[dandare]

The real problem is that Greece - especially under it's new leadership - will very soon generate new astronomical debt if the current one is forgiven (paid by someone else). Lenders would be silly not to lend if they know the debtor will be certainly bailed out and actually Tsipras would be silly too not to finance his communist utopia from debt if he too knows Greece will be bailed out no matter what.

[cwyers]

It doesn't seem like Tsipras is trying to get debt forgiveness paid for by the Germans, though. He wants to use the threat of default to force Greek's creditors to give them a haircut -- reduce principal or interest or both. That will reduce the amount of Greek debt repayment but it wouldn't increase the ability of Greece to incur more debtedness.

[dandare]

Are you sure? I thought the private creditors were already "haircutted", most of the Greek debts is to EU states and IMF.

[antman]

Here is how the trick worked: Private creditors were haircutted and the CDS (credit default swaps) were activated for the largerst organizations that could afford having them in the first place.

Smaller creditors were stiffed. Foreign Goverment entities were exempt and foreign institutions (pension funds etc) could buy at 30-40% percent the defaulted bonds. Said foreign Governments had ofcourse the inside information that they would give the Greeks the money to repay in full price their debt. That was hidden from the other investors during the start of the program.

[cwyers]

I will preface this by saying that I am totally not sure, but my impression was that the EU and IMF loans were to enable Greece to repay creditors in full or close to.

[bibabo]

Greece got a debt cut around 140B already.

[imarg]

Well sort of. Because after the haircut Greece owed more money than before.

[dpark]

Forgiven debt is not "paid by someone else". It's a write-off by the creditor. Creditors would likely not write off a bunch of debt and then lend Greece more money.

Now, if the bailout actually paid off the creditors and Greece now only owes money to, e.g., Germany (the IMF, etc), then sure, the original creditors might extend new loans to Greece if Germany forgives the Greek debt. But then, that could happen anyway, because the bailout already happened.

[tomp]

Well, the creditors are mainly other EU countries, so it would arguable be "paid by someone else" - the countries' taxpayers.

[lllllll]

Related relevant image: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B8Qf65ACYAAH3BR.jpg