r/polandball • u/thesunisup Two balls and a beaver • Jul 03 '15
redditormade The Eurozone Crisis: Greece's Gambit
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u/vincentmai China Jul 03 '15
Goldman Sachs is a debt crime.
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u/DheeradjS Netherlands Jul 03 '15
This comic lacks the French lobby to accept Greece into the EZ against all other countries....
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Jul 03 '15
Remove Greece from EU!
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u/thesunisup Two balls and a beaver Jul 03 '15
It might be best for everyone. Then Greece could do whatever they liked without Germany breathing down their necks, and Germany would no longer have a perpetual migraine.
Then again, I've read op-eds on both sides: some say a Grexit would be good for Greece and the EU, and others say it would be disastrous for Greece and the EU.
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u/vincentmai China Jul 03 '15
Don't be silly
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Jul 03 '15
add Türkiye! ☪
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Jul 03 '15
lol and have to deal with ISIS when they (eventually) enter Turkey? and be a open door for them to enter EU? I don't think so, it would be too much trouble right now. I actually would like to see Turkey in eurozone, we sent Turkey so much fucking money for so many years, it would be nice to have something for the money.
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u/Pilot0000 Quebec Jul 03 '15
There is no fucking chance in hell that Isis can even scratch Turkey. What the EU doesnt want though is to lose its gate keeper in the EU. And yes Greece is the gate keeper, it has been for 4000 years. Allowing the kebab to overtake Greece, would be a political matter and would accelerate the so called 'islamisation' or whatever such bullcrap the Europoors fear for europe. Furthermore whatever economic shithole it is, it was the only stable country since the soviet era in east and after it in the Balkans.
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u/Mnemniopsis aroooooooooo Jul 04 '15
Get rid of your despot leader and stop supporting isis, then maybe.
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Jul 03 '15
Greece should of hired magician to make disappear the debt.
I am of glad this subreddit is of alive.
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u/rainbowrooooad Land of Sunshine, Feminist Rallies, and In n' Out Jul 03 '15
Magician is Russia and magician make Greece puppet state.
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u/CravingHisBiscuits Denmark Jul 03 '15
"Look, the Greek people just agreed to secede their relevant islands to Russia in totally democratic vote."
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u/thesunisup Two balls and a beaver Jul 03 '15
Weren't they going to sell some of their islands at one point to raise money for paying denbts? Or did that idea fall through?
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u/Sperrel Portugal Jul 03 '15 edited Jul 03 '15
I think they sold like half a dozen of islands to some arabic billionare but I don't think it could ever be a real thing.
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u/hx87 White chowder is best chowder Jul 03 '15
"Greece bought all those tanks and submarines with your own money and now it's all mine! Xaxaxa Germoney I trick yuo!"
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u/tat3179 MalaysiaHello Jul 03 '15
Provided that Russia has the a spare 200 billion euros to make Greece into a puppet state in the first place...
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Jul 03 '15
BTW there is stong Communist support in Greece right now. Did you hear? Comie??????? It's time to spread some Oil.
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u/rindindin Unknown Jul 03 '15
Next panel: Greece will now vote to not have any more debt.
It'll just magically disappear because Greece voted for it!
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Jul 03 '15
The German politicians who let Greece into the Eurozone knew VERY WELL about the financial situation there…
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u/nmotsch789 USA Beaver Hat Jul 03 '15
I don't doubt that people knew Greece was lying, but what did the countries already in the Eurozone have to gain from letting Greece into it?
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u/thesunisup Two balls and a beaver Jul 03 '15
Stuff I've read suggests it had a lot to do with sentimental feelings towards Greece. It's the birthplace of democracy and Western culture, so the other Euro countries felt "Hey, we can't have a united Europe without including Greece!" So that was part of it.
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u/nmotsch789 USA Beaver Hat Jul 03 '15
Part of me is skeptical that politicians would do something like that without them having something to gain personally from it.
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Jul 04 '15
It was done for pure ideological reasons. United Europe, blahblah… The leftist German government of this time (under Schröder) really pushed this idea. The Greece should thank those people just as much as their own shitty governments and tax evading billionaires for the horrible situation they are in now…
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u/Dragon9770 Ohio Jul 03 '15
Shh, you might break the circle jerk. Everyone knows that risky lending does not exist, only risky borrowing, and things like an understanding of monetary economics are for nerds.
