Welcome to European Tribune. It's gone a bit quiet around here these days, but it's still going.
Display:
I find the official November 2010 EU release here, and the April 2010 release with the previous data here. The GDP revisions were modest (slightly upwards for the first two years and more – c. -1% – downwards for 2008 and 2009); but there is a massive upwards correction of both deficits and debts, in Euros as well as ratios to GDP, for all years between 2006 and 2009 (in fact the deficit corrections well exceed the GDP corrections in Euros!). So again further missing/mis-estimated items were found for all successive years, which cumulated. The upwards corrections in end-of-year total debt in percentage points (it's the same story in Euros):

2006 - +8.3 (to 106.1%)
2007 - +9.3 (to 105.0%)
2008 - +11.1 (to 110.3%)
2009 - +11.7 (to 126.8%)

The "Greeks were lying" story was also out based on the idea that their debt to GDP was at 115%.

I just don't get what you are arguing about. Fact is the debt and deficit numbers had to be retroactively revised, and always revised upwards, in every year from 2005, and always for multiple preceding years. The November 2010 revisions were just the last in the line, and, just like the previous, affected multiple years of prior data.

The yearly budget deficit at the time was considered to be in the 11% range.

The April 2010 estimate (which contains a specific note from Eurostat on reservations on the data from Greece, but with estimated magnitudes of the problem below the actual November corrections) gives -13.6% for the 2009 deficit.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Sun Nov 27th, 2011 at 04:02:30 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Others have rated this comment as follows:

Display:

Occasional Series