Now you are flogging the skeletal remains of a dead horse. It is a moot point, because the comparison is nonsense, but the information is not even consistent. Greek debt represents a balance at one point in time where the bank numbers are flows (and only inflows, not outflows) and do not represent balances. No credible person would ever say that Citibank borrowed $2.5 trillion dollars anymore than they would say the homeowner in the example I gave borrowed $500,000.

By all means, repeat this grossly misleading account of what occurred during the financial crisis, and I am sure there is no shortage of people in the progressive camp who will gladly believe it and pass it on. I am surprised that you stick to this narrative you must know gives a false view of what happened as I generally have found that your positions in the past have been solidly researched even when I have not agreed with your conclusions. You must really feel compelled to demonize the banks even if it takes a blatantly misleading and meaningless chart to do it.

So, Six Million WASTE by mayors is ok, but not the cost of running the Plebiscite? How more biased could you be?

Province and Mayors AGREED to have a plebiscite on funding, first was supposed to be a multi-choice option that was turned down by Mayors to a Yes/No answer (bad call), and THEN on top of all of running a plebiscite they went out and SPENT $6M on lobbyist? Vision political party making robocalls? TV advertising? Billboards? Radio advertising? Youtube/Facebook/Google advertising? Are you kidding me?

One was to run and operate the logistics of the vote, the other was just PURE WASTE, enriching the pockets of Vision lobbyists and political party. I think the latter is 10 times worse, and should have never ever happened!

In fact, if they had presented the plebiscite in that context (vote for a sales tax or face property tax increases)

In fact, if the question had been restricted to a choice between funding sources then people like A Taxpayer would have complained about not being given the opportunity to vote No.

@ Kirk:

This is the second most unaffordable place to live in the entire world. It seems like the wealthy urban planning elites can’t just understand that.

First, the vast majority of any planning department personnel consists of technical and support staff. Hardly elites.

Second, here are the local housing numbers. Note how they are broken down according to housing type. How many detached homes on open lots do you find in Hong Kong? How about comparing apples to apples for a change?

MLS benchmark housing price index of Greater Vancouver:

Detached: $1.12M (Metro), $1.09M (Vancouver East), $1.6M (Van West)

Apartments: $400,200 (Metro), $330,300 (Van East), $528K (Van West)

Townhouses: $506,900 (Metro), $562,100 (Van East), $805,500 (Van West).

Source: http://www.rebgv.org/home-price-index

In many ways, demand for condominium apartments in the Vancouver area is being sustained by the sky-high prices for detached homes. The majority new households are financially unable to live in a detached home. By virtue of being the most affordable housing type, therefore, apartments are for many Vancouver-area households – especially the young and first-time
homebuyers – the main housing option. Strong interest in condominium apartments is clearly evident in the resale market where they represented nearly 40% of all existing home sales in 2011. This strong interest can also be seen in new construction, where multi-family dwellings represented roughly four out of five housing starts in the area in 2011.

RBC Vancouver Housing Market (2012)

I pay a toll every time I take transit. Two zone fares are higher than the PM toll. In fact, transit has a 50% operating cost recovery rate in the Metro. Would that the road system covered even a fraction of that to offset its massive drain to taxpayers.

With respect MB, Ireland and Iceland had a different problem (they allowed their banking sectors to grow larger than their respective governments & GDPs could backstop).

Yet Iceland has recovered quite nicely. A therein lies a lesson: Iceland maintained it’s own currency. They also didn’t engage in ruinous austerity and did crazy things like actually hold their bankers to account. As in threw them in jail for crimes committed. Greece needs to generate revenue in order to pay it’s creditors, but the slash and burn policies insisted by the EU have crashed it’s economy and it’s revenue.

The Readers Digest version of all this is this:

1. Prior to adopting the Eurozone, Greece was a mild to moderate credit risk and paid interest rates that reflected that accordingly. As you mention, Greece has problems. Greece has a recent history looming over it like a shadow. But so do other countries.

2. Greece joins the Eurozone and creditors start lending it money at lower rates in the mistaken belief the European project wasn’t a house of cards. ie. Germany and/or the ECB would stand by the debts of member countries as the Bank of Canada would, push come to shrug, for the provinces here. And yes, Greece borrowed money. Because, you know, interest rates were low. What better time?

