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Inciting Bank Runs as a Negotiating Tactic
Inciting Bank Runs as a Negotiating Tactic
The troika of Greek creditors has gone into full-frontal morals-be-damned attack mode, handpicking arms from a weapons arsenal we haven’t seen used before, and that we never should have seen in an environment that insists – and prides – on presenting itself as a union, both in name and in spirit. Now that they are being used, there no longer is such a union other than in name, in empty words.
This has turned into the kind of economic warfare one would expect to see between sworn and lethal enemies, that the US would gladly use against Russia for instance, but not between partners in a union founded on principles based entirely and exclusively on being mutually beneficial to everyone involved.
Those principles, and everything that has been based on them, the common currency, the surrender of ever more sovereignty on the part of the nations involved, the relinquishing of national powers to the various supra-national bodies in Brussels, has for everyone involved been based on trust. Nobody would ever have signed up to any of it without that trust. But just look where we are now.
When spokespeople at the troika side of the table stated on Thursday that they don’t know if Greek banks will be open on Monday, they crossed a line that should never even have been contemplated. This is so far beyond the pale, it should by all accounts, if everyone involved manages to keep a somewhat clear head, blow up the union once and for all. If a party to a negotiation that can’t get its way stoops to these kinds of tactics, there is very little room left for talk.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
How The IMF Can Save Greece And Itself
How The IMF Can Save Greece And Itself
There’s a Reuters article by Paul Taylor today that’s thought provoking, but not along the same line of thought that the writer follows (or the twist he gives to it). Taylor concludes that the IMF would love to wash its hands off Greece, but can’t because it’s subservient to German and Brussels interests (a junior partner). However, he also describes, without realizing it, why and how the Fund can rectify that.
Not that we’re not under the illusion the IMF is prone to latch on to the following, but that it would nevertheless be an extremely wise move for the Fund, and especially for its reputation. Which, no matter how you see it, is under threat from its Asian ‘competitor’, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), not in the least because the non-western world has long found that the west has far too much power in the IMF, which after all is a global organization.
In that vein, let’s start off with an article the FT published in April 2013, by Ousmène Mandeng, who also features in Taylor’s piece. This former IMF deputy division chief pointed out what unease the IMF role in Greece caused, and how that role undermined its role as an international institution. Today, nothing has changed.
The IMF Must Quit The Troika To Survive
There are many victims of the eurozone crisis but one loser is seldom mentioned: the IMF has suffered considerable collateral damage. It has been dragged along in an unprecedented set-up as a junior partner within Europe, used as a cover for the continent’s policy makers and its independence lost. The monetary fund was set up as a technocratic institution. That, indeed, is why it was brought into Europe: it was felt that a neutral broker was needed to fix the eurozone’s problems.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Alexis Tsipras: The Bell Tolls for Europe
Alexis Tsipras: The Bell Tolls for Europe
This is a letter From Greek PM Alexis Tsipras in today’s Le Monde. I have little to add, his eloquence needs few comments at this moment. One thing is certain: the negotiations will never be the same. And neither will Europe.
Straight from the Prime Minister’s offical website: :
And the worst result: Despite badly damaging the social fabric, this Program failed to invigorate the competitiveness of the Greek economy. Public debt soared from 124% to 180% of GDP, and despite the heavy sacrifices of the people, the Greek economy remains trapped in continuous uncertainty caused by unattainable fiscal balance targets that further the vicious cycle of austerity and recession. The new Greek government’s main goal during these last four months has been to put an end to this vicious cycle, an end to this uncertainty. Doing so requires a mutually beneficial agreement that will set realistic goals regarding surpluses, while also reinstating an agenda of growth and investment. A final solution to the Greek problem is now more mature and more necessary than ever.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Russian Pivot: Greece Will “Probably” Join BRICS Bank, Official Says
Russian Pivot: Greece Will “Probably” Join BRICS Bank, Official Says
Greece has very little in the way of bargaining power with European creditors. Outside of gimmicks like tapping its SDR reserves, Athens has no cash to make payments to the IMF in June and, perhaps more importantly, there’s very little in the way of wiggle room when one looks at revenues versus spending (see below), meaning Greece will also struggle to pay public sector employees which, in combination with Greeks’ consternation about the safety of their deposits, could contribute to social unrest and put unwelcome political pressure on PM Alexis Tsipras and his Syriza party that swept to power just five months ago on a defiant (and apparently naive) anti-austerity platform.
