Very interesting read. Thanks for answering. I readily admit, I'm a bit of an idealist, so I would tend to underestimate the problems with nationalistic sentiments, greed, egoism, incompatible cultures within the EU and would rather see the chances: unified social system but not with unlimited liabilities, unified financial systems (truly european banks for example), a more democratic european parliament. A kind of slow transformation of a union of politically independent states to a single kind of country but with strong autonomies in many points. And this is actually achievable. For example you can imagine completely separated budgets for Spain and France (just examples) or a single budgets or any part in between where there is any level of solidarity.

I would most like a nice balance of solidarity and competition - that kind of guarantees a minimal properity and above all a chance, but also doesn't drain the power house (as you say it). I think it could be done. This is what the blue flag with the yellow stars really could be about.

But then there is also reality and realpolitics, so I don't know if we can achieve that within the next 10 years or so.

For sure it will be in Germanies interest that all member countries commit to strict fiscal discipline. Balanced budgets is the main (only) goal currently. For everything else here the agreement or disagreement with anything is as high as elsewhere.

http://dilbert.com/strip/2009-04-10
http://dilbert.com/strip/2009-04-11

Thanks, coming from you, that's really appreciated. By the way, please don't be ashamed of your idealism.

Yes, Romania took some harsh measures, back then (the public deficit was about 9% of GDP). Additionaly, the number of employees in the public sector in Romania is very high. No car was burned.

The public sector WAS bad, but not anymore because:
1. In 2008-2009 the wages were a little to high, anyway (compared to the private sector wages)
2. The 25% cuts are restored since 2013 (the other cuts, like the 13th salary is not, and it will probably never will).
The times when the wages were increased by 20% every year are long gone, though:).

The private sector is ok, not necessarily great, the economy is recovering, but anyone is more cautios now.
Joining European Union was great for our country. I supported the ideea of adopting euro as soon as possible. Now I'm against it.

Sounds like a good idea to me. Wait some more years, have growth and keep your own currency, have a balanced budget (better even adopt a constitutional debt lock like in Switzerland) and at some point if the economy is much stronger in like 10 years, seriously discuss adopting the euro. This might be the recipe for long term success.

For the privatizations in Greece I also red yesterday about a better solution. Problem is that prices are down now so by selling you might not gain as much as they are worth. But bringing these assets into private hands is still desirable to improve the economy. So what to do? Well, the best solution seems to be long term leases (30 years or so). So you give it into private hands for a fee (plus maybe a small share of the operating carrier to participate in profits) but essentially do not give it away. This might be the much better alternative to the privatizations and should have been done in Greece already at least 5 years ago.

That can have very destructive ending.
Let me explain - I'm from the country, which 20 years ago had only government property. After disbanding USSR new government started privatisation. Results were horrendous. Foreign campaigns got control over many plants... and closed them.
When you close a plant, which produces condensers, it causes bankruptcies of the plants, which produce TVs, Radio etc. We had thousands of people losing jobs.
It would have the same consequences for Greece, because their creditors would have advantage in getting property instead of payments. The same creditors whose control over Greece financial sector caused this stagnation in the first hand.

Realistically, if anyone needed to use Greece' naval yards, they already could have done it.

Leases or private management contracts have a lot of potential pitfalls though- who pays for maintenance, who pays for upgrades etc. If you lease for 30 years and get a dilapidated, outdated piece of infrastructure back or one that needs urgent maintenance because the leaseholder/ manager has scimped for the last few years of the contract then you have problems at that point, conversely Greece could still have to pay for upgrades and maintenance, reducing their savings while not being able to raise as much initial capital plus needing to actually put money into the infrastructure.

Mainly though, the creditors want maximum immediate money. That means sales, even if they're undervalued sales that don't really help Greece in the long term.

If the circumstances weren't so extreme a State Owned Enterprise model might work, where infrastructure is owned by the state but run along strictly competitive and profit driven lines, but realistically that had to be implemented a decade ago, and if the Greek government had that attitude they probably wouldn't be in such a mess as to require a fire sale now anyway.

Some lulz in this big mess

Not sure what you're basing that stuff on, but it is by far the most ignorant statement on this whole thread. What exactly differentiates Europe from Asia and South America?

