Home » Posts tagged 'yanis varoufakis' (Page 3)
Tag Archives: yanis varoufakis
Pray For Graccident—–It Will Trigger The Demise Of The ECB And The World’s Toxic Regime Of Keynesian Central Banking
Pray For Graccident—–It Will Trigger The Demise Of The ECB And The World’s Toxic Regime Of Keynesian Central Banking
It is not surprising that in a few short months Yanis Varoufakis has proven himself to be a thoroughgoing Keynesian statist. After all, what would you expect from an economics PhD who co-authored books with Jamie Galbraith? The latter never saw an economic malady that could not be cured with bigger deficits, prodigious printing press “stimulus” and ever more intrusive state intervention and redistribution.
In what is apparently a last desperate game theory ploy, however, Varoufakis has done his countrymen, Europe and the world a favor. By informing his Brussels paymasters that they must continue to subsidize his bankrupt Greek state because it is the only way to preserve the European Project and vouchsafe the Euro, the Greek Finance minister blurted out the truth of the matter, albeit perhaps not intentionally:
“It would be a disaster for everyone involved, it would be a disaster primarily for the Greek social economy, but it would also be the beginning of the end for the common currency project in Europe,” he said.
“Whatever some analysts are saying about firewalls, these firewalls won’t last long once you put and infuse into people’s minds, into investors’ minds, that the eurozone is not indivisible,” he added.
He sure got that right. People who believe in democracy and economic liberty anywhere in the world should pray for a Graccident. During the next several weeks, when $1.8 billion in IMF loans come due that Greece cannot possibly pay, there will occur a glorious moment of irony for Syriza.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Grexit “Disaster” Looms As Greek Hospitals Run Out Of Sheets, Painkillers
Grexit “Disaster” Looms As Greek Hospitals Run Out Of Sheets, Painkillers
The default countdown is about to go under 10 days and it is becoming increasingly apparent that both Greece and its creditors have had enough.
Months of tense negotiations have gone nowhere and yielded exactly nothing and it now looks like PM Alexis Tsipras and FinMin Yanis Varoufakis may be willing to miss a June 5 payment to the IMF if it means proving they are serious about keeping their campaign promises and forcing the troika to the bargaining table. The implications of a missed payment aren’t entirely clear but Athens is keen to predict the worst as it tries to squeeze concessions from creditors.Bloomberg has more:
A day after Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said Greek society can’t absorb any more austerity measures, Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said his government has met the euro area and IMF three-quarters of the way, and that it’s up to creditors to cover the remainder.“Greece has made enormous strides reaching a deal, it is now up to the institutions to do their bit,” Varoufakis said Sunday on BBC’s Andrew Marr Show. “It is not in their interests as our creditors that the cow that produces the milk should be beaten into submission to the extent that the milk will not be enough for them to get their money back”…
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, meanwhile, signaled there isn’t much wiggle room after Tsipras’s government committed to policy changes in return for aid in a euro-area accord on Feb. 20.
“That is the condition for completing the current program,” Schaeuble said in a Deutschlandfunk radio interview aired Sunday. “The problems are rooted in Greece. And now Greece does have to fulfill its commitments.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Why Not Tell Greece How To Run A Democracy?
Why Not Tell Greece How To Run A Democracy?
I know I’ve talked about this before, but it just keeps coming and it keeps being crzay.Bloomberg ‘reports’ that the ‘German Finance Ministry’, let me get this right, “is supporting the idea of a vote by Greek citizens to either accept the economic reforms being sought by creditors to receive a payout from the country’s bailout program or ultimately opt to leave the euro.” And that’s it.
They ‘report’ this as if it has some sort of actual value, as if it’s a real thing. Whereas in reality, it has the exact same value as Greek Finance Minister Varoufakis suggesting a referendum in Germany. Or Washington, for that matter. Something that Bloomberg wouldn’t even dream of ‘reporting’ in any kind of serious way, though the political value would be identical.
Apparently there is some kind of consensus in the international press – Bloomberg was by no means the only ‘news service’ that ‘reported’ this – that Germany has obtained the right to meddle in the internal politics of other eurozone member nations. And let’s get this one thing very clear: it has not.