3. After 2010, creditors start charging Greece high interest rates again while the EU simultaneously demands austerity. Greece can no longer afford to even borrow money to service it’s debt.

As a side note, Greece’s debt to GDP ratio in 2008 was 100%*. Now it’s 172% and yet they’ve implemented all the austerity that was demanded of them.

If Greece, like Iceland, had maintained the drachma then the Greek Central bank would have had the option to “print money” as they say and/or devalue we would likely not be here. If the EU had acted in the spirit it was set up for and ECB had acted like a real Central Bank instead of as a proxy for Germany we would likely not be here.

But a significant part of that stems from the behaviour of its own citizens, businesses and politicians.

And yet only one of those three are being made to pay. The simple fact is the Euro was an idea half-implemented at best and fundamentally flawed at worst. Was Greece a middle-income state with governance not up to, say, German standards? Yes. Did it start acting like a high-income state with German-level governance after joining the Eurozone? Yes. Is this the heart of the issue? Extenuating, but ultimately no. Spain was running surpluses and had debt to GDP ratio of 30% when the crisis hit. And yet they’re close to being in the same boat.

The EU will do what it will do. If they not worried about 25% unemployment, so be it. If they want to let radicals run riot in the streets of Athens, so be it. Just don’t be surprised if some future Greek government decides to throw in with the Russians or Chinese.

*This sort of debt to GDP ratio is not historically unusual. Japan’s is currently 237% and no one worries about Japan. Most major countries including the UK and US have had much higher ones, particularly after the war. Did they slash spending? No, their economies grew and as a result those debt ratios shrank.

I’d sure like to see a Danish budget breakdown to back up your “facts.”

… if I see that they would start TAXING foreign buyers and developers who are the main culprit of our housing affordability,…

So simple supply & demand has nothing to do with it?

Blame the foreigners. Don’t need any research to prove it, just a lotta bombastic rage.

Good luck with that.

Debt is what you allow. Apartments are affordable.

I wouldn’t ascribe blanket asumptions about your thoughts to you. Please don’t apply them to me.

Been there, done that re: debt. Twenty-seven years of it in a myriad of forms at the family level. It was an education to say the least.

Re: housing affordability. Condo presales still generate blocks-long lineups with people who realisically gave up on owning detached homes.

But this has little to do with a transit plebiscite.

“With respect MB, Ireland and Iceland had a different problem”

“Yet Iceland has recovered quite nicely. Therein lies a lesson: Iceland maintained it’s own currency.”

Partially true. Iceland’s recovery was facilitated because it had its own currency but Greece, as you acknowledge, had a different problem and if they had their own currency it would have eased the pain but not enabled them to avoid it altogether. Devaluing the drachma would have made imported goods more expensive and Greece does not have a domestic
industries to take up the slack or benefit from more competitive exports. Their problem is a primary budgetary deficit (before debt service) that the EU is not
prepared to continue to fund that deficit unless steps are taken to bring it in balance, particularly when the government deficits are incurred to provide Greek citizens a standard of living better than those who are going to have to pay for it.

Once again, you throw out irrelevant comparisons
(although not as egregious as your “bail out chart”) by introducing the debt level of Japan. Japan’s debt is funded domestically and it actually produces goods that the rest of the world wants to buy. It is equally ridiculous to compare post war economic conditions with Greece’s situation. (and you think there was no austerity in the UK post WWII?). Populations were growing unlike in Greece which has one of the lowest birthrates in the world. Combine that with emigration prompted by high
unemployment and you have one more constraint on economic growth.

Clearly, you are more interested in furthering your anti capitalism agenda than actually thinking about how to solve a complex problem that considers the taxpayers of the EU as well as the citizens of Greece. But for socialists, there is no problem that someone else’s money can’t solve.

No. You modified what I actualy said, which was:

Apartments are the most affordable housing option here.

and

Condo presales still generate blocks-long lineups with people who realisically gave up on owning detached homes.
Nowhere did I say apartments are unaffordable.

You said it, and then you edited it away after I called you on it. I have the email from Disqus (attached screen capture). And, Frances has all the edits since she’s the mod. But, you know, it doesn’t matter. I’m just going to drop it now. I’ll assume you just mis-typed and then corrected yourself, which is fine. Just try to add a comment whenever you edit your previously posted remarks to clarify what you changed. It’s a common Internet courtesy. A lot of forums ban people who go back and change their comments.

Ok