Another month another cliffhanger

[Workingman]

I see that after today's failure EU finance ministers are holding an emergency meeting on Monday. Good luck with that.

[Workingman]

And now the Russians have stepped in offering financial support for the Greeks.

They are playing 'agent provocateur' are the not? "Your sanctions have hurts us a little, tovarisch, now it is payback time."

They have waited patiently for this moment to catch the EU between the Devil and the deep blue sea.

[Suff]

Perhaps it's only available After they default. Which is the time they would need it, to keep the country going after repudiating all the debt.

That would do maximum damage to the Euro and if they got Greece back on it's feet very quickly as the Scandinavian countries did with Iceland, then it would do maximum damage to the EU....

Not that I'm crying over that too much...

Of course the next big one would be for Greece to leave Nato. But I don't think they would do that with Turkey next door. Although Turkey also needs that pipeline revenue too....

[Suff]

What the Greeks don't get.

Everyone else in the EU has a democratic process just as they do. Those voters don't want to give them any more money or any more time. Also the media and governments of those countries are feeding their voters an Anti Greece line.

What the EU don't get.

Democracy in Greece is equally as important and governing, as the democracy in their own countries.

There is a belief that democracy only extends to the borders of an EU country. That once it extends beyond that country, then whatever they demand of another country in the EU has to be done regardless of the democratic process in that country.

Which is why the EU, as a state, is doomed to failure until the EU becomes the first and foremost, totally democratic, government which is an arbiting force for all of the EU nations.

As the EU is actually less democratic than the least democratic nation in the EU, that won't happen.

So, I predict, Greece will be forced to bow down and beg for scraps, destroying the government and descending the country into chaos. OR. Greece will exit the Euro and the EU with some shred of dignity and head held high, whilst descending into initial financial chaos and having to restructure the country.

Bets???

Interestingly, from my viewpoint, Greece would be able to enact legislation to force out the cartels and force the tax avoidance to stop, much more easily, if they exited the Euro and caused the chaos. The Euro is like the EU. Kick the can down the road and pray for somebody else to fix it....

10 days. A lot can happen in 10 days. But not if you are betting on Tsipras to have an 11th hour capitulation as the EU are. His popularity is higher than when he won. I believe the stats on dissatisfaction with the governments negotiations do not factor in the people who are dissatisfied with the EU part rather than the Greek government part.

More interesting viewing. It's personal for me. I get the pay cut...

[Workingman]

I came to the conclusion some time ago that Greece would be better off out.

Reading a few things over the past two weeks it seems that some economic commentators are now being allowed to say the same. The arguments go that the New Drachma will come in at a joke rate against other currencies and that will make life very hard for Greece, the country. However, if the Greeks can sit out a period of pain, one they were going to get anyway, the economy would start to pick up; especially in leisure, tourism and agriculture. Coupled with the new tax laws and pension rules imposed by the Troika Greece will begin to look like a place to invest again... and on it goes.

Roll on the 1st of July.

[Suff]

I'm reading the increasingly pessimistic press about Greece and wondering why nobody actually gets it.

The creditors will not release one more Euro Cent until Greece passes the legislation to reduce pensions and reform the labour market.

The Greek Government can't pass that legislation because it simply doesn't have the majority for it. Or, at least, if it does pass it with the help of the other parties not in the coalition, the coalition would fall apart and new elections would follow. In either scenario, the laws would not be enacted.

With 10 days to go, Greece defaults and the banks become insolvent.

Unless the creditors capitulate completely and release at least €1.6bn in the next 10 days, then it's game over and the infighting will begin. However the chances of that are slimmer than graphene right now with all creditors saying things like "It's all up to Greece now" or "The conversation cannot continue until there are adults in the room.

The most interesting thing I've seen recently is the words "sullen", "obstructive", "childish" and "petulant". All associated with the creditors, notably, in the mainstream press. As people begin to wake up and realise that for 5 months the only people who have moved are Greece and Greece can move no more. The only place the creditors have moved from is hardline to harder line.

