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Greek elections

It is total bullshit from the Greek government though.

They said they'd get rid of austerity and re-negotiate with their creditors.

Their creditors told them to get stuffed, they huffed and puffed and the submitted with the figleaf of "we'll meet our obligations but with a reshuffled plan, which you have to approve and we have to come up with in a matter of a few days".

Germany are very slowly and in a very controlled fashion forcing the Greeks out of the Euro and perhaps the EU. The really dumb thing is that the Greeks voted in people who are rash enough to not cleverly resist that growing inertia, people who want to make points rather than deal with responsible policy.
 
I think there's a lot of propaganda and bullshit going on around this negotiation.

I'll be interested to see what the truth looks like when it eventually emerges ...
 
Also, what I'm most concerned about is that the Greek government have clearly not prepared for Grexit, which is why they are not playing their strongest card, whereas the rest of the Eurozone has been working on this issue for years - I remember advising clients on secondment about Grexit three years ago, for instance.

It will be painful for all involved but many firebreaks have been erected since then to insulate the rest of Europe from Grexit.

It would be in the short to medium term though enormously painful for Greece.
 
I'd also be surprised if we don't see another run on the banks in Greece next week.

If you had deposits in an Athens bank account denominated in Euros, would you keep them there given what has happened the past week?
 
What exactly would the greek government preparing for Greek Exit of the Euro consist of?

It's not as if they're in any position to build up reserves of cash / gold to tide them over is it?

All the Greeks really need to do is to convince some none EU countries with huge cash reserves that they're actually a very sound investment if their own plans to invest in growth are implemented rather than the EU's disastrous asuterity policies.

That shouldn't actually be too hard given that none of those countries have ever practiced austerity policies to get to their position of having huge cash reserves, so will see the sense in the Greek proposition when compared to the EU idiocy.
 
Yep, they're screwed but they've always been screwed. It would probably involve seeking assistance from China or maybe even Russia.

It would also definitely mean preparation for capital controls, investment in literally producing the notes for a new currency, and legal plans for how Euro denominated contracts would be re-organised, among many other things.

This current government has probably got into office then looked at the contingency plans and realised that there are none.

Also, to be clear, the Greeks have been pummelled by bad decisions over the last few years but that is mainly because they made very many more worse decisions over the course of the last decade. They may not be the total masters of their own misfortune but they certainly are the progenitors.
 
Bernie Gunther said:
I mean both sides have every motivation to spin the fuck out of whatever it was they agreed at the end of last week, which as far as I'm aware still isn't entirely clear.
Click to expand...

You'd think the Greeks would be putting a more positive spin on it though. But time will tell...
 
As you say, time will tell.

If anyone has a good link to a factual account of what was actually agreed I'd be grateful.

A non-hysterical interpretation of what it means for the immediate future would also be nice, but that's probably too much to ask.

Everything I could find yesterday and this morning looks like someone's PR bullshit.
 
Bernie Gunther said:
As you say, time will tell.

If anyone has a good link to a factual account of what was actually agreed I'd be grateful.

A non-hysterical interpretation of what it means for the immediate future would also be nice, but that's probably too much to ask.

Everything I could find yesterday and this morning looks like someone's PR bullshit.
Click to expand...
The non-bullshit key bits - the stuff that will set the context for internal greek political/social reaction rather the minutiae and individuals some want to concentrate on.
 
Source above, previous article:

The danger now is that Syriza will agree to a compromise with the EU leaders that ‘saves’ Greek and Euro capitalism at the expense of little or no improvement in the conditions for the bulk of Greek people. All that does is postpone the crunch between reversing austerity and the interests of Capital, without a Plan B in the interests of Labour.
Click to expand...
https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2015/02/20/troika-grexit-or-plan-b/
 
Bernie Gunther said:
Cheers, that's better than most of what I've been seeing.
Click to expand...
And a few other important things:

Greece has achieved several things:

  • Greece is no longer required to achieve a primary budget surplus of 3% this year. Only budget balance is required.
  • The “contract” which runs over four months is explicitly designated as a transition to a new contract, which of course remains to be defined.
  • The ‘Troika’ no longer exists as an institution, although each component continues to exist. Thus it is the end of the ‘men in black’ coming to dictate terms to Athens.
  • Greece can now write it own agenda of reforms, and she’ll write them herself. The institutions will give their opinion, but they will not be able make particular reforms an urgent requirement for Athens.
  • A more discreet advantage is that the Greek Government has broken the Eurogroup’s facade of unanimity and forced Germany to unveil its position.
 
