Alexis Tsipras' "open letter" to German citizens

volpunter said:
a) It is spelled grandfather
b) It is spelled World War 2, World War II, or WWII/WW2
c) Germans do not like dogs more than people.
d) In case you have missed something it is not just Germans who are running out of patience, it is most European countries and their tax payers who are tired of the shenanigans that Greeks are playing.

And it is funny that nobody in Japan or China injects themselves into the debate between Greeks and its creditors, yet there are certain American elements that always seem to have an opinion and always seem to have something to say to stir the debate or "gently direct" discussions in order to hope for a certain outcome and almost always ti turns out that such certain "American elements" are Jews or Jewish organizations. It is not a fact, not something I made up. You can by the way try to be intelligent and verify it for yourself. You can start with George Soros and his keen interest in everything Europe and Anti-German.
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volly has outdone himself. only a fool would not realize that the misspelling of father was not a spelling error but a typo.

"d) In case you have missed something it is not just Germans who are running out of patience, it is most European countries and their tax payers who are tired of the shenanigans that Greeks are playing. "
the shenanigan or stupidity was Germany agreeing to Greece joining the EU when it did not meet the conditions for joining.
the stupidity was Germany subsidizing Greek farmers tens of billions dollars which they were not entitled to. the greeks provided fake production numbers for decades and the Germans foolishly went along.
 
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A piece by one of the most respected macro analysts in the professional space:
(https://www.project-syndicate.org/c...political-suicide-by-anatole-kaletsky-2015-06)


A Greek Suicide?
  • provocative rejection of what he described as the “absurd” bailout offer by Greece’s creditors, no longer poses a serious threat to the rest of Europe. The bad news is that Tsipras does not seem to understand this.

    To judge by Tsipras’s belligerence, he firmly believes that Europe needs Greece as desperately as Greece needs Europe. This is the true “absurdity” in the present negotiations, and Tsipras’ misapprehension of his bargaining power now risks catastrophe for his country, humiliation for his Syriza party, or both.
    The most likely outcome is that Tsipras will eat his words and submit to the conditions set by the “troika” (the European Commission, European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund) before the end of June. If not, the ECB will stop supporting the Greek banking system, and the government will run out of money to service foreign debts and, more dramatically, to pay Greek citizens their pensions and wages. Cut off from all external finance, Greece will become an economic pariah – the Argentina of Europe – and public pressure will presumably oust Syriza from power.

    This outcome is all the more tragic, given that the economic analysis underlying Syriza’s demand for an easing of austerity was broadly right. Instead of seeking a face-saving compromise on softening the troika program, Tsipras wasted six months on symbolic battles over economically irrelevant issues such as labor laws, privatizations, even the name of the troika.

    This provocative behavior lost Greece all potential allies in France and Italy. Worse still, the time wasted on political grandstanding destroyed the primary budget surplus, which was Tsipras’s trump card in the early negotiations.

    Now Tsipras thinks he holds another trump card: Europe’s fear of a Greek default. But this is a delusion promoted by his finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis. A professor of game theory, Varoufakis recently boasted to the New York Times that “little Greece, in order to survive, [could] bring down the financial world,” and that his media image “as an irrational fool… is doing my work for me” by frightening other EU finance ministers.

    Apparently, Varoufakis believes that his “sophisticated grasp of game theory” gives Greece a crucial advantage in “the complicated dynamics” of the negotiations. In fact, the game being played out in Europe is less like chess than like tic-tac-toe, where a draw is the normal outcome, but a wrong move means certain defeat.

    The rules of this game are much simpler than Varoufakis expected because of a momentous event that occurred in the same week as the Greek election. On January 22, the ECB took decisive action to protect the eurozone from a possible Greek default. By announcing a huge program of bond purchases, much bigger relative to the eurozone bond market than the quantitative easing implemented in the United States, Britain, or Japan, ECB President Mario Draghi erected the impenetrable firewall that had long been needed to protect the monetary Union from a Lehman-style financial meltdown.

    The ECB’s newfound ability to print money, essentially without limit, to support both banks and governments has reduced Greek contagion to insignificance. That represents a profound change in Europe’s financial environment, which Greek politicians, along with many economic analysts, still fail to understand.

    Before the ECB’s decision, contagion from Greece was a genuine threat. If the Greek government defaulted or tried to abandon the euro, Greece’s banks would collapse, and Greeks who failed to get their money out of the country would lose their savings, as occurred in Cyprus in 2013. When savers in other indebted euro countries such as Portugal and Spain observed this, they would fear similar losses and move their money to banks in Germany or Austria, as well as sell their holdings of Portuguese or Spanish government bonds.

