
Real time Greek referendum results - tristanperry
http://ekloges.ypes.gr/current/e/public/index.html?lang=en#{%22cls%22:%22main%22,%22params%22:{}}
======
r721
Earlier discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9833930](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9833930)

~~~
001sky
why link to a discussion flagged of the front page?

~~~
r721
For people to read the comments made earlier.

------
pavlov
As a European, I'm somewhat puzzled by why a Greek default has been out of the
question.

Why is it considered a huge threat to the euro, while in America, large public
entities like Detroit and Puerto Rico can apparently default without
endangering the USD? Is that just because dollar stands apart as a global
currency?

In a reasonable world, the parties who loaned Greece all that money for
ridiculously low interest rates in 2000-2007 should have suffered the losses.
They're the ones who miscalculated the risk, after all. But that ship sailed
when the Euro countries bailed out most of that toxic debt with public funds.
I just can't understand why.

Merkel was in power back then, Tsipras wasn't. Hence I have some sympathy for
him.

~~~
stevewepay
It's never been out of the question. In the years that they have been kicking
the can down the road, all of the EU financial institutions have been
preparing for this exact thing. You can expect Greece to exit the euro with
little to no effect. The euro will of course rise, because the caliber of the
remaining countries are much stronger.

The real issue is contagion. The EU doesn't want Italy or Spain to go down as
well, because the markets/bond vigilantes love to pile on when there is blood
in the water. Look at what happened during the Asian currency crisis, it was
mass contagion throughout Asia that caused the subsequent problem.

~~~
WildUtah
Gp asked about default and you answered about abandoning the euro. The two
issues are totally unrelated.

Greece could leave the euro and continue with debt or default on debt and keep
the euro.

Leaving the euro would be nuts and bad for the country. Defaulting on the debt
is probably necessary.

~~~
stevewepay
The EU has already said that the referendum is about staying or leaving the
EU.

Leaving the euro would be the best thing for the country. You can't
rehabilitate your economy if you don't have control over your own currency
(dropping the exchange rate, encouraging and influx of foreign money, etc).
Look at Iceland, only a few years after their banking crisis, they are
thriving. ]

------
mratzloff
Goodbye, euro. Hello, drachma. The next 10 years are going to be uncomfortable
for Greece. Not so much the rest of the Eurozone unless others follow suit.

~~~
return0
Greek here. I don't see any other possible way out. People are currently
celebrating for it, though.

~~~
BenjiBajing
What? The other way out would simply be to accept the reformations demanded by
the EU. Greece would also need a new government as soon as possible. A
government that does everything possible to help Greece to regain economic
strength. Build new industrie, start-ups, let the tourism in this beautiful
country flourish again. The EU has already agreed to give Greece a huge amount
of additional money. But they obviously want to make sure that the money is
not wasted and stolen by corruption as the hundreds of billions since 2010
[1]. History has proven that socialism doesn't work. You guys need another
government, but only have a couple of pigs [2].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_government-
debt_crisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_government-debt_crisis) [2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Farm)

~~~
_delirium
Considering that Greece is far less socialist than the European norm, I'm not
sure how "socialism" is to blame. The closest Europe has to "socialism" is
around here (Denmark), and it works very well. Greece has been an oligarchy
for decades, with extremely high income inequality, a lack of even standard
social-democratic welfare benefits like universal healthcare or minimum income
support, and a corrupt government.

~~~
WildUtah
I don't know what you think socialism is, but we usually use the word to mean
social collective control of the means of production.

On that basis we can say Greece's state owned industries and crony controlled
companies with state mandated permits and monopolies make Greece more
socialist than the First World typical.

Denmark is possibly the least socialist country in the world. (Some have the
illusion that social insurance payments make Denmark more socialist but they
impose little social control over individual choice, mostly redistributing
cash from one person's young and healthy years to older less healthy ones and
similarly from working years to schooling years.)

------
tristanperry
Clicking on the little Great Britain flag on the bottom left will change the
webpage to English.

------
Mikeb85
Good. The conditions set by the troika were shit. Even though Greece's debt is
significantly lower than 2010, their debt/GDP ratio is the highest it's been.

Europe was trying to influence the referendum with their hard line (ie.
blackmail Greece into accepting their shit deal), but they'll backpedal, and
maybe Greece can get a deal that's actually sustainable, and doesn't lead to
another 25% contraction in the economy.

~~~
hartator
I don't see how the two main consitions of the treaty, having a VAT (sales
tax) on the islands and moving retirement age from 60 to 65, were
unsubtainable.

~~~
Mikeb85
First of all, more VAT will decrease tourist dollars spend. It will decrease
economic activity. Decrease GDP.

Second, when you suddenly tell people who don't have a job (remember,
unemployment is already high in Greece, especially among the youth) that they
need to find one, it leads to a further strain on employment, and societal
tension.

And remember, pensioners spend money. The money may come from the government,
but it goes into the economy. If this money isn't going back into the Greek
economy, the GDP decreases.

These measures will only increase unemployment and decrease GDP further.
Exactly the opposite of what Greece needs. It may seem like a small thing, but
on a macro scale, small changes add up.

~~~
hartator
I think it's fair for the islands to have the same level of taxation than the
mainland. Greek islands shouldn't exist to be the gateway to tax evasion.

Pensions are money taken from the working classes and the capital, it doen't
magicaly create GDP. Again, it feels fair that a country way poorer per capita
than the US or Germany should at least match their retirement age to those
country.