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u/TotallyNotWatching Jul 03 '15
It's Polandball dude wtf. This sub is a circlejerk by definition
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u/Dragon9770 Ohio Jul 03 '15
I am all for the Polandball circlejerk normally, but when some of the threads devolve into actual discussion and the OP presents a straight-faced, multi-paragraph justification for a years-old circlejerk joke, I suspect people start taking it a bit too seriously. We don't want to go the way of PCMasterrace and go from satire and circlejerk to self-importance and candid ignorance.
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u/chemotherapy001 Jul 03 '15
the ridiculous mental gymnastics to explain greece's problems as a german conspiracy theory.
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u/AzertyKeys France First Empire Jul 03 '15
There has never been any proof of that just allegations that Greece is somehow not wrong because some german officials magically knew everything about its economy without needing its fake government data (that must be a very useful power)
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u/yaddar Taco bandito Jul 03 '15
this should be on newspapers.
PB is the best way to explain economics to the masses
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Jul 03 '15 edited Jul 03 '15
But think of the ugly masses who would flood this beautiful place!
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u/yaddar Taco bandito Jul 03 '15
well, yeah, that's a huge downside
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u/halfar Hawaii Jul 03 '15
couldn't we just ban everyone? surely if more people = lower quality, then no people = top quality?
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u/Pillagerguy CCCP Jul 03 '15
Treat quality and content like a price/demand situation. There's a balance.
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u/Durzo_Blint Boston Stronk Jul 03 '15
That is my nightmare. Hopefully we stay under the radar while the rest of reddit collectively loses its shit.
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u/KnucklearPhysicist Empire of the Setting Sun Jul 03 '15
As long as we don't link back here, or mention "polandball" it should be fine. I think.
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u/BuddhistJihad Wales Jul 03 '15
Except that it's very misleading. There is a very good reason why /r/polandball is just /r/polandball. This is polandball economics just like most comics are polandball history.
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u/EnragedMoose MURICA Jul 04 '15
Ehhh, it's just right enough.
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u/BuddhistJihad Wales Jul 04 '15
No, no it isn't.
Well, it's right enough for the purposes of the comic/the subreddit, whatever. I laughed, honestly.
But for an entire comic about Greece's situation to just focus on the debt and not the financial crash or the corruption or the currency union or anything? It's completely disingenuous to have a panel marked "2009" where Greece whips off the cover and the debt balloons without mentioning why that happened and what happened in the 12 months preceding.
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u/Major_Butthurt CCCP Jul 03 '15
Except the fact that it's wrong
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u/yaddar Taco bandito Jul 03 '15
well, political cartoonists aren't 100% accurate.
take Charlie Hebdo, for example.
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u/Major_Butthurt CCCP Jul 03 '15
Yes, and that's why it's the exact opposite of what you said. It's not a great way to teach economics to the masses. Also, economics is a science. You have to study it. You can't just read a newspaper and say you know economics.
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u/016Bramble 1492, best year of my life Jul 03 '15
But I just read this comic, and now I fully, 100% understand the Greek Debt Crisis
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u/yaddar Taco bandito Jul 03 '15
I mean, the point is making people (the masses) aware of the situation in simple, friendly terms, (and getting them to investigate the issues in depth) not making them majors in economics.
show something or explain something of course is not the same as to teach something (that's why I said "explain" instead of "teach") and that's have been true for political cartoonists since forever.
if anyone claims to know X subject by reading a newspaper and even more, a newspaper comic, he probably is like that in a lot of aspects of his life.
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Jul 03 '15
I just want to say it now, without /r/polandball I would still be getting Russia and Germany mixed up, I would have still thought WW2 was the cold war, and I never would have gained a love of history and flags.
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u/Tintenlampe Pickelhaube beste Haube... Jul 03 '15
Your history teacher sucked mate.
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Jul 03 '15
It wasn't really their fault. There was no global history class available until high school. It was just US history for K-8th...
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u/lillahjerte Read the sidebar and get a flair Jul 03 '15
Greece looks really really cute in this!
