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by NotableAlamode 3995 days ago

    The transfers to greece of the last few years were to a large extent a way of transferring private debt of german and french banks to the general EU populace.
This is just not the case. Only about 1/3 of the bailout money went this way (and certainly not to the "general EU populace", only to some european tax payers). The remaining 2/3 went to Greek consumption in some form or other. It is estimated that 1/3 of the bailout money went to off-shore accounts.

Moreover, taking on Greek debt is a massive gift to Greece, for this money no longer needs to be paid back, hence is a gift.

1 comments

I'd be very interested in sources for this.
Sinn, Hans-Werner, "The Greek Tragedy", CESifo Forum 16 Special Issue 2015 (June), 2015, 5-35, downloadable from

https://www.cesifo-group.de/de/ifoHome/publications/docbase/...