To quote fith element "big baaada Boom" Soon....

[Workingman]

I see the head of Greece's biggest bank has said it would be "insane" not to reach an agreement.

The general media is now having to tell us what it should have been saying months ago - the rest of the PIIGS will sit on the side-lines and watch how the Greek situation unfolds.

The chips could fall in many ways and a lot of those are not favourable to the €.

[TheOstrich]

At the end of the day, come 30/06/15, they will merely kick the can further down the road, as they've done countless times before. Way too many vested international interests at stake.

[Suff]

The only people who can kick the can down the road this time are the EU and the ECB. With >50% of Germans favouring a Grexit and many other nations populations in the same boat, that is not likely.

For Greece there is no time left. They simply don't have time to get their reforms through parliament, even if they were willing to and they are not.

Add to this, you have the creditors saying "it's all up to Greece now".

Where does that leave you?

Bang.

As WM said. The press and the governments are culpable of lying to their people. Now the people have started to believe the lies and just when these countries need flexibility to kick the can down the road; they are being held accountable for not giving Greece any more rope.

It may yet be a can down the road situation. But it doesn't feel like it. They were all sitting there waiting for Varoufakis to tell them what the Greek plan for resolving this issue was. When they heard it, they did not believe it. Because it was the same as it has been for 5 months now. "Give us the money you promised us or we'll default". Except for 5 months Greece has been fiscally responsible and paid every debt on time and with money they can't afford. The Troika has not given Greece a cent since August 2014 and Greece has been raiding every cupboard to pay the bills. Now the cupboards are bare, the legislation the creditors want is not going to happen and both the IMF payment and the and of the current bailout arrive at the same time; June 30th.

Even more salient is that the remainder of the Greek bailout is €7.2bn. The repayment to the EU and IMF creditors (minus the tens of billions of bond swaps), till the end of the year, is circa €9bn.

The Greeks want to talk debt forgiveness. The Troika want to talk submission and pain.

That is the state of play today. It's not looking like a can down the road. It's looking like an anthill of red ants and when someone kicks it, it is going to be a bad day for everyone.

At least the press is now talking the truth. That the EU is being as shortsighted as the American government was over Lehmans. They are saying that the EU understands as much about the impact of letting Greece exit the Euro as the Fed did about letting Lehmans go and we are all still paying the price of that one. Whilst the PIIGS are all with bodged bailouts and are, nominally, backed by an ECB willing to simply print money and devalue € holdings if the markets go after the PIIGS, the market will leave them alone. But the second Grexit happens, it's high noon in the cowboy trading houses and the gunslinging begins; with nobody caring who is left standing at the end.

Yes they may patch it. But it's looking more and more like Lehmans as every day goes by.

[Suff]

Dear me, the market is really gagging today. They went off on a tear because the Greeks had "capitulated" and backed down on two of their dearly held principles.

Only to crash later in the day when the EU finance ministers, after getting the real offer and not the wrong one sent earlier in the day, said they had nothing to discuss because there were no solid details.....

It's almost like the markets think they can will Greece back into the Euro. They are forgetting that these finance ministers are politicians and they have convinced themselves, just as the US convinced themselves under Bush, that the Euro can afford to loose Greece if they don't get everything they want with knobs on...

Fortunately (or unfortunately if you think that way), the political leaders have a somewhat more realistic viewpoint. Otherwise it might be.

Quack, Quack, Ooops. Like it was in 2009....

It might be that anyway. We don't have long to wait.

But, again, even if they fix it this week, the writing is on the wall. Greece is flat broke. What everyone is arguing about right now is less than Greece has to pay back by the end of the year. It is just staving off the inevitable for a little while longer and when the next crunch happens, there will be no further bailout, no support and no sympathy. In the interim the EU and the ECB will do everything they can to insulate themselves from the fallout of a Grexit....

Hope on hope ever. Grexit would be better for Greece now than in 6 months with the EU prepared and willing to hang the Greeks out to dry...