Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Greece

Can the Greek government be as incompetent as it seems?  Uh, if you've decided to force your creditors to negotiate with you by defaulting, prepare for the consequences up front. Be clear with people about what it means.  And share the pain equitably.  Learn from the Cuban crisis of the early 1990s, probably the worst collapse in any country since the Great Depression.

I want Greece to win this one--I really do.  Greece is standing in for all of the other people who got screwed in the Great Recession.  Ireland, for instance, stupidly decided to take on the debt of their private banks. Spain, which is selling off its social housing to Goldman and Blackstone. The US tenants who had to deal with Deutsche Bank, the worst of a bad lot. And of course, all of the people who lost their homes and jobs because banks couldn't behave themselves.

And an actual economist sent me to this, in case anyone has forgotten how often Germany has reneged on its debts.

One other note: it occurs to me that the investor purchases of rental housing post-recession isn't that much different from the securitization of mortgages, in that rental housing has become an important source of profit for the financial sector.  Just as housing equity was the only money left in the real economy in the bubble period, now rent payments have taken their place.