The troika (and Germany) knows this of course and they are also acutely aware that Spain’s Podemos and Portugal’s Socialists are watching the Greek drama closely for the slightest indication of concessions from the IMF or from the EU. In other words, the standoff is now just as much about politics as it is about economics, and the ‘institutions’ do not want any Syriza sympathizers to be able to say that Greece made anyone blink by threatening an exit from the currency bloc. What all of the above means is that for better or worse, Greece has essentially no leverage because for many European officials, trading austerity concessions for the right to maintain the idea of euro indissolubility is no longer a desirable outcome as it could embolden anti-austerity governments in larger, more influential countries. All of that said, Greece still has one card to play: the so-called ‘Russian pivot’.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Austerity, Economics and Religion
Austerity, Economics and Religion
There are many things going on in the Greece vs Institutions+Germany negotiations, and many more on the fringe of the talks, with opinions being vented left and right, not least of all in the media, often driven more by a particular agenda than by facts or know-how.
What most fail to acknowledge is to what extent the position of the creditor institutions is powered by economic religion, and that is a shame, because it makes it very difficult for the average reader and viewer to understand what happens, and why.
Greek FinMin Yanis Varoufakis has often complained that he can’t get the finance ministers and others to discuss economics. As our mutual friend Steve Keen put it:
Steve Keen said the finance minister was frustrated with the progress of Greece’s talks with the euro zone, adding Varoufakis had compared the talks to dealing with “divorce lawyers”. Keen said the finance ministers of Europe refused to discuss certain euro policies, according to Varoufakis. [..] When asked what [Varoufakis and he] mainly discuss at the moment, Keen said, “Mainly his frustration, the fact that the one thing that he can’t discuss with the finance ministers of Europe is economics..”
“He goes inside, he is expected to be discussing what the economic impact of the policies of the euro are and how to get a better set of policies, living within the confines of the euro and the entire European Union system, and he said they simply won’t discuss it. He said it is like walking into a bunch of divorce lawyers, it is not anything like what you think finance ministers should be talking about..”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Europe Preparing Greek Bankruptcy Loan “In Event Of Grexit”
Europe Preparing Greek Bankruptcy Loan “In Event Of Grexit”
Earlier today, we learned that, contrary to what Greek government officials had been implying for the better part of a week, Athens did not have enough money to make a €750 million payment to the IMF on Tuesday. Instead, Greeceborrowed most of the money (€650 million according to unnamed officials) from its IMF SDR reserves. This money must be paid back within 30 days. This effectively means that the IMF paid itself and it sets up a hilariously absurd scenario wherein assuming Greece manages to convince creditors to disburse a €7.2 billion tranche of aid later this month, the IMF will send money to Greece, who will send it right back to the IMF to replenish an IMF fund, which was drawn down by the IMF to pay itself back for money it loaned to Greece a long time ago. Put simply: Greece has taken circular funding schemes to a whole new level.
Meanwhile, the IMF is understandably fed up and according to El Mundo, the Fund will not participate in a new program for the Greeks, something which German FinMin Wolfgang Schaeuble indicated may be a dealbreaker when it comes to structuring another bailout for Athens.
The takeaway: it’s likely over. Greece lacks the cash to keep up the facade and the IMF lacks the political will to perpetuate the farce any further. This suggests that both Greece and the creditors formerly known as the “Troika” will need to resort to Plan B. There’s a problem with that however — namely that EU officials have gone out of their way to make it clear that there is no Plan B, because to admit that such a plan existed would be to admit that the euro is in fact dissoluble after all, something which is taboo in polite discussions among European politicians. Here is but one example, via Reuters:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Greece Is Now Just A Political Issue
Greece Is Now Just A Political Issue
Greece paid off the IMF yesterday with its IMF reserves. Is that a big deal? Whatever you may want to read into this, it’s been obvious for years that Greece needs major debt restructuring if it wants to move forward and have a future as a country -let alone a member of the eurozone-. Instead, the EU/troika anno 2010 decided to bail out German and French and Wall Street banks (I know there’s an overlap)- instead of restructuring the debts they incurred with insane bets on Greece and its EU membership- and put the costs squarely on the shoulders of the Greek population.
This, as I said many times before, was not an economic decision; it was always entirely political. It’s also, by the way, therefore a decision the ECB should have fiercely protested, since it’s independent and a-political and it can’t afford to be dragged into such situations. But the ECB didn’t protest. And ever since the deed was done, Brussels presents it as if it were as unavoidable as Noah building the Ark. It’s not. It’s still just another decision to put banks before people.
And in this case the people have come out on the very short end of a very long stick. That’s what the Greek discussions have been about ever since Syriza was elected, with a substantial majority, to be the government in Athens. And no matter how many times how many people may claim Greece lived above its means for years, it’s obvious that the unemployed and the hungry children and the elderly without health care did not.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Greek Debt Crisis
Greek Debt Crisis
Is Default or Exit Inevitable?
