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Seumas discovers a new meaning of “profitable”

The idea that this crisis has simply pitted one democratic mandate – that of Greece – against the hard-pressed taxpayers of 18 other eurozone members is nonsense.

Not only have the loans that bailed out French and German lenders, rather than Greece, been highly profitable.

The net present value of those loans is around 50% of the nominal value. That’s not a profitable outcome where I come from really.

Actually, we usually describe that as a 50% loss.

12 thoughts on “Seumas discovers a new meaning of “profitable””

  1. Assuming that you’re using mark to market values. I am fine with that, but I know some people take issue with it.

  2. Well, the loans can’t be sold on so there’s no market. But it’s an NPV calculation the extremely low interest rates, the grace periods and so on, about halve the value.

  3. “That’s now the view of many inside Syriza and beyond, including those who voted against the eurozone diktat in the Greek parliament yesterday”

    Do you get to vote on a diktat? Or does this have some special meaning only Stalinists understand?

  4. Is that NPV taking into account the 2012 53% haircut the private lenders took passing their bonds onto the €-institutions?

  5. @ Ironman
    Certainly in a “democracy” you get to vote on a diktat – you vote in favour, 99% in favour.

  6. I think I must be in a parallel universe. The first 10 comments on that story are all against Seamus’ article.

  7. Another imbecile parroting the same line as Murphy, and one that worked for the Soviet bloc in the 80s – perhaps Lawrence from Guernsey will recognise why I say Murphy is so dangerous – this kind of crap makes it way into the mainstream……

  8. Bloke in Costa Rica

    Ho Chi Milne is as repellent a specimen as Jeremy Corbyn. Apologias for Stalinism are tantamount to saying, “well, OK, those Aztecs might have gone a bit far cutting all those people’s hearts out, but they had a point.” He’s an utter cunt and shouldn’t be indulged.

  9. Costa Rica, you are right, most of the Grauniardim are stupid, but Milne is a nasty little shit, whose articles often have a murderous tinge to them.

  10. Seumas “For all its brutalities and failures, communism in the Soviet Union, eastern Europe and elsewhere delivered rapid industrialisation, mass education, job security and huge advances in social and gender equality” Milne.

  11. @ ukliberty
    I went to Russia in the 1990s: gender equality may have existed in theory but I was taken aback by the massive inferiority in practice.

    Not quite the same as the National/Labour Party rules in South Africa that no whilte could be subordinate to any black but pretty close. I cannot, off the top of my head,. remember a woman in a position to give orders to a man. In 1964 I was taking orders from a woman.

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