Why the Greek bail-out has worked 2011

Stephanie Flander’s must have got hold of Gordon Brown’s crystal ball now that he has no use for it for predicting our economic future…’no more boom and bust’.

Here she is in 2011 telling us to relax, it’s all good, the future is rosy, unless you’re Greek:

‘Everyone says that heightened talk of a Greek default is proof that last year’s bail-out has “failed”. But you could make a strong case for the opposite.

In reality, all that the Greek support programme last year was ever going to do was buy time. And that is exactly what it has done. It just hasn’t bought quite as much as governments hoped.

Governments were right a year ago to kick the Greek problem down the road and buy the system some time.

One year on, they are roughly back where they were, facing the same choice.

What’s changed, from a Greek standpoint, is that its government is now much less popular than it was, and it now has even more debt to repay.

Europe is enjoying a decent recovery.

From their perspective, buying time has worked for the eurozone. It just hasn’t been working out so well for Greece.’

 Wonder how that Greek thing turned out?

Funny how she thinks ‘kicking the can down the road, doing nothing, buying time’ is a solution for Europe but isn’t prepared to wait out Osborne’s policies and give them time to run their course.

 

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11 Responses to Why the Greek bail-out has worked 2011

  1. PhilO'TheWisp says:

    It wouldn’t fit the script. Tories bad, everyone else good!

       15 likes

  2. chrisH says:

    Fine thing, the Internet isn`t it?
    All those fools and their “predictions”, forever up for the rest of us to laugh at and to mock.
    But not at the BBC.
    “We are where we are”, “lines in sand”, “time to draw a line and move on”…complete insouciance and the clatter of brass necks as they stay stony-faced and give us yet MORE predictions….shameless and unaware that they`re a joke.
    They just don`t mix in circles where they`d be regarded as public sector oafs in perpetuity. And what we think of them is of supreme indifference to them.
    They`re the REAL Shameless programme that has yet to be made…Frank Gallagher etal are much more accurate and honourable in any dealings than the useless walking chicken livers and beaks that are the entrails of liberal bien-pensant opinion.
    Look at Polly Toynbees, Jackie Ashleys views on politics since 1997-yet the same organs and idiots pay them to continue to spout crap on Labour etc.
    No one in the MSM saying why Flanders is forever in the grip of Balls and Miliband…the political IS personal after all, according to the feministas on Womans Hour innit?

       14 likes

  3. Scooper says:

    It just serves to illustrate the dire state of journalism at the BBC. She clearly had no understanding of the issue and preferred to make something up rather than research it properly.

       11 likes

  4. Richard D says:

    Kicking the problem ‘can’ down the road is typical of the EU (and when you think of it, of the UK Labour Government, which refused to tackle key issues like the explosive debt growth of the UK, the hidden costs of the public sector, e.g. long-term PFI and pension commitments, the exponential public sector cost growth, the need to deal with the benefits system, education heading down the tubes, and so on and so forth).

    BBC ‘pundits’ know this, but because it doesn’t fit with their own personal view (encouraged by BBC intransigence on even the slightest semblance of a balanced view on UK issues), they have been allowed to blast the current government on the consequences of having to deal with problems effectively created by the lack of real ‘government’ in the preceding 13 years to 2010. The can has been kicked to the end of the road, and now someone has to pick it up and deal with it….both in the UK and the EU – but the BBC pretends that any solution which actually really addresses the fundamental issues is beyond the pale, and shouldn’t be even contemplated by any government in the west.

       12 likes

  5. Jeff Waters says:

    ‘Perhaps the most shocking closure of all was that of the highly respected left-leaning daily Eleftherotypia.

    Founded after the fall of Greece’s dictatorship in 1975, it was the second-most-read newspaper in the country, with more than 800 employees. It was a rare voice of independence and impartiality – a voice silenced arguably when it was most needed.’

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19342961

    So this paper is both ‘left-leaning’ and ‘a rare voice of impartiality’. Is it just me, or is there a contradiction there?

    Jeff

       10 likes

    • Richard D says:

      Nope – no contradiction anywhere in these statements in the BBC mind-set.

      So it must be you !

      ….and me, and millions of others….

         3 likes

  6. David Preiser (USA) says:

    “Two Eds” has excellent credentials. That’s all that matters. You can be sure the BBC bosses feel she’s been doing an excellent job. After all, she holds the approved thoughts and has expressed them over and over.

       8 likes

  7. johnyork says:

    As Stephanie Flanders seems to think she is so economically astute, spare a thought for the Super League side Bradford Bulls.
    They might not have ended up in the mess they are currently in had she cast an eye over their finances.
    What, I wonder, would she have made of them buying £500 worth of Euro-Lottery Tickets each week ?
    My best guess is :
    Whilst it could well all be “Greek” to her, I’m sure she would report it, true to form, as innovative and there being nothing to worry about whatsoever.

       4 likes

  8. petrossa says:

    Well after the harsh slap on the wrist Merkel/Hollande gave Greece just now i’m sure all will be fine.

       2 likes