Eurozone will collapse...

[Ignitionnet]

Greek Finance Minister

I wish we had not entered this monetary union. But once you're in you don't get out, without catastrophe.

[nomadking]

The finances of Greece were in trouble long before joining the Euro. Eg How was it ever sustainable for hairdressers to retire at 55 or for unmarried women(sexist to begin with) to inherit their parents pensions, ie that's 2 or 3 incomes? The list goes on and on and that is before you get into collecting taxes.

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Greek Finance Minister

So, in one short sentence:

- He begins to invite Greeks to think the Euro is not a good thing after all
- He doesn't quite say it's impossible to get out

Of course, they can't leave until the exit plan is complete. If the markets get even a moment's notice, the resulting stampede for the exits would cripple Greece instantly. Deposit flight is already at very worrying levels as it is.

They will be getting all their ducks in a row, printing currency and planning to prevent money leaving the country from the moment Grexit is announced.

[Ignitionnet]

[Osem]

Originally Posted by nomadking

The finances of Greece were in trouble long before joining the Euro. Eg How was it ever sustainable for hairdressers to retire at 55 or for unmarried women(sexist to begin with) to inherit their parents pensions, ie that's 2 or 3 incomes? The list goes on and on and that is before you get into collecting taxes.

Makes you wonder who on Earth would be stupid enough to invite them into a club with an unswerving commitment to a single currency and rigid monetary policy??

[Osem]

There is something wonderfully mad about the idea that if Greece's creditors can agree on a bailout, which they have done, that represents important progress.

Because, as won't have escaped your notice, the biggest problem all along has been that the youngish Syriza government of the debtor, Greece itself, hates the conditions imposed by the creditors for the mooted rescue.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-32989534

Whatever the human temptation to say to the Greeks they shouldn't have borrowed the money and have to pay it back, it also defies precedent to argue that a country with such a relatively small and weak private sector will ever have the capacity to pay it back.

Which implies that the only rational conversation for Greece's creditors to have with Greece is the one they refuse to have - which is on the scale of a write-off necessary to take the country off an inevitable road to dangerous penury.

[Osem]

Greece has told the International Monetary Fund it will delay Friday's €300m (£216m) debt repayment and bundle all four of its June payments together.

The Athens government will have until 30 June to pay the €1.5bn total, which is also the day on which its bailout deal with the EU and IMF runs out.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is trying to reach a deal to unlock final bailout funds before Greece runs out of money.

But Greece's creditors say differences remain between the two sides.

IMF spokesman Gerry Rice said that under a precedent dating back to the late 1970s, governments could ask to bundle together "multiple principal payments falling due in a calendar month... to address the administrative difficulty of making multiple payments in a short period."

The last country to bundle together payments to the IMF was Zambia in the mid-1980s.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-33009034

Administrative difficulties??

It seems to me that a lot of people are in denial.

[Osem]

EU officials and German politicians have vented their frustration at Greece, with time running out for reaching a debt deal.

One diplomat described as amateurish Greece's attempts to unlock bailout funds from the EU and IMF.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said it was up to international creditors to "turn to realism".

But Germany's European Commissioner said if talks failed Greece would come under a state of emergency.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-33136664

I can see all this stirring up resentment which will not be forgotten in a very long time.

It's just winding me up now. The Eurozone seem to be demand unrealistically punitive conditions on a deal. A 1% surplus? It's clearly ridiculous. Cut them more slack with their repayments and the debt but insist that they institute real reforms. It's clear Greece won't be able to pay them back any time soon so it's better to try and force them into actions that will stabilise the country until such time repayment looks more promising.

That said I don't think Greece has been serious about addressing the systemic problems in their economy and public sector and in that respect it doesn't really matter if they stay or leave the Eurozone. The problems will remain. They could devalue their currency all they like but no one is going to lend to a country that has defaulted on their debts and shows on desire to avoid such problems in the future.

[Osem]

I predict cartoons of a great big German jackboot full of Euros squashing starving Greek peasants.

[heero_yuy]

Yawn! How often do they think they can kick the can down the road?

[Osem]

Crossing threads here but I wonder how the Greeks would fare re. immigration if they quit the EU. I suppose they could decline to take any and pass the problems to someone else but I imagine the boat loads would still arrive on their shores.

[Kursk]

Why are we standing by whilst Greece is humiliated? Why don't all EU Countries re-direct their foreign aid handouts to Greece? Yes, Greece needs to help itself but it needs a helping hand. Another one.

And now an entreaty a la Aragorn at the Black Gates in LOTR:

I urge you, men of The West, stand with Greece as she stands with us; she has gifted us democracy, culture and nice holidays with ouzo and the zorba's dance. We should offer a beacon of hope to our friends, to our own kind and in the name of all that is good.

Or continue sending money to Africa and Asia to line the pockets of despots.

[nashville]

Not too sure about some politics but I think we are better off outside the euro.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Damien

It's just winding me up now. The Eurozone seem to be demand unrealistically punitive conditions on a deal. A 1% surplus? It's clearly ridiculous. Cut them more slack with their repayments and the debt but insist that they institute real reforms. It's clear Greece won't be able to pay them back any time soon so it's better to try and force them into actions that will stabilise the country until such time repayment looks more promising.

Couldn't really make it up, could you? As part of the conditions to keep the Greek economy going they want a string of privatisations and measures that will cripple its already non-existent ability to sustain its debt burden.

It looks less like an attempt to actually resolve the issue and more like an attempt to asset strip a country. I appreciate that Germany has been prospering at the expense of Greece, et al, for a while but this is just a little too obvious.

The bailouts, and the new cash, are nothing to do with the welfare of Greece. They are purely about shifting bad debt from the balance sheets of private banks to those of EU and Eurozone taxpayers.

The EU's horrific corporatism shines through here. Brown reduced our ability to oppose this corporatism via the Lisbon Treaty, the Lib Dems naively think a 9% voting share can oppose it, Labour want in at any cost, and the party line from the Conservatives is to treat the EU membership referendum as a purely political exercise to score points.

Not that surprising given they seem to treat most things as political, rather than practical, exercises, and are cut from the same corporatist cloth as the EU with only the methods of forwarding corporatism being different.

---------- Post added at 15:54 ---------- Previous post was at 15:49 ----------

Originally Posted by nashville

Not too sure about some politics but I think we are better off outside the euro.

Without question. Our economy would've been an even bigger mess had we been in the Euro.

The Euro is a currency largely by Germany, for Germany, and sod the rest of the Eurozone.

---------- Post added at 15:57 ---------- Previous post was at 15:54 ----------

Originally Posted by Kursk

Why are we standing by whilst Greece is humiliated? Why don't all EU Countries re-direct their foreign aid handouts to Greece? Yes, Greece needs to help itself but it needs a helping hand. Another one.

Well, it needs a helping hand rather than being loaded with debt to pay off Eurozone banks who lent it money in the past so that they don't have to suffer the consequences of the bad loans they made.

The Greek bailouts have been nothing of the sort. They have been Greek creditor bailouts. A small fraction of the money has actually gone to Greece.

Moral hazard for the banks completely gone. They can lend however they like knowing the taxpayer will pick up the tab, so they can continue to act like asshats, pay themselves huge bonuses based on the dodgy loans, and pass the bill when it goes bad to taxpayers. A great deal indeed.