No more than the Greek government has somehow acquired the right to even vent its opinions on German domestic issues. It is a no-go area for all European Union countries. More than that, it’s no-go for all nations in the world, and certainly in cases where governments have been democratically elected.
So why do Bloomberg and Reuters and all the others disregard such simple principles? All I can think is they entirely lost track of reality, and they live in a world where reality is what they say it is.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Greek People Just Destroyed Syriza’s Strategy
The Greek People Just Destroyed Syriza’s Strategy
Greek stocks ventured deeper into purgatory. The ASE index dove below 700 intraday on Wednesday for the first time since the crisis days of June 2012. Then word spread that the ECB had raised the cap on the Emergency Liquidity Assistance for Greek banks by €1.5 billion to €75.5 billion. It’s the oxygen line for Greek banks. Without it, they’re toast.
The ELA provides the liquidity so that the Greeks can continue yanking their beloved euros out of their banks to stash them elsewhere before their desperate government confiscates them.
The government, under the cool leadership of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, is already confiscating €2.5 billion in “idle” cash that state agencies, state-owned enterprises, and local governments kept at commercial banks, the same banks that the ELA is propping up and that the Greeks are fleeing. Now these entities have to transfer the money to the central bank so that the government can “borrow” it for other purposes.
When word got out that ELA money could continue to flow to the banks for a little while longer, the dreadfully beaten-down FTSE Athens Banks index jumped over 11%. It remains 74% below where it was last June. The overall ASE index recovered to settle above 700. It remains a mere shadow of its former self, down 87% from its cheap-euro-debt peak in 2007.
Greek 2-year yields and 3-year yields, unlike their Eurozone brethren that are blissfully bathing in the negative, jumped to nearly 30%. The 5-year default probability is approaching 90%. In short, the Greek financial markets are kissing the euro goodbye.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Weak Suffer What They Must: Yanis and the End of Europe
The Weak Suffer What They Must: Yanis and the End of Europe
From southern Europe to the far north, matters are shifting, sometimes slowly, sometimes faster. There are moments when it seems all that goes on is the negotiations over the Greek dire financial situation and its bailout conditions, but even there nothing stands still. The Financial Times ran a story claiming Greece is about to default on is debt(s), and many a pundit jumped on that, but there was nothing new there. Of course they are considering such options, but they are looking at many others as well. That doesn’t prove anything, though.
Yanis Varoufakis’ publisher, Public Affairs Books, posted a promo for an upcoming book by the Greek Finance Minister, due out only in 2016, mind you, that reveals a few things that haven’t gotten much attention to date. It’s good to keep in mind that most of the book will have been written before Yanis joined the new Greek government on January 26, and not see it as a reaction to the negotiations that have played out after that date.
Varoufakis simply analyzes the structure of the EU and the eurozone, as well as the peculiar place the ECB has in both. Some may find what he writes provocative, but that’s beside the point. It’s not as if Europe is beyond analysis; indeed, such analysis is long overdue.
Indeed, it may well be the lack of it, and the idea in Brussels that it is exempt from scrutiny, even as institutions such as the ECB build billion dollar edifices as the Greek population goes hungry, that could be its downfall. It may be better to be critical and make necessary changes than to be hardheaded and precipitate your own downfall. Here’s the blurb for the book:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Steve Keen: The Deliberate Blindness Of Our Central Planners
Steve Keen: The Deliberate Blindness Of Our Central Planners
The models we use for decision making determine the outcomes we experience. So, if our models are faulty or flawed, we make bad decisions and suffer bad outcomes.
Professor, author and deflationist Steve Keen joins us this week to discuss the broken models our central planners are using to chart the future of the world economy.
How broken are they? Well for starters, the models major central banks like the Federal Reserve use don’t take into account outstanding debt, or absolute levels of money supply. It’s why they were completely blindsided by the 2008 crash, and will be similarly gob-smacked when the next financial crisis manifests.
And within this week’s podcast is a hidden treat. Steve’s character exposition on Greek Financial Minister Yanis Varoufakis. Steve has known Varoufakis personally for over 25 years, and is able to offer a window into his constitution, how his mind thinks, and what he’s currently going through in his battle with the Troika for Greece’s future.
