This article gives a rather

[Suff]

succinct view of what is going on in the EU and the world today.

It's what I call "The Big Lie". Brown's view of the world. It can only work if you grow and grow fast and also run inflation. The US, Asia and the UK are doing the first, but the second is being damaged by falling oil prices. The Eurozone, on the other hand, is doing neither. It is not growing and it is not inflating. In fact it is shrinking and deflating. Policies by scared central banks have forced the entire market into a state of hibernation. The very worst thing you can do in an Extend and Pretend scenario.

One thing the Article did get wrong is who foots the bill. It is not just the EFSF. There are two more mechanisms in play for the lending and the UK pays into one of them. So we are also on the hook for a chunk of the implosion.

Perhaps they can weather this and just kick the can down the road a bit more. I'm not sure. The ECB decision last night was nothing more than status quo. If you look at what is left of the fund and how much they extended it, plus how much is being taken out on average each day, they coincide exactly at the next payment to the IMF in March.......................

Tomorrow a Greek statement goes to the finance ministers. If the Ecofin group change one single word on that document it will be rejected by Athens. Already that document is a source of massive discontent in Athens and they cannot afford to move back one more step. So far the only people negotiating have been Athens. The Eurogroup has negotiated nothing. The only words from them have been No and Accept.

So the rollercoaster continues. But the stakes in the game are higher than most suspect.

[Workingman]

Anyone would think that these policies were dreamt up by the EU, and only applicable to Greece within the EU, and that nobody had ever used them before when in reality they are pretty bog standard economics as used by the IMF and World Bank, the US, China....

Never mind, it is Thursday, so it must be "Big, bad EU" day. But do not worry if the sky does not fall in there will be another "Big, bad EU" day along tomorrow, and the next day, and the next....

[Suff]

The point is that the rest of the world follows the rules of the game. The EU thinks it can play the game to its own rules.

Monday Athens said "Give us a loan". Germany said NO! Today Athens said"Give us a loan please and we will be good". Germany said NO!.

My flabber is not gasted..... The rolling train wreck continues to roll down the road.

[Workingman]

Anyone would think that the Greeks were forced to sign a blank sheet of paper on to which the details would be written once the Greek ink was dry.

A Greek government signed the deal knowing full well what it entailed. It could have walked away and suffered the consequences and, with hindsight, that is probably what is should have done. It did not, and now a new government is in and wanting to change the deal; that is why we are where we are today.

I support the Greeks and their desire to negotiate a new and better deal, and I deplore the way the Eurozone is dealing with the problem. However, I am getting a tad fed up with all these prophecies of doom from every quarter of the media. They have all been heard before, constantly, repeatedly, remorselessly and the big bad EU is still here, the crap currency € is still used, and the club within a club - the Eurozone is still operating, and, surprise, surprise, the sun still rises in the east and sets in the west.

[cromwell]

It's a bit of a problem, innit?

If I remember correctly the German banks lent more to Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland etc than they actually have in assets? So if the Greeks default on the loans, or if whoever is in charge says "OK Greece, we'll let you off", then the worry is that everyone else in hock to the German banks will also want to be let off!
Which will bankrupt the German banks. So the Germans aren't going to let the Greeks off - they can't afford to.

On the other hand the ordinary Greek people have had enough. Their crash is worse for them than the Great Depression and they can't see an end to it. Furthermore, they can't repay the debt. They can only repay the interest on the debt by taking out more loans! The debt itself remains untouched. Yes, the Greeks should not have lived beyond their means. Retiring at 50 and pensions all round, even for people who hadn't paid in.

Neither should Greece ever have been encouraged to join the euro.

But that was then and this is now; and I think that the Greeks will have to leave the euro whether they choose to or whether they are told to leave. They can't go forward or back if they stay in. Even the EU, where politics always seems to beat economic common sense, can't square this circle.

[Suff]

Actually slightly worse than that Cromwell. When Greece was rescued, the rescue package was used to buy the bonds that the German banks held. So the German banks are OK now but if Greece fails, then the rest of the EU will feel the pain as they default on all those bonds which are held by the EFSF and ESM and other mechanisms and the ECB too.

Germany doesn't want Greece to either fail or stop paying because it would then shine a very large spotlight on the German Banks who were, effectively, bankrupt. So they are aggressively trashing the Greeks.

Not very nice is it....

Notice that they rejected the "begging letter" which the Greeks submitted to the EU for a "bridging loan". The press are doing their bit by annoying everyone. They keep talking, alternatively, about Extension of the Bail out and "Bridging Loan". Each of which is unacceptable to the other in terms of wording. So the press are politically driving this off the cliff.

Greece has asked for an extension loan so that they can gain time to control the situation, get taxation under control and negotiation of the terms of their recovery.

Germany demands that Greece extend the bail out and continue to suffer economic contraction, unemployment and poverty.
The press is repeating the German position and mis-stating the Greek position. They keep using the words which have been found unacceptable to each party which is driving tensions.

In the end, it can only end up in disaster unless Germany backs down. Because the Greeks have bent as far as they can, even up to the point of allowing the Troika to monitor their own self imposed restrictions. Something which is totally unacceptable to the electorate.

I can't see Germany backing down and Greece can't back down. Stalemate and the clock is ticking. It seems to me that German self interest is trumping Euro financial health. But then that has been going on since 2010.....