Our history? Is there a continent with as many Empire "Builders" through war as Europe?
Granted trade and constitutions in Europe are a great buffer against something similar but they only work as long as the majority of Europes people feel they have a good and free life. If that changes too fast we might be in trouble again.

So I'd say EU contributes but is not the most important factor. In fact it might even turn out to be a liability with EU less and less taking the people of Europes side and instead greasing trade, companies, the market, capital, banks and so on. The future will tell us I guess.

Maybe Asia? You'd be surprised to learn how many wars , empires and what not they had in their history. And yet they don't engage in such wars nowadays, they don't have something like the European Union for them, and they still hold pretty big grudges and have xenophobic attitudes at times.

The world has become too globalized for such things to happen anymore. Conflicts are no more a matter of region.

Possible, but not the topic of discussion.

Well if you say that nobody needs Greece' naval yards then it would still be a waste of money to keep them. Why not saving the money needed for upkeep and investing it into something more worthwhile instead?

This is a danger but that could also happen (and maybe even more often) if Greece does not privatize these things and operate them on their own.

The implicit assumption is here that private management is on average much better than state owned management. If this is true... difficult to say but judging from the past there might be something to it.

So there are two potential benefits. With a lease you get kind of advance payment for the whole period plus higher profitability/efficiency and therefore in the long run less costs and more income.

I don't care much what the creditors want. They obviously make a mistake by looking at the short term only. I want to talk about the right policy and I think it's leases.

Privatizations can go wrong, but especially if you cannot devalue because you don't want to go back to your own currency, then not privatizing and keeping assets who are not very profitable and into whom you cannot really invest - sounds like the worse option. Leases sound like the best of both worlds.

I confess not knowing that much about Asian history but the only empires or empire wannabes I can think of is the mongols, china (It's such a big country that I think it can be called a empire. So I count its history of warlords.), possible russia (I know it's mostly in europe.) and japan during ww2.
But as I said this might be because of lack of knowledge on my part.

Europe is not all that different now from how it was before WW2. The only real difference is that there are mechanisms where countries can discuss differences more easily like UN and EU now.

I actually hope it's different or at least the people who live there. Because if not and any kind of killing starts, I will be out of it .

On the other hand this all might be a bit exaggerated. The economy is in a crisis for a few years and soon everyone sees WW2 coming back? Really?

If peace is that fragile let's just hope we never get into really serious trouble like no oil anymore or global warming or atomic bombs in the hands of fanatics ... (oh wait).

Imo you guys should read this

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/17/germany-greece-wolfgang-schauble-bailout

And then realize something... this German government never wanted this bailout. It raised the stakes to something it considered impossible for Greece to agree to, in order to get the result it wanted ( A voluntary grexit). A Greece agreeing to the 3rd bailout terms and austerity measures was not what Germany wanted and hence not something Germany worked towards in the negotiations post referendum and the shitstorm that happend with the 2nd bailout negotiations. For Germany, Greece was already out of the Euro at this point (in terms of realpolitik goal).

The idea of a temporary grexit (which would have turned permanent) was the last olive branch extended to Tspiras to grasp to not lose face. Instead he opted to agree to an Austerity package literally nobody in Germany expects to work. And over HALF of all Germans didn't want either.

Politics are always messy and dirty.. but imo it's clear that you can't blame Germany for trying to get Greece to accept reality that Bailouts aren't going to solve the problems. The idea of the temporary Grexit did come from Schäuble, after all. And France+Italy were starkly against this. So Greek people.. by no fault of your own you ended up in a mess where France+Italy forced Germany to raise the stakes in negotiations because it never wanted a 3rd bailout to begin with.

This is what they mean with "considerable rift" between France and Germany btw. There were literally 2 mutual exclusives ideas here and even goals at work.

*** Makes for a nice conspiracy theory anyway ***

Ps.: There is no danger of WW3 ;) European Union is stable and the economically the most powerful united entity on the planet. There will be wars coming when oil crisis starts, but western nations already have ability to turn to electric cars and renewable sources if they really wanted. Plastic can be made by other materials. But other nations, that can't do such massive infrastructure changes would be pretty much SOL.

Never got why people fear WW3 anyway. That world war would be the one with nukes. And who the hell cares about a war with nukes? Not like you or me are gonna survive even the first exchange. So why worry? In true Strangelove mantra: Embrace the bomb ;)