A failure to listen

[victor]

soon be renting out their navy bases

[Suff]

So the drama continues. Germany came with a list of requirements.

Greece to submit all fiscal legislation to EU scrutiny before it could be voted on
Greece to back out all legislation passed by Syriza
Greece to sequester €50bn in a fund to be managed by the EU
Greece to be subject to a 5 year "time out" from the Euro if it defaulted on any of it's loans.

The Ecofin meeting was halted on Saturday night after the German finance minister tore Draghi a new rectum.

Merkel and Hollande are at each others throats over the way they are treating Greece and the fact that Germany seems to be either trying to cause regime change in Greece or to force them out of the Euro. Of course if the Euro fell like a stone Germany would be a huge beneficial. France, on the other hand, who make a lot of their money out of services and finance and less of it from industry, would be badly hurt.

Greece? They're saying they will do whatever needs to be done to avoid leaving the Euro in a shambles. The Finns are pretty much demanding the Greek gets booted for the grand crime of trying to be a country which cares about it's people and not the finances or economies of the EU.....

This is a show worth watching from the sidelines... As a UK citizen who holds his money in £ not €, I find this exceedingly amusing. Although our property is valued in € and my income is denominated in €.

BUT, all the pain I will see in income and loss of asset value is made up a thousand times over by the revelation, to the rest of the world just exactly what the Euro is. A vehicle to allow the more industrialised states to make huge sums of money from the less industrialised states and to keep that money by locking them into the same currency so they can't devalue.

As the penny drops as to who thinks they actually run the EU and the Euro, many countries are looking to their size and economy in relation to Greece and having a long hard think about what this unbridled overwhelming of national parliaments means.

It is a joy to watch. It's everything I've talked about for the last decade coming to a head at once. Initially the EU institutions did the overwhelming "we are the boss" bit and tried to drive the whole thing. Only once the Commission and the Council's two "Presidents" were told to shut up and get back in their boxes did the Americans wake up and start to realise what the EU really is.

Personally I want Germany and the Finns, along with a few other hardliners, to throw Greece out of the Euro. Only then will France and the Southern states wake up and realise what is really going on in the EU. Even more so when France realises it only has one vote in the EU just like everyone else....

It's nice to see that France is being told what to do by Germany. No more the collegial little clique of France and Germany telling everyone else what to do. Merkel is trying to reach out to the UK, but I'm not so sure how that is going to go. I'd expect Cameron to play that for more and that will further alienate the UK and Germany...

Why is Merkel being such a nightmare? I'm pretty sure she's had the riot act read by the party. Greece has to be fully humiliated and the bastard government voted in has to be removed to ensure that nobody ever challenges the state of affairs or demands that Germany pay further war reparations.

In some ways I have sympathy with Germany's view on this. If anyone wanted to really push this it should have been done in 92 when the reunification was completed. Otherwise people will never stop dipping into the German well every time they screw the budget up. However it plays well for me as it breaks the ties which bind the Euro and the EU.

Essentially I'm not against AN EU in principle. I'm just against this monstrous hydra that has been created which his undemocratic and unaccountable. Anything which helps tear it down so it can be made again properly is fine with me...

[cromwell]

With the terms of the new Greek bailout being harsher than the previous bailout offered, the Greeks are being punished now. Punished for electing a left-wing anti-austerity party into government, punished for voting No to austerity in the recent referendum.

It's hardly the noble European ideal, is it?

Even the BBC are struggling to spin this story.

[Suff]

Now that the details are coming out, Germany and Merkel are getting a very bad name indeed. It seems there was absolutely no other way to read what they proposed.

Basically the German position was either something the Greeks simply could not accept in any way, or a bribe of debt relief out of the Euro. Basically they were trying to force Greece to take the step and leave the Euro.

If you take that and then revisit every thing that Germany has done throughout the entire negotiations and you come to the conclusion that they never intended to come to a deal at all, this was always their goal from when Syriza was elected.

That has really upset a lot of the EU members. Simply put they are seriously worried right now.

Interesting how the entire viewpoint of a situation can change in a few hours..... Virtually nobody is calling this Tsipras fault right now. Tsipras is now looking like the victim and very few are calling it any other way.

Right now the ECB and Draghi are being called the attack arm of Germany over the Euro. The estimate of the damage done to the Greek economy by the Troika and, especially, the ECB is somewhere around the size of the third bailout, which means that this bailout will do absolutely nothing for Greece.

It's amazing what this kind of press might do for Greece. Because if the ECB think they have been manoeuvred by Germany into crippling Greece, they might just decide to completely recapitalise the Greek Banks with some of the trillion odd € of liquidity which has currently been denied Greece.

Time will tell but I think that Germany has done itself absolutely no favours this weekend. When the president of the Council says that the PM of Greece has been put through "mental waterboarding", that kind of thing will send shockwaves through the EU. Especially as Tsipras has completely capitulated.

Personally I think the best thing that could happen tonight is that the Greek parliament votes down the package. Reports are that even moderates are shocked rigid by the way things went this weekend and Tsipras may find it difficult to get the majority he wants. We can only hope.

I'm sure that the phrase "Adults in the room" will come back to haunt the Troika over the next few years....

More interesting viewing this week....

[Workingman]

I am loving the position the BBC and its own Peston are in.

For months they have been predicting Grexit with floods, pestilence and the sky falling in. Grexit was this, and Grexit was that and the Troika would do this and that, but Peston overlooked a major fact: there are at least two Grexits.

The first is through the actions of the Troika forcing Greece into submission, which we are nearly at. The second is Greece choosing to leave and go back to the Drachma, and we might not be far off that, either.

[Suff]

This latest bailout certainly won't fix anything.

Latest estimates are that the damage done to the economy by the Greek Government refusing to cave and the EU using the ECB to basically bankrupt the Greek government is now running at around €30bn. Plus a needed €25bn or so to recapitalise the banks. Add to that the commitments for the next 3 years in repayments and you get to??? Serious negative figures in the budget.

Add to that the fact that the Greek economy will contract again this year and we will be back here in 18 months in the same situation. Perhaps then the Greeks will vote for someone who promises to take them out of the Euro... Because one thing is certain now. Syriza is going to break apart and there will be elections. Sooner rather than later.

The distance the can is being kicked down the road is shorter every cycle and the cost per year of that cycle goes up every time....

[Workingman]

..... we will be back here in 18 months in the same situation. Perhaps then the Greeks will vote for someone who promises to take them out of the Euro

At least if it goes that way it will be on Greek terms, and I would put a few bob on them not being too worried about what troubles it could cost the €zone.

Had the problem been put to a primary school class in the beginning it would have handled things better.

[Suff]

The IMF bites back.

Germany has said No debt relief in the Euro
Germany has said No deal without the IMF

The IMF has said No deal without debt relief....

Classic. So what exactly are the Greeks voting for tomorrow? Christmas????

[cromwell]

I'm not so sure. 18 months down the line it's possible but right now the Greeks are desperate to stay in the Eurozone. Which is why Tsipras had to take the deal on offer.

Christine Lagarde, lest we forget, was the French finance minister before she became head of the IMF. The woman who admitted that the bailouts broke the rules of the Lisbon treaty, who said "We violated all the rules to save the Euro". The French think the EU is their baby. The father of the EU Jean Monnet was French. The French led IMF want to go easy on the Greeks - to break the rules of the bailouts - to preserve the Euro, to preserve the European ideal.

The German banks are most exposed to the debt of Greece and the other southern European nations in debt, and they want their money back, plus control of the economies of debtor nations so that they don't continue to borrow money and waste it.

This is about German and France, really. About who runs the EU.