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Comment by wahern | Hacker News Reader

Greece's debt-to-GDP ratio never stopped climbing; it peaked at over 200% in 2020. The crisis, meanwhile, was short-lived as the ratio per se was not among the most salient factors.

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Greece crisis is short-lived? Greece never recovered from the crisis.

Employment in Greece in 2010: 4.6 million.

Employment in Greece now: around 4.0 million.

Sure the unemployment rate has gone "down". That's because the youth gave up and simply moved from Greece. The GDP per capita will improve because of that but their GDP in constant prices never recovered (and is around 2002-2004 levels).

The crisis itself pertained to bond defaults, and in particular the reverberations through the international financial system. But the extra context you've provided only drives home my point: facial nominal figure comparisons are worthless.

Geece had to massively increase taxes and implement austerity programs, to say nothing of the EU bailout. Since then, they've been able to survive on low interest rates. Low interest rates which are now gone, as the world is busy fighting inflation.

Inflation cuts both ways, eviscerating older debt. That's the whole reason for the present banking crisis. In any event, the debt-to-GDP ratio being higher than Greece's at the time of its debt crisis says absolutely nothing by itself about the U.S. situation. Pointing it out is a baseless, cheap insinuation.

Except it's not, because our interest rates are also in the same range as when their debt crisis began. Greece was fine at those debt levels until their bond yields hit 5%, at which point they entered into a self-reinforcing spiral of insolvency. The Federal Reserve is currently targeting interest rates above 5% to fight inflation.

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