Quote:
Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot  Greece debt crisis has nothing to do with banks. Google "cause of Greek debt crisis" and you will see. Banks are such small players in the overall Greek economy I bet you probably can't even think of the names of more than one or two Greek banks, if any at all. |
Well, actually, I did do that a couple of months ago, and read this, among other sites:
Economy of Greece - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Which explained this--
Quote:
| In early 2010, it was revealed that successive Greek governments had been found to have consistently and deliberately misreported the country's official economic statistics to keep within the monetary union guidelines. This had enabled Greek governments to spend beyond their means, while hiding the actual deficit from the EU overseers. In May 2010, the Greek government deficit was again revised and estimated to be 13.6% which was one of the highest in the world relative to GDP and public debt was forecast, according to some estimates, to hit 120% of GDP during 2010,[60] one of the highest rates in the world. |
--and which tells me that, one way or the other, the problem is still
debt, which no one wants to default on, so they monetize it by borrowing ever more, until the whole thing becomes unsustainable. If there were no central banks willing to continue to print the money to monetize the debt, then it would have gone down long ago, and wouldn't likely be in the bigger mess than they are now, would they?
Quote:
|
Europe is in trouble because for decades, it has been giving its people a level of social welfare and support which Europe's economic growth cannot justify. Unemployment benefits, heavily subsidiaed healthcare and education, lifelong pension schemes etc. The debt has accumulated over decades and the system has reached crumbling point.
|
Yes, I can understand this, and I think we've been doing the exact same thing in the U.S., which is why I'm concerned.
But, thanks for the input, ALG. It's direct answers like the above that I'm actually looking for.
The problem I have with the Central Banks, though, is that they just continue to print the money, as if to tell the rest of the government "go ahead, spend away!!" and I think that such is irresponsible, at best.