    As a result, the debtor countries’ bond prices would collapse, interest rates would soar, and banks would be threatened with collapse. If the contagion from Greece intensified, the next-weakest country, probably Portugal, would find itself unable to support its banking system or pay its debts. In extremis, it would abandon the euro, following the Greek example.

    Before January, this sequence of events was quite likely, but the ECB’s bond-buying program put a firebreak at each point of the contagion process. If holders of Portuguese bonds are alarmed by a future Greek default, the ECB will simply increase its bond buying; with no limit to its buying power, it will easily overwhelm any selling pressure.

    If savers in Portuguese banks start moving their money to Germany, the ECB will recycle these euros back to Portugal through interbank deposits. Again, there is no limit to how much money the ECB can recycle, provided Portuguese banks remain solvent – which they will, so long as the ECB continues to buy Portuguese government bonds.

    In short, the ECB bond-buying program has transformed the ECB from a passive observer of the euro crisis, paralyzed by the outdated legalistic constraints of the Maastricht Treaty, into a proper lender of last resort. With powers to monetize government debts similar to those exercised by the US Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan, and the Bank of England, the ECB can now guarantee the eurozone against financial contagion.

    Unfortunately for Greece, this has been lost on the Tsipras government. Greek politicians who still see the threat of financial contagion as their trump card should note the coincidence of the Greek election and the ECB’s bond-buying program and draw the obvious conclusion. The ECB’s new policy was designed to protect the euro from the consequences of a Greek exit or default.

    The latest Greek negotiating strategy is to demand a ransom to desist threatening suicide. Such blackmail might work for a suicide bomber. But Greece is just holding a gun to its own head – and Europe does not need to care very much if it pulls the trigger.


 
Lagarde: Only chance is to resume with adults in the room, says Lagarde.
Ouch, that's a jibe at Varoufakis

Ministers of finance of Eurogroup: It is totally excluded that Europe will give what Greece wants.
 
Final decision - Monday 6/22 . LOL
Grexit or kick the can down the road ?

The reality is Greek will go burst in long term if not debt restructure or "forgiveness", however, if they get the debt restructure, Europe is set for long term fights with other PIGS that will request a similar request,each of them will ask the same question " why we behalf as a good boy and perform painful austerity and get nothing, but the bad boy get the candy?". LOL
 
Our resident cool-headed, calm and amiable Volpunter requested an update on Greece, so I wanted to help him out.

Two Minutes After Midnight, Still No Pumpkins; Schäuble Seeks Capital Controls; Sisyphus
Early this morning, we saw reports of a last minute deal offer by Greece. That was followed by a Financial Times headline that read "Hopes Fade of Breakthrough Greece Deal".

The exact same link now displays this headline: Greek Concessions Keep Hopes of Bailout Deal Alive.

Greece on Monday kept alive hopes of an eleventh-hour deal with creditors to avoid default after Athens presented its first substantial concessions in months of fruitless negotiations.

Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, said Athens had produced “its first real proposals in many weeks”.

Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who heads the eurogroup of eurozone finance ministers, called the new Greek proposal “a positive step”.

Markets soared amid rising hopes of a breakthrough. The main Athens stock index closed up 9 per cent and bank shares surged more than 20 per cent.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, said finance ministers would be called back on Wednesday in an effort to finalise an agreement, and two Greek ministers will remain in Brussels to negotiate with creditors.

Some eurozone members remain deeply sceptical of the chances for a deal. According to three officials, finance ministers had an intense discussion about whether capital controls should be imposed in Greece.

Germany’s Wolfgang Schäuble and Michael Noonan, his Irish counterpart, pushed for curbs on emergency liquidity for Greek banks unless capital controls were imposed, one of the officials said.

At the evening summit of eurozone leaders, offcials said Mr Tsipras acknowledged he had lost the trust of many leaders in the room and tried to rebuild confidence by outlining the breadth of concessions he had made.

Mr Tsipras also raised the issue of debt relief during the session, something he has insisted on as a necessity to get support for a refom programme at home. Officials said he was told by other leaders that the issue could not be part of the current deal, but there was willingness to discuss it as part of future negotiations.

Angela Merkel, German chancellor, said at a post-summit press conference that she was open to considering debt relief — but only after the current negotiations over economic reforms were completed first. After Midnight

Here we go again. It is easily after midnight, for the nth time. Yet, no matter what happens, the clock instantly reverts to 11:58.

