But it includes government spending too right? And the government also sets the conditions in which the private traders trade."Transactions with the outside world go in the current and capital accounts. Trade and current income payments get recorded in the current account. When there is an excess of payments over receipts in this account, that's known as a current account deficit.
The upshot of a current account deficit is that the rest of the world is lending you money. (Think about it). They're not lending your government money, although they might well be doing that too. These are private transactions between private agents, for the most part--lots and lots of 'em.
To make things simpler, you can think of the current account deficit as just a trade deficit. In order to maintain a level of imports greater than your exports, the rest of the world must be willing to acquire claims against you--in other words, people must be willing to finance the deficit."
It's not an argument as such but something caused the balance in the account. It seems reasonable to me that the first place you look for the cause is to the people with the biggest influence on it. And if you are a person who has no real influence on that balance you have every right to be aggrieved if you lose your job or benefits or are forced to take a pay-cut becuase of it."That's not an argument though is it?
If you want to say that the Greek government caused the Greek current account deficit, or caused Greek households to dissave, or caused people to be willing to lend to Greek individuals, or caused people to stop being willing to lend to Greek individuals, then there needs to be some reference to specific things that actually happened. Just saying that the Greek government is larger than any individual Greek doesn't mean anything much in this context, as far as I can see. Probably I'm wrong though, so please explain."
Who is to blame then?"But you haven't actually established anything--including the fact that the Greek government are to blame or are largely to blame for the Greek current account deficit."
But the average Greek doesn't walk down the street thinking to himself "I wonder if my country can afford my standard of living" - that is the government's job. The government sets controls that affect people's standard of living - they are now setting them at a level that most people find crushingly low - it's the government that is doing that right?"In toto, Greece will have a lower standard of living in the future because in toto it had a higher standard of living than it could afford, even without recessions etc. Greek's can of course blame their government for this but it's not the fault of the Greek government, nor was their government the principle beneficiary."
But the average Greek doesn't walk down the street thinking to himself "I wonder if my country can afford my standard of living" - that is the government's job.
this is not to absolve the greeks, but this crisis is part of the domino effect of the 2008 crash, and they were helped by creative accounting from investment banks to hide the debt to the eu, for all the tax-dodging and profligacy surely the blame lies not only in greece. also, it's clear that austerity measures destroy the fabric of society before any good comes from them, the difference is that some feel and see the consequences of this while others see statistics and the long view from the comfort of their offices in zürich or whatever. the people who will suffer directly have every right to protest, in my view.
the student one is dead, nothing happened. the ex-leaders are/were on a speaking tour of europe, meeting with morin, that kind of thing.What's the latest on protests in Chile, Bruno? I looked for articles recently but couldn't find much (in English) on continuing protests past the end of 2011...