…click on the above link to listen to the podcast…
There’s Brussels And Then There’s Real People
There’s Brussels And Then There’s Real People
Once again, a look at Greece and the Troika, because it amuses me, it angers me, and also because it warms my cockles, in an entirely metaphorical sort of way. The Troika members love to make it appear (and everyone swallows it whole) as if in their ‘negotiations’ with Greece all sorts of things are cast in stone and have no flexibility at all. Humbug.
First, another great piece by Rob Parenteau (via Yves Smith), who lays it out in terms so simple they can’t but hit the issue square on the nose. For Europe and the Troika, there’s Greece, and then there’s the rest. No money for the Greeks lining up at soupkitchens (not even for the soupkitchens themselves), but $60 billion a month for the bond market. The $200 million anti-poverty law – a measly sum in comparison – that Athens voted in this week is a no-no because Greek government has to ask permission for everything in Brussels first, says Brussels, no matter that that only prolongs the suffering. It’s not about money, in other words, it’s about power, and the Greeks must be subdued.
Both the financial and the political press have by now perfected their picture of Yanis Varoufakis as a combination of some kind of incompetent blunderer on the one hand, and a threat the size of Vladimir Putin on the other, while the rudeness of German FinMin Schäuble is not discussed at all. The media are no longer capable of reporting anything outside of their propaganda models. The ‘middle finger’ video turns out to be a fake, but who cares, it’s done its damage. Parenteau:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
YANIS VAROUFAKIS: THE STRAW THAT BREAKS THE PONZI’S BACK?
YANIS VAROUFAKIS: THE STRAW THAT BREAKS THE PONZI’S BACK?
What do you do when your opponent won’t play by the rules? Worse, what do you do when your loan ‘partner’ (aka ‘debtor’) declares Calvinball, where the only rule is there are no rules, and proceeds to go off the deep end? The result, to put it mildly, is utter chaos, at least for those who expect the (self serving) rules to be adhered to. After all, the central bankers’ henchmen admonish, we’re all civilized here. So come back to the table and play nice. “Do it for the kids,” they plead – the epitome of hypocrisy since their stacked deck and tilted playing field does precisely the opposite.
There is an old and familiar saying in the financial world, no doubt a product of game theory brinkmanship, which speaks to the role reversal of power and leverage once the monster debtor owes such an astronomical amount they can no longer pay to service the note, let alone chip away at the principal. The supposedly weak suddenly inherit the Earth, or at least they wield a very long lever along with a fulcrum with which to move the central banker’s world.
It is most likely a safe bet to say those reading this article clearly see the unsustainability of the present day economic system. The vicious cycle of debt requiring ever more debt just to tread water leads nowhere else but into the abyss of inexorable socioeconomic crumble, if not all out chaos and collapse. At the very least we are facing war; the only real question is will it be worldwide and involve a nuclear exchange.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Memo To Obama: Butt Out Of The Greek Crisis—-You’ve Dispensed Enough Keynesian Poison At Home
Memo To Obama: Butt Out Of The Greek Crisis—-You’ve Dispensed Enough Keynesian Poison At Home
At the moment, Europe is struggling to pass an inflamed financial gallstone. The sooner that Greece is permitted to escape the debt clogged financial ducts fashioned by its Brussels paymasters, the sooner the entirety of Europe can begin the cure of debt liquidation and return to honest finance.
In their wooden-headed insistence that Greece remains obligated to 100% of its crushing $350 billion debt load, the Germans are, ironically, doing the work of the financial gods. By making it literally impossible for the new Greek government to abide by its voter mandate, Berlin is paving the way for “grexit” and is thereby setting-up the catalyst for the Euro’s demise. And with it, of course, the obliteration of the EU’s rotten regime of bank bailouts, central bank money printing and fiscal policy anesthesia.
Hallelujah! Europe and the world desperately need a big, bloody sovereign default, and there is no more worthy case than Greece. As Finance Minister Varoufakis so inconveniently stated last week, Greece is a “bankrupt state” and has been since the crisis first erupted back in 2010.
