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This is just to bump a note slightly in advance. In Europe recessions per definition ends, whenever the country's seasonally adjusted real GDP no longer contracts quarter-on-quarter. The challenge for our Wikipedia article however is, that

ELSTAT announced in May 2014, that they are still not able to calculate accurate qoq seasonally adjusted real GDP figures, but I think we can expect them to start doing it, when they launch their new updated calculation method in September 2014. Only at that point of time, it will be known when exactly the Greek recession ended. So I ask all editors to avoid adding premature speculation lines into the article, claiming that the Greek recession has ended, until we at least can proof it with the soon to be released seasonally adjusted qoq real GDP data from ELSTAT. Until we have this data in our hands, nobody really knows for sure. We can only guess if it ended already by the end of Q4-2013 - or perhaps only will end a few quarters later. The latest EC spring forecast 2014 published in May 2014, suggest Greece will experience a positive 0.6% year-on-year real GDP growth in 2014, which under the assumption of gradually arriving improvements of the growth climate, imply that a seasonally adjusted real GDP growth indeed could have arrived as early as Q1-2014. But if the improvements are sudden rather than gradual, or if the forecast is wrong, then the end of the recession could arrive a little later. Personally I speculate the Greek recession indeed already ended by the end of Q4-2013. But we have to wait for the first hard data to arrive in September 2014, before we can check if my speculation is correct, and report anything about it in the Wikipedia article. Danish Expert (talk) 12:35, 16 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

For those who excited wait for the first seasonally corrected quarterly real GDP data, I will -as a first prognosis- share that my own simplified calculation show that the seasonally adjusted quarterly GDP started to rise already in Q1-2014:

GDP at constant 2005 prices in Q1-2013: €37,281 million. <=> Simplified seasonally adjusted real GDP: €40,841 million.

GDP at constant 2005 prices in Q2-2013: €40,788 million. <=> Simplified seasonally adjusted real GDP: €40,441 million.

GDP at constant 2005 prices in Q3-2013: €42,905 million. <=> Simplified seasonally adjusted real GDP: €40,046 million.

GDP at constant 2005 prices in Q4-2013: €40,008 million. <=> Simplified seasonally adjusted real GDP: €39,654 million.

GDP at constant 2005 prices in Q1-2014: €36,934 million. <=> Simplified seasonally adjusted real GDP: €40,069 million.

To arrive at the above "simplified seaonsally adjusted real GDP for Q1-2014", I first calculated the adjusted forecasted quarterly GDP share for the four quarters in 2014 under the assumption the growth is evenly distributed throughout the year. If this is true - under the forcast that GDP will grow 0.6% in 2014, then we can expect this following seasonally adjusted percentage share between the four quarters in 2014: Q1share=24.944%, Q2share=24.981%, Q3share=25.019%, Q4share=25.056%. My formula for the "simplified seasonally adjusted real GDP" for Q1 then is:
Q1share / (unadjusted Q1GDP/(unadjusted Q2GDP+Q3GDP+Q4GDP+Q1GDP)) * unadjusted Q1GDP.
The simplified seasonally adjusted real GDPs for 2013 of course were calculated based on the same formula, with the only change that the "seasonally adjusted quarterly percentage shares" now were calculated based on the recorded final 2013 GDP growth rate (resulting in: Q1share=25.370%, Q2share=25.122%, Q3share=24.876%, Q4share=24.633%). Of course it is only a simplified prognosis model, so we still need to wait for the September data to arrive, before concluding for sure that the adjusted quarterly real GDP started to grow in Q1-2014. Based on my model it indeed did, already starting from Q1-2014, at least we can be almost certain about this conclusion, if the unadjusted Q2-2014 real GDP is reported to be above €40,550 million; because if this happen it will mean the "simplified seasonally adjusted real GDP" will be above €40,069 million in Q2-2014. We shall see. Danish Expert (talk) 09:06, 8 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

According to a Greek statistical note, the long awaited seasonal adjusted quarterly GDP figures will be published on 10 October 2014. In the mean time, ELSTAT now released their 2nd quarter provisional figures, which confirmed (when being subject to my homemade very simple seasonal adjustment) that the Greek economy indeed left its long recession as of 31 December 2013 - and now delivered positive growth for 2 consequtive "seasonally adjusted" quarters.

GDP at constant 2005 prices in Q1-2013: €37,281 million. <=> Simplified seasonally adjusted real GDP: €40,841 million.

GDP at constant 2005 prices in Q2-2013: €40,788 million. <=> Simplified seasonally adjusted real GDP: €40,441 million.

GDP at constant 2005 prices in Q3-2013: €42,905 million. <=> Simplified seasonally adjusted real GDP: €40,046 million.

GDP at constant 2005 prices in Q4-2013: €40,008 million. <=> Simplified seasonally adjusted real GDP: €39,654 million.

GDP at constant 2005 prices in Q1-2014: €36,866 million. <=> Simplified seasonally adjusted real GDP: €40,052 million.

GDP at constant 2005 prices in Q2-2014: €40,667 million. <=> Simplified seasonally adjusted real GDP: €40,081 million.

Again this finding of course still needs first to be confirmed by the official seasonally adjusted figures before we report anything, but so far the outlook looks positive. Danish Expert (talk) 15:00, 9 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Elstat has now finally released the long awaited seasonal adjusted quarterly GDP figures for the period Q1-1995 until Q3-2014. As expected, the latest recession indeed ended in Q4-2013. The new much more trustworthy data also show, that the Greek economy in the turmoil of the

Financial Crisis

was hit by a total of 3 separate recessions (and not one long):

• Q3-2007 until Q4-2007 (duration = 2 quarters)
• Q2-2008 until Q1-2009 (duration = 4 quarters)
• Q3-2009 until Q4-2013 (duration = 18 quarters)

Today I have updated the article with the above data. Danish Expert (talk) 07:49, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Greece hit by a 4th recession (+ ESA2010 figures for 1995-2005 will soon become available)

This is just a reminder for some future update work to be conducted. First of all, it is evident Greece risk (as soon as 13 May 2015) to be officially declared being hit by a new 4th recession starting in Q4-2014, as a result of the renewed political uncertainty about its will/intention to stay on the outlined path of the current bailout-programme (which is the premise for ensuring continued flow of the much needed financial Troika support). On 13 May 2015, ELSTAT will publish data for the seasonally adjusted real GDP in Q1-2015, and if it is negative again (as it was in Q4-2014), the appearance of two consecutive quarters with negative seasonally-adjusted growth satisfy the European definition for when states are declared to be "in recession".

Another development to keep an eye with, which will require us to update all 1995-2005 data in the wikitable about Greek financial accounts, is when ELSTAT release its ESA2010 transmission figures for those years. ELSTAT last year informed, they expected to have those data available already in April 2015, but they have not been released as of 8 May 2015. According to their latest schedule, it is a bit unclear when it will happen exactly, and could happen as late as October 2015 (as part of the ordinary revision of annual national account data being reported to Eurostat). Currently the wikitable lack references for the old ESA-1995 data, as I due to time constraints had to skip the part of digging up references for the old data (no longer available at AMECO). The problem with the missing ESA-1995 references will be resolved, once the ESA-2010 updated figures gets released, as they will replace all ESA-1995 figures. If I have failed to remember update the wikitable in October 2015, then please remind me of doing it, by posting a reminder at my talkpage. :-) Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 12:38, 9 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Greece indeed back in recession, with a seasonally adjusted (constant price) GDP shrinking by -0.4% in Q4-2014 and -0.2% in Q1-2015. I will update the article with this sad info, within one hour from this post. Of course it was kind of expected this would happen, when the new-elect Greek government chose a path to refuse complying with the terms of its current bailout programme along with enforcing a prolonged negotiation phase without any movement (which triggered its current harmful liquidity crisis). But still a very sad story, for me to see this play out in real life. I sincerely hope for Greece, that this current self-imposed fourth recession will be short. For this new fourth recession to be short (i.e. ending by the end of Q2-2015), it will require the immediate signing by Greece of a new agreement with its creditors - so that the liquidity crisis vanish again - while investors return as part of being calmed to learn what path Greece now opt to walk on in the future. Danish Expert (talk) 17:24, 13 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This is just to bump a short note, explaining why no detailed news is reported in the article about the current negotiations between Greece and the Troika in 2015. The simple reason is, that nothing notable really happened since the Syriza-government won the election. A lot of posturing and comments were made by the new Greek government, but no notable movement/action took place. Hopefully we can soon write a subchapter explaining the contents of some new re-negotiated and implemented terms for the current Troika bailout programme, but until that happens everything is pretty much up in the air.

After having followed the topic quiet intense, I am a bit concerned about the recent political statements made by various Greek government spokesmen, as it appear they either "say something which they know is not possible/true" (as part of attempting to score easy political points and/or appear more responsible than they actually are)" or suffer from a complete unawareness of the fundamental rules of the eurozone. In example, Varoufakis continue to suggest, as of 14 May 2015, that ECB through a debt-swap should reschedule the Greek government repayments of earlier issued ECB-bonds (suggesting Draghi is willing to do it - if the Bundesbank did not restrain his maneuver options) - although all of us having passed the basic course in EU politics know that both the letter of the founding Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union and the ECB statute strictly prohibit ECB from conducting fiscal policy and/or offer debt-finance or debt-relief to some of its members (which is something that only the Eurogroup can make political decisions about). Asking ECB to unease liquidity constraints and/or reschedule debt repayments is simply equal to ask for something which is not an available tool in the tool box (they can not do something which the treaty prohibit them to do - and therefor solely base their liquidity offers to the Greek financial system based on observations for their specific needs - and not the potential need for funds subsequently to get transferred from the Greek banks to the Greek government - and if the Greek government at some point of time is incapable of repaying what they owe to ECB then ECB will keep their repayment claims unaltered - leaving a scenario of either a sovereign default or the Eurogroup+IMF to come to the rescue by offering a new third bailout programme so that Greece can honor its repayment commitments). Likewise, it is pretty clear that all locked bailout funds in the current bailout programme, can only be unlocked the moment the Troika review find that Greece actually has implemented all of the original payment terms - or alternatively some mutually agreed substituting terms - before this happen the Eurogroup (which it made absolutely clear through various statements issued since February 2015), will not approve the unlocking of any remaining frozen bailout pledges in the current programme - and they even clarified that before the current programme had been successfully completed by Greece "no negotiations would start about a potential third follow-up programmme for covering the Greek needs after 1 July 2015". Despite of this very clear fact, the Greek government repeatedly suggest towards the media, that an extraordinary Eurogroup will soon be called to approve a new deal, which is direct (intended/unintended) misinformation, as we all know (except apparently the Greek government) that the Troika needs both: (1) First to strike a mutually agreed deal with the Greek government about some renewed payment terms and (2) then publish an updated review-report concluding such terms have actually been implemented by the Greek government (through laws in parliament), before (3) The Eurogroup then finally can approve releasing the remaining funds in the current bailout-programme (which in best case - because of all the work before then still needed to be done - now only is possible at the earliest in the second half of June 2015). To conclude, this extra topic about potential "unawareness of fundamental rules of the eurozone", is also something I currently hesitate to write a sub-chapter about, at least for the moment, as it might too be a temporary non-notable event and/or just a "political game".

As we are all right now in a waiting game to learn what exactly happens, this is also the explanation why no specific "negotiation news" so far has been added to the article. We are all waiting for specific substantial news, which hopefully soon will arrive. Danish Expert (talk) 11:48, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Please abstain from such commentaries and stick to the facts as much as possible; let me just say that your views on the EU/€Ζ Power Game - cause that's what it is in short - are not universally accepted... ;-)
PS1. It would be fun to a have a fightconversation with you here on the issue at hand but others might not approve; these talk pages are not supposed to be a forum.
PS2. Describing the present state of affairs though, is indeed hard because among other things it's hard to write about leaks and counterleaks, about statements, counterstatements and denials thereof without knowing exactly what's going on behind the curtain... Thanatos|talk|contributions 14:34, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Thanatos: Sorry if my post above developed into being a bit too long and forum-style commentarish. It started out as an attempt to figure out, when it would be appropriate to add a sub-chapter about the current negotiations. My own conclusion after elaborating a bit on the topic, was the same as yours, that we have to wait until the negotiations have ended, and then report the results by a fact-styled manor. Perhaps my post just in the process got a bit polluted by my personal growing frustration, that even the negotiation process itself (and what role ECB can possibly play), is something the current Greek government fails to understand (or at least spin false tales about to the media).

For sure I do not claim to know the outcome of negotiations, but the negotiation framework and ECB's role, were both matters being fixed before negotiations started (regulated by treaty agreements, ECB statue, ESM statute, and the Eurogroup decision issued "Feb.20" not to start negotiations about a follow-up programme before negotiations and implementation of the current programme had been completed successfully), and this negotiation framework can not be changed in any possible way - meaning the process is limited to be all about whether or not a mutual agreement about adjusted payment terms can be settled between the Greek government at one side and with IMF and the Commission's working staff group at the other (and if this is achieved, the process will then move to the next step, being the "implementation of terms by passing laws in the greek parliament", and then thirdly the final review report will be published by the Commission's working staff group, and fourthly the Eurogroup will then convene and approve the transfer(s) of bailout funds to Greece, and fifthly the Eurogroup at the same time will start a negotiation process for starting up a follow-up programme supposed to cover the time period after the current programme end on 30 June). This outlined process is a fact, which already now can be sourced by various previous statements issued by the Eurogroup, and will at least be clear to all of us when (and if) the negotiations someday will complete successfully. I send my apology for posting such a long comment about it though, my bad. I agree with you, it is appropriate in all circumstances, now to await the final outcome of negotiations before we add a subchapter about it in the article. Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 18:29, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

1. Rules, deals, agreements, laws and treaties are commonly interpreted at will and/or bypassed/bent and/or broken outright, e.g. 1, 2. Especially by those who have the power to do so and who are often the ones who set the rules in the first place. This is hardly a novel phaenomenon...
2. Sure, let's take something that at the very least isn't working (need I say that this is a huge understatement?) and most probably isn't supposed to work in the way it's been declared to do so (or equivalently it's working fine, perfectly, but not in the stated manner; 3), and let's extend and pretend (after all these Greek guys are relatively far far away at a place few people see and for those who do see it, it's when they are on summer holidays partying); pretend it's working then when fail, goto start. Because after all rules are rules...
PS In short, it's probably meaningless to argue over this, however fun it would be were it not for the problem that this is not a forum; our view on the...universe is a bit different... ;-) Thanatos|talk|contributions

@Thanatos: Yes, some of the operating rules can be interpreted to a certain degree by the political institutions (i.e. the Eurogroup). But nobody has the power to change the fundamental rules and procedures. In example, ECB can never accept writing-off debt that a Member State directly owe to ECB (as such a thing would be equal to a breach of the fundamental "no government financing"-rule). Just like it is written in stone in a similar way, how the negotiation process is conducted for Accession of new EU Member States, where the candidates always are required first to complete a specific outlined process of having 36 chapters opened and successfully closed before an accession treaty subsequently can be signed to let them into the club as a new EU member. Your referral to the example of slack historic governance of the Stability and Growth Pact (which is something the Eurogroup solely was responsible for), can not be used to conclude its now possible for ECB freely to interpret and change its "fundamental rules" of operating. It is a complete no-go if ECB breaches its fundamental mandate and start acting politically, as such a move would inevitably shortly afterwards end up in constitutional courts and be declared illegal. By the way the European institutions are constructed, no political negotiation (or rule bending) is allowed in ECB, which is required to operate strictly within its inflation-mandate, while all sorts of "political negotiation" and/or approval of new negotiated bailout deals is a matter solely for the Eurogroup to approve (because they have the democratic mandate of actually representing the political will and judgement of voters in the eurozone member states, which is something the central bank governors never can do).

When the current Greek government point a blaming finger towards ECB, this can either be because they lack understanding of how the "fundamental rules" work or some political spin fired-off for the sole purpose of running a political game of "lets blame the institutions for something which they are not responsible for - just to alleviate the political pressure/opposition that we otherwise would face on home soil from Greek voters - because of our poor way of running the negotiations".

All this fuss put aside, I think we (at least for now) should avoid to debate this issue further. We both agree on the conclusion, namely that it is now appropriate to await conclusion of the negotiations before writing a subchapter about it. When the dust settles, everything will be much more clear. I can guarantee you in advance, that none of the fundamental rules will be broken (i.e. ECB will keep playing a political neutral game and not in any way directly interfere in the political process). Perhaps the Eurogroup might reverse their "Feb.20-decision" about keeping negotiations separate for respectively "completion of the current programme" and the expected "follow-up programme starting on 1 July" (because they have the political power to do so if they find it appropriate), but it would be very irresponsible for the Greek government to cling its hope and negotiation position at such a dangerous bet.

In any case, the only story the wikipedia article currently can depict (to avoid speculative content and crystal balling), is the one describing the negotiation timeline and negotiation process approved by the Eurogroup on 20 February. I also think, you agree with me on this strictly limited editorial point, which btw imply no need for changes to the current content of the article. Danish Expert (talk) 05:33, 16 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

1. I won't comment on the views you've again expressed so that we stop debating this as we both evidently agree we should. This doesn't mean I agree with what you've said; it just means I'm stopping and I'm expecting from you to stop too. OK? ;-) 2. Yes as I've said in my first reply it's hard to present in a reasonable fashion what's going on; therefore it'd probably be better to wait for actual clear changes and events; minor edits would be fine but for drastic ones my view is that it'd be better to wait. I don't know whether third parties will agree though... Thanatos|talk|contributions 16:29, 16 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Glad that we fully agree about the proposed editorial line - to await commenting the negotiations before they conclude. This has now indeed been established, by the posts by all three of us. :-) All that we have up until now, is only secondary reports, of what the central negotiators allegedly said/proposed/compromised:

• IMF negotiation chief informed on 14 May: IMF wont pay any of its remaining frozen bailout transfers (initially scheduled for transfer in 2015 and 2016) before Greece both (1) Sign a new bailout agreement for the follow-up period stretching from July 2015 until March 2016 with the Eurogroup to ensure this period is fully funded, and (2) IMF's upcoming review report shall on that basis at the same time conclude that Greece implemented all of the agreed conditional terms while the IMF debt-sustainability analysis at the same time conclude existence of debt-sustainability in the medium-term.

• Eurogroup President clarified in a Q/A on 11 May (watch from the 18 min mark and forward): The Eurogroup can not (which was repeatedly communicated to Greece since Feb.20) release any of the remaining frozen bailout tranches of its current programme to Greece, on the same day a potential renegotiated agreement is signed between the Troika and Greece. The unlocking of frozen transfers require in addition to the signing of a mutual agreement for some renegotiated terms, that a review report subsequently gets published by the Commission's technical staff team which shall find the agreed renegotiated terms actually have been implemented by the Greek government (i.e. through passing of specific legislation in the Greek parliament). Only when such a thing happen, then the Eurogroup will finally approve payment of the remaining tranche, but this being said - the final tranche might be divided into several smaller tranches (to ensure Greece receive a constant flow of transfers for the remaining period until 30 June, based on a splitting up of conditional terms into smaller packages, rather than having to await complying with all terms before a single penny is paid). Finally, negotiations for establishment of a follow-up programme being envisaged for the period following the end of the current programme on 30 June, is something the Eurogroup agreed should not begin (which was repeatedly communicated to Greece since Feb.20) before the "current programme has been successfully completed" (which is something the Eurogroup first await receiving a finding of - by its "5th programme review report", effectively meaning negotiations for a potential 3rd programme will only begin, once the final transfer of the remaining conditional bailout tranche of the 2nd programme has been conducted).

• Tsipras wrote a letter to the Troika on 8 May: Informing them he had ran out of liquidity to pay his scheduled debt-tranche to IMF on 12 May - suggesting them to approve one of four proposed initiatives to solve his problem - which subsequently caused the IMF to approve a 5th solution which was that Greece instead could pay with money from its "IMF reserve fund" (feeding the dog by its own tale - as a temporary solution).

• Negotiation status as of 16 May was: (1) Agreement to introduce a new VAT-rate (increasing revenues) in form of a high (18%-20%) standard rate and a low (8%-9%) rate for "special categories", (2) Agreement to lower the previous requirement for a 3.0% primary surplus in 2015 and 4.5% in 2016 - now to be only 1.0%-1.5% in 2015 rising to 1.5%-2.0% in 2016 and 3.5% for all following years (for the purpose to avoid excessive austerity), (3) Disagreement about "pension reforms" and "labor market reforms".

• Varoufakis outlined his five-point proposal for a new 3rd-programme on 18 May:
  (1) A proposed debt-restructuring. After finally realizing ECB-debt can not be rescheduled, he now propose Greece instead should be allowed to conduct all scheduled ECB-debt repayments through establishment of a new
  EBRD
  development bank and the Commission's new multi-billion "European Fund for Strategic Investments".
  (3) Establishment of a Non-Performing-Loan (NPL) public management company funded directly by ESM, to which Greek banks are allowed to transfer all their existing toxic NPLs, for the purpose of freeing up liquidity otherwise needed to cover their losses - so this liquidity instead can be lend-out again to private projects which will help boost economic growth. (if using the ESM-language, such an initiative would equal a new second "bank recapitalization and restructuring package", which would be transferred to the already existing HFSF under the same strict conditionality as written for its first bank recapitalisation package - that such funds can only be used for bank recapitalization or liquidation of created "bad banks" ~ i.e. a NPL public management company).
  (4) Program to combat poverty.
  (5) The new third programme agreement should move away from using the "language and logic of the IMF" being used when formulating the conditionality in its expiring second bailout programme, so that the language become more reminiscent of a "World Bank development type program", which require all negotiating parties to agree on a joint conditionality - meaning a new package of reforms which effectively will close the previous second bailout programme and start the new Metamnimoniaki era.

• Negotiation strategy of the Greek government, revealed on 20 May: Despite repetitive messages issued by the Eurogroup at its monthly meetings since Feb.20, that "negotiations for some updated conditional terms ensuring a full conclusion of the 2nd programme - needs first successfully to conclude - before negotiations for a potential follow-up 3rd bailout programme can begin", the Greek government still as late as 20 May has opted to refuse accepting this negotiation framework! So they will not strive towards completing negotiations with the Troika by the end of May 2015, if this is understood to mean a final agreement introducing a complete update of all terms in the remaining part of the second bailout programme. They claim this is impossible for them now to do (either for political reasons or time constraints), and will on the "EU partnership (enlargement) summit" in Riga (scheduled to take place 20-21 May), now ask for the Eurogroup to be reconvened for an extraordinary meeting in early next week, with the sole agenda of approving Greece can receive half of their remaining frozen bailout tranche (€3.9bn) in return of Greece then signing an "interim agreement", in which only half of the terms in the remaining part of the 2nd bailout programme is being updated and agreed upon, while the Eurogroup at the same time will be asked to accept negotiations for the 3rd bailout programme now can be allowed to begin (dealing with the continued disagreement about the remaining old batch of "non-complied terms", along with setting up extended additional financial support for Greece throughout at least the period from July 2015 to March 2016). The Greek hope is, that if this special revised negotiation framework will be accepted by the Eurogroup, then this will lead ECB subseqently to accept at the same time allowing Greek banks to increase their holdings of short-term government T-bills, to an extend making it possibile for the Greek state to uphold its financial obligations towards all parties also in June 2015, so that one extra month of precious time can be bought for completing negotiations for a new 3rd (more permanent) bailout programme - of which the first conditional tranche is envisaged then ultimately can be received by the Greek state in early July 2015.

