Auteur: Burgercomité-EU

Suppose you consider Tsipras an incompetent twerp. Suppose you dearly want to see Syriza out of power. Suppose, even, that you welcome the prospect of pushing those annoying Greeks out of the euro.

Even if all of that is true, this Eurogroup list of demands is madness. The trending hashtag ThisIsACoup is exactly right. This goes beyond harsh into pure vindictiveness, complete destruction of national sovereignty, and no hope of relief. It is, presumably, meant to be an offer Greece can’t accept; but even so, it’s a grotesque betrayal of everything the European project was supposed to stand for.

Can anything pull Europe back from the brink? Word is that Mario Draghi is trying to reintroduce some sanity, that Hollande is finally showing a bit of the pushback against German morality-play economics that he so signally failed to supply in the past. But much of the damage has already been done. Who will ever trust Germany’s good intentions after this?

In a way, the economics have almost become secondary. But still, let’s be clear: what we’ve learned these past couple of weeks is that being a member of the eurozone means that the creditors can destroy your economy if you step out of line. This has no bearing at all on the underlying economics of austerity. It’s as true as ever that imposing harsh austerity without debt relief is a doomed policy no matter how willing the country is to accept suffering. And this in turn means that even a complete Greek capitulation would be a dead end.

Can Greece pull off a successful exit? Will Germany try to block a recovery? (Sorry, but that’s the kind of thing we must now ask.)

The European project — a project I have always praised and supported — has just been dealt a terrible, perhaps fatal blow. And whatever you think of Syriza, or Greece, it wasn’t the Greeks who did it.

Paul Krugman

Bron: New York Times

Whatever the outcome of wrangling in Brussels over its debt problems, Greece may be heading for further political turmoil as defections by left-wingers weaken Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s grip on government.

Out of 149 lawmakers in his radical-left SYRIZA party, 17 refused to support him in Saturday’s vote which authorized the government to reopen negotiations for a bailout in exchange for austerity measures.

The revolt meant Tsipras could not count on his majority in the 300-seat assembly.

He got the votes he needed with the backing of the right-wing opposition and a coalition that included Socialist and other left-wing legislators.

Since the vote Greece has plunged back into tense talks with the 18 other members of the eurozone over a potential bailout to keep the heavily-indebted nation in the euro.

But any deal will inevitably come tied to tough conditions, demanded especially by northern European countries.
It will require the approval of the Greek parliament – and Tsipras will again not likely be able to rely on the support of a portion of his party.

Fifteen SYRIZA MPs who had backed Tsipras on Saturday sent a letter to the premier saying he should not count on them to approve any future reforms demanded by Greece’s creditors.

More austerity demands are expected as Germany’s fiscal hawks faced off on Sunday against doves led by France at a summit of the 19 eurozone leaders in Brussels, with Athens facing demands to push through new reform laws as early as the coming week.

Among radical politicians who have bucked supporting Tsipras are Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis – a sworn foe of the euro – and parliamentary president Zoe Constantopoulou, a thorn in Tsipras’s side.

Constantopoulou has become an icon for the left with an oppositional stance against the country’s creditors, including a parliamentary inquiry she launched that concluded Germany owed Greece 279 billion euros ($311 billion) in World War II reparations.

According to Greek center-right daily To Vima, Tsipras now finds himself stuck “between (German Finance Minister Wolfgang) Schaeuble, Zoe and Lafazanis.”

For the Greek press, Tsipras has just three options: new elections, a national unity government or a crackdown on SYRIZA members.

Lees verder op Ekathimerini

Faced with lending conditions so severe that one wonders if Germany intends it to leave the euro of its own accord, Greece and its PM are facing a terrible choice.

It comes down to this: Greece has until Wednesday to pass into law draconian new austerity measures or leave the single currency. Months of fruitless talks, all the midnight oil burned in the seemingly never-ending cycle of summits, have ended with a simple message to Alexis Tsipras and his leftwing government: stay on our terms or walk. You decide.

It’s a terrible choice for Tsipras. The conditions being attached to a third Greek bailout are beyond harsh. There will have to be tax increases, pension reforms, privatisation and spending cuts previously rejected by Athens, all overseen by the troika of the European Central Bank, the European commission and the International Monetary Fund.

Tsipras came into power pledging to end austerity. Instead, he is being asked to sign up to an intensification of fiscal pain. Another €13bn (£9bn) will be sucked out of an economy that is already in a slump. The centre-right and centre-left governments that have run Greece since the crisis began at the end of 2009 have been asked to swallow a lot, but never as much as this.

The alternative, though, is to see his country descend into chaos. No preparations have been made for exit from the euro and it will take months for an alternative currency to be in circulation. And with the banks days away from collapse, that is time Greece doesn’t have.

Lees deze column van Larry Elliott verder op The Guardian

As the Greek saga continues, many have marveled at Germany’s chutzpah. It received, in real terms, one of the largest bailout and debt reduction in history and unconditional aid from the U.S. in the Marshall Plan. And yet it refuses even to discuss debt relief. Many, too, have marveled at how Germany has done so well in the propaganda game, selling an image of a long-failed state that refuses to go along with the minimal conditions demanded in return for generous aid.

The facts prove otherwise: From the mid-90’s to the beginning of the crisis, the Greek economy was growing at a faster rate than the EU average (3.9% vs 2.4%). The Greeks took austerity to heart, slashing expenditures and increasing taxes. They even achieved a primary surplus (that is, tax revenues exceeded expenditures excluding interest payments), and their fiscal position would have been truly impressive had they not gone into depression. Their depression—25% decline in GDP and 25% unemployment, with youth unemployment twice that—is because they did what was demanded of them, not because of their failure to do so. It was the predictable and predicted response to the austerity.

The question now is: What’s next, assuming (as seems ever more likely) they are effectively thrown out of the euro? It’s likely that the European Central Bank will refuse to do its job—as the Central Bank for Greece, it should do what every central bank is supposed to do, act as a lender of last resort. And if it refuses to do that, Greece will have no option but to create a parallel currency. The ECB has already begun tightening the screws, making access to funds more and more difficult.

This is not the end of the world: Currencies come and go. The euro is just a 16-year-old experiment, poorly designed and engineered not to work—in a crisis money flows from the weak country’s banks to the strong, leading to divergence. GDP today is more than 17% below where it would have been had the relatively modest growth trajectory of Europe before the euro just continued. I believe the euro has much to do with this disappointing performance.

Lees deze column van Joseph Stiglitz verder op Time

How private bankster's debt got turned into public debt. #Greece pic.twitter.com/1Ft3GcPXI6

— Kaatje Kabelkrant (@kaatje36) 12 juli 2015

How private bankster's debt got turned into public debt. #Greece pic.twitter.com/1Ft3GcPXI6

— Kaatje Kabelkrant (@kaatje36) 12 juli 2015