Syriza to get majority in Greece.

[truman 10]

I said 'Putin', not 'Russia'

 

Berberis didn't though :

[L00b 441]

Berberis didn't though :

His mistake

 

(meant in jest)

[geared 316]

I said 'Putin', not 'Russia' ...and who said anything about paying the debts off

 

Too true, they might just throw them a bone on the proviso they let a carrier fleet setup shop in Greece.

 

I'd bet the lefty Greek government would be more than happy to jump into bed with the neo-Soviet Russia.

[L00b 441]

Well today's Eurogroup meeting came and went, nobody blinked, no deal.

 

And Lagarde did not lose a second playing credit controller.

 

Greek savers are running on banks as well (€2bn withdrawn in 3 days...at the scale of Greece, if that's not a bank run, I don't know what is ) but that's being kept relatively quiet.

 

Yo, I think the Greeks' fries are done.

 

Oh dear.

 

That's going to be some fireworks!

 

In other news, Tsipras visited Putin today. Pure diary coincidence, I'm sure.

Edited June 18, 2015 by L00b

[RickyM 10]

Well today's Eurogroup meeting came and went, nobody blinked, no deal.

 

And Lagarde did not lose a second playing credit controller.

 

Greek savers are running on banks as well (€2bn withdrawn in 3 days...at the scale of Greece, if that's not a bank run, I don't know what is ) but that's being kept relatively quiet.

 

Yo, I think the Greeks' fries are done.

 

Oh dear.

 

That's going to be some fireworks!

 

In other news, Tsipras visited Putin today. Pure diary coincidence, I'm sure.

 

Thanks for this information.

 

I wonder if it will get to the point where Greece will default and leave the Eurozone. Any thoughts or predictions on this, anyone?

[L00b 441]

There's a lot of people between rocks and hard places, but none more so than the Greek Joe Saps.

 

In the end, it will boil down to whether Syriza does what needs to be done: roll over on their election promises to secure more bailouts and save the Greeks from financial Armageddon...but become unelectable for a generation or longer; or stick to their hard left guns (or actually be forced to do that at home: Syriza is a coalition of hard and not-so-hard lefties after all) and default.

 

It won't be a case of having a choice to leave or stay in the Eurozone: they'd have no choice but to get out, and get the money presses going like mad, to try and kickstart their economic breakout. To stay in the Eurozone would be beyond economically suicidal.

 

Useful article, for future reference. Note the date. Yes, that's October 2010. Choice extract:

The resulting dumping of Greek bonds onto the market was, in the short term, no big deal, because the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank had between them agreed to lend Greece—a nation of about 11 million people, or two million fewer than Greater Los Angeles—up to $145 billion. In the short term Greece had been removed from the free financial markets and become a ward of other states.

 

That was the good news. The long-term picture was far bleaker. In addition to its roughly $400 billion (and growing) of outstanding government debt, the Greek number crunchers had just figured out that their government owed another $800 billion or more in pensions. Add it all up and you got about $1.2 trillion, or more than a quarter-million dollars for every working Greek. Against $1.2 trillion in debts, a $145 billion bailout was clearly more of a gesture than a solution. And those were just the official numbers; the truth is surely worse. “Our people went in and couldn’t believe what they found,” a senior I.M.F. official told me, not long after he’d returned from the I.M.F.’s first Greek mission. “The way they were keeping track of their finances—they knew how much they had agreed to spend, but no one was keeping track of what he had actually spent. It wasn’t even what you would call an emerging economy. It was a Third World country.”

 

As it turned out, what the Greeks wanted to do, once the lights went out and they were alone in the dark with a pile of borrowed money, was turn their government into a piñata stuffed with fantastic sums and give as many citizens as possible a whack at it. In just the past decade the wage bill of the Greek public sector has doubled, in real terms—and that number doesn’t take into account the bribes collected by public officials. The average government job pays almost three times the average private-sector job. The national railroad has annual revenues of 100 million euros against an annual wage bill of 400 million, plus 300 million euros in other expenses. The average state railroad employee earns 65,000 euros a year. Twenty years ago a successful businessman turned minister of finance named Stefanos Manos pointed out that it would be cheaper to put all Greece’s rail passengers into taxicabs: it’s still true. The Greek public-school system is the site of breathtaking inefficiency: one of the lowest-ranked systems in Europe, it nonetheless employs four times as many teachers per pupil as the highest-ranked, Finland’s.

Enough said, I think. Edited June 19, 2015 by L00b

[geared 316]

Their election promises were based on lies and stupid ideas, they knew it was un-workable but took a chance the EU would bend over backwards for them.

 

Greece needs to change, but the government has resisted change the whole way and still won't do what needs to be done.

 

They cannot continue as they are, they will just collapse 6 months down the line anyway.

Cut them off now, let the economy collapse and bring back the drachma.

 

FWIW when the Drachma changed to the Euro it was roughly 500 to £1

Edited June 19, 2015 by geared

[ted77 10]

in the long run it may not be good for the people of Greece but Im glad a democratically elected government is standing up to the multinational banks telling them what they must do

[L00b 441]

in the long run it may not be good for the people of Greece but Im glad a democratically elected government is standing up to the multinational banks telling them what they must do

What, "pay your debts"?

 

Last I checked, it was the EU, the ECB and the IMF doing the asking, not 'multinational banks'.

 

EDIT - read the linked article, you might learn a thing or two. Another useful quote, ending with a great line, from that article:

Oddly enough, the financiers in Greece remain more or less beyond reproach. They never ceased to be anything but sleepy old commercial bankers. Virtually alone among Europe’s bankers, they did not buy U.S. subprime-backed bonds, or leverage themselves to the hilt, or pay themselves huge sums of money. The biggest problem the banks had was that they had lent roughly 30 billion euros to the Greek government—where it was stolen or squandered. In Greece the banks didn’t sink the country. The country sank the banks.

Edited June 19, 2015 by L00b

[Obelix 11]

in the long run it may not be good for the people of Greece but Im glad a democratically elected government is standing up to the multinational banks telling them what they must do

 

It's not the banks asking. It's the other soverign nations of the EU asking Greece to stop being a knob and peeing money up the wall.

 

It's a shame they didn't start asking about ten years earlier as it wouldnt have been as messy but this is nothing to do with nasty banks...

[L00b 441]

In other news, Tsipras visited Putin today. Pure diary coincidence, I'm sure.

Well, well, well, what have we here?

 

Tsipras meeting Putin in a couple of hours, and insistent noises that Russia might spring up some bailout cash after all.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists, "To consider such a question, you first have to hear some kind of proposals or initiatives from our Greek partners. To discuss this abstractly, without having any appeals or proposals, would be shortsighted."

 

That follows yesterday's:

Greece has not asked Russia's finance ministry for financial assistance and its prime minister is visiting Russia to discuss joint projects, not to seek cash, Russian Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak said

Riiiight. 'Course they're not seeking cash. And now, for my next trick...

 

Now, guess what happens on Monday? An Emergency Eurogroup meeting about Greece, yes...aaaaand a Eurogroup meeting during which a decision may be taken to extend EU sanctions on Russia. Coincidence? I think not

 

Be nice to think that, if Tsipras has it in mind to play a bit of realpolitik with this ("bail me out or I'll Grexit and wed Vlad"), the EU send him on his merry way with a jumbo-sized jar of lube for a wedding present (the Greek population -or generals- can always chop his head off and mount it on a spike after he does ). Sadly, I doubt they will.

Edited June 19, 2015 by L00b

[ted77 10]

I think political parties should stand by their manifestos, maybe if the parties in this country tried it they wouldn't be held in such low esteem.