The above secondary sources are - as we seem to agree about - not good/important enough in an encyclopedic context (because they are either based solely on secondary sources or might reflect an intermediate not final negotiation result, remembering that Wikipedia is not a newspaper). This is the argument, why we now need to await primary sources about the final negotiation deal, before writing something which is notable, official and accurate. Danish Expert (talk) 11:30, 20 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Summary of reached consensus in the above debate

There is no way to follow this with any reasonable effort. Clear example of

People, talk pages are about discussing concrete proposals for page improvement. Unless someone can make such a proposal in less than 400 characters (so that people may actually read it), I suggest we stop this as it seems more an

opinion piece than anything else right now. Arnoutf (talk) 17:13, 20 May 2015 (UTC)[reply

]

I agree with Arnoutf. The sheer volume of text, in the article and on the talkpage, is making it very difficult for others to resolve problems and suggest improvements. bobrayner (talk) 17:20, 20 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I already posted my unconditional apology, for having written the initial long post in this debate. My last reply (updated 20 May), summarize the debate and conclusion of it (and featured six sourced bullet point examples - which if we utilized as material in the article in my opinion only would generate non-notable content). My proposal was, to formulate it more short and clearly, that we right now shall refrain to create a subchapter describing the "negotiation process on updated terms for conclusion of the 2nd programme", actually so we avoid walls of text in the article describing non-notable events. My argument is, the outcome of the negotiations posses encyclopedic value (so eventually we can create a subchapter under the 2nd programme entitled "Agreement on updated terms for conclusion of the programme"), but featuring a chapter about the negotiation process itself (describing its present current state) in my opinion conflict with

WP:NOTNEWS - and therefor should be avoided. Thanatos replied above, that he agreed with me on this proposed editorial line, to await the final outcome of negotiations before creating a subchapter about it. Other editors are of course welcome to chime in, if they have any arguments against this proposed "wait and see - only report conclusive final facts" editorial line. Best regards, Danish Expert (talk) 06:25, 21 May 2015 (UTC)[reply

]

Simply providing endless rambling texts to which nobody responds does not constitute any kind of consensus. To be more clear, I object all suggestions in this post until the proposal including the proposed line for the text (verbatim) is presented in less than 1,000 characters. For comparison, your above post is over 1,500 characters long. Arnoutf (talk) 17:08, 21 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Bulletpoints in my Feb.20 post only added as examples of what shall NOT be added and explaining WHY. The proposal which Thanatos and I reached agreement on:

1. NOT to add text about "current ongoing negotiations", due to concerns it would conflict
   WP:NOTNEWS
   .
2. Only when negotiations conclude, we agreed to describe their outcome in this 3.4.4 subchapter: Agreement on updated terms.

If nobody disagree, this consensus will stand. Danish Expert (talk) 07:20, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Article says " a cross currency swap, " and links it to CDS article. This is wrong. 46.186.80.192 (talk) 11:34, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for reporting the error. I have now corrected the link to the correct

cross currency swap article. Danish Expert (talk) 13:16, 22 May 2015 (UTC)[reply

]

Thank you for considering.--EconomicsEconomics (talk) 15:51, 25 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the general thrust of your argument; this article has reams of technical detail, but it's not serving readers until somebody with an average attention span can read about the topic and get a general view. Even the lede fails to summarise, right now (the lede on its own would be in the top 0.1% of articles by length). bobrayner (talk) 15:57, 25 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I think the length of the lead is appropriate, when considering it summarizes a complicated crisis spanning six years in duration. Also think its appropriate (being requested by most readers), that the lead as it stands now, focus to explain a short summary of the causes, followed by a summary of how the crisis evolved, and ending with a short summary of its present state. As for the proposal by Economics for us to let the article feature a summary of "main causes" and "main countermeasures", I agree on that. However, it can as I see it, be done in three different ways:

1. Spin-off the content of the main chapters of the article into sub-articles, and then rewrite the chapters into summaries of the sub-articles.
2. Begin the "Causes" chapter and "Countermeasures" chapter with a short summary section, before letting them go into further details below.
3. Expand the current "Overview" chapter, so that it not only provide an "Overview of Evolution", but also provide an "Overview of Causes" and "Overview of countermeasures".

Not sure which of the above three structures would be best to implement. In any case, writing the summary text about "Overview of Causes" and "Overview of Countermeasures", should in my point of view only be done after a careful read of the Troika's latest Review report (last edition was published in April 2014, and we currently await the fifth by the end of June 2015), as this document is the best scientific source to decide "the perceived causes Greece initially faced and needed to combat" and takes stock "what has been done so far to what extend - and what remains to be done". Danish Expert (talk) 16:55, 25 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'll have to de facto disagree and oppose such a drastic change cause while such a let's say bullet list and a more spartan form or look would prima facie be very welcome (lakonizein esti philosophein), deciding for example and among other things what and where to put in said list would be, to say the least, very hard; for example some - need I say which? - of the countermeasures you've listed belong according to some people, including editors (need I say who?), to the causes and not to the countermeasures or at least both to the causes and countermeasures; so having them being presented in such a definitive way as a countermeasure, i.e. as a solution, would be very misleading or one-sided.
PS

• 1. I will partially agree with Danish Expert one this. This is a complex, multifaceted, long and ongoing event, issue. It's hard to keep it short and simple without sacrificing essence. I had once for example shortened the lead; well, it somehow - what kind of sorcery is this? - simply grew back... :)
• 2. I will also have to remind you that this article is already a child split from among other things the European sovereign debt crisis article and also that it already has its own split-off children articles.
• 3. Put in another way:
  OK, if you or some other editor(s) have so much free time to waste (need I add that it seems like such a change would need a gargantuan effort? unless that is, you'll simply and mercilessly chop off parts and refs), let him/her/them try doing at your/his/her/their sandboxes everything that has been proposed and then let's have him/her/them present to us the result; we'll then decide whether such a change would be acceptable, warranted.

Thanatos|talk|contributions

I started summarising and trying to make things clearer, but Danish Expert steamrollered over my changes. I would happily finish the job if there were some assurance that the summary would not be submerged in another 100k of new text. It's not impossible to summarise; there are plenty of reliable sources that do so. (In fact, it's very hard to find sources that are longer than our article). bobrayner (talk) 19:16, 25 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I would applaud that the lead be shortened. It has too many paragraphs

WP:LEADLENGTH

and on top of it the paragraphs are very long. In my view the lead section should be shortened by at least half. Summarizing complex issues into short accessible texts is in my view evidence of good editing, leaving it long and technical is lazy or incompetent writing.

For example I think the first paragraph can be shortened with only losing details (that should be picked up in the main text) to:The Greek government-debt crisis (also known as the Greek Depression[3][4][5]) is part of the ongoing European debt crisis. It is believed to have been caused locally in Greece by a combination of structural weaknesses of the Greek economy and pre-existing high structural deficits and debt-to-GDP levels. In late 2009 reported strong increase in government debt levels along with continued existence of high structural deficits.[6][7][8] led to fears of a sovereign debt crisis among investors. This resulted in wide bond yield spreads and high cost of risk insurance on Greek credit default swaps compared to the other countries in the Eurozone.[9][10] Arnoutf (talk) 19:27, 25 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It is believed to have been caused locally in Greece... This statement completely ignores the faults and effects of the imposed austerity and the widespread criticism of many reliable sources against the austerity imposed on the Greek economy. Δρ.Κ. ^{λόγοςπράξις} 21:24, 25 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Rhetoric about "imposed austerity" might play well to Greek voters, but would fail

WP:NPOV

. The Greek government overspent and undertaxed; it maxed out the credit cards; consequently, it faced very high borrowing costs on the open market; so it sought out soft funding elsewhere, which came with a condition attached - that Greek government actually make some reforms that would improve its position in the longer term.

Outsiders didn't force Greece to run years of budget defecits or dysfunctional fiscal policy. Outsiders didn't even force Greece to take these particular bailout terms. bobrayner (talk) 22:23, 25 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Rhetoric about "imposed austerity" might play well to Greek voters,... Please dispense with nonsense comments. This is an encyclopedia and not your personal blog. There are a myriad of specialist reliable sources which analyse technically the effects of austerity and its detrimental effects on the Greek economy. That you seem not to accept or understand that is your problem and the problem of your POV. Your problem becomes even more pronounced when you start your clueless rhetoric about how this plays to Greek voters. This is as bad as it gets in terms of lack of NPOV from an editor. Δρ.Κ. ^{λόγοςπράξις} 23:12, 25 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Of course I am open to alternatives. However note that the current text "believed to have been started locally in Greece by a combination of structural weaknesses of the Greek economy along with a decade long pre-existence of overly high structural deficits and debt-to-GDP levels on public accounts"is very similar to my proposed shortening So please don't blame it on the proposed shortened version. But do we at least agree the summary and the article need to be drastically shortened? Arnoutf (talk) 17:05, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@all: Is this article not about the Greek „ government debt crisis“?

One can understand the emotional frustration about the fact that various Greek population groups are suffering now, and everyone knows how the political LEFT STORY goes: it is unfair that international investors and foreign states stopped to (unconditionally) finance the increased Greek spending level and deficits (as they also financed it in the preceding years). Those international parties now even “force” austerity on the Greeks (by not continuing to pay for the Greek deficits) even though the Greek population has voted against it (which implies that non-Greeks should continue paying for the deficits). There are poll results in Greece that 80% of the population support an austerity stop (but foreign voters have not been asked in those polls even though their countries should foot the bill with their tax money).

One can also understand the emotional frustration of the tax payers in the other countries, and everyone knows how the political LIBERAL/RIGHT STORY goes: the Greeks themselves elected those governments that spent much more than they earned and only the Greek themselves consumed it (and foreigners have nothing to do with their decisions, the responsibility principle must not be diluted). The Greek themselves voted in free elections not to pay taxes like others do and not to finish corruption and favoritism like others did and they don’t work so hard as others do (even though not all groups outside Greece work hard). The Greeks even drew 100+ bn Euros from their bank accounts only in the last months alone instead of having learned to pay taxes and helping themselves (neglecting that the Greeks were afraid of sudden capital controls or a currency change). Also, the Greeks cheated their way into and through the Euro, why should the deceived foreign populations now be responsible (neglecting that Greeks were consulted by international investment banks)?

Or one can stick to the major FACTS of this „Greek government debt crisis“ omitting less important details (it is a 100s of bn Euro crisis!) and omitting the 100s of possible and conflicting emotional/political/moral views in the intro. They can be covered in special passages in the depth of the 100+ pages or even in sub articles.

That is all I tried to propose when distilling the most important facts concerning a 100s of bn Euro crisis, as it is all covered in the press. Distilling for an introduction should mean leaving details and pure political sources out, and then being able to summarize the important and undeniable stuff (or should we leave the 100+ pages as is even though a elementary school teacher would ask why nobody is able to make a simple summary)?

--EconomicsEconomics (talk) 08:58, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Simply put, one cannot "stick to the major facts" when many people disagree over what's major and what's a fact... ;-) Thanatos|talk|contributions 14:23, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I read your comments, thank you. Still, there will never be a summary if we are not specific. So, for a one page short summary of main causes and measures, which of the proposed bullets would you kick out, change, or add?--EconomicsEconomics (talk) 15:06, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

In short, all of them; explaining in a substantiated manner why or what exactly I mean by this would need an essay-sized reply. So no thanx. As I've said, as far as I am concerned (my objection could obviously be outvoted, bypassed) you're free to do all the work on your sandbox and then have it presented for comments, a vote etc..
PS Just to be clear, my objection to such a drastic change does not mean that I'm really satisfied with the present state of the article. Hell, imo even the title thereof is wrong; I'd prefer something much more poetic, something like Greek post 2007 external debt crisis within the confines of the madhouse named EU/€Ζ... ;-)
Thanatos|talk|contributions 15:57, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Just to be clear, imho, a summary of a "government debt crisis" should not be blocked or enlarged because there are different political/moral/emotional views on what measures are good or bad or should be enforced or stopped; or if some measures might lead to further problems what you indicated if I can interpret your comments correctly. But a good summary should contain the main points that caused the debt crisis and the main measures that have been taken so far for more than five years to solve it (which are facts, even if measures don't work). Reading the current article summary, and the answers to my proposal, it becomes clear that over the five years of the crisis the authors have lost their energy to focus. If you allow me to say: my children would not even pass elementary school exams with those summarizing approaches or skills.--EconomicsEconomics (talk) 16:32, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Even the nature of the crisis is not commonly agreed upon for god's sake!!! Is it a government debt crisis, an external debt crisis, a balance of payments crisis, ...? And no, it's not a commonly accepted fact that for 5 years or so parties or at least all of them are really trying to solve the crisis unless one goes by a very loose definition of the word "solution"; it could be easily argued -and indeed it has already been argued, manyatime - that some of the major players or actors in the game have just been kicking the can down the road firewalling themselves in the meantime against the actual crisis, making it thus even harder for some other here-to-remain-nameless actors of this drama. Or should I say farce?
This is a long and complex, an extremely power and value laden issue within an extremely power and value laden field or rather array of fields of inquiry and of reality and you are going ex cathedra ultra-positivist and supposedly power and value neutral on me?!?!?
I've said what I've said. I'll stop here, because as I've said elsewhere this is not a forum, by also repeating to you and to others: outvote me if you will or if you must but I simply have to object due to reasons already stated. Thanatos|talk|contributions 17:19, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I fully agree with EconomicsEconomics here. I would fail any of my students writing such an article / article summary because it does not take into account the reader. Arnoutf (talk) 17:05, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I fully agree with Thanatos666 here. This is a very complex sociopoliticoeconomic issue on a Global scale which has no clear answers. Any attempt to simplify it is an attempt at pushing one's favourite POV and it is unacceptable and unencyclopedic. Remember we are supposed to be descriptive not prescriptive in writing about this crisis. Trying to diagnose it is like trying to push our POV into the reader's mind. We should only describe what happened and let the readers make up their minds instead of trying to blame one side of this global, multifaceted economic phenomenon which happens to have a Greek component to it. Δρ.Κ. ^{λόγοςπράξις} 17:34, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Shortening is not the same as simplifying or putting in a specific POV. Stating that trying to shorten it, without willing to seriously consider the suggestions to do so is at best a sign of

ownership of the article. Please keep in mind that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia aimed at readers with no in depth knowledge on the topic; and not a comprehensive report of a topic. The current length (about 35,000 words - about the size of a small novel) is prohibitive for novice readers and for that reason alone this article in its current state is a very poor article. And THAT has nothing to do with POV pushing but with a basic level of respect for our readers. Arnoutf (talk) 17:54, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply

]

Quoting competence and ownership to me is a failure on your part regarding keeping this discussion civil and refraining from personal attacks per NPA. It also indicates an inability or unwillingness to understand what I wrote in my previous reply. Also please don't capitalise words. Being loud does not help your case and makes you look out of control. Δρ.Κ. ^{λόγοςπράξις} 18:37, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Thanatos @DrK: you both seem to agree that the current article "summary" does a bad job summarizing at all; you both say it is too complex for you to write a good or at least mediocre summary; you both cannot specify if you would add/change/subtract specific points from a proposed clear-cut bullet summary I presented as a preparation; you both say you prefer to block other authors to write a clear cut summary ("accusing" them of POV without specifically saying what you specifically identified as POV). After 5 years of a very bad summary in this article, what is the risk here? afraid that you cannot tweak a short and understandable summary so easy later-on (to reflect your personal wishes you cannot really explain here)? Is this culture of "preserving chaos" and slowing down any progress to the "speed of the slowest" a typical element of a national culture? At least I start understanding why Greece is in trouble apart from what one can read in the press... --EconomicsEconomics (talk) 18:23, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Please don't put words in my mouth. I never wrote we cannot write a good summary of the article. I simply think your points do not begin to describe the contents of a good summary and are POV and one-sided. And refrain from nationality-based personal attacks and crass innuendo. They just demonstrate the background and nature of your POV and also discredit you. I ask you to stop these attacks and also retract the attacks you have made. Δρ.Κ. ^{λόγοςπράξις} 18:37, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

So EconomicsEconomics you've just, among other things, casually repeated the usual racist accusations against Greece and Greeks in general and I'm supposed to simply agree and trust you rewrite the whole article and/or summarise the causes of and countermeasures-solutions to the Greek crisis? Like hell I will! Thanatos|talk|contributions 19:04, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ok let's put it down plain and simple. The article is currently unreadable because of length (this is my professional opinion as a publishing academic). Both the lead and the article should be cut down by about 70% (ie leaving it to about 30% of current length) to make it just a very long article (at about 10000 words this is longer than the vast majority of scientific publishers accept for an article or book chapter, let alone an encyclopedia lemma). Where can you see the content wise POV in that.
I have seen no signs of deliberate POV pushing in this discussion, and I have explicitly stated above that I am willing to collaborate to avoid unintentional non neutral POV. The current

Why do you think Thanatos shows a battleground mentality and you choose to disregard your comments or the ethnicity-based taunts of the other editor to whom I just replied? Δρ.Κ. ^{λόγοςπράξις} 19:15, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Actually I was also referring to you. I do agree the recent remark of EconomicsEconomics are not very helpful either. Arnoutf (talk) 19:18, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That still does not answer my question regarding your comments. Do you think your comments are civil, AGF, BATTLE compliant? As far as my comments provide a diff where I exhibit battleground mentality, otherwise retract your uncivil remarks about BATTLE and NOTBLOG. Δρ.Κ. ^{λόγοςπράξις} 19:23, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Easy "Any attempt to simplify it is an attempt at pushing one's favourite POV"

Not helping though.

But still my earlier questions remains unanswered. Do we agree the article should be shortened. Possibly by splitting off sections into new articles giving more in depth background. Or do we think it is ok as is (ie easily readable for novice readers)? Arnoutf (talk) 19:27, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Why do you think that my reply "Any attempt to simplify it is an attempt at pushing one's favourite POV" shows a battleground mentality? This is a complete failure on your part of assuming AGF or even understanding what my comment actually means. Your AGF failure extends also to your uncivil warnings about NOTBLOG. But you still have not answered my question regarding your comments. Δρ.Κ. ^{λόγοςπράξις} 19:34, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

To answer your question. No less than yours or anyone elses here.

I would, however, like to stop discussing editor behavior and get answer to my content/article relevant question whether we can come to an agreement that the article in its current form is too long and detailed to read for a reader with little expertise on the topic. Arnoutf (talk) 19:39, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

To answer your question. No less than yours or anyone elses here. This reply shows some sign of realisation on your part that you have violated a few policies. However it is disappointing to see you do not take responsibility for your crass and uncivil warnings to other editors. In any case, I would also like to stop analysing the behaviour of other editors as long as said behaviour does not involve personal attacks against me or

WP:SUMMARY to this article. Δρ.Κ. ^{λόγοςπράξις} 19:50, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply

]

@EconomicsEconomics: As for your proposal for the article to feature a better summary of the implemented counter measures, I can see this section a year ago already was spun off into a subarticle, and that no summary of this subarticle have been ridden yet. This in my point of view settles the question for now, that the first point of the articles to-do list should be to write a summary of the implemented counter measures first in this specific section. I oppose that the lead of the article should feature such details, as the lead section is only supposed to provide a first hand overview of what the topic is about, meaning it is good enough simply to let it cover what it already covers right now, that the bailout programme was conditional on implementation of "fiscal consolidation", "privatization", "structural reforms" and "debt restructuring". Danish Expert (talk) 00:13, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Arnoutf: I disagree with your opinion, that the article needs to be redesigned and drastically shortened, solely to suit the purpose of better informing novice readers about the topic. Wikipedia allow (and actually rate it to be "high quality") for articles to be comprehensive and cover all notable aspects of a topic. If we compare the article with the comparable European debt crisis article, our articles length is 315KB versus 277KB, and both articles feature an identical length for their lead. I think the lead length of our article is appropriate, when considering it summarizes a complicated crisis spanning six years in duration. Also think its appropriate (being requested by most readers), that the lead as it stands now, focus to explain a short summary of the causes, followed by a summary of how the crisis evolved, and ending with a short summary of its present state. Because of being a six-year long event with multiple phases, it is justified for the lead shortly to mention each of these phases, which it does as it stands right now. In this way, readers to begin with, are presented to a summary of all main phases of the crisis, which they then can read more about (following the same structure) below in the article. In this way it makes perfect sense, and should not be shortened further. Danish Expert (talk) 00:13, 27 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

For readability it is recommended articles are not longers than 50,000 characters long (sse

WP:LEAD. That other articles out there are too long to be readable is a problem (of those articles). It is not an excuse for this article. By the way I do agree that we should probably not split off sections without immediately writing a summary to replace them to avoid empty sections Arnoutf (talk) 12:03, 29 May 2015 (UTC)[reply

]

(And a sentence in the summary that there are 100s conflicting views on guilt, moral, possible and better alternatives, wishes of involved parties and so on) (?)--EconomicsEconomics (talk) 07:43, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

and maybe that also WP:CONFLICT authors "allow" a summary (see next para)? --EconomicsEconomics (talk) 07:43, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I would not add a sentence in the lead saying "100s conflicting views exist", as such line can not be related to be an essential summary part of one of the main chapters in the article. I personally support a status qou of the current lead structure, which currently briefly mention "main causes" and briefly "main measures" (but only by stating headlines for the content of implemented bailout programmes - which can be understood to be the "main measures"), and then finally several paragraphs providing a chronological summary of "crisis evolvement".

My argument why its preferred for the lead, to keep featuring several paragraphs about "crisis evolvement", is because the crisis spanned 6 year in duration, during which the crisis can be said to have been in at least 5 different phases (i.e. the 4th paragraph represent the phase where Greece for 3 quarters in 2014 had regained access to private financial markets; with its crisis being millimeters away to end for good, if the Greek Government had just completed its programme as initially scheduled in Q4-2014 and not flushed its positive prospects away due to eruption of political caos). Casual readers having a first time look into this crisis topic, benefit from shortly getting presented to an overview of each of these key phases by the lead (the chronological crisis evolvement), before continuing reading the following more detailed article content. So it kind of summarizes the crisis and what it was about, and within this context, it is very helpful with the line stating that Greece actually suffered from four distinct time-stamped recessions (so that readers initially get acquainted to how the pre-crisis and crisis situation was). In a couple of months, the 6th paragraph can be rewritten to a much shorter one, only presenting key features of the upcomming third bailout programme. Danish Expert (talk) 11:29, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I also agreed already (in my comments below) to the structure with the thee elements (main causes, main measures, crisis evolvement). Maybe there is still a way to shorten/aggregating the crisis evolvement a bit without leaving out any important steps, and enhance causes and measures a bit not to leave out important ones.--EconomicsEconomics (talk) 09:57, 2 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The article already briefly mention the reason, why "fiscal austerity" was a necessary evil to implement in the midst of the Greek government-debt crisis:

• The initial position of the Greek debt-to-GDP ratio and structural balance being in unsafe territory, thus leaving no room for utilizing traditional Keynesian policy, where government's traditionally combat an economic crisis by increasing its public investment spending during such times (the opposite of austerity).

My proposal is, that we create a technical subchapter dedicated to highlight this issue more in-depth, as it seems to be a subtopic of the crisis with high media notability (but often suffering from a pure technical understanding amongst non-experts).

In the first early part of the crisis (2009), the Greek government apparently (despite of its initially screwed fiscal position), attempted to utilize Keynesian policy to combat the Great Recession while hiding its true fiscal problems by publishing false statistics. The attempt was only partly successful, as this move indeed succeeded to put a brief end to its second recession in Q2-2009, but at the same time the statistical fraud (serving the purpose for the government to keep the private lending market alive as a cheap refinancing source by telling them the incorrect fiscal figures) was discovered. When the statistical fraud had been revealed, it caused a double penalty for Greece: (1) Financial market trust fell deeply into negative territory (twice as deep as if the Government only had reported correct statistics straight from the start), (2) Economic sentiments in Greece (both among consumers and companies) were nuked deep down into negative territory, which caused the third Greek recession to start already in Q3-2009, as everybody suddenly realized how bad a state the current Greek economy actually was in.