Accordingly, the Brussels bailout transfer of that impaired debt from the banks and investors, which had so richly earned the right to experience deep losses owing to their lack of prudence, to EU taxpayers was a stupendous act of economic and political folly. It paved the way for the very evil that the fiscally resolute Germans profess to fear the most. Namely, central bank financing of state deficits and the unleashing of politicians to thereby ultimately bankrupt it.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Behind The Global – Game Of – Thrones
Behind The Global – Game Of – Thrones
Greek PM Alexis Tsipras yesterday laid out Syriza’s stance, and from what I saw he didn’t pull even one punch. Despite all the suggestions from the financial press throughout the past week that Tsipras and Varoufakis reneged on campaign promises to seek debt write-downs, they didn’t, and never have – other than perhaps in semantics.
Which I don’t find the slightest bit surprising. I would have been very surprised if they had. The misinterpretation, and the faulty expectations, are easily explained through the fact that – most of – these guys are not politicians, which they very deliberately expressed in the way they dressed for their meetings with ‘Europe’s finest’.
They don’t see the ‘space’ career politicians see to negotiate away the mandate their voters have given them. For them it’s simple: we were elected on our program – which in this case happens to be to end the misery forced upon Greece by the European and Troika schemes -, and we’re not going to move away from that just because ‘the other side’ starts threatening us, or (a crucial difference in politics) because our voters may not vote for us again in a next election.
In their view, trying to scare Greece into even more submission, which is the overlying message emanating from Brussels and beyond, is entirely null and void because Greece can’t – and shouldn’t – sink any lower than it has. Very and refreshingly simple. No surprise there, but, at least on my part, just support and admiration. Syriza is fighting the fight many others don’t have the intellect, the chutzpah and/or the courage for.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Why the Beautiful New Greek Government Is Screwed
Why the Beautiful New Greek Government Is Screwed
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, often in a good-cop-bad-cop manner, have been cruising through the media, lobbing a mix of admirable rhetoric, verbal hand grenades, and down-to-earth explanations. And they have become white-hot media darlings.
So Varoufakis was in Germany to meet with his counterpart, Wolfgang Schäuble, and they didn’t “even agree to disagree,” he said. He urged Germany to help end the “gross indignity” of the Greek debt crisis. The Troika’s austerity program had wasted “too much time, hopes, lives,” he said.
But it’s all about other people’s money.
They’d come to power with a pledge to wipe out half of Greece’s insurmountable pile of debt. Debt restructuring, debt exchange, more haircuts for bondholders, exit from the Eurozone… these are the kind of terms that Syriza party officials have bandied about before and after the election victory.
To show that this isn’t just talk, that the Greeks mean business, the government hired Lazard’s government advisory arm, headed by Matthieu Pigasse, master of sovereign-debt restructurings. And they made sure the media picked it up.
Syriza is also running a highly effective charm offensive. Not just words and smiles – but actions, or at least symbolic actions. It wants to show that it’s different from the prior succession of corrupt, self-serving governments.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Greece Exposes The Global Economy’s Achilles Heel
Greece Exposes The Global Economy’s Achilles Heel
The new Greek political party, known as Syriza, the Coalition of the Radical Left, has done the unthinkable: they’ve dared to speak the truth.
In this case, the truth is perfectly captured by the blunt assessment by the new Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, who recently declared “I’m the finance minister of a bankrupt country.”
Such honest assessments are not supposed to be uttered in politics, no matter how true they may be. And so, as you can imagine, the machinery of the defenders of the status quo is in quite a lather over the whole affair. And it’s doing everything it can to minimize and marginalize the new Greek government.
One editorial in the Financial Times summed up the establishment view quite well, I thought, putting its contempt for those who dare to simply state what is true right on the table:
Athens plots a daring escape from the troika
Feb 2, 2015
Syriza is as radical as any party to take power within the eurozone. Hardly any of Greece’s new cabinet have experience of government; predictably, its first week was studded with chaotic interventions, including a clumsy blunder into EU-Russian relations. Syriza’s rhetoric is still more suited to a university seminar than a serious programme of government.
(Source)
To summarize, the European establishment considers Syriza to consist of radicals with no experience in government who are acting chaotically as they blunder about brandishing immature rhetoric more suited to young students than the serious business of governing.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Have A Little Faith In Blotto
Have A Little Faith In Blotto
What, Greece again? Sorry!! But I see a lot of things flash by that make me want to say something. Today it’s the alleged 180 that Syriza made on debt reduction, before that it was their alleged kow-towing to Brussels on Russia sanctions, and tomorrow it’ll be something else again. It’s all media formatted bite-size and pre-chewed chunks, but the Greece-Troika stand-off is anything but.
