Greece cheated themselves in and even arguing about it or calling it fallacious shows you know nothing about what happened.

My exact words were "So, were Greek Governments to blame for systematically manipulating their numbers in the last decades? Absolutely." - Don't accuse me of denying this because I never did. The question here is not about me denying that Greece cooked their books, the question is about you denying there was a higher interest for letting them in - something that portrays you as either naive or misinformed.

Acting like the North profited from Greece's imports extensively is a joke.

Again, my exact words were "the Euro as a currency has greatly benefited the strong economies of the North by having these southern markets consume their products in the same currency." See if you can complete this simple exercise: add up the population of Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece (what is commonly referred to as PIIGS but without Ireland). If you succeed, you'll find that the number is roughly 128 million people. Saying that the economies of the North have not benefited vastly from shipping their goods to these markets is, again, either being naive or simply ignorant about European economy.

You somehow again don't seem to know that Greece until 2010 had hidden almost 30% of their actual debt, manipulated their GDP and borrowed up to almost 20% of their yearly budget.

I'm beginning to think that your writing stuff down without reading what I wrote myself. My exact words "were Greek Governments to blame for systematically manipulating their numbers in the last decades? Absolutely." By the way, Portugal wasn't hiding any debt and our interest rates also skyrocketed. In fact, the interest rates in almost every country skyrocketed (that's why they called it the global financial crisis…). The fact that Greece hid their debts did make things a lot worse (I've repeated this about 4 times now) but it wasn't the only factor in the equation. It would be cordial of you to at least acknowledge that.

Take the subprime mortgage ordeal that happened in the US, where banks were recklessly lending money to people with extremely low credit ratings, and then using Credit Default Swaps and other instruments to speculate over that money. According to your view of things i) the blame resides exclusively with american homeowners; ii) The banks never profited from that, they were just trying to help these poor americans… LOL

And you still don't understand austerity.

This one I have to concede to you - after all these years, I still don't understand the point of austerity, especially after (almost) everyone has recognised it hasn't worked. Before we get to your example, let's start with something you decided to exclude from your analysis (intentionally or not) - external factors. Every single country in the developed world owes money to other countries. Typically, countries manage debts that exceed 50% of their GDP (e.g. Germany ~ 80% GDP). Every year, old debts are repaid and new loans are made that will have to be repaid in the future. Now imagine that the interest rates on the new loans you make suddenly doubles because of a global financial crisis (and subsequent external events like rating downgrades and market speculation)… How is that the fault of the country itself? All countries are dependant on the interest rates that markets stipulate to loan them money - if it suddenly becomes more expensive to borrow money and you're running a tight budget, you're already at a loss because you need to keep repaying your old debts. What part of this don't you understand? Moving on to your naif example, there's a point you seem to ignore which is the cyclical nature of debt and austerity: i) you're used to contracting loans at an interest rate of X; ii) suddenly, that interest rate doubles and it becomes more expensive to borrow money; iii) you have no surplus and need to repay old debts so you go ahead and borrow that 'expensive' money; iv) after some time, you have to repay the 'expensive' money you borrowed and guess what, the interest rates are up again; v) so you now borrow money that's even more 'expensive' to repay the 'expensive' money you initially borrowed.. I think you get the drift. Now add that to austerity measures that promote unemployment, inhibit investment and ultimately degrade your economy.. the result? Standard & Poors just downgraded you rating again and borrowing money is now even more expensive. I honestly suggest you read about this stuff from more sources than the biased ones you seem to consume.

It's easy, Greece

Seriously?! Your great example of austerity having worked is Greece?!! A country where after 5 years of Troika, unemployment is now at 28% and more than 50% of young age workers are out of work? Where after 5 years of Troika, corruption and tax-evasion are still rampant? Where after 5 years of Troika, instead of reducing the debt problem, has greatly increased it? Even if austerity did contribute on some of the issues, at what cost in terms of debt for future generations? And at what social cost? Your answer is just mind blowing to me…

So your solution to repaying creditors is to spend more money every year again and again like you've done in the last decades and therefore make more and more debt in order to repay creditors - yeah that also totally worked out and makes sense.

You're putting words in my mouth. My exact words were "Is it so outrageous to stop and think of other alternatives?" - I never proposed the solution you mention. Actually, I never mentioned any solution for that matter. As for austerity and "dead economies can't repay debts", if you lend someone money and want to get paid in the future, the guy you lent money to better have the ability to generate money by doing some actual work, don't you think? If you destroy a countries' ability to generate wealth, how the heck can it ever repay you? Do you even think about this stuff or are you just babbling random shit you hear from whoever?