This early 2009-context is important to note, as it represent the explanation why "implementation of austerity" subsequently was needed for the Greek government to implement (as a main condition when the Troika arrived to rescue Greece in May 2010). In a perfect theoretical world, where both the private lending market and public creditors still possessed 100% fiscal trust, that it was possible to continue unconditional lending to Greece of cheap (low-interest-rate) money during a long lasting Greek government debt-crisis, and then be certain the Greek government subsequently - when strong growth had been revived - then by-it-self at this later point of time then would start to implement heavy doses of needed austerity to fix the problem of still having operated a screwed "structural balance and debt-to-GDP ratio", then YES all experts agree this path would have been far better for Greece (compared to implementing fiscal austerity straight away). As Greece had a ten-year historic record, of not being able to implement the needed austerity to fix its existing "fiscal sustainability issues" during the good times with strong economic growth from 1999-2008, it was however evident (and not a surprise), that such trust had evaporated from both the private lending market and public creditors. Only way to rebuild this trust - and ensure continued flow of cheap lending money to Greece in this situation, was for the public creditors to attach the conditionality for Greece straight away to implement fiscal austerity, despite that all economic experts perfectly were aware this by-itself in the short-term would deepen and prolong the Greek crisis. If money had been offered at first for free, without this austerity condition being attached, it was a historical proven fact, that Greece subsequently would not honor this trust by subsequently implementing the needed austerity by-itself once strong economic growth had re-emerged.

The subchapter dealing with this issue, would also benefit, if it made a context comparison of how the UK opted to combat its country-specific Great Recession, as they because of having a healthy strong initial fiscal position, actually had maneuver room enough to implement Keynesian policies (active fiscal loosening) for many years in a row, resulting in the UK structural balance and debt-to-GDP ratio deteriorating to the extend that its debt-ratio now only will start to decline again in 2016 (after having risen from 44% in 2007 to 90% in 2016). This implementation of Keynesian policy (fiscal support during bad times followed by austerity implementation in good times) was only possible in the UK, because it possessed both a positive structural balance track record and a healthy debt-to-GDP ratio ahead of eruption of its Great Recession. Most economic experts agree, that what UK did was the best thing to do, but this said, it was at the same time not a viable thing for Greece to do, because it did not benefit from the same strong fiscal position and trust level at financial markets that the UK benefited from before the Great Recession erupted.

A final point (perhaps being the most important) also to mention, is that the Stability and Growth Pact required Greece not only to ensure respect of the rule about a maximum 3% actual deficit, but also required straight since its entry into force in 1999, that the Greek government should strive towards ensuring its structural budget was in "balance or positive". When the pact was reformed, also to take country-specific implicit liabilities of debt (long-term sustainability issues related to ageing costs and heavy debt service costs) into account, the SGP's calculation of the Minimum MTO in 2009 even revealed that the MTO-target for the Greek structural balance should be improved to be minimum +2.75% (because of the heavy future costs associated by its pension and health care system, along with increasing costs generated by its high amount of debt). Reason why the MTO details are also important to highlight, is because they help explain why financial creditors also lost trust (or interest) to continue lending cheap money to Greece - without at the same time requiring heavy doses of austerity to be implemented. These austerity doses were objectively needed (a necessary evil), simply to restore the long-term fiscal sustainability of Greece. Moreover they were unfortunately needed to be implemented immediately, because of the Greek government's poor track record with "no structural balance improvements being achieved across 1999-2008", meaning that nobody trusted such improvements could be achieved by the Greek government without the creditors forcing them to do it as conditions to be met before their lending payments were made. If the S2-LTC value was still unchanged at +11.4% in 2012, the Calculated Min.MTO show that Greece now needed a structural balance of +4.75% to be achieved in average over its current medium-term, to ensure presence of long-term fiscal sustainability of the government's budget balance. This high structural balance requirement can only be lowered, if the "costs of ageing" and "costs of debt" are lowered by the Greek government, which also helps explain why Greece needed to accept such radical reforms to their pension system (extended retirement age + lower benefits). In relation to this, its important to stress that any positive S2-LTC value is only related to presence of too heavy long-term ageing costs (not to debt), and that this figure should be lowered towards 0.0% (to ensure inter-generational equal treatment) even if Greece had absolutely no debt at all. So this need for pension reform, would have been there to ensure long-term sustainability of the public finances, even in the absence of the current heavy debt load for the Greek government.

These above additional technical facts and fundamental reasons explaining why, despite that economic experts were aware each 1% GDP of austerity would cause economic growth to be between 0.5-0.8% lower, that this fiscal austerity was a necessary evil to implement as a pre-condition to be met for delivering financial rescue help. Finally, the call for implementation of structural reforms (pension-reforms and labor-market reforms) to solve problems the Greek economy actually suffered from before its economic crisis erupted in 2009, actually helped to lower the demand for implementation of otherwise needed additional austerity. While its save to say from a scientific point of view, that the reluctancy of the Greek government to pass such structural reforms rapidly during its crisis, only made its crisis more severe and prolonged, not only because of the additional liquidity crisis erupting each time its bailout programme got frozen because of non-compliance, but also because the earlier implementation of these needed reforms would have ensured the reaping much earlier of positive fiscal results stemming from these reforms (i.e. its an academic view shared by most experts that implementing reform changes fast - rather the slowly drip by drip - is much better not only because direct positive results will arrive faster - but also as it will help indirectly to restore consumer+company confidence much faster if they facing all negative changes straight from day one so that they subsequently can start look forward only to positive things happening in the following bright future). So the "austerity trap" (each year bringing demands for a new extra austerity effort to be implemented during the bailout programme), was also heavily related to the delayed implementation by the Greek government of the much needed structural reforms. When Greece achieved a government structural budget balance surplus in 2013 (for the first time since 1973), it was actually out of the woods, in regards of the need to implement austerity demands (if everything else had been equal and implementation of the required structural reforms had followed the initial plan), a fact that has been confirmed by official statements made by IMF's chief negotiator Poul Thomsen.

All in all, it can be a quiet complex technical issue to explain "why austerity was needed straight away" and "why Greece kept falling into extra new unexpected austerity demands - when each fiscal year of its crisis had passed". By this post, I have attempted to explain it in short. I do not have time during the next six months to write this technical "austerity chapter". If somebody else has time to do it, I think the article would be heavily improved by adding such a chapter (presuming of course it is build upon an appropriate amount of technical references - of which the Troika's review reports are a great starting point). Danish Expert (talk) 08:06, 29 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to add such a lengthy section, please cut down the article by more than 300,000 characters first to make it readable. Arnoutf (talk) 12:04, 29 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I said I wouldn't but you keep writing lengthy essays so...

Your analyses keep missing

• that Greece does not have its own currency, unlike e.g. the UK
• that the Greek debt problem is predominantly of an external nature, unlike e.g. the one of the UK, having been financed through capital inflows from abroad which stopped and/or reversed after a major recent global event
• that a very common step, if not the historical norm, in such cases is simply to default, i.e. that sovereign defaults are very common historically, that they aren't a negligible exception
• that there is also the other historical precedent and analogue of countries exiting currency unions (and/or pegs, i.e. currency nions of whichever form, e.g. the Gold Standard).

Your analyses keep assuming

• that the Greek crisis is just a severe case of liquidity problem/crisis and not of an insolvency one
• that other countries or organisations actually tried to help save Greece and not just themselves and/or the system (they're not oblided to do so but let's say that lying about it is also not obligatory)
• that many austerity policies taken by the Greek Governments during the crisis were taken in order to indeed save Greece and not the interests of the people in power.

Your analyses keep presenting

• the actions taken by other countries and/or international organisations as having been indeed taken indeed in order to save Greece and as being indeed objectively necessary for Greece, i.e. that TINA

misrepreseting thus major steps or order of events that took place and ommitting the advice of

• many economomists, analysts,... who've claimed that other steps should have be taken instead of or in a different order than the ones actually taken

and also misrepresenting actual beliefs of many people and/or groups of power

• e.g. that in the broader context beyond Greeece, the confidence fairy and expansionary austerity in a time of crisis was/is thought to actually be a law of nature (e.g. in the aforementioned UK),
• e.g. that many people and organisations actually believe(d), focusing this time in the narrower context, that Greece would actually be saved if only it did austerity and/or structural reforms.

A very clear example of this is that

• even if we assume Greece remaining in the EZ as being objectivelly necessary, which we shouldn't, and
• even if we assume that Greece not defaulting unilaterally as being a necessary fact of live/history, which we shouldn't, and
• even if we assume that structural reforms an/or austerity would indeed be a solution and/or necessary and/or not actually bad, counterproductive for the actual economy and interests of Greece, of the Greek people, which we shouldn't

that there are tons of people that have claimed that the commonly, mutually agreed upon haircut should have come first (and be of a major magnitude) when in reality it came much later (twice or 1 point something times) and either by itself and/or as a consequence of the delay it was of an inadequate magnitude worsening thus even more, much more, the already unbelievable mess and conundrum. And it has also been claimed thus, that this happened in order to save the foreign banks etc. and/or countries, NOT @#%@% Greece, that in reality other countries were extending and pretending, kicking the can down the road so that they could firewall and ringfence themselves and their banks, saving the lenders that shouldn't have lent Greece such huge loans in the first place. It has also been claimed that the politicians of these countries sold, presented, portrayed saving these banks, funds etc. to their citizens as a magnanimous and benevolent action, solution, as saving (unworthy) Greece and Greeks from destruction because otherwise they couldn't have persuaded their taxpayers/citizens (or anyway would have a very difficult task before them trying to do this) to save the banks and the rest of the financial system one/two... more time(s) after the global crisis.

Thanatos|talk|contributions 13:11, 29 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

If you want my personal opinion on the causes. I think there are three parties to blame for the initial mess. Goldman Sachs for its amoral trick (and grabbed payment) to present Greece's situation as better than it was. The European (especially North Western European) banks for loaning Greece for interest rates not taking account of the actual risks (which they knew - and considered secured by their too big too fail status ). And the 2000-2008 Greek governments that showed lack of self control in borrowing far too much, for unrealistic interest rates. The first two agents being amoral, the third being mainly naïve the response from many European governments utterly fits the current dominance of the "objective" neoliberal view that naivety is a sin and amorality a virtue. Hence we save the banks and sacrifice the Greeks.

My ironic view on neoliberalism here is probably not the most neutral point of view but not intended for article space anyway ;-) Arnoutf (talk) 18:32, 29 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Thanatos: Perhaps to your surprise, I can agree with you on your point, that we also had presence of most of your objectionable points. Although only to the extend, that they exist as supplementary (less important) points/views in addition to the ones reflected by my initial post. Here you have my reply in short:

• Greece had its maneuver room restricted by being a eurozone-member: Yes of course - saying goodbye to the devaluation tool and default option, is the price you pay for receiving lower interest rates, ECB liquidity support and become a member of financial support mechanisms. Still the EU+Eurogroup in fact issued a common response when the Great Recession had erupted, allowing all its members (who could afford it) to respond with supportive Keynesian economics during the first two years of the Great Recession (2008+2009) - due to the severity of this global recession, so that active fiscal support initially was injected into all healthy economies. My point was, that UK could afford it and actually did it (as stated in their 2008-09 Convergence report). While Greece could not afford it, but despite of this did it anyway in 2009, while pretending it could afford it by hiding its correct statistical figures for its true fiscal position. Of course this "hiding the truth" was only possible for a limited amount of time, and it only made the subsequent Greek crisis much more worse. A display of correct figures from the start, could have triggered a much more rapid bailout support package already in early 2009, and if the needed structural reforms had been implemented already in the first crisis year rather than 3-6 years later - this would also have been very helpful for Greece.
• UK as a non-eurozone state can not be used as a 1:1 crisis-combat example to Greece: Of course not, this was never my point. If you want a more direct 1:1 example for other eurozone-states performing a similar "internal devaluation" as Greece did, then you can however compare with Estonia+Latvia+Lithuania. They actually implemented the same package of "internal devaluation" structural reforms and "fiscal austerity" in 2009, while operating a fixed euro peg. The common point for all these 3 Baltic states, was that they did all their needed tough and hurtful reforms rapidly, and subsequently also reaped all the positive fruits from their reforms rapidly, to the extend they since 2011 were the states in EU with biggest economic growth. If Greece had implemented its needed reforms in a similar fast and committed way already by-itself in 2009 (and in addition avoided additional liquidity crisis erupting from the freeze of subsequently established bailout transfers), most experts agree this could have shortened its crisis only to have had a 3-year duration in total (meaning the bailout programme - envisaged to have started one year earlier in 2009 - could have expired by the end of 2011 - followed by strong levels of positive economic growth for all subsequent years in 2012-2020). It is evident the slow crisis response and political opposition to implement needed countermeasures rapidly, also prolonged the Greek sovereign-debt crisis.
• A market failure by "external lenders" to price country-specific risks correctly, existed ahead of the crisis eruption: Yes I agree. But only to the extend, that half of the problem was due to incorrect credit ratings, while the other half of the problem for Greece was the failure to submit correct statistics revealing the true extend of fundamental economic challenges that the Greek government faced during 1999-2008. The true challenges only became revealed in late 2009 and early 2010.
• Organisations only helped Greece for the purpose of helping themselves, and when they did, the debt-haircut arrived much to late: Yes, I agree with you the initial crisis response in May 2010 apparently got "polluted" by some "mixed intentions" also reflecting external worries about adverse contagion spreading to other southern European states and the eurozone could have broken down into multiple pieces. I also agree with you, that from a technical point of view the most appropriate thing to do by the "international organisations" would have been to require the debt-haircut should have been done already in May 2010 rather than in March 2012. However, such simple thing, could not have prevented the Greek sovereign debt-crisis to erupt. Needs to implement austerity and structural reforms would still have co-existed. Only difference would have been, that the debt-pile for Greece could have been somewhat lower, while the fundamental problems would still have needed a fix. Unfortunately its impossible to rewrite history, and impossible to predict if private creditors would have accepted their haircut two years earlier in May 2010 (we can only speculate, as arguments can also be made that the outlook needed first to be as bad as it became in 2012, before they finally would accept a haircut). Anyway, the argument can also be listed, that the public creditors (tax payers in other eurozone states) are now paying the price for this "delayed haircut" mistake and not Greece, as the bailout-loans in return now are given to Greece with a 0% interest rate from 2010-2020 (with all interest rate payments being reimbursed) to make up for this mistake.
• Alternative options like "sovereign default" and "leaving the currency union" were also available to Greece: Yes, but only in theory. Most experts agree the costs of such things (devaluation which initially will cause a huge decline of GDP, losing financial stability support mechanisms like ECB liquidity + ESM support, and losing "trust of financial markets" because you failed to qualify for continued membership of a strong euro club) would far exceed the short-term benefits for doing such a thing, and moreover it would not have served to solve the deeper economic problems Greece suffered from (Balance of Payments, Competitiveness issues, too high public structural deficits, and finally also a long-term unsustainable health care system and pension system). Once again, the long-term sustainability challenges for the Greek economy, were already revealed by the 2009 Fiscal Sustainability Report, and needed a solid response anyway, even before the Greek sovereign-debt crisis erupted in May 2010.

In other words, if we pretend Greece tomorrow defaults and return to use a devalued Drachma instead of the euro, this would not at all solve any fundamental economic problems, but only make the situation much more worse for Greece. Main point is, that Greece currently service its debt pile to public creditors almost at a 0% interest rate, but despite of this huge help, still has problems both with its daily liquidity situation and continued presence of a remaining need still to reform its pension and health care system, so that it finally become long-term sustainable.

The main point of my initial post, was to explain why austerity and structural reforms were needed as a crisis response. Both instruments help to restore "fiscal long-term sustainability", and due to "political concerns" the creditors asked for an immediate "austerity implementation", as they did not trust this needed additional "austerity requirement" could be delivered by the Greek government post-crisis (but only could be delivered if it was forced to happen as a condition of transferring bailout funds). I think its evident to say, that all 5 elements of the Troika's programme (austerity + structural reforms + bank recapitalization + debt restructuring + privatization programme) are/were needed. Elements of "bank recapitalization" and "privatization programme" were both important to spur a subsequent "private investment" to boost/ignite economic growth. The condition to implement structural reforms, actually helped to lower the amount of "austerity" otherwise needed to implement, while also solving those fundamental fiscal long-term sustainability problems that Greece already suffered from before her debt-level spiked in 2009.

To summarize, I still think the article would benefit from featuring a short subchapter providing info about these technical economic details (i.e. the Greek S2-LTC value called for reforms of the pension system and health care system already in 2009, that the structural balance in the medium-term needed to respect the country-specific calculated "minimum MTO" - which had been calculated to a whopping min. +2.75% requirement already back in 2009, and that creditors lost trust Greece would correct such issues by itself - therefor setting them up as attached conditions to be met in order for Greece to receive bailout help), to explain why implementation of painful fiscal austerity was needed as a crisis response straight from the start. Danish Expert (talk) 12:22, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a simply an also thing, it's a proper context thing, among many other things. It's also not simply only about a possible future henceforth; it's also retrospective; i.e. setting yourself on a course of trying to explain - or to claim - why Greece 'couldn't go countercyclical/keynesian in the midst of its crisis', you should have either explored as many alternatives (at least the major ones), by now counterfactual, possible strategies, steps or routes Greece and other players could have taken or at least stated explicitly your assumptions, the framing you're using. You've e.g. done, all these years, great work presenting the structural deficit etc. story or side thereof; as I've frankly told you before I personally think that this kind of story, of causation, is BS (cause, to say the least, it's of secondary or tertiary importance), nevertheless it's a very popular story, so congrats and many thanx! What I can't congratulate you on or thank you about though is the fact that you've flooded the article and/or its talk pages with that story without having made explicitly clear to the layperson, the one coming here to educate oneself on the subject, the context, the framing and the hidden assumptions and hypotheses you've been using.... ;-) Thanatos|talk|contributions 13:43, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I got your point. But politely disagree. The article is the result of many editor contributions, and not the result of a single editor's personal view. As for the articles so-called choice of "context, framing and hidden assumptions and hypotheses", it is clear it opted to reflect the same view as presented by the objective Troika review reports. Adopting an alternative "context, framing and hidden assumptions and hypotheses", i.e. present the Greek crisis from a Marxist perspective based on another set of strange assumptions, would not be appropriate, as it would not represent the objective main view shared by the technical expert working groups of IMF and the European Union. It is clear and evident even to casual readers, and not something that need a flashing alert box in the article, that the article's presentation of the crisis facts, mainly is based on sources agreeing with the "cause interpretation and analysis" made by the objective Troika review reports.

Using the Troika review reports as framework for a fundamental understanding of the crisis, is the only sober objective thing to do. Likewise, my request here in this talkpage debate, for the article also to present extracted "S2-LTC" and "calculated minimum MTO" data from the European Commission's 2009 Fiscal Sustainability Report, should not be refuted as something being "not relevant" to feature. Perhaps I went a bit too far with my analysis here at the talkpage, about the appropriateness/availability of utilizing "Keynesian economics" for Greece, but so far, it was only mend to be a first hand invitation for other editors to dive into this additional topic and find sources about, so that a special subchapter explaining this difficult "austerity discussion" can be crafted down the road. When that day comes, I wont object that we also add a single line to mention that the magnitude of "austerity need" most likely could have been less in case the debt-haircut had happened early in May 2010 rather than late in May 2012 (as I am positively certain we can find a valid notable source backing up such view). This said, it is evident (and can be backed by multiple sources), that an early debt-haircut could not have solved all the fundamental economic problems Greece faced in early 2010. The Greek sovereign-debt crisis would still have erupted, and the medicine would still have been a mix of austerity + structural reforms + privatization + bank recapitalization. ;-) Danish Expert (talk) 18:21, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"Adopting an alternative "context, framing and hidden assumptions and hypotheses", i.e. present the Greek crisis from a Marxist perspective based on another set of strange assumptions, would not be appropriate, as it would not represent the objective main view shared by the technical expert working groups of IMF and the European Union".

Marxist...objective... For fuck's sake!! Read for example, the CIGI paper I've pointed you to elsewhere; it includes and mentions among many other things, WSJ articles that first broke various stories relating to various interesting stuff about the Greek program, shedding light upon what was actually going on inside the IMF at that time (and dare I say by extension also later, hitherto; both per se and vis-à-vis the two other parts of the Troika). Or have a long, careful reading of a Krugman quotation from the NYT, included in this wiki-article:

Ever since Greece hit the skids, we’ve heard a lot about what’s wrong with everything Greek. Some of the accusations are true, some are false — but all of them are beside the point. Yes, there are big failings in Greece’s economy, its politics and no doubt its society. But those failings aren’t what caused the crisis that is tearing Greece apart, and threatens to spread across Europe.

PS This is a fantastic, a prime example of what I've already said, about us two discussing the issue being potentially fun but pointless, about us having a different take on reality itself... Thanatos|talk|contributions 20:01, 30 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I had a full read of your CIGI paper and the Krugman article ahead of starting this debate, and it did not change a single point/argument in my above posts. From a technical point of view, I agreed with the CIGI paper's finding, that if anything else had been equal (which unfortunately it was not), then IMF should have insisted for the debt-haircut to take place in May 2010 rather than in March 2012. What the CIGI paper fails to do (which is perfectly normal when writing a scientific article based on a narrow "research question"), is that it does not perform a deeper analysis of: technical economic factors + political context factors + market functionality context factors, that all affected the Troika's decision how to design the first bailout programme (being reluctant to require early debt-haircut - masked by adoption of unrealistic best case scenario forecasts - due to concern of major contagion risks that potentially could have blown the eurozone into pieces if this debt-haircut had been required to take place already in May 2010).

This said, it seems like you falsely believe the Greek sovereign-debt crisis could have been totally avoided, if the debt-haircut had just arrived two years earlier than it did, which is a great illusion. As stated above, Greece needed in any-case bailout help accompanied by implementation of austerity to fix its "structural budget balance problem", structural reforms to fix its "competitiveness problem and long-term sustainability problem of its pension system and health care system", and privatization + bank recapitalization to help "boost healthy economic growth". The debt-restructuring (and long-term debt sustainability) was a separate issue that co-existed among the other issues. This a scientific fact, at least for as long one make use of the sane status quo assumption, that Greece would continue to be a eurozone member under the same fiscal sustainability rules applying towards all other eurozone states. Krugman does not represent the general viewpoint among economic experts about the challenges the Greek society faced in its crisis, and he tend to simplify his argumentation under certain special assumptions, which the majority of experts disagree with him about.

My focus in this talkpage debate, is not to attempt convincing you/Krugman to adopt certian crisis analysis assumptions. My focus was just to propose how an add of additional technical economic info to the article (i.e. the S2-LTC value and "calculated min.MTO" value in 2009), would be appreciated, as this technical insight would help answer the difficult question "why austerity + structural reforms were needed under the Troika's utilized technical assumptions". Your counter-proposal was then (apparently), that you wanted the article to descripe the entire Greek sovereign-debt crisis not from an objective factual point of view (reflected by technical facts and figures printed in Troika review reports), but from a subjective alternative Krugman set of special assumptions only made by him. I now rebuffed this proposal and took much time to explain why. Thanks for the debate. But lets stop debating now. ;-) Danish Expert (talk) 07:50, 31 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I had a full read of your ...May 2010).

It doesn't because it doesn't need to. Let's say that the point thereof is to show that program was really awful, a miserable failure again and again, and the reason for this is that the real purpose or primary priority thereof was not to save Greece. The technical details you're invoking are not sacrosanct or a necessity of the laws of nature, they're assumptions etc. of the said miserably failed program/model itself. The ideological, political, socioeconomic, geopolitical etc issues, parameters, constraints etc. are essential parts of the equation of the Game and cannot be simply waved off as secondary issues or minor details as you have done. THE IMF is not God, neither is the ECB or the EU; their views, predictions, policies, programs etc. (which by the way and inter alia disagree with one another) are not scientific facts or simply direct consquequences or results of strict, formal scientific laws and reasoning, of a value-neutral analysis, at least not necessarily or in their totality.

