Greece's new finance minister used to be Valve's games economist

[atl]

I totally hope the New Drachma is backed by huge warehouses of the Ring of Jordan.

[Michael_R_Smith]

Or Eve’s.

[Basscadet]

ooooooh the austerity plan that was full of measures against corruption and reckless spending, however almost none of them was enforced and instead all salaried and pensioners were taxed to the bone. And these measures were not enforced by EU and lenders because Greece is a sovereign country and they didn’t want to act like they were imposing. And here’s where we are now. At least Mr Varoufakis can act on what he was proposing all those years and we’ll see how it works (or doesn’t).

[Basscadet]

I remember in the 80s you d buy a car and keep it for decades while after the late 90s one would change a car every 3-4 years. And everyone was borrowing money to buy newly built houses (hello real estate bubble) on top. Now, everyone is amazed at how all this debt has piled up and all is slowed down

[GilbertWham]

Eve players are far more likely to be IMF fans

[anon50609448]

@Basscadet

ooooooh the austerity plan that was full of measures against corruption and reckless spending, however almost none of them was enforced and instead all salaried and pensioners were taxed to the bone. And these measures were not enforced by EU and lenders because Greece is a sovereign country and they didn’t want to act like they were imposing.

Well, they didn’t want to act like they were imposing when it came to anti-corruption measures, but they sure wanted to act like they were imposing when it came to everything else. Basically, rich and powerful people get a free pass, everyone else pays through the nose. And thus it ever was.

“Reckless” spending is a matter of taste. I would say that these days we are doing a lot more reckless choosing-not-to-spend in the name of cutting budgets.

I realize that a substantial part of Greece’s problems were that there was a huge black market and people avoided taxes to a huge extent. That is an internal problem for Greece. However, this wasn’t a big secret, and if foreign bankers were lending them money, they should have set the interest rates high enough on their various loan to cover the possibility of default - that’s how lending people money works. If they didn’t do that then they are just lousy bankers, and, as I said, I’m not going to shed tears for them.

[hhype]

…but they still had to pay for that $3500 shirt!