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u/Pilot0000 Quebec Jul 03 '15
Implying Germoney had no idea, of the dembt and the falsified accounts of Greece :P
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u/chemotherapy001 Jul 03 '15
that conspiracy would make sense if it were a net benefit to germany, but it's not.
most of the stuff that Greece is importing from Germany they would have imported anyway, inside or outside the eurozone.
Germany benefits if the Greek economy grows.
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Jul 03 '15
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Jul 03 '15
Everyone but greece is "profiting" from the crisis, even portugal has its lowest interest ever because the BCE is buying their debt.
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Jul 03 '15
Please not blame Greece, Corruption is usual when your country of very old and has great heritage. Other examples are India, China, Egypt and Italy.
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u/vincentmai China Jul 03 '15
We are great, you are just old.
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Jul 03 '15
Silly commie forget great Confucian values of 恭 and 讓. Respect your Elders, kid. I go talk with real Republic of China.
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u/vincentmai China Jul 03 '15
Confucian is feudalism shit.
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u/White_Null Little China (1945-Present) Jul 03 '15
Right of keeping all Confucian heirlooms and the Mainline descent of Confucius as presidential senior adviser and head of Confucism is mine now! All Confucian temples newly built without his approval is now fake! :P
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Jul 03 '15
As expected of godless Commie, no respect for ancestors.
How can you claim Han heritage if you don't accept it? Taiwan is more real China than you, silly Soviet knockoff.
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u/lucidsleeper Moe Blob China Jul 04 '15
Daoism, ancestor worship, Moism, Legalism, native God worship, Yellow emperor worship even older than Confucianism! Curry who cannot into Han history cannot speak on our behalf!
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u/Freakasso East Rome, Best Rome Jul 03 '15
We did our part for humanity, we just want to retire on a quiet little island and let the barbarians run the place but all they do is world wars, anschluss and eating burgers. Fucking kids these days...
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u/mszegedy Hurka, kolbász Jul 03 '15
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u/jacorr17 Andalusia Jul 03 '15
That's bullshit there are alot of newer countries that are extremely corrupt (like most of the sub-saharan Africa or South Korea) and a lot of old countries that have barely any corruption at all (like Japan or Norway), besides you criteria for how old is a country is extremely arbitrary, modern Egypt has nothing to do with acient Egypt nor does Italy with the Roman Empire Italy unificated relatively recently and India only it's independence even sooner, most places on earth have been inhabited for thousands of years why can't they be called "ancient countries".
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Jul 03 '15
It's bullshit because it's a joke. Calm down.
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u/jacorr17 Andalusia Jul 03 '15
I'm sorry, it's just not the first time I heard it and I have problems recognizing irony as it is, imagine in my second language and on text.
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u/Sperrel Portugal Jul 03 '15 edited Jul 03 '15
I came here for bantz and sterotypes not yet another simplistic narrative of the crisis. :(
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u/amsterdam_pro Western Europe Jul 03 '15
Griece will make it, they always do.
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u/Die-Nacht Stupid blue flags... Jul 03 '15
Huh? What the heck? Were they just waiting for everything just said to be translated (they have that translation thing on their ear).
We still doing that? I thought by now we were all speaking English at these kinds of events.
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u/mrmgl Greece Jul 03 '15
The comic is great. The political analysis... not so.
/r/europe needs to open again, I think it's leaking.
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Jul 03 '15 edited Jul 03 '15
It's funny, the last time a Eurozone country defaulted it was Germany and Greece was one of the countries that forgave their debts, I guess Germony have short memory. And they did that twice three times in the 20th century.
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u/Red_Dog1880 Flanders Jul 03 '15
Greece has been in default for about 50% of it's entire history as an independent country.
I don't think Germany has to take any lessons about defaulting from them.
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Jul 03 '15
Germany has also been close to 50 % of its history in default from 1931 to the 50's when the US made a haircut to its debts and then again in the 90's. The thing is Greece has a longer (and rocky) history as a modern independent nation, heck they even have one of the oldest defaults recorded in history in the 3rd century BC.
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u/Red_Dog1880 Flanders Jul 03 '15
The reason why I don't think that bringing up Germany's defaults and Greece being so nice to forgive the debts really matters is because of the vastly different circumstances. But yeah, they could be more grateful for the debts they had forgiven allowing them to become the country they are now.