This said, it seems like you falsely believe the Greek sovereign-debt crisis could have been totally avoided, if the debt-haircut had just arrived two years earlier than it did, which is a great illusion

.

No I don't and that's a huge strawman. Did you miss for example the part in which I'm claiming (repeating other people's claims), that the Greek (in)solvency problem/crisis has been treated as if it were an (il)liquidity problem/crisis?

As stated above, Greece needed in any-case bailout help accompanied by implementation of austerity to fix its "structural budget balance problem", structural reforms to fix its "competitiveness problem and long-term sustainability problem of its pension system and health care system", and privatization + bank recapitalization to help "boost healthy economic growth".

This is a fantastic exemplar of a petitio principii...

The debt-restructuring (and long-term debt sustainability) was a separate issue that co-existed among the other issues.

No it was/is not simply a separate issue; it's of !@$!$!%$ central, paramount importance.

This a scientific fact, at least for as long one make use of the sane status quo assumption, that Greece would continue to be a eurozone member under the same fiscal sustainability rules applying towards all other eurozone states.

No it's certainly not a scientific fact /facepalm/, either assuming Greece remaining in the EZ or not. Moreover the very fact that Greece (and/or others) is in the EZ has been argued by many that it is in essence the real cause of the crisis (see the refs).

My focus in this talkpage debate...Thanks for the debate. But lets stop debating now. ;-)

If you want us to stop debating (need I repeat that I've regarded this as being futile?) then please stop flooding the article and its talk page with a view portayed as a scientific fact or as the scientific consensus view when to say the least, it's not, it's neither... ;-) Thanatos|talk|contributions 12:33, 31 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Please stop flooding the talkpage by multiple futile replies, which now more and more clearly fail to focus on how the content of the existing article can be improved. All posts from me in this debate, was a genuine attempt to open a thread leading to content improvements for the article - calling for other editors to help create a subchapter featuring additional technical details helping readers to understand "why austerity was needed immediately as part of the bailout-programme in the eyes of the Troika?" (I am not going to repeat anything now, but just refer to my previous reply). You managed sole-handedly to derail this debate with futile replies, and now excuse your futile behavior by saying that you warned me from the start, that this debate in your point of view would lead to nothing. Yet, I still

WP:AGF on your behalf, and just politely ask you to stop flooding this talkpage debate with futile replies. Danish Expert (talk) 14:17, 31 May 2015 (UTC)[reply

]

One of the reasons why no other editors get involved is the lengthy communication (ie flooding). If you truly want to involve others you should make the things you are saying easily accessible (ie short). This thread alone is now already 6000 words long, which is on the long side for a full article. Arnoutf (talk) 15:02, 31 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"why austerity was needed immediately as part of the bailout-programme in the eyes of the Troika?" (emphasis mine)

Although that's hardly the full or an accurate picture, it's certainly an improvement!!! Now if you could only have explicitly said/written this from the beginning, you could or might have saved so much of my time, time spent arguing against multiple essay-long supposedly "scientific facts"... ;-) Thanatos|talk|contributions 15:55, 31 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The Troika were hardly alone in pointing out that Greece had severe economic problems, or in arguing that Greek government spending should be reduced to sustainable levels. bobrayner (talk) 18:29, 31 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Did Greece need austerity? The "fact-based answer" can only be "yes"

If an author does not arrive at an "yes", it would by a try to redefine history for Wikipedia.

• Borrower perspective: Greek government needed to limit spending to the fiscal income level (="austerity") because Greece was not able anymore to borrow money without certain conditions attached to the borrowing contract, one condition being a certain degree of "austerity". Even Greece itself did not try to reduce the "austerity" burden with its internal fund raising possibilities like significant privatizations. Historic fact.

• Lender perspective: Neither Greek investors nor international investors/states/organizations did lend significant money to Greece without "austerity" conditions attached to it. Historic fact.

• Why not stopping irrelevant perspectives: it would help improving the article. Ideas like "the real purpose of the bail-out was not to save Greece but the lenders" can not be proved as there have been 100s of Greek and international decision makers involved and if it were so, it wouldn't change the Greek debt crisis for Wikipedia, it would not change the causes, not the measures and not the evolvement of this Greek debt crisis (as those are facts); what the authors of those sentences really want to say (but somehow put it as a conspiracy) is that they don't like the fact that 100s of decision makers also tried to stabilize the banking and financial system.

• The term "austerity" is a theoretical (POV) conception. It assumes that the natural state for a country is to have an automatic financing of deficits and there needs to be a political effort/action to stop this automatic source of government income. But the reality is clearly much more the contrary: the natural state is that a government can spend its income and its reserves. To spend more it needs to keep up creditworthiness and can then decide to borrow (which typically reduces further creditworthiness). It is the same as with credit cards: if the average creditworthy citizen has one credit card and you have already three credit cards and all maxed out and lost your creditworthiness, nobody would say further banks are forcing you into anything (like austerity) because they are not providing a debt laden citizen with a fourth and fifth credit card.

Danish Expert's reasoning on why there were no real alternatives (without "austerity") to Greece sounds very structured, logical, and reasonable to me, it is in line what you can read in the mainstream press, as it is based on average understanding and assumptions how economies work. --EconomicsEconomics (talk) 07:13, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Mind if I jump in?

"when the Troika arrived to rescue Greece in May 2010…"

When the Troika arrived to rescue Greece? Are you serious? You can't be serious. The Troika arrived to rescue the banks—nothing more. The fact you still can't (actually, refuse to) see this, even in mid-2015, does you no credit. Here is a recapitulation of what happened, and it wasn't rescuing Greece:

It was no different with the save-Germany bailout for Spain. If you don't have access, let me know and I will upload the article somewhere for you to read, though there are plenty of analyses freely available on this front, some of which are used in the article.

So I submit that you are putting forward a false dilemma: country can't borrow, but needs stimulus spending—ergo, just got to bite the bullet and do austerity. The third choice, which you have shut out, was writing off Greece's unsustainable debt. As quoted above, even the IMF finally said so. A debt write-off, however, wasn't acceptable, since who were the idiots who recklessly lent Greece so much money? French and German banks. This is what Greeks have suffered so much for, for so many years now?

No pain, no gain—unless you're German, of course. --YeOldeGentleman (talk) 15:06, 3 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@YeOldeGentleman - I had already proposed (in following para) not to call the measures "rescue" (as different parties may have had different intentions when they decided and executed the measures). So, why don't we just call them (NPOV) "measures". Those measures had effects on international private creditors/banks AND on Greece, so it would also be POV if WP only mentions the effect on creditors/banks.

A total "debt write-off" would probably also have made the Greeks suffer as there would have been conditions to this attached too; but there we are really speculating a lot.

--EconomicsEconomics (talk) 17:25, 3 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Main point for the debate, was an invitation for a skilled editor with more time than me, to create a subchapter with factual details explaining why "austerity was needed" as one of the countermeasures. I only wrote the long "context presentation" here at the talkpage to be a potential help (or drafted argumentation) for such work to be done, when other editors start to search for the appropriate sources to help display these facts in a neutral appropriate way in the proposed subchapter. This debate was never intended to focus on, whether or not a specific phrase in my context presentation ("when the Troika arrived to rescue Greece in May 2010") should be replaced by another more neutral word.

This said, now when this specific objection popped up for using the word "rescue", I want to respond that it is completely out of factual/scientific logic, to insist that the Troika did not rescue Greece from default in May 2010. Because they did rescue Greece for something which would have been worse, as a fact. Default is per definition never a nice event (no historic examples can be posted to the contrary). If Greece had defaulted without help in May 2010, all experts agree this would have caused an immediate bankruptcy of all its domestic banks (with Greek savers loosing all their deposits from one day to the next, which btw also is why Greeks 4 biggest systemic banks all are considered among experts to belong to the category labeled "To Big Too Fail" requiring to be rescued in event of crisis - no matter what to protect the greater interest of the Greek society), while the Greek GDP had suffered a collapse because the state at the time ran high primary budget balance deficits - which would have caused an immediate liquidity crunch if its expenditures had not been adjusted immediately to match the revenues. As a paradox, a 100% unilateral uncontrolled non-negotiated default in May 2010 would have entailed even higher demands for very fast (automatic) austerity - effective from day 1, and the GDP in such cases would have suffered significantly more.

This said, I agree with Thanatos and YOG, that its valid (if anything else had been equal - and no other internal/external interests had existed to impact the decision), to question the appropriateness of delaying the debt-haircut towards private bondholders, only to be executed two years later and not already in May 2010. However, as EconomicsEconomics replied there were many reasons (not one) why it did not happen straight away in May 2010. As I outlined earlier in this debate, it is also not really a key question (contrary to what some of you believe), because even if it had happened in May 2010 rather than March 2012, there would still have been need for Greece to receive bailout support conditional on implementation of austerity + structural reforms + privatizations. Because the private lending market would not stand ready to support Greece with fresh capital straight from day 1 after having suffered a 54% debt-haircut. When such things happen, states need first to proof they are back on a "sustainable path", before private lending markets reopen again. The bailout from the Troika helped Greece, so that it could gradually adjust both its budget balance and implement the needed structural reforms to bring it back onto a path entailing long-term sustainability - while staying in the eurozone. This is a factual observation (not POV), which if people continue to question this as a fact, really can be backed up by multiple sources.

Again I do not object, that we can also add a special additional line in the proposed factual austerity chapter, mentioning that the need to implement austerity could have been less if the debt-haircut had happened in May 2010 rather than in March 2012 (as long as we can find appropriate sources to document how this alternative scenario would have been). I however object, if anyone propose we should feature a long paragraph presenting pieces of counterfactual history. My objection also remain, for the proposal of lines suggesting that austerity could have been entirely avoided - if the debt-haircut had just happened two years earlier. This is false. As the factual "structural balance" data show for 2009 along with the calculated S2-LTC value from the 2009 Fiscal Sustainability Report, it was evident Greece no matter what, needed both structural reforms of its health care system and pension system along with implementation of additional austerity, in order to transform the state into a path of being long-term sustainable. This was an underlying fact, which btw also was acknowledged to be the mix of needed medicine, by the Greek government itself in their Jan-2010 Stability Report (before the Troika even had arrived to the stage and the debt revealed to be unsustainable).

Moreover, being part of the eurozone while benefiting from all the goodies of such membership (low interest rates, ECB liquidity support, financial support mechanisms, Quantiative Easening, etc), made it undesirable for Greece to default 100% and leave the eurozone in May 2010. Yes, a few economists indeed argued back then, that while it would be a short-term disaster, it could have made it easier for Greece in the long-term - but only under the hostile assumption that Greece was incapable to implement the needed structural reforms anyway - and then it was better to quit the euro club sooner rather than later (so that it could return to the instrument of devaluation instrument to solve its never ending problems). Although all this counterfactual history is fun to debate, it is not appropriate to crowd the article with such things. So lets focus the proposed subchapter only to feature factual actual data, being published by reliable primary sources, to help explain towards bewildered readers why immediate austerity was needed as a necessary evil in the eyes of the Troika (which happen to reflect the neutral consensus/majority view point of economic experts - as they represent the two biggest International Organisations engaged to assess such things).

Danish Expert (talk) 19:25, 3 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

May be those authors having a WP:CONFLICT (conflict of interests; COI; here persons that have a special interest in Greece) should stop editing this article and stop blocking everything (COI editing is strongly discouraged in Wikipedia). It is obvious that they contribute nothing here to improve the article. It it very hard to understand what they really want to say in these discussions. Everything from them sounds more or less like the world is having a conspiracy against Greece they need to block here in Wikipedia to fight for Greece. EconomicsEconomics (talk) 07:13, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I guess we Greeks must have paid this and many other guys to advance a story of a conspiracy theory against us because of our inferior, our decadent national character...
PS This is the second time you've attacked Greeks and Greek wikieditors with your proofs. Furthermore you've now added among other things an accusation of

WP:CONFLICT arguing in essence for Greek editors to be prohibited from editing the article, the topic!!!!
I'm briefly replying to you and I'm remaining reasonably polite only because third parties may read this and I don't want people to think that I/"we" can't respond; next time I assure you, I won't be so polite...
Thanatos|talk|contributions 20:24, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply

]

--EconomicsEconomics (talk) 22:50, 1 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

• You fucking racist idiot, the very fact that it was only ~100bn and that had been for so long delayed and that such a huge new loan(s) was given under such conditions is the very point of it being extremely negative for the interests of Greek people, tipping the scale greatly for the interests of the creditors, even that is, if one limits oneself to a framework of a supposedly, a so called mutually agreed upon, amicable agreement and exclude a Grexit etc..
  Has for example the Greek debt become sustainable after and because of the program? Fuck no! It's even worse! (It's e.g. more or less the same in absolute terms and has skyrocketed in relative ones. Moreover it has been issued under English/British Law, instead of Greek Law, and is owed to the Official Sector instead of the Private one, making a much needed - and agreed upon once a primary surplus had been achieved, a taken back promise and agreement... - substantial additional haircut or even an outright default even more harmful and/or difficult to/for Greece) Have the consecutive DSAs (and assumptions thereof etc.) been reasonable or even sincere? Fuck no! (Even the supposedly achievable end-result of the program(s) would be e.g. a debt level equal to the one Greece entered the crisis with in the first place!) And so on and so forth.

Note: the interests of the European taxpayers have indeed been sacrificed, be they Greeks only if one refers to them only, cause Greek taxpayers belong to the set of the European taxpayers, or Greeks and Germans and..., cause among things European (EZ) taxpayers in general have been lending Greece more and more, again and again, money to pay and save the German and French and Greek and... banks etc., kicking the can of the Greek insolvency further down the road and making thus things worse.
Note: I won't even bother to comment on the Greek entry into the EZ. There are plenty of arguments, facts and citations available at the relevant section you have to deal with and argue against if you could...

• With common sense it is also easy to understand that a 10 mil population with >300 bn debt and a high debt/GDP ratio and >10% annual deficit has to execute a lot of hard changes to arrive again at a sustainable state.

Even if common sense sided with you, which it doesn't, it very often sucks in economics, especially during macroeconomic crises; watching someone supposedly teaching ex cathedra others economics by invoking "common sense" is very commonly guaranteed to be ludicrous. The numbers, the conditions for example you've stated are not necessarily unsustainable by themselves for a country nor do they necessarily require the changes you're alluding to; they're missing for example the context of the debt being mostly external, for all practical purposes in a foreign currency because of the monetary union, and that they've followed a global crisis which caused a sudden stop to the capital inflows to this country (and to other countries of said monetary union); capital flows and stops/flights in a very flawed monetary union that have in fact been regarded by many scholars, economists, analysts,... as the very cause of the problem/crisis itself in the first place.
That means that even if common sense dictates something true, it does not follow that it dictates what you're claiming it does.
Greece for example could have unilaterally defaulted and exited the EZ and then dealt with a different set of consequences and problems. Or Germany and the rest of the surplus North could have reflated or differentially inflated in relation, with respect to the South/Periphery, making the adjustment or the austerity needed, demanded from or rather dictated to Greece and the rest of the South/Periphery, much softer, much milder. Or the austerity dictated on Greece could have been much less or much more frontloaded. Or the ECB could have dropped the rates to zero from the start and kept them constanly there since; or it could have gone for an OMT program from the beginning, including or excluding Greece to/from it. Or the IMF could have relentlessly disagreed with the rest of what then became the Troika, instead of acceding to their views against its own rules, and hence never taken part in such a ridiculous program, a mind-boggling mess. And so on and so forth.
The relevant decision tree or game has thus many (more) branches, nodes, paths etc.; the possible worlds, the alternative possibilities are virtually endless compared to the specific and supposedly necessary story and sequence of events you're advocating.

• The very reason I've been arguing for a proper context and/or against a simplistic and misleading definitive bullet list or summary of causes etc. or ... (against which I have to remind you, cause for some strange reason it seems that you've forgotten, others have argued too) is exactly because Wikipedia is supposed to present a NPOV, to present the scientific, scholarly, etc. consensus view or as many views as possible, if there is no consensus on the subject at hand. I've cited and quoted e.g. at least one such respectable source that argues that Greek interests have been sacrificed in favour of the ones of the creditors. That means that this has to be included or at least taken into account. If other such sources disagree on this or even claim that e.g. it was not the Greek but rather the German or the Danish or... the Martian interests that have been sacrificed, or that ..., that's fine, let them be included or taken into account too, as some of them, for that matter, presently are and have been, and as and about which for example I've have congratulated and thanked Danish Expert, inspite of, that is, my slightly different view on the subject.
  There are many POVs in such a complex, multifaceted and long lasting issue, that's what I've been saying from the beginning. So what I can't allow you to do, be it as an interested Greek or as a thoughtful wikipedian, what YOU MAY NOT do, you ignorant and racist piece of shit, is to have the article portay a single false or one-sided supposedly definitive and simplistic picture of the crisis as the scientific consensus, as a scientific fact!
  Now I have spent more than enough time dealing with you; feel free to fuck off!!!

PS Preemptively to any wikipedia admin(s) who might read this:
Punish me if you must for my language, I don't care, I don't mind; in fact I understand and accept the consequences of my choice of words.
What I do strongly care about, what I do strongly demand from you though is

• • 1. to see and acknowledge the racist slurs this editor has used against me and more importantly against Greek editors and Greeks in general, and to act on them,
  • 2. not to delete this discussion or any choice of words/expressions used herein, so that people, interested readers or editors, could judge for themselves, and
  • 3. to prevent this or any other editor from turning this article (arguably even more) into a simple-minded POV article, greatly misleading and misinforming (or should I say disinforming?) readers who might come here to educate themselves on the subject.

Thanatos|talk|contributions 02:00, 2 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I still think a good summary can list main causes, main measures, and main evolvement points of the crisis without necessarily having a significant POV problem. I don't see in my bullet point proposal as a preparation for a short summary of the debt crisis (preceding para) any real POV problems. Also your statements do not really invalidate it; you are merely talking about theoretical alternative historic developments and I don't have any problems if they are described as special features in the depth of the 100+ pages article, but not in the summary (I can even comment that there was a clear reasons why history went like this without the need for conspiracies as explanation pattern; just later as right now I don't have enough time). And I invited everyone to propose add-ons/changes/deletions to the summary without making it too long. I know I might have less involvement and therefore less emotion than you editing in this subject, being the only reason to propose to consider WP:CONFLICT. --EconomicsEconomics (talk) 05:41, 2 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Thanatos, you have a lot of POV in your arguments:

Oh god, here we go again....

• You: "[The debt-cut for Greece] was only ~100bn and that had been for so long delayed"

You miss that there was and is a "no-bail-out clause" in the EU contracts (otherwise there would be a contractual incentive for piling up unsustainable debt levels) that forbid eurozone states to give debt-cuts or bail-outs. It was already pushing the legal limits when the eurozone states and the ECB indirectly helped out Greece with huge unsecured credits and interest rate subsidies. And the private creditors did not want to give more or earlier debt cuts to Greece which is just a historical market result. The main reasons private creditors don't aggressively give early debt cuts (apart from the fact that they don't like to be forced to donate money to their debtors) is that it incentivises other debtors not to pay back debt and instead ask for debt forgiveness, too. Parting from these historic facts is introducing a strong POV.

1.No bailout clause: True. But you're using naive legalism and a mess to justify a mess. None of the actions of the ECB for example would be deemed legal, would have happened if 2007 hadn't happened. 2.You're also neglecting the fact, if you want to go legalistic on me that, the according to the Greek Constitution which is btw the Supreme Law, it's not EU or other treaties, contracts or laws, as far as Greeks are concerned, the interests and the welfare of Greece, of the Greek nation and people, are of primary importance. 3.Private bond-holders' objections would e.g. be irrelevant if e.g. Germany really pushed for it.In any case, you're justifying a mess by arguing it's a mess. I personally have no problem to accept that joining the EZ was a stupid decicion on the Greek side or that EZ is a mess. We entered, we opened the door to the mess by ourselves; noone forced us in, to do it (though the average Giorgos or Giannes could be somewhat but not fully excused because noone really asked his opinion nor really explained things to him). But what I'm arguing for is that once we were in the mess was also others people's fault in a systemic way and that simply the rescue of Greece is not a rescue of Greece. Noone is obliged to help us, to save us, but noone is also obliged not to help us let alone to lie about supposedly helping, rescuing us when in fact they're helping themselves and fucking us over even more. Every country has its own national interests and laws. Neither the EU nor the EZ is a country or a nation, we're just a very flawed,

non optimal

currency union. Preteding that whatever the Troika decides and then is dictated to Greece is derived by a simple objective cold logic of numbers and not or not also to a major extend by national interests and other reasons is simply naive and misleading.

1. (myth) - The EU contracts governing the Euro are not a legal "mess" but circumventing/neglecting them can lead to a real "mess" like a debt crisis; referring to the euro governing treaties (second largest currency in the world) is not naive legalism; if the ECB had exceeded its mandate (i.e. violated the EU treaties) this would not produce a wild card for other eurozone states to break the euro treaties too, e.g. neglecting the no-bail-out clause. One person neglecting a clause in a multi-party contract doesn't lead to an invalidation of the contract or give others the right also to neglect clauses in that contract. 2. (counterfactual) - if Greece had deemed the euro contracts as irrelevant because of the primacy of Greek law, Greece wouldn't have paid huge sums to investment banks to conceal its breaking of those contracts; 3. (myth/counterfactual) - I am not arguing that everybody can/should neglect contracts because other parties may have neglected other clauses of a contract, i.e. I am not justifying a mess with a mess. As early as in 1992 there was and is also today is a widespread public agreement among politicians and economic scientists that having non-convergent economies in a joint currency will lead to tensions and eventually to a "mess" like this debt crisis. The consequences were broadly known before the euro was created. It didn't prevent some states to test their luck, some even the extreme way with investing a lot in long-term concealing of a non-convergence. But in the end one can't betray basic economic logic as we all saw. I didn't pretend anything about the Troika. I didn't deny the existence of national interests. I was just explaining typical decision makers motives why this historic decisions have been like they were (facts) because you seemed a bit lost that history went like that, but motives of decision makers are anyway not really that relevant for WP.

• You: "[This way was] extremely negative for the interests of Greek people"

If the eurozone makes it an easy way to default on credit contracts and to get bail-outs, it would be bad for all eurozone states because of moral hazard problems, it would probably kill the EU as an economic community. Let's assume this easy way would be in Greece's interest, why should Greece's interests (being 2% of the EU) rank higher than the general agreed principles in the EU and eurozone, is that not introducing a strong POV?

1.Whether it does or it doesn't is irrelevant with respect to whether the program was/is indeed a rescue of Greece. 2.If talking about what Greece has to say on the rescue of Greece and/or Greek interests in a story about the Greek crisis is a minor, secondary POV, well... (An other answer could be that the main POV is about the interests of whoever is much more powerful over who is weak. But that would mean that the article is mainly about a Power Game and not simply about real or made up structural deficits numbers or made up known-from-the-beginning-to-eventually-end-in-failure solutions to made up or real but irrelevant, secondary, problems.

1. (myth/unclear) - you forgot that it is unclear if Greece wants to be "rescued" from outside as they actively denied international support in collecting taxes or stop corruption or privatize, also emphasizing the national proud of the Greek people; you also forgot that Greece didn't have the same idea what a "rescued Greece" will look like than the potential "rescuers" have (lean state and privatizations? productive private sector and less protected markets? collection of old due taxes? balanced budgets? and so on). So "rescue" is not an easy to agree-on concept concerning Greece's development; so using it in this debt crisis context makes sense if you don't want to be specific and understood or introduce unclear POV . 2. (myth/unclear) - now you are introducing the concept of "Greek interests". You forgot that Greece first complained it got too much easy money (while Greece concealed a lot of their financial problems to get this easy money) and then Greece complained it is not getting enough easy money anymore (after it became clear that easy money did no good to Greece and its financial reputation is now too low for easy money). So what is in Greece’s interest? Is having a higher consumption level in Greece’s interests? Is it still in Greece’s best interests if financed with credits? Is it in Greece’s interests that the various governments did not raise money with privatizations and hard tax colleting? Is it still in Greece’s interest if there are not enough other sources of government income and the population has to suffer? Is it in Greece's interests that the current government is going for a big bet – like trying to get more debt-cuts and risking a Grexit? I am not answering these points, I am just showing that if you want to be specific and understood, the concept of “Greek's interests“ is this context is very blurry and unclear, so not very suitable, and it would certainly introduce unclear POVs in WP.

