Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris
Why would they have had to close it?
The austerity measures in Greece (real austerity, by the way, not the softly-softly austerity lite we have in the UK), have been mandated by the Troika as a condition of bail-out funds. And at least one member of that Troika, the IMF, has been found to have ignored its own basic operating principles, its very reason to exist, in fact, because it has been acting to save a supra-national currency rather than to rescue a national economy.
Greece's fundamental problem is that its exchange rate is too high. The Euro is simply too expensive for it to use as a national currency. The solution is for it to default on all its Euro-denominated debt, issue Drachmas and begin paying all public sector employees in that currency. The result would be a severe short-term economic shock for Greece, but let's face it, when you get to the point where you have to close down your state broadcaster at less than 24 hour's notice just to keep the rest of the country ticking over, how much worse can things actually get?
With the Drachma floating freely Greece could start to rebuild. The Drachma would be worth next to nothing initially, but Greece has very strong tourism potential and still has something of a shipping industry, so therefore a ready means of earning foreign currency.
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Because they ran out of money. Even if they did start a new currency, promised it's value and started paying people with that they still would have had the situation where their outgoings were vastly higher than the money coming in. Changing currency wouldn't fix that. I also question how well it could work if the Drachma isn't worth anything internationally, people could have tried to deal with dollars or pounds.
Greece's fundamental problem was surely utterly incompetent economics which were only made worse by an inability to control their exchange rate but were not caused by it? They had a large state, pensions and they weren't too fussed about collecting tax.
---------- Post added at 11:27 ---------- Previous post was at 11:26 ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by heero_yuy
£3.80 a month compared to our £12.16 a month, sounds like value for money given the number of TV channels and radio it was running yet even then it was termed a haven of waste.
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Depends what they did with it. The BBC is one of the largest broadcasters in the world. I doubt the Greek public broadcaster had anything like the news division or production capabilities the BBC have.
---------- Post added at 11:44 ---------- Previous post was at 11:27 ----------
Looks like they're defying the ban:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013...roadcaster-ert