I have a ton and a half of respect for David Stockman, who earlier this week wrote: ‘Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has the weight of history on his shoulders’, but I’m sorry, I can’t agree with that, Dave. Yanis, who I only know through the occasional recent email exchange, if he has any weight on his shoulders, it’s that of the Greek people. And it’s the weight of their future, not their history.
Stockman also hints that Greece should leave the euro, and perhaps that is true, I would certainly tend to agree, but that doesn’t mean, even if Syriza agrees too, that today is the day they should go public with it. A Grexit may even be their endgame, but focusing on it now could well backfire. After all, a Grexit could come in many different shapes.
I have confidence that Varoufakis and his people have thought this through, and thoroughly, and that they have a – longer term – strategy that not many people will be able to comprehend. A quality all good strategies have. And the other side has no such strategy: they have never entertained the idea that they could lose, so why strategize? Goliath never figured he needed one either.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Europe Fractures: France “Prepared To Support Greece” In Debt Renegotiations
Europe Fractures: France “Prepared To Support Greece” In Debt Renegotiations
Despite Angela Merkel’s insistence on numerous occasions this past week that there will be “no debt renegotiations,” it appears a schism at the core of Europe is opening. As France24 reports,following a meeting between France’s finance minister Michel Sapin and Greece’s finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, the press conference had a considerably more amicable tone that Friday’s Dijsselbloem dissing. “France is more than prepared to support Greece,” Sapin said adding that Greece’s efforts to renegotiate were “legitimate.” Sapin urged a “new contract between Greece and its partners.”
France’s Socialist government offered support Sunday for Greece’s efforts to renegotiate debt for its huge bailout plan, amid renewed fears about Europe’s economic stability.The backing was a victory for Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, holding talks with European officials to push for new conditions on debt from creditors who rescued Greece’s economy to save the shared euro currency. Worries have mounted that Greece’s new far left government might not pay back its debts.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
ECB Threatens Athens With Bank Funding Cutoff If No Deal In One Month: February 28 Is Now D-Day For Greece
ECB Threatens Athens With Bank Funding Cutoff If No Deal In One Month: February 28 Is Now D-Day For Greece
As Deutsche Bank’s George Saravelos politely puts it, “Developments since the Greek election on Sunday have moved very fast.” And indeed, so far the new Tsipras cabinet, and here we focus on the words and deeds of the new finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, has shown that the market’s greatest hope – that the status quo in Greece will continue – has been crushed into a pulp (and so have Greek stock and bond prices) especially following yesterday’s most recent comments by the finmin in which he said that Greece “does not want the $7 billion” from the Troika agreement and that it wants to “rethink the whole program”, culminating with an epic exchange with Eurogroup chief Jeroen Dijsselbloem in which Greece made it clear that the “constructive talks” are over.
And suddenly the Eurozone is stunned, because what had until now been its greatest carrot when it comes to dealing with Greece, has become completely useless when the impoverished, insolvent nation itself says it no longer needs a bailout, seemingly blissfully unaware of the consequences.
So earlier today the ECB’s Erikki Liikanen, tired of pleasantries and dealing with what to Europe is a completely incomprehensible and illogical stance, one which is essentially a massive defection by Greece in the European “prisoner’s dilemma”, and which while leading to a Greek financial collapse and Grexit – both prerequisites to a subsequent Greek economic recovery unburdened by the shackles of the Euro – would also unleash a European depression, came out and directly threatened Greece that it now has 1 month until the end of February to reach a deal with the Troika, or else the ECB would cut off lending to Greek banks, in the process destroying the otherwise insolvent Greek banking sector.
And since only the ECB backstop has prevented a banking sector panic, the ECB is essentially betting the house, and the sanctity of the Eurozone (because after a Grexit all bets are off which peripheral leaves next) that the threat, and soon reality, of a bank run (at last check Greece had about €145 billion in deposits still left in its bank after JPM’s latest estimate of €15 billion in outflows in January) will finally force Varoufakis and Tsipras to sit at the negotiating table with the understanding that not they but the Troika has all the leverage.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