• You: "Has for example the Greek debt become sustainable after and because of the program? **** no! It's even worse!"

Then you are blaming the international parties for a debt forgiveness of "only" 100bn and bail-out loans of 200+bn that Greece got. You forget to mention that international parties delivered 100% on agreed actions while it was Greece that only delivered tiny parts of their planned measures, be it to collect taxes, to do privatizations, to reduce the escalated corruption levels and so on. The non-delivery of Greece had two effects: 100+bn was missing in the Greek budget, and Greece lost further international trust that it can deliver at all, meaning it also got cut-off of further investments the economy would have needed to grow and stabilize. You also forgot that Greece actively blocked any international help to get the Greek measures done (e.g. not accepting the Swiss offer to inform Greek authorities about huge untaxed amounts of Greek citizen's assets) which further reduced the trust that Greece is at least trying to get their finances stabilized.

It is a bit of POV now blaming the international parties for problems during the rescue process (2010-2015) if it was the Greek party that worked actively against agreed-on plans.

1.The international parties delivered on their part because they were the ones to set both their own and Greece's part (asymmetry of power but also admittedly idiocy and/or private interests on the Greek side) making the former easy and the latter impossible. Even more so there are stuff that they haven't deliver on; Greece had been promised for example a further haircut once it had achieved a primary surplus; well... 2.Even if for example privatisations were indeed good or necessary, which they aren't, it's a firesale of the family silver going into a bottomless pit,

there was never any possibility of getting 50bil€ by selling them, not even close. Do you think that Troika hasn't known this from the beginning?

1. (myth) – why should it be “impossible” for Greece to collect due taxes and execute privatizations? If it was impossible why did Greece actively reject international support in doing so? Why should it be “easy” for foreign governments and private institutions to support Greece with a lot of money if the foreign voters/shareholders start getting critical about it? - 2. (myth/counterfactual) – Total Greece doesn’t have assets worth 50 bn that it could sell? I read that by not collecting the full taxes Greece gives away a cash of 20-30 bn a year, so selling tax claims/receivables of the last 10 years alone should yield much more than 50 bn, let alone real assets. If you talk of “family silver” it always depends who manages it. Maybe a new investor can transform a silver state asset in a private gold asset, especially if it was managed mediocre beforehand. Then the Greece government would get the price for silver assets and (because the assets would be more productive afterwards) also an increased tax income thereafter.

• You: "I won't even bother to comment on the Greek entry into the EZ"

That is a pity because this is the main root cause that Greece got into the debt crisis. By tweaking debt and deficit reporting for 10 years until 2009 Greece joined an (external) currency, getting access to the investor's trust and low interest rates of the eurozone, but in reality without being convergent to the fiscal and economical rules of the Euro at all - everybody warned in 1992 (Maastricht treaty) that it would be an economic bomb that would eventually explode if you do that. Greece did that. (It deprived Greece of devauating any debt by 10% to 20% a year as Greece did with the Drachma, so it deprived Greece of 200+ bn "debt reduction by inflation" during their time in the Euro. This single factor alone would explain the whole debt problem of Greece since entering the Euro.) It is a litte bit POV if you don't consider this (all-explaining) route cause.

OK now you're playing silly games; at this point I was obviously referring and replying to your claim about Greece entering the EZ by falsifying data etc., I was not speaking about the consequences of entering the EZ etc. in general. And no, not everybody accepted that it would be a bomb or even if it were they said they would find a solution (bicycle theory etc.); well the definition of a solution it seems, is in the eye of the beholder.} Also inflation (or the lack thereof) is important but it's not the full picture. Casue among other things it's non linear; greater inflation (differential) in comparison to the North was also a cause etc.

(myth/counterfactual) – there was and is widespread agreement among leading politicians and scientists there will always be tensions if non-convergent countries join in a currency union like the Eurozone (and if you are far away from convergence like Greece it is more like a bomb than only tensions). I didn’t say that you can always find sources telling the opposite, especially if you look for people blogging with a strong political agenda. It is wrong that important variables like “inflation” are “in the eye of the beholder” as the eurozone contracts (and the ECB) have a concept how to handle “inflation” (which is very different from how inflation was handled with the historic Drachma). “non-linear relationships” have been one of the causes Greece couldn’t conceal its real financial situation forever, but they don’t explain what … I didn’t get your argument there

• You: "they're missing for example the context of the debt being mostly external"

This is the consequence of joining the Euro zone. Nobody missed this context as a main cause, except you by "not bothering" for this factor of "the Greek entry into the EZ."

Bullshit. There is virtually for example no mentioning in this article, in all the 347,275 bytes thereof, of the debt being external excluding the few parts in which I've mentioned it.

1. (confirmation) – that is exactly why I put “joining the Euro without sufficient financial convergence and competitiveness“ at the top of my proposed bullet point summary – because this important point is broadly implied in the article but missing as an explicit point (I am sorry for the misunderstanding because for me I was clear that the “missing convergence” is mainly important because the euro is an external currency and can’t be devalued – maybe if I formulate my bullet list as a "summary text", then those misunderstandings can be avoided as the bullet list is only a summary of a summary)

• You: "Greece for example could have unilaterally defaulted and exited the EZ"

Nobody can deny that, and 100s of other theoretical historic pathes would have been possible. But how is this relevant for a description of causes, measures, and crisis evolvement in Wikipedia? And without getting into strong POV?

1.Adding in POVs when there is not a NPOV is not exactly a wiki-sin. Or put in another way, listing many POVs, especially the most important ones, when there is no NPOV is/becomes the (meta-)NPOV.2.Are you joking? What about TINA?

1. (counterfactual) – NPOV is the historical fact because Greece did apply and did get bail-out deal – I am not against writing up other theoretical scenarios that didn’t happen in the article - but let’s keep the summary short and near to the known facts. 2. (?) – I never said there was a lack of alternatives.

• You: "the surplus North could have reflated or differentially inflated in relation"

Europe has a market economy without a central decision maker (like dictator/communism leader). Prices and wages are freely negotiated. As the North is continually seeing a lot of its value creation transferred to Asia and to other regions because the wages/sourcing prices are cheaper over there, how can you recommand to centrally increase prices and destroy the market results? (That is the continued problem of communism that market results are much better than central management attempts and the "Communist Party" is always overconfident about its knowledge). And take the risk to massively tweak market economy results just to have a "relative" convergence to Greece (2% of EU) and loosing competitveness to the total world at the same time? Who should then pay for bail-outs or other crisis if the North has lost more competitiveness? Seems to be a strong POV and not really elaborated.

1. Paul Krugman among other people does. He has among other things been awarded a Nobel Prize in Economics. Ask him. 2. Yes in essence the EZ therefore sucks. Moving on. Btw it's not about Greece only (I've explicitly stated so I really don't have to strawmen), it's about all the deficit countries vs the surplus countries. Or put in another way again, it's exactly why the EZ sucks.

1. (POV/not relevant) – it is known that during his whole career Krugman has had a strong political left agenda. It is also known that people with left agendas tend to have a (too) high confidence that a state can do/decide things better centrally than otherwise markets/individuals. They also tend to “forget” to also incorporate the negative effects of interfering too much in market results (also left people with a Nobel price). Did you ever read Krugman writing about the negative economic effects of the European North losing value creation and income to Asia and other regions if the North artificially increases prices to “relatively” support Greece? No, as Krugman is not interested in making transparent the real effects (total effects) of his agenda. That is also the reason a lot of Krugman’s agenda points are not really relevant and not applied by politicians in very open economies. 2. (myth) - can you provide calculations/reports why it would be an advantage for the EZ if the North decreases its competitiveness (in order to be nearer to the South) even though Europe is already losing competitive positions to America and Asia? Is an increased loss of the aggregate competitive positions versus the world an advantage for Europe?

• You: "austerity dictated on Greece"

Now you are conradicting yourself. If you say Greece could also have defaulted (implying Greece is free in its decisions) how can "austerity" be dictated to Greece? The situation was more that nobody thought it to be a good idea to further finance Greek government's deficits (including the Greek citizens who were and are hiding their money from Greek state in the amounts of 100+ bn) (and including the Greek government not executing significan privatisations). In your logic, the Greek people would also "dictate austerity" by not investing in Greek debt paper (or pay due taxes). Or do only international investors/states/organizations qualify as "austerity dictators" when not financing further Greek deficits? Seems a litte POV again.

Now you're simply lying or have very poor reading comprehension skills: Had listed some alternative possibilities, not necessarily overlapping ones, arguing against TINA.

1. (“austerity dictatorship” is a POV concept) – I explained this above and see no arguments against my explanation. I was never arguing for TINA.

• You: "Or the ECB could have dropped the rates to zero from the start"

Again a theoretical alternative history that is not really relevant for Wikipedia (POV). A zero interest rate has many disadvantages as it destroys the various price signals the market can show in different interest rates. It also destroys the asset side of insurances and pension funds by taking away yields. It may be the start of the next bubble as a lot of projects are done because of super-cheap financing. And so on. Not to have those problems was one of the reasons the Maastricht treaty in 1992 had clauses in it to avoid to have non-convergent economies joining the same currency.

Trichet has been manyatime called a fucking idiot for raising them; bust, no fiscal policies, rates increase; basic macroeconomics. Also very relevant on the prevailing mindset and ideology in the corridors of power. Hardly therefore non relevant however big or small the subsequent potential, hypothetical change with respect to Greece. Also, legalistic arguments suck.

1. (counterfactual) – There was no early “zero interest phase”. Historical fact. I was just explaining to you typical decision makers motives why there was no early zero interest phase because you seemed again a bit lost that history went like that; but again, motives of decision makers are not really that relevant for WP and they don’t change the facts anyway, so forget my explanations on why history went like that.

I find strong POV in all your views and arguments as explained above. But you are trying to "accuse" me of POV even though you did not show me one single POV point in my "bullet point summary" (preceding para) or maybe you didn't tell me clear enough which point it was. Anything else relevant for WP or NPOV? Otherwise it would be a good time to improve the summary.

--EconomicsEconomics (talk) 16:13, 2 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

1. Perhaps you should go check again wiki NPOV policies (just like you should check confict of interest policies or using racist slurs against other national groups of wikipedians and nations in general policies) and realise that this is an article about the Greek crisis, therefore Greek interests etc. might have prominence? I'm accusing you among many other things of trying to push a single POV when they are many. Moreover I and other editos have argued that it would be difficult, futile, misleading etc. to summarise for example in such a simple or simplistic way the crisis. Or again for the nth time, do the actual work on your sandbox and come back with the results. Also, others are free to override my objections deciding by majority vote.
Now I repeat, I have spent more than enough time. End of story.Thanatos|talk|contributions 17:02, 2 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

1. (?) – I am arguing that the WP article should have the main facts in the summary and have at least the summary NPOV. Again, you did not show any POV in any of the points in my bullet point summary but funnily enough - you are again accusing me of POV. Additionally, you introduced a lot of new POV in your red comments. I made this transparent with my blue comments. So I assume you didn’t find a single POV in any of my summary points because you never named one. That means the summary can be improved having the main facts in it and POV positions out.

PS: Did the authors writing the current summery (with POVs in it) use sandboxes?

--EconomicsEconomics (talk) 12:49, 3 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

As I see it, this entire POV subdebate (which I now structured into becoming a separate subdebate of the initial one), fails to be constructive in regards of raising specific proposals how to improve the current article content. As we also currently have no general POV issue for the article, I think we are really wasting our time and energy by continuing this lengthy POV subdebate here at the talkpage. Just my personal opinion. ;-) Danish Expert (talk) 16:14, 3 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

At least it is clear to me now what Thanatos wanted to say between the lines in the previous discussion; I couldn't understand before what he really wanted to say.

Sorry to mention but there is a lot of POV in the summary right now. If one looks at the first 20+ words only: "The Greek government-debt crisis (also known as the Greek Depression) is part of the ongoing European debt crisis, being triggered by the turmoil of the Great Recession,..."

Concerning the "European debt crisis" there is no mention that the Eurozone states finished their bail-out programs except for Greece (and small Cyprus); the "subprime crisis" was already gone June 2009 (as one can see by the interest rate spread data), and as to my knowledge there was no "Great Recession" in the EU or in Greece (or elsewere? is this lemma a wikipedia only invention?), and the Greek debt crisis started in 2010 after Greece stopped masking its debt and deficits; there is a direct time&logic connection between these two events (stop masking - public shock - start of Greek debt crisis). So, there are still many unnecessary POVs and just outdated facts in the summary - I am not saying it is there intentionally - but it is there.

--EconomicsEconomics (talk) 18:10, 3 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This specific debate was never about the lead summary, which I btw do not agree to be POV. Wikipedia's description that the Great Recession hit Europe in 2008-2009 (in many states however under the name Financial Crisis - i.e. in Denmark it was called "Finanskrisen"), is something which has been supported by multiple primary reliable sources (i.e. IMF economic analysis and outlook reports). Moreover it is also a commonly accepted fact among experts - that the so-called Great Recession had different end dates for the specific states being hit (so it can not be said to have ended with certainty for all states in June 2009). When the lead mention that "the European debt crisis was triggered by the turmoil of the Great Recession", this deliberately highlight it was not directly caused by the Great Recession (but only triggered). Some underlying structural unhealthy states for the majority of European Economies, were the true cause for eruption of the subsequent "European sovereign-debt crisis", which the second part of the line then also continue to explain.

There is no need for the lead of this article to go into greater details about the geographical+time scope for all the other country-specific European-sovereign debt crisis. As a general term, the European-sovereign debt crisis has been described by its lead paragraph, to have started from the moment in "late 2009" when the spreads of long-term government interest rates started to increase. Only details about the Greek crisis is relevant here in the lead of our article, because readers can learn more about such additional country-specific European debt-crisis by clicking at its Wikilink in the lead. Point is, that the "Great Recession" and "European debt-crisis" are sort of interconnected, without saying the first caused the second (which would be false), but rather that the first triggered eruption of the second in "certain weak states" plagued by fragile economies (with macroeconomic imbalances / competitive issues / financial instability / fiscal sustainability issues, being the true causes - and not the "Great Recession itself" which only was the trigger for these unhealthy issues suddenly becoming visible - because such fundamental problems are never visible during good times but per definition will always only be revealed during bad times when "no-risk behavior" reverse to become "risk aversion" among investors).

When everything is taken into consideration, I believe the lead has been written in a very neutral way. I agree with you the Greek debt-crisis can be argued only to have started when the first bailout programme was signed 2 May 2010. However, on the other hand, it can also be argued when looking at the history, that the Great Recession more likely ended in Greece in Q2-2009, while the Greek sovereign-debt crisis then started already from Q3-2009 (coinciding with eruption of the third Greek recession recorded to start in Q3-2009), which was also reflected by the long-term Greek government interest rates starting their rising path away from the similar rate in Germany - also that time around. In addition, the reveal of the correct 2009-data also came drip by drip as explained further down in the article (i.e. 2/3 of the true figures were revealed slightly ahead of the election campaign, already in September 2009), supporting that the debt-crisis indeed started in Q3-2009 rather than May 2010. Danish Expert (talk) 21:18, 3 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Danish Expert: "no need for the lead of this article to go into greater details about the geographical+time scope for all the other country-specific European-sovereign debt crisis" (agree); "Only details about the Greek crisis is relevant here in the lead" (agree, but the lead also should summarize to be short)

The current status of the first 30+ words in the lead: "The Greek government-debt crisis (also known as the Greek Depression) is part of the ongoing European debt crisis, being triggered by the turmoil of the Great Recession, and believed initially to have been caused locally in Greece ..."

@all: (oppose to strong "European debt crisis" context, especially for crisis start): one should keep in mind that there was no "European debt crisis" and no other eurozone state in a debt crisis when the Greek debt crisis started, therefore stressing cause-effect relationships of the European debt crisis to describe that Greece went into a debt crisis seems to be unnecessary POV. One should also keep in mind that there is no "European debt crisis" anymore (and therefore the current lead wrongly assumes that Greece is part of it.)

(oppose to ""Great recession" trigger): There are always business cycles, so one can usually define countries/regions as being more in a boom/expanion or a recession phase but I don't think there is common agreement on years/countries/content of a "Great recession". Everybody agrees what the subprime-crisis, dotcom-crisis, "Black Friday" and so was. But the "Great recession"? Nobody I know is aware of such a "monstrum" or can define it (neither by country, starting point, ending point, or whatsoever), even though it should have been the latest crisis; maybe we don't use this term in the summary (I don't deny there are specialists who define in their communities a lot and analyse much more cycles than are broadly known, but this may not be suitable as a context for the lead section); especially not suitable as a "trigger", as a trigger is something very exact. Like the revelation by Greek government in 2010 that they had to revise the 2009 buget deficit again, this time to a "2-digit figure". This was a severe message and it took seconds, exact as a trigger. Greece has been able to borrow in free capital markets still in 2010 just before this latest announcements (--> no debt crisis), Greek has not been able anymore to borrow in free capital markets since then (and could not pay back due debt since then without external help) (after this announcement (--> debt crisis)). That is what everybody would probably agree to be trigger-like. But business cycles (incl. a multi-year "Great Recession", if that really existed in Greece) come and go and can contribute as one of the multi-year-causes to the Greek debt crisis like "overspending for years" is a multi-year-cause, like "no real collection of due taxes" is a multi-year-cause and so on. But imho you can't pick one of the multi-year-causes for the Greek debt crisis, and decide this should now be the exact trigger, and the other mult-year-causes don't qualify as trigger (POV).

First lead sentence: "The Greek government-debt crisis (also known as the Greek Depression) is part of the ongoing European debt crisis, being triggered by the turmoil of the Great Recession, and believed initially to have been caused locally in Greece ..."); can everybody understand what "believed initially" really means? Is it not believed anymore? For the lead: Why don't we just list all the main causes in the lead, as they are known more than five years after the crisis started.

If you read only the first 30+ words (what many may do), you read something that is not true (anymore). It is not hammered in stone, anyway, is it? --EconomicsEconomics (talk) 09:43, 4 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I am not opposed to implement potentially improved formulations (if the existing one can be misunderstood). The first line was intended just to say - and can perhaps be reformulated to either:

• Counterproposal A: The Greek government-debt crisis (also know as the Greek Depression) is part of the European debt crisis (the collective term for a handful of country-specific sovereign-debt crisis erupting within the eurozone in wake of the Great Recession), and was caused locally in Greece by a combination of structural weaknesses of the Greek economy along with a decade long pre-existence of overly high structural deficits and debt-to-GDP levels on public accounts.
• Counterproposal B: The Greek government-debt crisis (also know as the Greek Depression) is part of the European debt crisis, which erupted in wake of the Great Recession, and was caused locally in Greece by a combination of structural weaknesses of the Greek economy along with a decade long pre-existence of overly high structural deficits and debt-to-GDP levels on public accounts.

Can you accept we implement the above A/B reformulation, instead of the current one?

As for your proposal to extend or rewrite the second half of the line - lets call it the "cause line" of the lead (which were displayed by the article continuously by this formulation for the past five years), such change in my point of view should only be implemented after having posted such alternative formulation proposal either at your sandbox or here at the talkpage, followed by consensus agreement that such change would be an improvement (as it can be considered to be controversial to emphasize some causes rather than others). Point here is also to note, that it is kind of intentional the current "cause line" of the lead is vague - as it is not supposed to mention all specific causes but only the main "root causes" (as the first lead paragraph only per

WP:LEAD shall introduce readers to a "general definition of the topic and presentation of its context"). In example, a specific "balance of payment" cause is normally understood just to be part of the more general root cause term "structural weakness of the economy", which is why we have not mentioned this specific cause explicitly in the first paragraph of the lead. Danish Expert (talk) 11:36, 4 June 2015 (UTC)[reply

]

PS: Was the revised 300bn debt level already known April 2010? Or only later 2010? --EconomicsEconomics (talk) 13:32, 4 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

To make my reply easier and more short, I took the freedom to color your proposed alternative phrasing. My first taught is, that the green line (to which I added a slight reformulation/clarification), could perhaps be good to add. However, as for the red line, I am still opposed. Reason for my oppose, is that it selects a later start point for the crisis ("early 2010" instead of "late 2009"), and overemphasize the meaning of the corrected debt and deficit figures. As an isolated event, the "April 2010 correction of figures" only explain why the tipping point for a shift from "private lending markets" to "public creditors" happened on 2 May 2010. However, it was not because the debt figures themselves were a market shock (btw this point is something you can find proof on, just by looking at how the long-term interest rate reacted in the lead graph, which display that it only gradually increased month by month with no sudden spike from one day to the next).

In example, if the structural budget balance had been positive and the S2-LTC value close to 0.0% for Greece in 2009 (this would have generated sufficient trust in the heads of professional private creditors, that the Greek government would achieve a government budget surplus along with declining debt-to-GDP ratios once it would exit its ongoing two-year recession - while the fiscal stance of the government also had prospects to remain sustainable for the long-term as indicated by the close to 0.0% S2-LTC value), then the private lending market gladly on this basis alone would have continued financing a prolonged two-year recession for Greece, even to the tune of an annual 16% government budget deficit and a debt-to-GDP ratio deteriorating to 130%. No problem at all. And Yes, the 300bn debt level was known in April 2010, and btw also more or less known in 2008+2009, as the incorrect figures were not wildly wrong, as far as I remember the "cheat"/"inaccuracy" was just in the level of 25bn - so the cheat itself or corrected debt amount itself did not generate a shock. The shock was more connected to the fact how big an annual structural deficit the state operated, which revealed how big its current short-term fiscal sustainability problems were.

As the current root-cause line in the lead explain, the Greek government-debt crisis "was caused locally in Greece by a combination of structural weaknesses of the Greek economy along with a decade long pre-existence of overly high structural deficits and debt-to-GDP levels on public accounts." This was the fundamental reason why the private lending market shut down for Greece in May 2010, after having lived through its first recession years. It was not the debt-level or government deficit itself being the problem, but that investors realized (starting from October 2009 as revealed by the rise in Greek interest rates), that Greece had been caught by an unsustainable debt trap due to its combination of problems.

