DungBeetle

Well it sounds good on paper!

Simple. Use RPI (including house prices) instead of CPI as the inflation target for interest rate decisions.

While banks are allowed to practise infinite forbearance nothing will change.

Was it the town bike?

+1

So was the second Greek Bailout a "private bank bailout"? Yes and no. Yes, a large amount of Greek Government debt disappeared off the books of the Banks around the period of the 2nd bailout, and yes the EU / ECB bailed out the Greek nation. However, much of the privately owned Greek government debt had matured and was rolled-over, so the EU / ECB became the buyer of last resort and purchased the majority of newly issued debt to cover the short-fall. Things are never that simple.

Quite! The most basic and often ignored feature of a productive society. Ignored because it means that only hard work is rewarded, far better to accumulate free money at the expense of others.

Increased supply is only useful if there is a conscious human acknowledgement of that increase with the sellers, otherwise you will get more houses selling for the same ridiculous price, because credit, regulation, and the tax system support them.

Not just debt though is it...

Gold? Oh please.

Quite! We couldn't compete with Germany and emerging economies, so we decided to play the paper pushing game.

Nobody is saying an efficient Germany is bad, but Germany internalising its surplus and not "sharing the love" is. The Greece story in a nutshell.

No, the moral is share the currency, so share the surplus, or doom yourself.

The clue is in the phrase "imbalances". Eventually there will be a scenario where Germany will be sitting on a pile of savings, and there will be no demand left in the rest of the world and their exports die (as do the economies of their trading partners).

The same way both Germany and Greece ran illegal deficits during the past 15 years, governments ignore the rules because it suits them.