I suspect that those in Brussels knew it, or at least should have looked closer, and known better.

Agreed, definitely there was significant motivation to have Greece join the EU at any cost. Reasoning was everything including geopolitically disadvantaging Russia, increasing the Brusselcrat's power, getting a new vassal state for Germany and France et al, lots of money going into Greek hands via the entry loans....endless reasoning.

Now, of course, the roosters are coming home to roost and there ain't no one here but us chickens.

Tspiras has committed the cardinal sin of NOT KNOWING HIS PLACE, alles in ordnung you know and now they are getting punitive.

So many sins of the past, so many misguided socialists spending other people's money, so little leadership and realpolitik that it would be humorous if it was not so terrible.

One report is that the French are ready to make a side funding deal bilaterally which really would put the German fox amongst those French chickens. Talk about EU unity!

If the Frogs and the Krauts split on this issue, it could get very ugly, very quickly.

And yes, I use the epithets with meaning, forcefulness and deliberately.

'effin political leaders, where are good solid brick walls and good firing squads when you really need them.

Dennis

So you are saying a complete lack of ethics in banking at the global level is OK?

Let's all celebrate Arthur Andersen for paving the way of a new generation of "should haves" instead of just relying on honesty and integrity in banking and consulting. The lesson of Arthur Andersen wasn't to not commit fraud, it was do commit it better, in ways so complex no one would understand or know how they did it, and therefor not get caught.

Lack of ethics in most senior people is a given as their world is filled full of greys, no black and white.

And, even given that the entry was unethical....what do you do now?

We The People get to pay for all this stuff....seriously, most European nations are into Greece for about 3% of their national GDP.

Bend me over and bring me joy,
Show me that I'm just your toy,
Give more, oh give me more
Keep goin' 'til my ass is sore
That's true love.


Dennis

I stated what I believe to be a FACT. Where on Earth did I say, or allude to a complete lack of ethics in banking being OK? I'm disappointed in your reading skills Shaun.

Greece LIED to the EU to get in, apparently so did Goldman Sachs, AIG, whomever. Brussels and the EU looked the other way because they were so eager for Greece to join the EU. Like many other geo-political debacles they are all acting like Sargent Schultz "I know nothing, I see nothing". Yet everyone of them is culpable.

Hugh, it's easy for anyone to lie when an independent company helps to create the lie and then confirms the lie to interested parties.

Greece can't lie without Goldman Sachs confirming the lie.

That's the point.

Everything else is pure speculation.

Easy, let them go down. Throwing good money after bad isn't much of a business strategy.