By the way, the "Balance of Payment" and "short-term external funding" issue, which DugganMC1 today posted an article about, is for the same reason neither relevant enough to mention for the first paragraph, as the highlighted causes in this article in the same way can not be understood to be root causes, but causes at the next level beneath the root causes. Because "structural weaknesses of the economy" (which btw include the competitiveness and productivity problem) causes a "Balance of Payment problem", and the articles focus on existence of a "short-term external funding issue" will only be a real felt problem the moment private creditors loose their market trust in the fiscal sustainability stance of the Greek government and as a consequence withdraw their unbounded short-term funding. Danish Expert (talk) 22:07, 4 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Bullshit!!!! This is plain POV, an interpretation. We could argue for ever about e.g. what/which is defined, believed as or is the root cause, the effective cause, a trigger, Aristotle's or Kant's causes or whatever but again it would be pointless.
The point is that I have provide to you ample evidence, sources that claim otherwise! So stop pushing this as a fact or as the scientific consensus!!! And btw I obviously disagree with both of you so obviously there is also no wiki-consensus. So stop acting as if there was one; the fact that I've stopped replying to EconomicsEconomics - as I had pointed I would - does not in any way mean that I've consented to you two making the decisions! I've accepted - a grave error - for far too long your view being presented in the article as the 'Truth'; I won't accept it anymore! Thanatos|talk|contributions 13:57, 5 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Are Thanatos666 and DugganMC1 - both accounts promoting sources of the political left direction, both with the argumentation, both with a high level of aggression, both at the same time complaining about POV - only working in a rotation principle? if one stops, the other happily takes over? What a coincidence. Or did Thanatos really miss that DugganMC1's source "Marie Christine Duggan" likes marxism? And no, again Thanatos666 is not having any WP:CONFLICT, no, he is really trying to fight POV, this time with the support of Marxism-like ideas, in a duet with DugganMC1.--EconomicsEconomics

PS: Again, it it almost impossible to identify what Thanatos really wants to say or oppose, as he doesn't really specify. It is hard to validate his general accusations that the authors of this article would be trying to push POV; I cannot see any POV being pushed, especially no extreme/political POV. It is the opposite, the authors are trying to make the lead understandable and free of POV as much as possible. And Thanatos - as everybody can read above in the red text blocks - is trying to push POV, mainly political left POV and "Greek interests POV" whatever he defines as Greek interests - the blue text blocks above make transparent his POV pushing)--EconomicsEconomics (talk) 13:19, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I shouldn't reply to you - yet again - but again I'm doing it for the sake of other people/editors reading this:
OK the editor who parachuted onto the article out of nowhere pushing for among other things a major undoing of the work others have done and has among other things accused whole groups of editors and people of supposedly promoting conspiracy theories when there are plenty - a demonstrated herein fact among other things - of respectable analysts, scholars, .... for example that have made the same relevant or similar claims, the idiot who retorted to racist slurs as an argument, invokes yet again WP:CONFLICT. /facepalm/

If you want to understand - that is, if you really can or want to - what I'm referring to, read carefully Danish Expert's claims directly above (also the ones before that, about e.g. the 2007-8 crisis being only a trigger, not a cause; as if for example, triggers are not a kind, a form of a cause) and then scroll up/back and read also the refs (most importantly the ones at the currency/bop crisis article and relevant section thereof; btw they include claims by, of, H.W. Sinn, i.e. hardly, to say the least, of an arch-Communist!!! Oh the irony!!! :D) I had pointed him to; I'm fucking tired of having to argue and counterargue and explain in detail and repeatedly the same things, again and again (e.g. about various views on what is the "real", "main" or "root" to use Danish Expert's expression above, cause(s) of of the crisis). If you won't read, carefully or at all, or can't understand that's not my fucking problem!!! I.e. since you've hardly read, or at least act as if you haven't, what I've writeen to you when we two were talking but instead had retorted to e.g. moving the goalposts (e.g. on the €50bil privatisations for all practical purposes impossibility; you replied by claiming it's supposedly, somehow a myth, according to unknown, unspecified things you've read somewhere, by not responding at all to the citation (may it be perhaps because you don't speak Greek? I don't know, do you?) and by changing the claim/issue (i.e. moving the goalpost) from privatisations to privatisations plus tax receipts), I doubt you will now.

Also you damn foul, a Marxist interpretation of something is certainly a POV but a source/source/claim/view being really or allegedly, presumably or supposedly Marxist is not by e.g. definition or ipso facto, wrong, nor is it of course a reason to exclude it from wikipedia!!!!! Just like that is, being a neoliberal, a market-fundamentalist, a heterodox or an orthodox, a right, center or left wing, a keynesian, a monetarist, an ordoliberal, a communist, an anarchist, a fascist, a nazi, a democrat and so on and so forth source/scholar/analysis/view/claim/... isn't!!! GET IT? Claiming in effect otherwise makes to other people abundantly clear that you're unable to think outside the tiny box of your ideological POV. GET IT???
Oh and by the way you moron, (I shouldn't say or needn't have to say this cause there is no reason for me to do but since among other things the irony thereof is enormous, I'm gonna to) I'm right wing ideologically, it's just that as far as I'm concerned, being right wing is not the equivalent of being e.g. a laissez faire or an antimarxist etc. fanatic... ;-) Thanatos|talk|contributions 15:11, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

ok, agree, is this suitable? (I still think - to reasonably define the lemma - it is needed to mention the rough figures 130% and 13% when the debt crisis started, but not as a cause; and it it short enough to qualify for a lead):

1. The Greek government-debt crisis (also known as the Greek Depression) is an ongoig multi-year crisis having begun between late 2009 and April 2010. At that time Greece had a €300 billion debt level being 130% of its GDP and was running a budget deficit in the order of 13% of its GDP. This situation was broadly recognized as the start of the Greek government-debt crisis because Greece lost the ability to service its existing debt, as it was neither capable to refinance due payments with new debt issues because of a reduced creditworthiness, nor able to meet its debt obligations via a budget surplus including any sale of assets.
2. Starting autumn 2010, the eurozone states Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and Cyprus also slid into a debt crisis. These debt crisis together including the Greek one also have been referred to as the "European debt crisis". The five debt crisis shared some similarities, but also had its differences with respect to causes, measures, and crisis evolvement.

--EconomicsEconomics (talk) 10:43, 5 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I still prefer that we either stick with the first paragraph of the lead as it currently stands, or alternatively replace the first line with "counterproposal A" that I posted above on 4 June 2015 11:36. Reason why I prefer it this way, is because it describe both the crisis and its context in a very neutral way. Inclusion of specific figures like "€300bn debt being 130% GDP" and "13% deficit" in the first paragraph, IMHO still overemphasize the meaning of such figures, in relation to why the crisis erupted. In the way the lead has been formulated already now, it provides a broad and accurate presentation of the crisis (also noting the Greek Economy suffered from a pre-crisis and double-dip recession in Q3-Q4 2007 + Q2 2008 - Q1 2009). Readers need also to get presented to this pre-crisis context from the start, to understand why the second "Greek government-debt crisis" erupted in late 2009 (being Q3-2009 if we link it to recorded recession data). On this basis, I still think we should keep featuring a wikilink both to the Great Recession and European debt crisis, as they are important main context topics. To further back up my argument, that the existing lead presentation of the article is fair, appropriate and neutral, I will now post the direct quote from the EC Spring Forecast report (5 May 2010) (in which I bolded some of the important words):

0

This above quoted neutral understanding of the crisis, can be found not only in the economic forecast reports printed by the European Commission (representing the consensus view by its employed group of economic experts), but also by similar OECD and IMF reports printed at the time. They all conquer, and give more or less the same description of the Greek government-debt crisis, which the first paragraph of the lead has been modeled to present and reflect in the exact same way. I am inclined to keep it this way (at least for now), and do not see a heavy need for reformulating the first paragraph of the lead. Danish Expert (talk) 13:18, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

1. I don't want to over-emphasize anything. But maybe, saying that Greece slid into the "debt" crisis with a 300 bn "debt" level is neither over-emphasizing the topic "debt" nor a unnecessary detailing of the first definition/description sentence, what debt crisis the WP article is about. (I added a "common sense analogy" section below on the discussion page as I feel - because of the discussion intensity - everything is getting a bit paranoid; next thing would be not to mention in WP it is about Greece because other states also had a debt crisis? ... just joking :-)

2. The EU reports are always naming many reasons for the Greek debt crisis but never really touched the crisis reason that a non-Maastricht-convergent Greece joined the euro. Why does the EU have so many EU reports, identifying so many reasons for the Greek debt crisis, but is always "forgetting" the root cause of non-Maastricht-convergent entry in 1999/2001? Maybe because the EU administration is a party and not neutral in this.--EconomicsEconomics (talk) 17:55, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

3. To give the lead a clearer structure (and to be intellectually more honest), one should have a sentence/paragraph in the lead listing all the major causes, as already agreed. That would mean not to "hide" the cause "Great Recession" already in the first definiton sentence by saying "triggered by the turmoil of the Great Recession" (which is no less than taking one multi-year-cause out of the various causes and give it much more prominence than all the other multi-year-cause causes). Is that ok? --EconomicsEconomics (talk) 10:42, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, taking into account the various discussions (thanks for the constructive contributions), I am deriving a lead start not mentioning the 130% debt and 13% deficit ratios so nobody is inclined to think this is already mentioning the causes:

1. The Greek government-debt crisis (also known as the Greek Depression) is an ongoing multi-year crisis having begun between late 2009 and April 2010. At that time Greece had a €300 billion debt level. This situation was broadly recognized as the start of the Greek government-debt crisis because Greece lost the ability to service its existing debt, as it was neither capable to refinance due payments with new debt issues because of a reduced creditworthiness, nor able to meet its debt obligations via a budget surplus including any sale of assets.
2. Starting autumn 2010, the eurozone states Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and Cyprus also slid into a debt crisis. These debt crisis together including the Greek one also have been referred to as the "European debt crisis". The five debt crisis shared some similarities, but also had its differences with respect to causes, measures, and crisis evolvement.

The third paragraph should now list the causes. I have no problems that overlapping causes are listed as that is how reality was. I also have no problems if there is one sentence about there being special views on causes (but please let's stop to put sources close to Marxism in any prominence as this is not the broad view; all those special views can be elaborated in the article, they don't need any (wrong) prominence in the lead) --EconomicsEconomics (talk) 11:16, 9 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This sentence is very confusing. "Accept" is not a noun in Engish. I suggest the whole sentence is rewritten in a clearer manner. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.43.48.145 (talk) 14:39, 2 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

OK, just solved the problem by rephrasing it to: "accepting the payment terms attached to its last tranche to be renegotiated". Thanks. Danish Expert (talk) 14:55, 2 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

YeOldeGentleman, I understand that you might feel strongly about the topic, but naming a reference "IMF staffed by scum and idiots" is a very bad move. Cut it out. bobrayner (talk) 23:02, 4 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Bobrayner: ♥ ♥ ♥ --YeOldeGentleman (talk) 18:58, 5 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Not to enlarge the POV / LEAD discussion too much, I add this section as everybody has been going a lot into details at the expense of the overview and the big points in the Greek debt crisis. An analogy for common sense:

If there was an article about a (fictional) famous "Manhattan Speeding Accident", I think it would be common sense that a first definition phrase would contain date, location, and speed, like: "November 1995 in Manhattan the 50-year-old Simon Smith went with his Lamborghini in a store when going 130 kmh, double the allowed speed, and fortunately no human injury happened." Even if there were multiple causes detected for the accident later on in a report, like the road being wet due to former rainy weather, mediocre road surface conditions as annual street maintenance had been postponed, a car-crowded city street because the planned new highway was still postponed, and so on, nobody with common sense would say: Let's not name the speed of the speed accident in the wikipdia definition because many experts are saying: With a dry, properly maintained street, not crowded by too many cars, one can drive a Lamborghini with the illegal speed of 130 kmh without necessarily running into a store.

The reader should have the right to know what this speed accident is about already in the definition phrase, wether the Lamborghini went like 80 kmh (exceeding the 60 kmh speed limit like almost everybody else has already done before), or if it went 130 kmh, something more exceptional; even though if - according to experts - with an illegal "speed" of 130 kmh you also could have avoided a "speed accident", if only the environment had been better (no rain), nobody would hide the speed in a WP "speed accident" article (WP authors are usually not afraid that the reader later on doesn't understand that with better environment conditions a 130 kmh does not necessarily lead to an accident.) (WP would also not empasize "legalism" concerning the legal speed limit being 60 kmh, even if they are special interest groups like Hells Angels who traditionally wouldn't care about speed limits as they have "club rules")

In a second sentence one could mention that between 1995 and 2000 there have been some speed accidents in New York since they were importing European Speed Cars, the New Yorkers were not used to drive, and mention that the detailed causes varied (they have have been speeding with drunk driving, with cell phone use, with bad tires, and so on)

In a third sentence one could summarize the main causes of the famous "Manhattan Speeding Accident", also reflecting that the driver was speeding for years with his Lamborghini, but the police didn't do their job to monitor speed in that region for 10 years.

The official New York police report, written by accident experts New York is mandating, will probably not mention/emphasite too much the speed of the accident because of accusations that New York didn't monitor speed in that region for 10 years against their rules.

So, also an EU report on the Greek debt crisis might not emphasize the 300 bn debt level too much, as the EU institutions with their big budgets were not able to discover that Greece had a debt overload since the beginning of the euro, and for 10 years. So EU reports may not have a "neutral understanding of the crisis" concerning causes that were with the EU institutions. But that is no reason WP should hide the debt level of state sliding in a debt crisis (even if the debt level were of minor importance to a debt crisis - what it is not)

--EconomicsEconomics (talk) 15:48, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

EC Economic Forecast reports are written by technical economic experts, working independently from the EU political bodies (i.e. the

Grexit

), which will not harm the rest of Europe but only himself and Greece. By the end of the day, the choice is up for Varoufakis and the Greek people to decide how to transport themselve into the future. Personally, I recommend choosing the "Lamborgini with speed control".

All this said, the reason why the first paragraph of the lead does not explicitly mention the debt and deficit in the first year of the Greek accident, is that the size of such figures do not explain why the car crashed - or to what severity it crashed. As I replied earlier in our debate, €300bn debt (130% of GDP) along with a 15% deficit would be something the private credit market gladly would have continued to finance for two more years in 2010, if this has just had happened in the context of "no structural weaknesses of the Greek economy" and the government operating a "structural balance surplus" (which is possible while operating a 15% budget balance deficit - then solely originating from adverse oneoff measures and adverse impact of the recession and not being related to unhealthy public deficit spending). In comparison Japan has a + 200% debt-to-GDP ratio without having a government-debt crisis, so looking blindly at this figure alone, does not define when you are in the midst of a crisis. If Greece can manage to operate a positive structural balance for a sustained number of years (while ensuring long-term sustainability by reforming its pension and health care system), then private investors will gladly return and finance its refinancing of debt, even if the debt-to-GDP level is up at 200%, because such scenario will equal a guarantee the debt-to-GDP ratio is on a solid declining path and not dangerously running upward at an increasingly speed.

In this context, one can even claim, that IMF is kind of obsessed when demanding the Eurogroup needs to offer Greece debt-relief to the extend of its debt-to-GDP reaches max.124% in 2020. But why is it 124% in 2020 and not 124% in 2030, and why do they consider a 150% ratio declining steadily 5% per year because of operating a modest structural budget balance at +1% not to be sufficient? Reason for this obsessive IMF demand of 124% in 2020, is that the "debt sustainability" for a debitor state receiving its loans need to be "guaranteed by a strong likelihood". The truth however is, that Greece will be regarded to have fully regained its "Fiscal sustainability" as soon as they continue operating structural budget surpluses and implement the needed structural reforms. This is btw also why the door to the private lending market already briefly reopened again for Greece during Q2-Q3 2014, before Syriza spoiled all progress by flushing out the Greek progress through insisting Greece should not take its needed medicine - preferring a harmful period of political caos and objecting to medical care. Danish Expert (talk) 20:58, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Here is a misundersanding. You wrote "the size of such figures do not explain why the car crashed"; I agree to that but my point is another one. In the first sentence for WP "accident" articles WP should define/describe the accident that the article is about (country, time, issue) and not already try to explain the reasons for the accident especially if there are many reasons.

• telling the speed of a car in the first sentence of a "speed accident" article is defining/decribing what speed accident the speed accident is about and not saying this speed necessarily produces accidents; it is also not implying that even higher speeds are not possibe without having an accident
• telling that 1 box of beer has been consumed in the first sentence of a "beer accident" article is defining/decribing what this specific beer accident article is about and not saying this consuming of 1 box of beer necessarily produces an accident; it is also not implying that even higher beer consum levels are not possibe without having an accident
• telling that 3 bullets have been shot in the first sentence of a "shooting accident" article is defining/decribing what the specific shooting accident article is about and not saying this firing of 3 bullets necessarily produces an accident; it is also not implying that firing 6 bullets is not possibe without having an accident
• telling that 300bn was the debt level in the first sentence of a "debt crisis" article is defining/decribing what specific debt crisis the article is about and not saying that having 300bn debt necessarily produces a debt crisis; it is also not implying that a higher debt level (Japan) is not possibe without having a debt crisis

--EconomicsEconomics (talk) 22:32, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I've re-written this somewhat, and added a whole bunch of in line citations, added qualifications (eg added values to amounts that are described as "large", "small", "similar" etc. I've removed the huge POV bias in this section and the repeated use of "Actually" which seemed to be there to discredit the previous statement. Where some of the claims were against facts I've corrected these and added citations to qualify these.

The only part I was unsure of was the previous last paragraph which seemed tacked on and to add nothing other than to try and push a specific agenda as they don't state a controversy nor address one, copied below.

Greek public debt-to-GDP ratio was essentially stable prior to the 2008–2009 international crisis, averaging between 1995 and 2007 (including all recent Eurostat revisions) 99.8%, compared with 110.5% in Italy, 106.8% in Belgium 65.1% in Austria and 62.3% in Germany.[56] Relevant arguments include those expressed by Paul Krugman:

Ever since Greece hit the skids, we’ve heard a lot about what’s wrong with everything Greek. Some of the accusations are true, some are false — but all of them are beside the point. Yes, there are big failings in Greece’s economy, its politics and no doubt its society. But those failings aren’t what caused the crisis that is tearing Greece apart, and threatens to spread across Europe.

—Paul Krugman, Greece as Victim (June 17, 2012)[57] In general, when quantified and qualified, the true relative position of Greece has been shown in a number of issues, including external debt (gross, net and Net International Investment Position) and corresponding thereto current account deficit,[31][58][59] state borrowing (measured by public debt to GDP as shown above), tax evasion,[60][61] bureaucracy,[62] etc.

MattUK (talk) 17:46, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Referencing the reversions by user Thanatos666 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Thanatos666 what is the basis for this revert? The information was all factual, cited and correct, you've just reverted a whole section back to a heavily POV writing style for no apparent reason?MattUK (talk) 18:09, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm also concerned about these reverts by Thanatos666. This is no place for POV rants. Cleaning up cherrypicked economic factoids, and highly selective use of sources, and removing text that contradicts reliable sources are false, is not "unjustified content removal". bobrayner (talk) 18:12, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm happy to discuss any changes, any maybe some of the paragraphs need further re-wording but they were significantly POV before and many of the previous "facts" were actually inaccurate when I came to add citations to them so those were corrected as I went along. I understand that some people have a strong opinion on this so I was especially conscious to not add anything without making sure I provided the citation. MattUK (talk) 18:18, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

(editconflict)

@ MattUK

Undid both your IP edits.

• Part of the relevancy of the Krugman quotation for example is in short that there has been a bombardment claiming x while according to at least his view the real problem is y, i.e. that the media and pundits have been or are being, to say the least, a bit wrong...
• Another example, among the many, of why I've reverted your edits can be found at the "The need of (lazy) Greeks to work harder" and your adding in a supposedly counterargument to it by adding in productiveness. Well productiveness, competitiveness etc. are important (they are also complex issues) but this does not constitute a counterargument to the rebuttal of the accusation/claim, at least not necessarily. Greeks for all practical purposes have been accused, among other things, of being lazy scum that could or would save themselves if only they worked harder/more. Well let me just say that an Greek worker, overworked or underworked, cannot change for example that he/she's not producing Mercedes premium cars when he/she's working.
• Also discussing such a major change before making it would be nice...
  PS On the other hand remove, if you must, for example, the "actually"s. Just please don't go from saying that you're removing instances of "actually" to reaching a point where you've removed or negated whole sections.
  PPS @bobrayner I will disregard for now the rant accusation but bear in mind that my patience is running thin, out. To say the least, characterising something as a factoid etc does not automatically transform it into one... Thanatos|talk|contributions 18:44, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The Krugman quotation seemed to be just “floating”, it’s not relevant because it has no context, it’s just pasted in at the end of the section almost on the basis of “if you disagree with the facts presented above, here is someone’s opinion”.

In the "The need of (lazy) Greeks to work harder" section only one element of how “hard” someone works was presented, which was the amount of hours spent “at work”. I added the information of productivity per hour worked precisely because it was a complex issue, it can’t be boiled down to just one statistic (hours in work) and by presenting the full facts people are able to come to their own conclusions. Your opinion, just as mine, on whether Greeks have been called “lazy scum” is irrelevant, citable facts are what counts on Wikipedia.

I made the changes because the section was so blatantly POV that it couldn’t stand as it was, the changes as per WP guidelines wouldn’t be called major, I removed weasel words, added (cited) facts and deleted some seriously POV comments. You claim that I said I just removed the repeated “actually’s” but my edit summary was in fact “Removed POV wording, weasle words, repeated use of "Actually" added balance including citations to various sections, corrected grammar, spelling and punctuation”. Also you claim that I “negated” whole sections, but how can presenting facts, being that Wikipedia is supposed to be factual be regarded as negating anything, the only thing I negated was POV!

Additionally as the POV had stood for some time and not been removed I took action as per the “Be bold!” policy, I made the change to remove the POV and created a section on the talk page so that any minor issues could be worked out afterwards. That would seem to be a perfectly sensible and rational course of action to take. MattUK (talk) 19:15, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The section below was removed with the comment below by YeOldeGentleman: “however this is countered by Greek workers being some of the least productive, with only three un-modernised Eastern Block nations being less productive.

"Firstly, bare links are bad! Secondly, it is not germane: hours worked is in context of disproving "lazy greeks"; the fact that they have to work hard because of lower productivity is beside the point.)"

I don’t understand why linking to the data is bad? “Hours at work”, is not a solid basis for proving, or disproving “hard” work, it’s one metric in a larger measurement. Maybe the wording is wrong but in the context of the discussion I feel that it’s highly relevant. MattUK (talk) 19:54, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I misunderstood what you meant by "bare link", but I hardly think that necessitates the removal of the section, surely the solution is to annotate the links? Especially when virtually none of the links on this page are annotated. MattUK (talk) 19:57, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Further reverts by YeOldeGentleman with the comment below

Point about productivity's irrelevance stands. See OECD's basic 'Measuring Productivity': "productivity only PARTIALLY reflects… capacities of workers or the intensity of their effort.")

You seem to be missing the point, hours at work can not be used as the sole arbiter of how "hard" someone works, it can not be used to prove or discount "laziness", how hard someone works is a measure of a range of factors, how long they are at work, how much they produce while there etc. I'm trying to present relevant facts, I've stated reasons why I think they are relevant. You are deleting them by claiming that a single measure can't be used to prove effort, but you have now twice deleted an additional relevant metric, when only one was there before.

I am attempting to "assume good will", however I can't see a valid reason, nor have you been so far willing to present one as to why cited relevant facts should be deleted from the article.

MattUK (talk) 20:30, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict again)

Well that's you view and the onus is on you to substantiate it. For example

Ever since Greece hit the skids, we’ve heard a lot about what’s wrong with everything Greek. Some of the accusations are true, some are false — but all of them are beside the point

(emphasis mine).

• First bolded part is the media frenzy. First point of relevance.
• Second bolded part is the false accusations; Second point of relevance.
• Third bolded part is the whole point; all of this media frenzy, including the accusation, is irrelevant cause it's besides the point, at least according to Krugman.

Also, the passage has value in the greater context of the article. Also by removing it you've removed one of the few places in the article where a widespread, different opinion on the causes, nature, etc. of the crisis is expressed at a time when we're having a huge debate here at the talk page (look up... :) )

Need I continue?

Well facts, be they truely facts or not, are by themselves useless; you must exactly place them inside a context (a thing you're claiming to be editing and arguing for). In what way is productivity for example a counterargument to laziness, i.e. the accusation? High or low productivity does not mean, is not equivalent to laziness, at least not necessarily. Also put in another way, productivity is a function of many variables, one one of which is working hours, hours spent working. Again Greek workers, be they hard working or not, cannot simply make their job produce high added value stuff, it's hard for the Greece as whole to do it, let alone for Greeks as persons, as workers, especially but not exclusively in an overvalued for the economy currency.

