For years, various negotiations tried to avert this train wreck. But the creditors insisted that fresh aid would come only if Syriza adopted an austerity programme similar to previous governments.
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There are 40,000 British residents in Greece, including 6,000 receiving payments from the Department of Work and Pensions; and around 300 receiving public sector pension payments.
This was not such an outrageous proposition. A second possible strategy: strangle Greece’s economy until the people decide that the lesser catastrophe would be to resign themselves to endless austerity within the eurozone.
Within the European Union, the concept got a different name, convergence, because it also involved aligning laws and standards.
And if Europe doesn’t buckle – well, Tsipras can say that he didn’t lead Greece out of the eurozone – it was kicked out by unreasonable creditors.
Tsoukas said it’s likely that Greece would eventually revert to the drachma if the euro is no longer its main currency.
Due to the fractious negotiations the ECB has refused to accept Greek government bonds or Greek government guaranteed bonds as collateral for Greek banks loans since February.
It is also an open secret that the bulk of the €240 billion total bailout money received by Greece during 2010 and 2012 went to banks and bondholders who lent the money before the crash.
On Tuesday, Merkel told German MPs that there would be no renewed discussions with Greece until after the referendum. These profound illusions and delusions are proving a catastrophe for Europe (and beyond). After Greece confessed to downplaying the scale of their deficit in 2009, they’ve been on the verge of financial meltdown ever since. They don’t agree on all the details but they do suggest that the widely-touted benefits of Grexit (the reduction in debt service costs, the boost to competitiveness from a lower currency) need to be heavily qualified. Despite Winston Churchill’s much-quoted 1946 speech in Zurich calling for a “United States of Europe”, it has troubled both British political parties for decades.
There are two reasons for this, the first being that the big holders of Greece’s massive debt is now the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank (ECB) and eurozone government rather than private lenders. And you might even capsize quicker if you handle the supposed excess ballast wrongly. Argentina is essentially the laughingstock of global finance the world over, and its economy is in a shambles largely because the Argentinians continue to support corrupt populist governments such as that of Ms. Ferdinand de Kirchner. As happens with Norway and Switzerland, to retain full access to the EU’s single market, Britain would have to obey most of the rules (and pay into its budget) without having a say in them.
Mr Fuchs said the current proposals presented “no sustainability at all” for the Greek economy.
If Greece and its 11 million people left the European Union, it would be an unprecedented move within the monetary system that gave birth to the currency known as the euro. They emphasize that the ability of other countries to push through overhauls demanded by their partners, in return for assistance, has helped Europe strengthen its economic position and given the region time to ride out the upheavals in Greece. Taxpayers in Germany, France, and the Netherlands, in particular, would have ended up bailing out their reckless bankers, who were responsible for spreading financial ruin across the continent. What nonsense! Whatever happens to Greece, the fallout for the rest of Europe and the world economy is probably modest.
In the first book, Chang described how the industrialized countries are attempting to kick away the ladder with which they had climbed to the top, thereby preventing developing countries from adopting policies and institutions that they themselves had used.
And that is of course just another grand illusion.
Banks will start running out of cash on Sunday even as Greeks go to the polls, with their government urging a “no” vote on austerity measures proposed by worldwide creditors. If that was necessary to rescue the euro, lacking any defenses at the time, why do the Greeks alone have to pick up the bill? It compares the economic performance of Greece inside the euro with European rivals that don’t use the euro. Let’s hope the people of Greece make the right decision so that their country can likewise begin the recovery process.
Iceland had already experienced some of these problems when it faced a huge financial crisis after 2008. The euro as a means to prosperity turned out to be a pipe dream. Joining Europe’s currency union made Greek attractive to foreign investors. For how much longer will it be a means to secure peace then? Wisely, it is not in the euro or the Schengen travel zone.
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Greece is a mess.