Watching action in Greece is like watching Sisyphus roll a ball up a hill.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
 
"No Deal": Tsipras Says Creditors Did Not Accept Greek Proposal

Who could have possibly foreseen that the IMF would throw up all over the Greek "proposal"... aside from this post here "Why The IMF Will Reject The Latest Greek Proposal In Just Two Numbers" yesterday afternoon of course. In any event, moments ago Bloomberg reported that just as we wrote here yesterday afternoon, there is no deal and that Greek PM Alexis Tsipras told his associates that creditors not accepting equivalent fiscal measures has never happened before, according to a Greek govt official, who asked not to be named in line with policy.

Creditors “not accepting parametric measures has never happened before. Neither in Ireland, nor in Portugal, nor anywhere. This strange stance can hide two scenarios; they either don’t want an agreement or serve specific interests in Greece,” the official cited Tsipras as saying."

As a reminder, Tsipras is meeting Wednesday with European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in an effort to reach a deal before Greece’s bailout expires and about 1.5 billion euros ($1.7 billion) in payments come due to the IMF on June 30.

The reaction across European asset classes was kneejerk lower...



... although it has since bounced back modestly as "hopes" that this final final deal, which was just scuttled, will be revised and lead to yet another favorable conclusion. They don't call it climbing the wall of Greek rumors for nothing.

As for Tsipras suggesting that Troika does not want an agreement, he is absolutely correct. Recall "Goldman's "Conspiracy Theory" Stunner: A Greek Default Is Precisely What The ECB Wants"... the same Goldman that blessed a Lehman bankruptcy and got precisely what it requested.

In any event, the ball is now in Greece's court...

  • CREDITORS SAID TO HAND GREEK GOVT REVISED PROPOSAL
... also as we predicted, where either the Greek negotiators will finally enact the "dreaded" pension cuts, or else the Troika will be able to wash its hands of a Greek default and blame it all on Greek intransigence. As a further reminder, at this point it is all about who gets the blame for a "Grexident."
 
your guy Mish really seems to have a hard-on for Greece and Europe, huh? All that from the Californian or West Coast wilderness, does that not strike you as a bit odd?


Tsing Tao said:
Our resident cool-headed, calm and amiable Volpunter requested an update on Greece, so I wanted to help him out.

Two Minutes After Midnight, Still No Pumpkins; Schäuble Seeks Capital Controls; Sisyphus
Early this morning, we saw reports of a last minute deal offer by Greece. That was followed by a Financial Times headline that read "Hopes Fade of Breakthrough Greece Deal".

The exact same link now displays this headline: Greek Concessions Keep Hopes of Bailout Deal Alive.

Greece on Monday kept alive hopes of an eleventh-hour deal with creditors to avoid default after Athens presented its first substantial concessions in months of fruitless negotiations.

Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, said Athens had produced “its first real proposals in many weeks”.

Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who heads the eurogroup of eurozone finance ministers, called the new Greek proposal “a positive step”.

Markets soared amid rising hopes of a breakthrough. The main Athens stock index closed up 9 per cent and bank shares surged more than 20 per cent.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, said finance ministers would be called back on Wednesday in an effort to finalise an agreement, and two Greek ministers will remain in Brussels to negotiate with creditors.

Some eurozone members remain deeply sceptical of the chances for a deal. According to three officials, finance ministers had an intense discussion about whether capital controls should be imposed in Greece.

Germany’s Wolfgang Schäuble and Michael Noonan, his Irish counterpart, pushed for curbs on emergency liquidity for Greek banks unless capital controls were imposed, one of the officials said.

At the evening summit of eurozone leaders, offcials said Mr Tsipras acknowledged he had lost the trust of many leaders in the room and tried to rebuild confidence by outlining the breadth of concessions he had made.

Mr Tsipras also raised the issue of debt relief during the session, something he has insisted on as a necessity to get support for a refom programme at home. Officials said he was told by other leaders that the issue could not be part of the current deal, but there was willingness to discuss it as part of future negotiations.

Angela Merkel, German chancellor, said at a post-summit press conference that she was open to considering debt relief — but only after the current negotiations over economic reforms were completed first. After Midnight

Here we go again. It is easily after midnight, for the nth time. Yet, no matter what happens, the clock instantly reverts to 11:58.

Watching action in Greece is like watching Sisyphus roll a ball up a hill.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
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