That's you opinion. I disagree with most of it and with most of these changes you've done. For example how is "Greece has received over EURO 400 billion in subsidies from the EU during it's membership.[477][478]" relevant or even a counterargument to the accusation or rebuttal thereof of "Greeks living beyond their means"???
Note:Aside from the apparent imo irrelevancy, at least directly, many countries for example in the EU have received subsidies (including the northern ones). The subsidies were and are given for some reasons; for example by joining the EU and by susequent decisions thereof, Greece and other countries have lost a great deal of their productive base to the high tech etc north.

Or let's take a look at another change of yours: how is this

The key issue with the Greek deficit is that it was at nearly 10% in the decades running up to 1999, droped below 3% for one year to meet admission criteria and the rose significantly on entry

1.a counterargument to the relevant accusation, i.e. "Greece cheated its way into the Eurozone (did not truly meet admission criteria", 2.where are the sources backing it up?, and 3. how isn't itself, be it true or false, a false context or cherry picking accusation itself in the light of e.g. this?

You're claiming to be fixing stuff when in reality...

Note: I've used "actually" as a shorthand for some of your claims. Which btw still have to be substantiated.

And now I'm asking you to discuss first and try to find a consensus. Reverting a reversion of a bold move on a once much argued and since very steady section without first discussing can easily start a edit-war, especially during times of of a another (fierce) war (scroll up). PS Well it seems that yet another war has started already, so... Thanatos|talk|contributions 20:38, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I’ll answer your points one at a time as I get the time so it might take a while. In the “lazy Greeks” section what I’m arguing for is the inclusion of a range of information that allows people to evaluate the statement properly. Hours at work on its own is not enough, neither is productivity per hour worked, however combined they can allow people to begin to interpret the available data.

You are arguing for the removal of productivity per hour because it doesn’t prove or disprove the effort of a Greek worker, but neither does the amount of hours at work, in isolation both are worthless statistics, together they could begin to mean something.MattUK (talk) 20:48, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanatos666, you're talking about an "edit war" as though other people, rather than you, were hammering the revert button. That is not a helpful line of discussion. Similarly, I am struggling to understand your revert complaining about inadequate discussion, before you even commented in the thread that I'd previously started. bobrayner (talk) 20:50, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes right, it's me that isn't talking and is reverting without first discussing, not you, despite the fact the reversions are on a different topic from yours, a thread I haven't even managed to see or read yet or one about which I might not even be interested in joining the discussion. I'm supposed to see and comment in 1000 different things whilst you can simply revert on everythingsomething I've provided real arguments and points about, and on something the only comments, be it here on inside the edit summaries, you've made is me supposedly ranting etc? Right... Thanatos|talk|contributions 21:30, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You disagree with most of the changes I made, that’s your prerogative, but it doesn’t tie up with what is trying to be presented here, which is the presentation of factual information relevant to the case at hand. The statement "Greece has received over EURO 400 billion in subsidies from the EU during it's membership.[477][478]" is relevant because it shows that the Greek economy has been subsidised by the EU that is important when explaining about “living beyond ones means”. Also the sentence: “The key issue with the Greek deficit is that it was at nearly 10% in the decades running up to 1999, dropped below 3% for one year to meet admission criteria and the rose significantly on entry” in relation to the accusation that Greece gamed the system to get in is relevant. How relevant is up to the reader, but the information is as factually relevant to the claim that Greece was under the limit when it applied as the criteria are supposed to apply for ever, not just for one year. Your comment below: “Note: I've used "actually" as a shorthand for some of your claims. Which btw still have to be substantiated” My “claims” are factual information, reliably cited, as far as Wikipedia is concerned that qualifies as “substantiated”. MattUK (talk) 20:54, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

“And now I'm asking you to discuss first and try to find a consensus. Reverting a reversion of a bold move on a once much argued and since very steady section without first discussing can easily start a edit-war, especially during times of of a another (fierce) war (scroll up). PS Well it seems that yet another war has started already, so...”

You haven’t asked to try and find a consensus, you started an edit war with multiple reversions to reliably cited material. The section might have been “steady”, but it was hugely POV and so shouldn’t stand as per WP policies. In this case YOU started this particular edit war and the separate edit war is actually irrelevant to the case of part of an article being POV or not.

You’ve reverted four times now and Wikipedia has the 3RR, see edit warring...

Well if you like to go legalistic on me then the two first reversions are really one divided into two and the last one was one to an editor that is not agreeing with you, not on your side. But yes, I had tried to prevent an edit war requesting a discussion but you and Bob continued the former while I was replying to you so as I've already indirectly stated in a previous post scriptum of mine, if you want an edit war, OK let's have it... Thanatos|talk|contributions 21:16, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"OK let's have it..."

I don't want an edit war, but you seem to be set on one unless you get your own way. You keep reverting to the version you want against the fact that everything is cited and according to WP policies is correct while replying with a spurious narrative that, and I'm paraphrasing "you can't use that measure of how hard people work, us this one, and don't include any others". I created the section on the talk page, which you ignored while making multiple reversions. MattUK (talk) 21:23, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

MattUK (talk) 21:01, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I see Thanatos666 has made yet another revert whilst imploring other editors to discuss. bobrayner (talk) 21:02, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I see that you still haven't tried or managed to really discuss, i.e. provide actual arguments etc.... ;-) Thanatos|talk|contributions 21:16, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I've provided quite a few arguments, and citations in the article, so far you've ignored them on the basis that only your chosen method (hours in work) can be used to measure how hard Greeks work. All the time while you indulge yourself in an edit war. MattUK (talk) 21:25, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

First of all that was a reply to Bobrayner, not you... Second, in such a context productivity among other things is a not a very helpful metric; the claim and accusation, the slur manyatime against Greeks is that Greeks among other things are lazy, don't work enough, not that the value of what is produced by their work is low or high. Hours worked is admittedly not the best or the only metric or variable one has to account for on laziness or other stuff but citing productivity let alone in such a way is even worse and besides the point of the accusation; or put another way it's an argument for the Greeks, against the accusation!!! ;-) Thanatos|talk|contributions 21:47, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Thanatos you keep deliberately missing the point, that you feel that Greeks are being "slurred" or "insulted" has no impact on this point. I agree that productivity ON ITS OWN is no measure of effort, but neither is hours in work. I'm arguing for the inclusion of multiple metrics to allow people to properly evaluate the information, you are arguing for the removal of any information that doesn't fit the POV that is currently in the article. MattUK (talk) 11:25, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Please do not restore

There is no "understanding", the paragraph (below) is not conjecture, it's sourced from solid factual information. I'm sure I can find multiple other sources that show the same if you'd rather that however the facts still stand as facts.

• ", however this is countered by Greek workers being some of the least productive, with only three un-modernised Eastern Block nations being less productive.[1]."

MattUK (talk) 21:11, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That's a remarkably broad definiton of WP:SYNTH; now we're forbidden to add a "however..." pointing out what a reliable source says, if it disagrees with other text that you like? bobrayner (talk) 21:16, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Please understand that you are using a primary source to push your SYNTH into the article. Unless you find a secondary, reliable source which makes the explicit connection do not attempt to edit-war your POV SYNTH into the article. Δρ.Κ. ^{λόγοςπράξις} 21:17, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, here we go:

• Business Insider
• The Guardian
• The Atlantic
• BBC

MattUK (talk) 21:33, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

OK, here we go.

• Business Insider piece is just about hours worked and productivity; tells you zilch about "laziness".
• Guardian: just tells you about hours worked; what's your point?
• Atlantic piece: comically, it totally undermines your position: "Germans—armed with large and scaled-up firms, low corruption, state-of-the-art technologies, financing opportunities, and smart global supply chain management—get a lot more product out of each hour worked. So does the U.S. With the wealth that our productivity buys, Americans and Germans can afford things like leisure, or savings, or (in the case of the U.S.) lots and lots of stuff. Matt Yglesias put it simply, broadly, and truly: 'Countries aren't rich because their people work hard. When people are poor, that's when they work hard.'"
• BBC Magazine: again, totally contradicts you.

This is a big waste of my time. Monumental question begging. German source on Greek "laziness". --YeOldeGentleman (talk) 22:09, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with YeOldeGentleman. None of these sources provided by MattUK supports the SYNTH phraseology that is being attempted to be inserted into the article. Δρ.Κ. ^{λόγοςπράξις} 22:21, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, Dr.K. The word "countered" is totally erroneous. The problem seems to be—not that my pointing it out seems to have made the slightest bit of difference—that some editors don't understand elementary economic concepts such as productivity). The bit about working long hours is analysis and conclusion from economist Dean Baker; the "countering" source is a bare link to productivity data. There is a reason original research is not allowed.

As I have already tried to point out, productivity is not a function of one variable (worker effort), so trying to put it up there as countering reliably-sourced evidence that Greeks are not "lazy" (which is a classic racist slur, you read it all the time in colonial histories: "lazy natives, if only they were like us, blah blah blah…") is, at best, embarrassing and ludicrous.

So my question is this: if you don't or won't grasp even elementary concepts like productivity, why are you trying to edit an article on an economic crisis? --YeOldeGentleman (talk) 21:43, 6 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not arguing that productivity are solid quantifiers of EFFORT, but neither is "hours in work", I'm arguing for the inclusion of multiple metrics to help represent the real situation properly rather than one cherry-picked statistic. MattUK (talk) 11:29, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

YeOldeGentleman, you are protecting the two phrases:

"The need of (lazy) Greeks to work harder". Actually Greeks have the highest average annual hours actually worked per worker in the European Union and one of the highest such number among OECD countries.

and in the discussion you try to make the impression to have embraced the "concept of productivity and laziness"? Did you see that these two sentences were a strong case of WP:SYNTH ?

Did you ever try to understand why so many brand new production facilities in Greece (that have been put up with EU subsidies) have been shut down and written off, i.e. why productivity in Greek plants has been so low that it was cheaper to throw the plant away than trying to improve the productivity? The story was always the same: usually product quality was problematic and reliability (schedules/deadlines/volumes) was missing. Instead of reacting and improving the work set-up, worker's councils and unions forced salary increases and made clear to their employers that rigid Greek labor laws protected them. As a consequence many Greek plants of international companies were closed down. The two sentences you are protecting don't make any sense because working hours were not Greece's problems but the willingness of the employees to adapt to market demand (or to refuse adaption until employees in other countries have taken over the whole volume). Some call that a lack of motivation, or lack of flexiblity, some call it ignorance, some call it laziness, I don't want to go in that discussion. But MattUK wasn't that wrong...

--EconomicsEconomics (talk) 01:16, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Your

talk) 05:49, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply

]

--EconomicsEconomics (talk) 09:39, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Excuse me, Athenean, but my changes were not "unexplained". I gave clear, concise reasons in my edit summary. Thank you. The word "actually" that is being used as a rebuttal to every argument about the reason Greeks have a debt crisis is a prime example of

I agree that these conjunctions are SYNTH, but so is this

However Greek public debt as a percentage of GDP and of government is the highest in the EU and Eurozone and Greece has received over EURO 400 billion in subsidies from the EU during it's membership.

which was added after the bullet refuting that "Greeks were living beyond their means". For starters, the EU subsidies have nothing to do with the subject of Greeks living beyond their means. Second, the fact that the debt to GDP ratio is currently the highest in Europe is misleading without added context regarding other countries which have similar ratios yet noone accuses them of living beyond their means. It is also anachronistic to mention the current debt to GDP ratio as a metric of Greeks living beyond their means because the ratio skyrocketed as a result of the depression-causing austerity not because Greeks are living beyond their means during the austerity-caused depression. Δρ.Κ. ^{λόγοςπράξις} 14:36, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@DrK: I agree that the EUR 400 bn should be presented in a context that cannot be misunderstood, and also describe effects more differentiated. Your arguments (and plain reverting) are not really helpful for the article, your arguments being really wrong:

• If a highly corrupt system/country gets EUR 400 bn subsidies for investments, this system/country will try to disobey the conditions attached to the subsidies, more clearly speaking: consume as much as possible of the 400 bn instead of investing the funds (like trying to create well paid positions and get family and friends in those positions even though they can not add value; like to buy (troubled) assets with these funds at (overvalued) prices; like selecting projects for the funds that are not productive (but yield high salaries); and so on). And exactly that happened to Greece. Consequence 1 is a unnaturally elevated Greek consume level. Consequence 2 is an unnaturally inflated Greek GDP (with many unsustainable projects) that will collapse as soon as the misallocated "investments" have to be written off. (ceteris paribus)
• If other countries don't have the same corruption level than Greece, they can have higher debt/GDP ratios without getting into trouble because their GDP is much more sustainable (ceteris paribus)
• Austerity - here meaning not getting as much deficit financing and cutting back former government expense increases - is a natural consequence if a state has misallocated/consumed a lot of investments for a long time because the state has to take the double hit - missing the planned return of those "investments", and not having anymore the inflated higher consume levels (after corruption stopped) that the population has got used to. (ceteris paribus)

This misallocation happened in Greece. The consequences happened, too. What I don't understand is that I (and not you) have to explain these casual relations about Greece as you perceive the other editors here to be starters (implying you are the professional)

--EconomicsEconomics (talk) 16:04, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Aside from your wall of text which per

WP:STICK. Δρ.Κ. ^{λόγοςπράξις} 17:25, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply

]

@

WP:ORN but leave your personal attack nonsense out of this discussion. Δρ.Κ. ^{λόγοςπράξις} 02:22, 8 June 2015 (UTC)[reply

]

@DrK: Suddenly you decide that a 400 bn Euro topic is not so important? And pretend not even to read answers after you were first very interested in deleting the topic (instead of improving it) and then starting a discussion (with wrong arguments). You are just stealing time with all your tactical moves, appearing to miss any honesty. --EconomicsEconomics (talk) 21:21, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Leave you silly personal attacks out of this talkpage. After your walls of text trying to justify your SYNTH didn't succeed to get your POV into the article you have resumed your personal attack nonsense. These are either dishonest tactics on your part or simple trolling. Don't waste my time if you don't understand what SYNTH is. But I will repeat to you once more in the outside chance you will finally get it: You don't need to write

WP:TLDR walls of text to support your SYNTH POV. Just find a reliable source which makes the connections you are making by creating your SYNTH-supporting walls of text. But obviously you haven't found that source and that's why you keep your attacks coming. Δρ.Κ. ^{λόγοςπράξις} 02:04, 8 June 2015 (UTC)[reply

]

You are trying to keep the 400bn subsidy subject out of this debt crisis article with wrong claims. I just gave clear arguments as a reply why your claims are wrong, and why it is wrong to keep this topic out of the article. There is no SYNTH violation in a talk page, especially not when making wrong claims transparent. Why are you not answering to the arguments as they are in total contradiction to your claims? Does it mean you agree? (and yes, it needs to be sourced when put in the article, no need to fill discussions with those no-brainers.)--EconomicsEconomics (talk) 09:07, 8 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

As some people seem to be intent on pushing an agenda I can see reaching any kind of consensus is going to be very difficult, however it doesn't mean the reasonable ones amongst us shouldn't try. I feel that it's best to take the paragraphs point by point to stop people being generally vague and reverting anything that doesn't fit their POV agenda.

The current paragraph as it stands is below, I've bolded weasel words that are covered by WP:Editoralizing

"The need of (lazy) Greeks to work harder". Actually Greeks have the highest average annual hours actually worked per worker in the European Union and one of the highest such number among OECD countries.

The first part "The need of (lazy) Greeks to work harder". is controversial, that doesn't mean it's true, or untrue, but means it needs balance and a qualification of both sides or the viewpoint.

Hard working/Lazy can't be quantified in one statistic, there is no A-F grade for effort that we can apply, so we need various metrics to allow people to draw their own conclusions. In isolation none of the provided statistics are relevant so I propose supplying the reader with a combination of data to allow them to draw their own conclusions.

The measures I propose providing to the reader are: Hours in work (with comparison to other EU countries, top, bottom and average) Productivity per hour in work (with comparison to other EU countries, top, bottom and average) I'm also open to other RELEVANT metrics being added if people can propose them. MattUK (talk) 10:41, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The current paragraph is below, I believe that the best course of action here is to add the number of days, EU average, and the three noted examples (Greece, Germany and France).

"Too many vacation days". Greeks have on average fewer vacation days than most EU workers (including the German and French). MattUK (talk) 10:44, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

As previously added I propose providing the average retirement ages and rewording the paragraph.

Current paragraph: "Greeks retiring early".[446][451][453] ( a somewhat erroneous argument based on focusing on specific groups which &ndash like in many countries – enjoy early retirement). The average retirement age (both official and effective) for Greeks is close to that for Germans, and, more importantly, effective retirement age is higher than this in countries like Austria, France, Finland and Belgium.

Proposed revision: "Greeks retiring early". The average retirement age (effective) for Greeks (61.9) is close to that for Germans (62.1), however the effective retirement age is higher than this in countries like France (59.7), Finland (61.8) and Belgium (59.6), but lower than countries such as the UK (63.7), Ireland (64.6) and Portugal (68.4), with the OECD average being 64.2).

(a somewhat erroneous argument based on focusing on specific groups which - like in many countries - enjoy early retirement). The average retirement age (both official and effective) for Greeks (61.9) is close to that for Germans (62.1), however the effective retirement age is higher than this in countries like France (59.7), Finland (61.8) and Belgium (59.6).

http://www.oecd.org/els/emp/ageingandemploymentpolicies-statisticsonaverageeffectiveageofretirement.htm MattUK (talk) 10:51, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The current paragraph is below: "Spendthrift Greek governments". Government expenditures as a percentage of GDP in Greece have been near or below EU average and certainly below these in Germany, Netherlands, Finland, France, Austria, and Belgium. The problem lies mostly in the revenue side of the equation, not in expenditures.

The revised paragraph citing facts and figures. "Spendthrift Greek governments". Greek government expenditures as a percentage of GDP in Greece (51.9%) have been roughly in line with EU averages (49.8%), Netherlands (49.8%), Finland (55.1%), France (56.1%), Austria (50.5%), and Belgium (53.3%).

Removal of the last sentence because it is irrelevant to the expenditure, expenditure is covered elsewhere.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending#As_a_percentage_of_GDP — Preceding unsigned comment added by MattUK (talk • contribs) 10:55, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Current Paragraph: "Profligate Greek welfare state". The Greek social safety net has historically ranked low or lower than many other countries in Europe and moreover it is very dependent on kin or familial contribution and expenditure, characteristic of the Southern European Social Welfare model.

Proposed revision: "Profligate Greek welfare state". The Greek social safety net has historically ranked low or lower than some other countries in Europe and moreover it is generally dependent on kin or familial contribution, which is characteristic of the Southern European social welfare model. MattUK (talk) 10:58, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That seems reasonable to me. bobrayner (talk) 14:38, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The current paragraph is: "Greeks living beyond their means". While the rise of private debt, consumer, household, financial or other, during the boom years, might indeed constitute a serious problem (especially when combined with other problems), private, household and total (private and public) debt-to-GDP ratios in Greece are actually among the lowest in the Eurozone. However Greek public debt as a percentage of GDP and of government is the highest in the EU and Eurozone and Greece has received over EURO 400 billion in subsidies from the EU during it's membership.

Proposed revision: "Greeks living beyond their means". While the rise of private debt, consumer, household, financial or other, during the boom years, might indeed constitute a serious problem (especially when combined with other economic issues), private, household and total (private and public) debt-to-GDP ratios in Greece are actually among the lowest in the Eurozone. However Greek public debt as a percentage of GDP and of government revenue is the highest in the EU and Eurozone. During the periods in question and Greece has received over EURO 400 billion in subsidies from the EU which helped masked further issues with structural deficits. MattUK (talk) 11:02, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Current paragraph: "Greece cheated its way into the Eurozone (did not truly meet admission criteria)". This is a widespread yet debatable, if not controversial, statement about a complex issue; moreover, it is many-a-times extended to Greek people being cheats in general.[482] It refers predominantly to one of the five Eurozone entry criteria (as the rest, if not all, had been met or as on many countries, had in essence been waved off, not strictly applied),[483] the year 1999 budget deficit, which should have been below 3% of GDP. Although Greece has been the worst, though not the sole,[483][484][485] violator of the Eurozone convergence criteria after its entrance, it has been argued that it actually fulfilled all criteria for admission including the 1999 budget deficit (even with all later corrections, within a margin of about 0.07% of GDP, as per the most recent AMECO -the official Annual Macroeconomic database of the EU commission- data) according to the accounting method in force at the time (ESA79). Even the highest ever alternative estimate for the 1999 budget deficit (in 2004, using an unorthodox accounting for military orders, later corrected, coupled with retroactive application of the current EU accounting method, i.e., ESA95) did not exceed 3.38%. This claim most commonly lacks context, qualification or comparison to other countries; for example, according to the AMECO database statistics, the deficit data (Excessive Deficit Procedure) for year 1997, the year other initial member states were assessed on for entry into the Eurozone, show other countries exceeding the 3% of GDP mark too: in 1997, France, Portugal and Spain ran a government budget deficit of 3.308%, 3.688% and 4.006% of GDP, respectively

"Greece cheated its way into the Eurozone (did not truly meet admission criteria)". This is a widespread and hotly debated subject and has become complicated issue.[484] It refers predominantly to one of the five Eurozone entry criteria, the year 1999 budget deficit, which was required to be below 3% of GDP to qualify for entry. Greece has been the worst, though not the sole,[485][486][487] violator of the Eurozone convergence criteria after its entrance. it argued that it actually fulfilled all criteria for admission including the 1999 budget deficit at the time of admission (even with later corrections) according to the accounting method in force at the time (ESA79). The highest alternative estimate for the 1999 budget deficit (in 2004, using an unorthodox accounting for military orders, coupled with retroactive application of the current EU accounting method, ESA95) was 3.38%. (Excessive Deficit Procedure) As a comparison for 1997 (although not a qualifying year, the year other initial member states were assessed on for entry into the Eurozone, show other countries exceeding the 3% of GDP mark too: in 1997, France, Portugal and Spain ran a government budget deficit of 3.308%, 3.688% and 4.006% of GDP respectively, however in the year of joining they were all below the 3.00% limit. The key issue with the Greek deficit is that it was at nearly 10% in the decades running up to 1999, dropped below 3% for one year to meet admission criteria and the rose significantly on admission. MattUK (talk) 11:08, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Current Paragraph:

"Goldman Sachs helped Greece cheat its way into the Eurozone”. Also a surprisingly widespread erroneous (inter alia antedating) statement, since by 2001, the year of said Goldman Sachs deal, Greece had already been admitted into the Eurozone.

Proposed revision:

"Goldman Sachs helped Greece cheat its way into the Eurozone”. The Goldman Sachs deal didn't take place until 2001 by which time Greece had already been admitted into the Eurozone.

MattUK (talk) 11:10, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe to add the sentence: "It is unknown if the 2001 Goldman Sachs deal was already being negotiated when Greece was in the process of becoming part of the eurozone without really fulfilling the Maastricht criteria."

--EconomicsEconomics (talk) 11:22, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

What do you think to: "The Goldman Sachs deal wasn't completed until 2001 by which time Greece had been admitted into the Eurozone. It is unknown if the deal was already being negotiated when Greece was in the process of becoming part of the Eurozone without truly fulfilling the Maastricht criteria." MattUK (talk) 11:33, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It is anyway worth mentioning this topic even broader because there is also an obligation of the eurozone countries to stay within convergence criteria after the entry (especially deficit and debt; not anymore inflation if I remember correclty). And GS also wanted to "help" until 2009 but the Greek PM refused to mask the figures any longer. --EconomicsEconomics (talk) 12:21, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This section doesn't address any specific points, it's more of a collection of opinions that are thrown in at the end for no obvious reason, recommended amends in italics below if this section stays at all, which is debatable.

