Greece, delusional to the last

Exit polls indicate a roughly 60/40 split in favour of Greece flushing their national economy down the crapper, albeit on a paltry 50% attendance rate.  THIS IS SPARTA!!

http://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/no-voters-begin-celebrating-in-athens-after-bailout-referendum/story-fnu2pycd-1227427441121

Having effectively told their creditors they have no intention of paying their bills, of course their immediate reaction to the "mandate" was to go begging for a handout!  I honestly have no idea why the IWF and creditor countries would even given this pack of clowns the time of day, because they're the dole bludgers of Europe, and dole bludgers fundamentally aren't interested in helping themselves - they're only interested in a handout so they don't have to get off their collective arses.

Just to illustrate the size of the problem:

Ultimately, I think the European creditor nations and IMF are going to have to abandon hope of collecting all of the debt, simply due to the scale of the problem.  Even the IMF itself says that the proposed austerity package which Greece won't accept would leave them with an unsustainable debt to service by 2030, because the country is just that far in the shit.  It has pretty much no exports other than some primary production foodstuffs and tourism, so that means a permanent balance of payments option when the country won't live within its means - Greece is the national equivalent of a teenager who just left home but expects instant access to the luxuries their parents spent years earning.

The IMF estimates that Greece could possibly, just, maybe, service a debt of 110% of GDP if everything follows a sunny day scenario.  They're currently in the hole to the tune of 175% of GDP and totally dismissive of any attempt to do anything meaningful about it - their best offer was under half of what the IMF asked for.

It's been pointed out to me that Greece did write off a bloc of German debt following WWII, and although true, to me there are several significant differences which mean the reverse should not be automatically reciprocal.

For starters, Germany's debt at the time was largely the result of WWII - war expenditure, reparations, and funnily enough their economy took a bit of a hit at the time.  Blame Hitler.  Greece's debt is the result of 30 years of being a socialist handout society.  I don't see why the world should fund that.

Secondly, Germany's problem - Hitler - ceased to be an issue towards the end of WWII, whereas Greece's problems are ongoing - any writedown of debt would only be to enable them to incur new debts, at ongoingly unsustainable rates, because they won't address their root issues of excess consumption for their means.  Greece's debt is currently around $508 billon AUD and their government monthly salary and pensions bill is $2.5 billion AUD per freaking month.  The only way that's going to get solved is real, fundamental, widespread restructuring of the way that Greece does business, internally and externally, and while they have a nutjob delusional left wing government that doesn't accept reality, that's not going to happen.

Of course, there are some immediate things that Greece could do, like crack down on the level of crime, tax evasion, cash transactions and general lack of legal compliance in the economy - there is reported to be as much as $120 billion AUD in untaxed fraud hidden away.  But that won't happen, because it's easier to claim persecution and hold out the begging bowl.

What the world needs at this point is the international version of bankruptcy, where a receiver gets appointed and directs what's going to happen.  Nobody likes the outcome - creditors get far less than they are owed, and the debtor lives in penury for a few years, but at least it discharges the problem.  Theoretically, it also allows the debtor to begin again, theoretically having learned their lesson.  That won't happen in the case of Greece, because their socialist handout mentality won't allow them to succeed, but at least the creditors would be smart enough not to fund their shit next time around.

But we don't have that, so what will probably happen this week is that the IMF and the troika of creditors (whose own hardworking taxpaying voters aren't happy seeing their aid funding pissed away to dole bludgers) won't be economically or politically winning to waste further cash on a lost cause, Greece will drop the Euro and go back to their own currency (which is not without its own issues - the incompetent fuckwits can't even print money any more), the arse will go out of their exchange rate because their balance of payments will be a smoking hole in the ground, and the only good news for anyone is that holidays in Santorini will get really cheap for Europeans (the ones that work for a living).

Well done, Socialism.  Another shining success.