Corruption, red tape and over spending are the reasons why Greece is in bad
shape.

~~~
Mikeb85
Costs of doing business in the islands are higher than the mainland,
transportation and all.

Under the EU program, money taken away from the working classes goes directly
to creditors. Better to give to pensioners, who did 'earn' it, based on their
understanding during their working years, and at least return it to the
economy.

And no one should work as much as Americans.

And finally, you can't change society overnight. Corruption red tape and over
spending exist everywhere, even the US. You can't simply crack down because
then capital flight occurs. There's an entire category of economics that deals
with this (development economics). It's always a balancing act.

There's many reasons for the Greek crisis, its all too easy to apply moral
judgement to a very complicated issue.

Edit - the concept of 'fairness' also has no place in economics. That's for
politics or religion. Economists try to achieve the best outcome, not try to
decide what's 'fair'.

------
gruez
Planet Money did a piece about the two options:
[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/07/01/419238213/episo...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/07/01/419238213/episode-636-yes-
or-no)

------
paglia_s
Italian here. I think what Greece is going through in economics terms is
terrible and the main objective of any deal should be to get the Greece
economy to grow once again and I don't think that taxes are going to help.

At the same time my country is exposed to Greece for ~40bn € and we did some
reforms that nobody liked, like rising retirement age.

We should be ready to help Greece but they have to make real reforms, they
have their own responsability in their situation and according to what I read
they have big problems collecting taxes, corruption and mispending of public
funds. They have to make so that in a few years they won't need anymore money
from other countries.

------
z92
As of now: 61% No. 39% Yes. [ 51% vote counted ]

What's next? I have a gut felling we are seeing the beginning of the end. The
situation is not comparable with Iceland, as the whole country has shutdown.
No export import.

Obviously things can't run like this. It will be interesting to see how they
work it out.

~~~
agumonkey
Redditors (for what it's worth) said devalued drachme would worsen the
situation. It seems that this referendum will be a dogmatic chimera, pleasing
people for his promise, too strong economical forces may bring back Greece
under negotiations.

------
agumonkey
pretty telling [http://imgur.com/rs2SO89](http://imgur.com/rs2SO89)

------
new_guy123
How come they reversed the dots and commas?

~~~
WildUtah
Lots of countries get dots and commas backward. [0] Lots of countries also
drive on the wrong side [1], but the two seem to have no correlation.

[0] [http://www.statisticalconsultants.co.nz/blog/how-the-
world-s...](http://www.statisticalconsultants.co.nz/blog/how-the-world-
separates-its-decimals-m.html)

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-_and_left-
hand_traffic](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-_and_left-hand_traffic)

------
noobie
Can someone ELI5 this whole situation in Greece?

~~~
cperciva
Greece is like an orphaned child who really likes eating candy.

Back in the 1990s, Greece was eating lots of candy, but it wanted to be
adopted into a big and wealthy family, and the parents of that family had a
rule that they would not adopt children who ate too much candy. Greece kept on
eating lots of candy, but it made faces and pretended that some of the candy
was actually vegetables; and because some of the other kids in the family had
grown fond of Greece, the parents overlooked the continued candy-eating and
officially adopted Greece in 2001.

Now, it's sometimes difficult for orphaned children to get their hands on
candy, but if you're part of a big and wealthy family, it becomes a lot
easier. Just like most children would, Greece started eating a lot more candy.
Greece's adopted parents also had rules about how much candy their kids could
eat (not just rules for children they were considering adopting) but Greece
wasn't the only child who was eating too much candy so they pretty much forgot
about those rules for the moment.

Then 2008 hit. Some children on the other side of the world started getting
sick from eating too much candy, and immediately people started looking around
at other children who were eating lots of candy and worrying about them.
Greece, which was by this point very much overweight, came to the top of
everybody's lists of children who had eaten too much candy. Suddenly nobody
was willing to give Greece any more candy, and this made Greece very unhappy.

So Greece turned to its adoptive parents and begged them to give it some more
candy. While they had ignored Greece's growing waistline earlier, they had
also gotten worried about it recently; so they offered Greece a deal: They
would give Greece more candy -- not a lot, but enough that Greece could still
feel slightly good about itself -- if Greece promised to go outside and get
lots of exercise.

This worked for a while, and by 2014 Greece was starting to lose weight; but
it wasn't very happy with the situation -- Greece wanted to be playing Candy
Crush, not running around outside. In January 2015 Greece finally rebelled and
told its parents that it was sick of running around outside and wanted a new
deal which would allow it to keep eating candy _and_ to be allowed to keep
playing Candy Crush.

Greece's parents were not very impressed by this, and promptly told Greece
that this was not acceptable, and Greece was not going to get any more candy
if Greece didn't start doing as it was told. Today, Greece thought about this,
answered back with a resounding NO, and slammed the door as it ran away from
home.

So what happens now? Well, Greece isn't going to be getting any more candy,
for one thing. Greece is going to be hungry, but the only way it will be able
to eat at all is if it goes out and works hard to get it -- which means it
won't have much time to play Candy Crush either. Greece might change its mind
and go back to its parents, but at this point they're pretty tired of Greece's
rebelliousness and they're not likely to start handing out candy unless they
see Greece start running laps first.

All in all, Greece is in for a few unhappy years.

~~~
noobie
Thank you!!

