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1 posted on 05/31/2012 9:57:36 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin
“If the money never gets to the borrower, then it's not a loan. Scam is a more appropriate word. Of the €141.7 billion bailout, only €47.2 can be construed as a loan all of which nearly all went to government operations, none to the average Greek citizen.”

This is a completely absurd statement. Let me reword it in different terms, and the absurdity of it will be apparent.

“Gregor's Visa account is overdrawn, and he can't make even the minimum interest payments out of his wages. He borrows the money for the interest payments from his MasterCard account. “It's a scam” says Gregor. “All of the money I've borrowed from MasterCard went to Visa. I wasn't able to use any of it for beer and that new wide-screen TV I need.”

2 posted on 05/31/2012 10:08:01 AM PDT by USFRIENDINVICTORIA
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To: Kaslin
To be clear, I am optimistic that the whole Euro farce will soon collapse. However:

If the money never gets to the borrower, then it's not a loan. Scam is a more appropriate word.

The author of the article apparently thinks it is not a real loan because the Greeks never really borrowed from the European banks or have no obligation to pay them back. A loan that gives you the funding to pay preexisting debts surely is a real loan, not a scam.

The money is going to the European banks that made the loans to Greece, which Greece cannot repay. The European governments will not allow their own banks to suffer the effects of a Greek default so they are making these loans to bail out their own banks. Not a decision I agree with but I don't know what makes it a scam.

3 posted on 05/31/2012 10:14:52 AM PDT by Stingray51
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