The current mess at the end is below:

Moreover, a lot of references to problems after Greece’s entry into the EU and the Eurozone (increase in public spending, lower competitiveness, over-regulation, corruption, "protected" professions, tax evasion etc.) are often made without quantification or comparison with other EU countries, possibly creating an impression of an "inevitable" Greek debt crisis (independent of external factors). However, Greek public debt-to-GDP ratio was essentially stable prior to the 2008–2009 international crisis, averaging between 1995 and 2007 (including all recent Eurostat revisions) 99.8%, compared with 110.5% in Italy, 106.8% in Belgium 65.1% in Austria and 62.3% in Germany.[492] Relevant arguments include those expressed by Paul Krugman:

Some of the problems after Greece's entry to the EU and Eurozone are made without direct comparison to other EU countries, however comparing individual statistics in isolation is difficult due to the wide differences of how each EU country has structured it's economy and budget.

Ever since Greece hit the skids, we’ve heard a lot about what’s wrong with everything Greek. Some of the accusations are true, some are false — but all of them are beside the point. Yes, there are big failings in Greece’s economy, its politics and no doubt its society. But those failings aren’t what caused the crisis that is tearing Greece apart, and threatens to spread across Europe.

—Paul Krugman, Greece as Victim (June 17, 2012)[493]

(Does this even add anything to the article? It's an opinion piece rather than any presentation of fact.)

In general, when quantified and qualified, the true relative position of Greece has been shown in a number of issues, including external debt (gross, net and Net International Investment Position) and corresponding thereto current account deficit,[467][494][495] state borrowing (measured by public debt to GDP as shown above), tax evasion,[103][496] bureaucracy,[497] etc.

(This section is entirely POV, it adds a strong POV narrative which isn't needed if the facts are presented.)

MattUK (talk) 11:18, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Krugman has a Keynes' agenda meaning he will almost always propose (and "analyze") that the state with its fiscal expenses and the central bank with printing money will solve any problem, independent of the specific environment and the specific situation.

Krugman has not really been open in his long career to the changed world. Many countries are more globalized than decades ago (internet, communication, global travel/trade, global brands and global consumer behavior, global taxi services like 'uber' an so on), and Keynes national recipes don't really work well in the open world economy.

Late in his career, Krugman didn't want to learn that, e.g. that short-term income and consumption is not correlated as it used before, with inflation and employment the same (because the central banks cannot fool people so much as in earlier times with printing money, as everybody can read it on his smartphone before the printing machines even start) and so on.

If you don't know how to solve your problems or don't want to do structural reforms, you would always refer to Krugman or Keynes, as they says, structural reforms are overrated, just throw (state) money at the problem (which obviously doesn't work, everybody threw money at Greece for decades, even being the reason they have no efficient structures; why collect taxes if you can get money from the EU and ECB?)

That is the reason Krugman is not asked by the EU how to solve the crisis.

--EconomicsEconomics (talk) 11:47, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with

• First point of concern, is that the scope for the chapter seems solely to build at a singular secondary source: the article of Sonja Joku, without checking/mentioning how her personal view fits with findings by other sources into this subchapter about "Controversy about media coverage".

• Second point of concern, the validity of featuring the list below of "incorrect citations by various media", of which the majority of the citations were sourced by links to cartoons and statements made by John Stewart in The Daily Show, can also be questioned. At least it needs to be put into context. Point here is, that the editors compiling this subchapter made the WP:SYNTH mistake to bridge a hypothesis posted by Sonja Joku ("that inaccurate media stories about Greeks, could be the root cause why private investors suddenly decided to ask their continued lending to be conditional of sky high interest rates above 6% - starting from January 2010"), with a bulletpoint list below of comedy citations made by the comedian John Stewart (implicit suggesting professional investors made their lending decisions to Greece based on a handful of John Stewart statements).

• As for the first bulletpoint statement (which opened up this specific talkpage debate): "The need of (lazy) Greeks to work harder", there also is a heavy concern into the fact that we lack appropriate primary sources for this citation to be widespread/present in other media outside of how a few Comedians/Cartoons might have depicted the Greek crisis back in 2011. The first "source" (being a satirical cartoon) actually did not even feature the cited words, as it in fact only depicted that Greece received bailout funds from Germany without doing anything in return (other than stressing out at the beach). The second "source" is the John Stewart video clip, which does not play for me in Denmark, but again I heavily suppose his words if really being "The need of (lazy) Greeks to work harder", should not have been interpreted how this phrase is being interpreted when standing alone out of the rest he said in the clip. Cutting out pieces of word from a joke, and utilizing it this way as a bulletpoint to bridge a niche hypothesis made by Sonja Juko (an external doctoral candidate at a German university faculty for political science), is as WP:SYNTH as anything can be.

I am not opposed to keeping having the subchapter as part of our WP article, but some of us really needs to read it carefully through from top to bottom (while reading all the attached sources), and then correct all of the present WP:SYNTH issues being present in the chapter. Danish Expert (talk) 11:26, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There is a broader problem. Reliable sources say certain things about the Greek economy, which certain editors disagree with, so this section is maintained as a way of undermining those sources. We should just report what reliable sources say, instead of building an immense pile of synthesis to explain away the bits we don't like. bobrayner (talk) 12:45, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

there is an even broader problem: if Apple employees or their family members would obvioulsy block the improvement of the Apple article (having an obvious agenda to make Apple look good even if it means tweaking reality; block-reverting almost everything not compatible with their agenda; mainly active to block/delete and not to contribute; opposing any change of obvious POV/SYNTH/and so on; filling lengthy unnecessary discussions but not specifying what they really want or oppose; not even contributing to the article with their special Apple knowhow and sources), they should probably refrain from editing this article because of obvious WP:CONFLICT; is that different with the Greek debt crisis?

Or better wait until every (competent and willing) author is fent away?

--EconomicsEconomics (talk) 13:13, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Shall we remove the section, then? bobrayner (talk) 20:51, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I reverted an edit

Technically it still is the most corrupt country in the EU, it's just tied in that position with three other countries, like in a horse race, the four of them are joint last. That being said I would re-write the paragraph based on the 2014 data to something similar to what is below: "Greece, together with Italy, Bulgaria and Romania are the four joint most corrupt countries in the EU, all scoring 43/100 on the Transparency International index." Remember to assume good faith in edits, information was added that was sourced, unfortunately this information was out of date, the information, where relevant, should be updated rather than removed in its entirety. MattUK (talk) 17:59, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It's hard to assume good faith when someone gets sloppy like that with the facts and also reverts despite being told that the statement is inaccurate and dated. Your formulation is better but it is still too definitive because even the source used talks about perception of corruption not an actual fact. Δρ.Κ. ^{λόγοςπράξις} 19:41, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Multiple reliable sources discuss rampant corruption in Greece, but Dr. K removes any mention of this, with spurious reasons. First, arguing that the source is too old (a source which is three years after the crisis started); then complaining about "attribution" - which is bullshit, it's perfectly OK to use wikipedia's voice to say what reliable sources say - then going back to the "old sources" fiction and lying about my motives, even after I added a much more recent source. Dr K's extraordinarily high (and ever-changing) standards for sourcing appear only to apply to content which are honest about Greek economic problems - I note that Dr. K hasn't edit-warred to remove the swathes of synthesis and badly-sourced content elsewhere. Previously we had no mention at all of Greek corruption, but we did have coverage of German corruption, citing a source that wasn't about Greece at all. Dr. K, do you understand Wikipedia's policies on

verifiability? If you do, can you give a meaningful explanation - don't just repeat your last excuse - for removing any mention of Greek corruption from a topic which, reliable sources say, is heavily influenced by Greek corruption? bobrayner (talk) 19:51, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply

]

I see Dr. K. has readded my content - with some extra framing, which is a start. I'll overlook the attacks in Dr. K.'s latest edit summary, since we should be focussing on improving content. Dr. K., for future article improvements, would you agree that we need more coverage of Greek corruption based on the many reliable sources, and less

synthesis about other people's corruption? bobrayner (talk) 19:59, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply

]

Your rhetorical question does not impress me. I find it amazing that you still stick to an outdated source from 2012 which calls Greece "the most corrupt country in Europe" and you willfully ignore the fact that that statement is no longer correct. I don't think you have a problem with English so can you explain to me why you insist on something that is patently misleading for the reader? Δρ.Κ. λόγοςπράξις 20:51, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

To what extent do you feel the reduced levels of Greek corruption in 2014 - which you have now emphasised in the article - alleviate Greek responsibility for economic problems in preceding years? My last comment wasn't a rhetorical question, by the way, it was entirely genuine; would you agree that we need more coverage of Greek corruption based on the many reliable sources, and less

synthesis about other people's corruption? bobrayner (talk) 21:52, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply

]

I have not emphasised anything. I provided accurate information and corrected patently misleading facts based on expired sources. As far as your second question, my initial reply was focused on the particular edit I just performed and I thought you were calling it synthesis. But if your question is more general than that, then it is too vague for me to address. However I must say that if other peoples' corruption is related by reliable sources to the Greek corruption then it should be included in the article because it can provide needed context without which the article will become a one-sided POV piece on Greece. Δρ.Κ. ^{λόγοςπράξις} 22:38, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The article covers a crisis with a timespan from 2009-2020, so removal of any content believed to be "misleading facts based on expired sources" from the earliest years in 2009-13, is highly inappropriate. Such removals shall be restored immediately. When appropriately sourced problems or facts develop over time, WP depict such developments by mentioning both the data from 2012 and 2014 (based on both of the two sources). The oldest source will per definition never expire, and remain to be valid for ever. The 2012 corruption source help depict how big the corruption problem was at the beginning of the crisis, and if it then gradually improved across the subsequent years such finding will also be relevant to note (to depict that the problem started gradually to improved in the midst of the crisis). Adding a "2014 fact line", can never remit removal of the "2012 fact line", which explained how big the corruption problem was in 2012. Danish Expert (talk) 07:44, 8 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You do not

talk) 07:59, 8 June 2015 (UTC)[reply

]

@

WP:NOTABLE and being inside the content scope and time scope of the chapter/article's topic), then such content remain to be valid and will never expire. If applying Dr.K's invalid "expired data" argument on the article's content in general, we could only depict 2015 data for the 2009-2015 Greek government-debt crisis, without describing how the data progressed during the course of the crisis, which really proofs my point why a sudden enforcement of this "removal of expired data argument" is highly inappropriate. Danish Expert (talk) 08:34, 8 June 2015 (UTC)[reply

]

You are, of course, entitled to your opinion. However, do keep in mind that it is just an opinion and other people may disagree with that opinion. In any case, I think the matter is settled now.

talk) 08:43, 8 June 2015 (UTC)[reply

]

Even not considering your user name, Athenean, I assume you may have a basic understanding of main points of the Greek debt crisis, including that its causes started latest in 1999/2001 when Greece entered the eurozone without being fiscally and economically convergent to the eurozone criteria, including that corruption is one of the main causes so many things went wrong for such a long time (and are only being really addressed through international pressure when the debt crisis erupted). Everybody having this basic understanding would normally ask to enlarge the 2012/2013/2014 corruption data with appropriate sources at least up to 1999/2001 to get the full picture relevant to the debt crisis - but you (alongside with others obviously having a WP:CONFLICT) do the opposite and try to demotivate any editor to contribute at all to this article.--EconomicsEconomics (talk) 09:27, 8 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Danish Expert: Such removals shall be restored immediately. I don't think you have read a single comment I wrote about the removal or the justification for it. You argument The oldest source will per definition never expire, and remain to be valid for ever. is of course nonsense when the source refers to an outdated poll about corruption perception from 2012. You are also off the mark when you say I removed the sources. Have you seen my edit where I restored the source after I fixed the misleading phrasing of the sentence? Or would you have preferred that wrong, outdated information remain uncorrected in the article? So leave your imperious instructions Such removals shall be restored immediately. for someone else because they do not apply to me. Δρ.Κ. ^{λόγοςπράξις} 11:48, 8 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Dr.K.: Somehow you entirely missed my point, which was declared in full to my above follow-up reply to Athenean. I will not repeat again, but refer you to read my previous reply to Athenean. After having revisited your changes of the disputed line and 2012 source, I can see that you indeed kept the source visible in the article (which was good), but that you decided to rephrase the line into what you refer to as a formulation reflecting "correct info - replacing expired old data" (which was bad). What you did was to replace below phrase 1 with your own phrase 2:

• Phrase 1: "Tax evasion is widespread, and Greece is the most corrupt country in the EU."
• Phrase 2: "Tax evasion is widespread, and according to the 2014 Corruption perception index, Greece, together with Italy, Bulgaria and Romania are the four joint most corrupt countries in the EU, all scoring 43/100 on the Transparency International index."

My reply in this talkpage debate, was simply to highlight, that for a debt-crisis having a duration at least from 2009-2015, it is highly relevant the article does not limit itself only to display the latest data, but on the contrary feature data and info also to mention how various factors developed both ahead and during the crisis. I salute your add of the second more updated reference, featuring data for 2012+2013+2014. My point however was, that instead of enforcing your Phrase 2 (which completely ignore how data were for Greece back when its debt crisis erupted), it would be far better to let the line display how his "corruption" figure developed during the course of time. On this basis, my proposal is that we now replace your "Phrase 2" (which did not reach consensus here at this talkpage), with this new "Phase 3":

• Phrase 3: "As of 2012, tax evasion was widespread, and according to Transparency International's Corruption perception index, Greece, was the most corrupt country in the EU by a score of 36/100. Due to the effort by the Greek government to combat corruption - as part of meeting one of the conditional terms in its bailout program, the corruption level improved to a score of 43/100 in 2014, which was still the lowest in EU, but now up at the same score as being measured in Italy, Bulgaria and Romania."

I hope you all can accept the above counter-proposed "phrase 3" (being a compromise between phrase 1 and phrase 2). Thanks for a good constructive debate. Danish Expert (talk) 10:29, 9 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Danish Expert: Thank you DE. I agree with your proposal and have implemented it with a few minor grammatical copyedits. Your proposal is more detailed, technically proficient and more accurate historically. Keep up the good work. Best regards. Δρ.Κ. ^{λόγοςπράξις} 12:56, 9 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Dr.K. now picked the only option that is total WP:SYNTH ( "Due to the efforts of the Greek government to combat corruption - as part of meeting one of the conditional terms in its bailout program, the corruption level improved to a score of 43/100 in 2014" ) - this is totally made up - and anyway not very believable if one has read the press the last years. Also again a very astonishing double standard of Dr.K. who has tried with his other edits on this talk page to make everybody believe he would fight WP:SYNTH (even if there was no WP:SYNTH.). (Learning: one should only negotiate with other editors about good WP content if they are free WP:CONFLICT )--EconomicsEconomics (talk) 13:40, 9 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

WP:CONFLICT accusation

@EconomicsEconomics: Kindly keep your aspersions regarding my username and motivations to yourself. It's thanks to various "experts" such as yourself and others that is article is an massive, convoluted unreadable wall of text. And now you and the other "experts" want to make it even more convoluted and unreadable. You do realize there is no one who can read the article in its present form. Even the lede is tl;dr territory for most of our readers. Think about that for a while.

Please kindly accept that "username and motivations" are not irrelevant to WP:CONFLICT, even the opposite.

You also missed the point that I started the talk section " >100 pages, but still main points missing? " and proposed to have 1 page with the main points in the lead. I also proposed a structure to ensure the article would not be something like "massive, convoluted unreadable wall of text" as you call it, but that it be understandable and accessible. But the accounts Dr.K and Thanatos (and with part-time support of some others) were not interested to cooperate and opposed - as you do above - any reasonable change. It is clear to me that accounts having a WP:CONFLICT won't admit it, so I preempt your protest. --EconomicsEconomics (talk) 09:57, 8 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Please kindly accept that "username and motivations" are not irrelevant to WP:CONFLICT, even the opposite. Can you quote a policy supporting that remark or is it just the product of your proven propensity for ethnicity-based discrimination? Why are you targeting Greek editors who are properly defending Wikipedia against your SYNTH while hiding your own details behind an anonymous account? You could have any type of anti-Greek agenda or conflict of interest hiding behind your mask of anonymity and lack of details of your ethnic background. Or do you think your lack of transparency gives you the right to adopt a holier than thou attitude while at the same time discriminating against those who have openly declared their ethnic background? Leave your ethnic-discrimination theatrics out of Wikipedia. Δρ.Κ. ^{λόγοςπράξις} 11:38, 8 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Dr.K. , you know it better:

(so why the show if you hate long discussions?)

I am not "targeting Greek editors" but I proposed (after very frustrating and blocking discussions with Greek editors) to Greek editors having a WP:CONFLICT (Thanatos666 himself said that his agenda is to have "Greek interests" represented and that "Greek interests etc.[need to have] a prominence") that they should refrain from blocking the article improvement. You strongly supported Thanatos666 in blocking everything. What are you trying to convince me? That I'am blind?

--EconomicsEconomics (talk) 13:38, 8 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Can you give me a diff which supports that [I] strongly supported Thanatos666 in blocking everything.? And if you have a problem with Thanatos what do you think gives you the right to indiscriminately extend it to other editors of Greek-background and harass them about COI? Δρ.Κ. ^{λόγοςπράξις} 13:55, 8 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Just read again this talk page beginning with section ">100 pages, but still main points missing?", you have been very involved, so you might remember. And to remind you again: I suggested to Greek editors having a WP:CONFLICT to refrain from blocking the article, be it alone or in a coordinated behavior; or be it with your method of continuously changing your standards (sometimes WP:TLTR, sometimes you invoke and like long unnecessary discussions, and so on) --EconomicsEconomics (talk) 14:15, 8 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

...you have been very involved, so you might remember. This is the usual nonsense I have come to expect from you. "Being very involved" in a dicsussion does not equal "blocking" a discussion. You have to provide a diff or diffs supporting your ridiculous assertion. You have also been "very involved" in this discussion and often you have been pushing walls of text supporting SYNTH. Yet I did not accuse you that you have an agenda or insinuated anything about your background. You should try to offer the same courtesy to the editors who disagree with you. You also keep spouting your baseless, ethnicity-based harassment despite my level-2 warning on your talkpage: I suggested to Greek editors having a WP:CONFLICT to refrain from blocking the article, be it alone or in a coordinated behavior.. You should stop your harassment of the Greek editors. Consider this your final warning. Δρ.Κ. ^{λόγοςπράξις} 14:38, 8 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You definitely have too much spare time.--EconomicsEconomics (talk) 15:00, 8 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

How would everyone feel about a two or three day moratorium on edits, the article stands as it is now (07/06/2015 @ 19:22 UK time) for a period of two or three days while we on the talk page try and get things progressing in the right direction? That give us time to remove the huge amounts of POV in various sections and reach even a provisional consensus on the most contentious sections of the article. If that fails then I can see this needing a request for dispute resolution specifically related to people who keep reverting to POV material in the article and seem to oppose any changes whatsoever. If the everyone agrees then I think it could really help, however it needs to be a team effort otherwise it will just crash and burn. MattUK (talk) 18:25, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure you propose this with the best of intentions, but the article has serious problems with

WP:V, and so on. Pausing edits means delaying fixing those problems. Stopping to talk is a fine idea, but the cause of these problems is not a shortage of talkpage kilobytes. bobrayner (talk) 19:02, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply

]

I'm just looking for a solution because there are a couple of people who seem to oppose any changes whatsoever and they seem to be pushing POV, my hope is that 2 days might give them enough breathing space to calm down, and if they don't then the issues can be dealt with by dispute resolution. Unfortunately I feel it will end up in dispute resolution regardless and the 2-3 key POV pushers probably need a topic ban, but that's not for me to decide. I've already started preparing a comprehensive case for dispute resolution, hope for the best, but plan for the worst! MattUK (talk) 19:10, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

+1 I would support it with the hope it changes the editing culture from blocking to constructive (two weeks ago I started an approach to have at least a more systemtic lead using the talk section ">100 pages, but still main points missing?"; a few editors can effectively block almost any improvements if they want) --EconomicsEconomics (talk) 19:12, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That's my thinking, if those editors still continue to block and disrupt then we can have them dealt with, if not and they come round to NPOV and start being reasonable then the problem is resolved, it's a win win regardless. MattUK (talk) 19:21, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Well it looks like that idea is dead, Dr K is making disruptive reverts on cited materials, Plan B, Dispute resolution here we come! MattUK (talk) 19:42, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Well it looks like you forgot to assume AGF and were too quick to condemn me. I just replied to you above discussing the edit in good faith and you come to this section which I didn't even read to attack me with baseless accusations for reverting dated facts inaccurately presented in Wikipedia's voice. Please assume good faith and discuss my point above. Δρ.Κ. ^{λόγοςπράξις} 19:49, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You seem to have a very selective view of what is acceptable to Wikipedia and your various edits cherry pick to suit what seems like an agenda, if you truly are editing in good faith then you won't have anything to fear from a dispute resolution, because it will come to the conclusion of what is accurate and factual, rather than what is POV. MattUK (talk) 19:57, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You keep your attacks going although in my edit I implemented your proposal verbatim. I used your terminology and then just added where the info came from. What dispute resolution are you talking about? Remember I did not participate in any other dispute thread, except the one calling Greece the most corrupt country in Europe and I am not interested in any other dispute at the moment. Δρ.Κ. ^{λόγοςπράξις} 20:46, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'll draw up the full case for dispute resolution and post it tomorrow night, I'll hold off on any edit's on the article myself until then. MattUK (talk) 19:45, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

IMHO there is no need to enforce a two day moratorium for all edits to the article in its entirety, although I agree it perhaps could be relevant/helpful to consider a moratorium, if this moratorium only apply specifically for the Controversy about media coverage chapter. All our above debates from nr.10-23 (except debate 22 - which has been solved), is about the Controversy about media coverage chapter. Personally, I posted my own WP:SYNTH concern about the way content is displayed by this chapter, in the above #Proposal to correct the entire "Controversy about media coverage" chapter from WP:SYNTH debate. I will leave it to you and other editors, to judge if additional more drastic dispute solution methods (other than talkpage debate) shall be launched, for the purpose to settle a remaining dispute about the content in this Controversy about media coverage chapter. As for all other potential disputes in the article, I think we have a positive track record for the talkpage debate being capable to resolve such disputes (letting the strongest argument win), without the help of external WP administrators or moratoriums being needed. Danish Expert (talk) 11:07, 8 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is not only with the sections concerning "Controversy about media coverage", the major problem is that many major points about the Greek debt crisis are missing in the lead and the article, even though it consists of >100 pages. This is addressed in

• section #4 - ">100 pages, but still main points missing?"
• section #5 - " Why did Greece need fiscal austerity in the midst of its crisis? "
• section #6 - " POV / LEAD debate "

Two weeks ago, I proposed in this section #4 to have the main points at least in summary style in the lead (as important ones are not even in the article)

Just let's only take the first point listed in #4, being joining the Euro without sufficient financial convergence and competitiveness in the summary list of causes for the Greek debt crisis. It is the major single and early root cause for the Greek debt crisis. Without this root cause Greece could technically not have had this debt crisis because it could always have printed itself out of every debt volume as they did before with the drachma. But this cause is missing in the 100 WP pages and in the WP lead. The current lead only lists normal problems like "structural weaknesses" and "recessions" (even though it is clear that Greece faced those normal problems for decades and always solved them with high drachma inflation if needed) - so without naming the root cause there is no cause for the Greek debt crisis.

What happened after I proposed to have the main points in the article (at least in the lead as a summary) and also invited everybody to add/change/delete from my proposed the main point list? There were strong opponents working in a coordinated action, threatening to fight any significant change, saying one can not summarize a Greek debt crisis, saying "Greek interests [need to have] a prominence") when describing the debt crisis in WP, saying they will not let other editors summarize it, and so on. So we have almost 100 new pages in the talk section, and main points about the lemma not in the article (like it was during the last 5 years)

--EconomicsEconomics (talk) 22:15, 8 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]