Greek Capital Controls

[The Comrade]

well when the drachma finishes bottoming out after all of this i think i'll book myself a flight to greece.

[Kane]

Meh. Let what will be...be.

Lays the groundwork for future crises in the periphery should the EU decide to continue with the imposition of austerity on the debt laden southern states. You've already got critical levels of political fragmentation in Spain right now...and Portugal will be on everybody's radar soon. The big one will be Italy should it eventually come to that.

Europe adopted macroeconomic policy to sate political talking points built upon highly ideological economic grounds rather than empirically tested ones. Without real growth in the southern states you'll have debt loads that will continue to rise as economies contract and/or remain disinflationary. The issue requires an economic union that doesn't have to atone for the political nationalism associated with creditor and debtor states. The second you frame it that way you lend to adversity and eventually...conflict. It assumes a position of power and/or strength which diminishes some state electorate's from their willingness to fund perceived profligacy. It's a strategy rife for cracking any union.

[John Galt]

greece was the tenth member of the EU but everyone tries to keep up the fiction that it is "periphery" since it's the eastern edge near problematic balkans, russia, and across the sea from lybia. in reality it was one of the first EU members. this is dangerous precedent and the start of the unraveling of the european post war dream

the euro was a bad idea and now it, and greece's association with the eu, is bringing about ruin. well, i mean, the greeks being unable to govern is bringing about ruin, but it doesn't matter. its bad bad bad

to be fair to the europeans you can't just let one member flout the rules and expect that others take care of his messes all the time. greece has apparently just thought no matter what europe will back them in the end because well, the alternative is worse. well i guess we'll see, there's a few hours left and perhaps they will work out a deal before greece implodes

[Dylan]

It's peripheral because it's a fairly minor economic player. E.g., DE was the first state but nobody gives a shit about it. That's literally all it has going for it - being the first state. It's on their license plate because they haven't done anything cool since then.

The Euro shall survive.

[The Comrade]

the euro wasn't a bad idea. shrinking the economies intentionally of debt burdened countries was.

[spacemonkey]

I wonder if the Greek thing is just a preview of a possible world wide financial meltdown. The human race already owes itself impressive amounts of money.

[Saz]

[Dylan]

[Saz]

[Dylan]

Yeah I agree to an extent but the logic was that a baby step is better than no step. It's fairly sound logic (windows of opportunity for tectonic shifts in policy are few and far between) and I think it was worth the risk.