...and for those feeling a bit at sea with all this and attempts to specialise and enclose it away from easy understandings, the first half of this may be useful:

Greek Debt as Labor Contract Negotiations

On the ‘management’ side are the Troika—the European Commission, the IMF, and European Central Bank, and its apparently delegated bargaining team of Eurozone finance ministers, gathered in Brussels. On the ‘labor’ side are the representatives of the Greek party, Syriza, its president, Alexis Tsipras, and Greece’s finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis. Behind the Troika stand their constituency—the Euro bankers, US and global hedge funds, private equity firms (aka shadow bankers) and big individual capitalist investors. . Behind Tsipras and Varoufakis, the overwhelming majority of the rank and file Greek people. It all has a very class character, in appearance and in fact.
Click to expand...

First, Greece can default on existing debt payments that start coming due in March and can refuse to continue to abide by terms of the old debt-austerity agreement in the interim—a kind of a ‘work slowdown’—while leaving open an offer to continue to negotiate. Or it can announce it is going to leave the Euro, and break off negotiations, unless and until the Troika requests a return to the table to discuss new terms based on Greece’s proposed new agenda of renegotiate debt but not the ending of austerity. The latter event, a Greek exit, would represent a kind of a ‘strike’ alternative.
Click to expand...

Second, the Troika and its finance ministers can refuse to agree to any of the temporary bridge loans Greece has requested, refuse to negotiate any further, and allow a run on Greek banks to occur in the interim as a way to pressure Greece back to the bargaining table on its terms. This, in effect, implements a kind of a management ‘lock out’.
Click to expand...

Neither ‘strike’ nor ‘lock-out’ is likely at this juncture, nor even on March 1 and the expiration of the current ‘contract’.

The third scenario is that both the Troika and Greece continue to negotiate past the February 28 deadline, but with no bridge loan provided by the Troika and with Greece making no payments on past debt. At the same time, Greece continues to proceed with dismantling austerity, but without declaring an exit from the Euro. In this most likely scenario, both sides agree to behind the scenes arrangements, not apparent to the public, designed to keep Greek banks temporarily afloat as they keep talking.
Click to expand...
 
Sounds like the Greeks are playing for time.

Can't make a revolution in one country, need to export it or fail.

So it all depends on Spain then. A victory for anti-capitalists there really could open the floodgates.
 
butchersapron said:
And a few other important things:

Greece has achieved several things:

  • Greece is no longer required to achieve a primary budget surplus of 3% this year. Only budget balance is required.
  • The “contract” which runs over four months is explicitly designated as a transition to a new contract, which of course remains to be defined.
  • The ‘Troika’ no longer exists as an institution, although each component continues to exist. Thus it is the end of the ‘men in black’ coming to dictate terms to Athens.
  • Greece can now write it own agenda of reforms, and she’ll write them herself. The institutions will give their opinion, but they will not be able make particular reforms an urgent requirement for Athens.
  • A more discreet advantage is that the Greek Government has broken the Eurogroup’s facade of unanimity and forced Germany to unveil its position.
Click to expand...

Laughable. You are bereft of knowledge about contract law altogether.
 
Diamond said:
Laughable. You are bereft of knowledge about contract law altogether.
Click to expand...
I'm doing alright - the director of studies at School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris since 1996, the director of the CEMI-EHESS (Centre for the Study of Modes of Industrialisation), also in Paris. Also visiting professor at the Moscow School of Economics and serving on the editorial boards of the Journal of Comparative East-West Studies and the Review of Geography, Economy and Society and, finally, a contributing editor to World Oil magazine.
 
butchersapron said:
I'm doing alright - the director of studies at School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris since 1996, the director of the CEMI-EHESS (Centre for the Study of Modes of Industrialisation), also in Paris. Also visiting professor at the Moscow School of Economics and serving on the editorial boards of the Journal of Comparative East-West Studies and the Review of Geography, Economy and Society and, finally, a contributing editor to World Oil magazine.
Click to expand...

It took you days to find out that he is not a practitioner?

You eejit!!!!
 
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