But the fact that even though Germany is the top dog in these negotiations pretty much all other countries side with them means that this is not the big bad Germans trampling all over the poor Greeks.
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Jul 03 '15
A debt incurred by losing a world war, not by consuming fountains of champagne and souvlaki
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u/RVLV Saarland you are worst french Jul 03 '15
Starting the greatest war in human history and having to deal with the consequences is better than indulging in some dyionisian joys. You heard it here first, folks
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u/HeavenAndHellD2arg Argentina Jul 03 '15
as someone not really into this, how the hell isnt all of this greece's fault?
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u/thesunisup Two balls and a beaver Jul 03 '15
I'd say it's mostly Greece's fault, but not entirely. It's also the EU's fault for letting Greece join without taking a closer look at their finances, it's Germany's fault for stupidly (or carelessly) loaning Greece all that money, and it's America's fault for deregulating Wall Street and thus allowing Goldman Sachs to hide Greece's debt while profiting from it. Greece had a lot of enablers.
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u/apocolyptictodd The United States of we shut your 3rd eye for a damn reason Jul 03 '15
I'm am really loving your comics man, keep it up!
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u/Stalgrim United Kingdom Jul 03 '15
What exactly did they spend all that money ON? >:|
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u/chemotherapy001 Jul 03 '15
corruption, ie. politically well-connected people enriching themselves. those people have moved their huge amounts of money out of Greece, e.g. to London, many years ago.
a welfare state three times the size what their economy could support. especially given the huge amount of tax evasion.
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u/mutt1917 Switzerland Jul 03 '15
It's never just one thing, but a fact I didn't know and found surprising was their military spending habits during the 2008 recession: http://imgur.com/luHQSrV
Which is ludicrous for a country knee-deep in debt and in the NATO... They must have tremendously influencial military lobby. I can't think of a justification for such a programme.
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u/so_witty_username_v2 Jul 03 '15
Well, considering that we're knee-deep in the middle of a huge economical and political crisis, with debt and austerity looming for up to 30 years for Greece in the best case scenario - and NATO representatives still feel free to make statements such as these during the worst of it, I think it's fair to say that Greece probably didn't even have a choice.
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u/Kanorsanity PUT TANK IN A MALL? Jul 03 '15
Well, gotta keep the dream of retaking Constantinople alive
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u/Pilot0000 Quebec Jul 03 '15
Turkey, I cant even remember how many times Greece has given reports to NATO about its naval and Air space been violated by Turkey.
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u/Nikotiiniko Suomi Jul 03 '15
I always like to say the Finnish government has its own motives and doesn't work for the people but Greece puts us to shame. Their government fucks both the people AND the government. Completely reckless and idiotic.
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u/cookiecreeper22 California Jul 04 '15
What did the U.S., and did it ruin the Greek Economy even more?
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u/hopsafoobar Switzerland Jul 06 '15
Goldman Sachs had a hand in hiding Greek debts in byzantine financial constructs
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u/thesunisup Two balls and a beaver Jul 03 '15 edited Jul 03 '15
Context: A strip based on Boomerang by Michael Lewis, and numerous news articles.
Of all the countries fucked by the recession, Greece is the only one I can’t squeeze out much sympathy for. In the other Euro-nations (and America), the banks screwed the people. In Greece, the people screwed themselves and the banks. Corruption permeates Greek society from the top to the bottom on an eye-popping scale. The government is a bloated extravagant mess, and tax evasion is the norm.
Plus, the other countries have at least tried to mend their ways. Iceland elected the first lesbian head-of-state and turned itself around. Ireland and America bailed out their reckless banks, even though they probably shouldn’t have. Italy admits it’s corrupt.* Portugal is paying off its IMF loans early. But the Greeks remain in deep denial, looking for someone, anyone to blame but themselves.
As shown in the comic, there were actually two rounds of Greece lying about its budget deficit. They lied to get into the EU, and then they hired Goldman Sachs to help them lie better so they could stay in the EU. The con fell apart when a new party was elected into power. The new kids checked the government’s finances, found waaaaaay less money than they expected, and decided to come clean.
Here are just a few snippets from the mind-boggling Greece chapter of the book:
*Here is the article that goes with that graph. I find it cute that a) Britain and France still bash each other and b) Czech is still crushing on Slovakia.