[Workingman]

If I could have roped him in and got a penny for every prediction the BBC's Gavin Hastings got wrong about the EU, Eurozone and € I could dine at the finest restaurants at every meal. If I could have roped in all the doom-mongers on the same lines, and got a penny for all of their negative predictions that were wrong, I would dine at the same table a Bill Gates et al.

There will eventually be a fudge, we all know it, and life will go on in Greece, the EU, Eurozone and the world. Move on.

[Suff]

Perhaps.

Attitudes are certainly changing but Germany only needs 6 other nations to stand with it to carry to the day tomorrow.

If they continue on this path to reject the Greek requests, then it will all start unravelling by next Friday.

It's not feeling like a deal. Before Athens was negotiating from a position of weakness. Rioters in the streets, no support in the populace, political weakness everywhere. Today it is different. Greeks in the street quietly giving moral support to the Government. 70% or more support for the approach. Irritation from some states to Germanys irrational stance.

I can't see Germany backing down. They haven't moved one micron from the beginning and they see no reason to move now. There is a difference between ambushing Germany on QE to get the economy going and lighting the blue touchpaper of debt forgiveness. Whilst many of the Euro nations were scared of what might happen if QE was held back again by Germany, more are scared by what will happen if Greece is allowed to continue on this path. Most of them would rather burn the house down with themselves in it.

Not very clever, but certainly a decisive action. LIke throwing yourself off a multistory without pause....

[Workingman]

I will come back on Saturday and I still expect the € to be there, the EU to be there, the Eurozone to be there and Greece to be there.

A deal will be done, eventually, and then all you doom-mongers will have to come up with yet another theory as to why the EU and Eurozone has to fail. Thus far your predictions have been piss poor. You have had forty years to try to trash the EU, and it is still going.

What might happen if you decided to work with it instead of against it?

Just asking.

[Suff]

Of course it will. Also if Greece is ejected from the Eurozone, all of that will still be there and the EU will still be there 20 years from now. That is not what this observation is about.

What it is about, is changes in the way that it works and also democracy. The Danes were right when they voted down the Maastricht treaty, the EU is anti Democracy and if Major had not signed it, the Danes would still be saying no today.

All the Euro parties are saying that the Euro is "forever". Clearly this is total bollocks because there are enough nations and massively enough of the EU GDP (because of the UK), not in the Euro that there is no reason why any country currently in the Euro could not drop out of it. However their precious schemes and their precious power depend massively on nobody being able to change anything once the EU has it hooks into you.

Now what is happening is that the intransigence of those who draw power from the EU and the Euro is being laid bare. One of the smaller countries in the EU is challenging the EU on a democratic ticket with huge popular support and it's being steamrollered while the world watches.

In fact the markets are getting an abject lesson in what the EU is right now. They and the press are listening to the "government" as they see it and "taking hope", only to have that hope trashed by Germany. Most outside the EU think that Jean Claude Junker is the "president" of the EU. Yet they are watching his work be simply dismissed as irrelevant by two or three countries and by the finance ministers, not even the elected senior ministers. It must be so confusing to so many of them who have been used to thinking of the EU in one particular way.

This one will continue to limp on for a while yet. But the seriousness of it is quite evident. Senior figures in the EU are starting to work against themselves, they're trying to word things so that Greece gets what it wants without the voters recognising what is happening. That stance is, of course, what the EU always does. However this time the press is refusing to work with them as they smell blood in the water and every effort is destroyed before they even get to the table to take a vote on it.

It is not so much a case of me not working with the EU. The EU is working against itself. The EU has created this mess, handing huge economic power to Germany more and more. Now that is threatened and Germany is refusing to back down. Even though the request being put to them is actually quite reasonable and is certainly very democratic.

If you go back to the beginning of this and re-read every thing, attitudes have reversed totally 108deg. First it was Syriza won't win. Then it was Syriza won't do what they told the voters. Then it was Syriza will back down. Then it was recognised that Syriza has given up almost 75% of what they were asking for but have a core of issues which they simply cannot back down on and stay in power.

Now, today, the attitudes have changed so much. Greece is reasonable. They have a mandate from the votes but have compromised on what they can do and what they can achieve in order to work with the rest of the EU. Germany, on the other hand, won't compromise on anything. They are standing there saying Nein, Nein, Nein, we have the power and you will do what you are told.

Interestingly this doesn't play quite the same way in the UK. However most of the rest of the EU have heard that from Germany before. 73 years ago. For them they are just waking up to the reality of having "won the economic war" and the fact that Germany is, as a nation, can be just a tad overwhelming when it comes to a bit of power and how they use it.

Russian Communism was "forever" and people wouldn't work with it. The USSR was "forever" and people just wouldn't work with it. Yet both of these crashed, almost overnight in political terms. Whilst the EU is somewhat more robust because of the slightly more democratic way it was created, it is also equally fragile.

If the EU want's to continue for another 50 years, then it's going to have to learn, to change and to accommodate.

This is what I'm hoping from the Greek crisis. What I expect to see is that Greece will be driven into the ground. Perhaps initially. If there is a deal struck, it will be a significant change to the EU because Germany is not going to back down and if it is forced to back down then this is going to be the first of many times. Something which will be good, in the long run, for the balance of the EU. Because, so far, the EU has tried to make everything Germany's way as the key economy in the whole group. If that attitude changes then the entire EU, as a whole, will change for the better.

When I first learned Computing at tech, I was taught about synergy and synergy diagrams. At present the EU is massively out of synergy and the only way to fix that is to lower the efficiency of one or two nations.

So, in a way, what I observe and what I want, from my perspective, is helping.