This past week, April 24, European finance ministers met in Riga, Latvia. High on the agenda was the topic of Greek debt negotiations. Two months after the February 28 interim agreement between Greece and the EU ‘troika’—the IMF, European Commission, and European Central Bank—in which both sides agreed to continue negotiating—little has changed. In fact, led by its de facto spokesperson, hardline German finance minister, Walter Schaubel, the Troika’s position has continued to harden since February 28.
Schaubel and other northern Europe finance minister have continued to insist for the past two months that there will be no changes in pre-2014 terms and conditions of debt payments. The Troika and Schaubel have repeatedly demanded as well, that Greece provide more details to show how it will continue to pay its debt and how it will maintain previous austerity measures.
In reply, Greece and Syriza point to the various measures they have agreed to since February 28, as well as what they agree in principle to implement in the future: pension reforms that limit early retirement but don’t cut pensions ‘across the board’, selective privatizations that avoid cutting necessary social services but not general privatizations, tax reform that make the wealthy pay their fair share, and so on.
While Schaubel and the Troika demand Greece abide by the previous debt agreement, they themselves refuse to do the same. They refuse to release to Greece the US$8 billion in loans due to Greece under the old terms of the agreement. Or to release to Greece the US$2 billion in interest earned on Greek bonds earned since 2010. In other words, Greece must adhere to the letter of the debt agreement but the Troika does not have to.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Greece €400 Million Short For Wage And Pension Payments, Rushes To Pass Troika-Friendly Laws
Greece €400 Million Short For Wage And Pension Payments, Rushes To Pass Troika-Friendly Laws
There was a brief bout of Greek risk-on euphoria following yesterday’s latest twist in the winding road to the Greek insolvency, in which the Greek finance minister Varoufakis became the latest sacrificial scapegoat to be “Nav Sarao-ed” to the angry gods of the Troika, and has been henceforth kicked out of any negotiations with the Greek “institution” creditors.
The core problem for Greece, however, remains: namely that it is still completely out of money, and as we learned yesterday, the local municipalities have mutinied, and told the government they would not hand over their cash to the central bank without their own conditions being met first, and certainly not before May 7 which may well be too late for Greece.
Which means that suddenly not only does Greece not have the nearly €1 billion in cash it will need to fund May payments to the IMF, but it is suddenly short by €400 million for wage and pension payments.
According to Bloomberg, the Greek government is €400 million short of the amount needed for payment of pensions and salaries this month, citing a Kathimerini report.
Surprisingly, this takes place even as Greece’s IKA, OGA pension funds have been informed by the government that amount needed for payment of pensions will be deposited today, while the Greece’s OAEE pension fund has said payment of pensions won’t be a problem.
In other words, someone is not telling the truth: either there is enough money or there isn’t. And if the latter case is valid, then either the government or the pensions are now openly lying to the population.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Stunned Greeks React To Initial Capital Controls And The “Decree To Confiscate Reserves”, And They Are Not Happy
Stunned Greeks React To Initial Capital Controls And The “Decree To Confiscate Reserves”, And They Are Not Happy
Earlier today, following weeks of speculation, Greece finally launched the first shot across the bow of capital controls, when it decreed that due to an “extremely urgent and unforeseen need” (ironically the need was quite foreseen since about 2010, but that is a different story), it would be “obliged” to transfer – as in confiscate – “idle cash reserves” located across the country’s local governments (i.e., various cities and municipalities) to the Greek central bank.
Several hours later the decree which was posted in the government gazette has finally percolated among the population, and the response to what even ordinary Greeks realize is now the endgame, is less than exuberant.
Bloomberg reports, that “as Greece struggles to find cash to stay afloat, local authorities say they oppose a government decision to use their reserves for short-term financing.”
“The government’s decision to seize our reserves not only raises legal and constitutional issues, but also a moral one,” said George Papanikolaou, mayor of Glyfada, the third-largest municipality in the metropolitan region of Attica after Athens and Piraeus. “We have a responsibility to serve our citizens,” Papanikolaou said by phone on Monday. Glyfada has about 16 million euros in cash reserves, he said.
George is unhappy because as recently as tomorrow, he will find there is precisely zero euros in his public bank account, as all the money has now been forcibly sequestered by the government in order to repay future Troika, pardon, IMF obligations.
Sadly for Greece, this is the only option left as the money has now fully run out: Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras ordered local governments and central government entities to move their cash balances to the central bank for investment in short-term state debt.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
“Odious Debt” Has Finally Arrived: Greece To Write Off “Illegal” Debt
“Odious Debt” Has Finally Arrived: Greece To Write Off “Illegal” Debt
It was back in June 2011 when we first hinted that the time of Odious Debt is rapidly approaching.
As a reminder, this is what Odious Debt is: In international law, odious debt is a legal theory which holds that the national debt incurred by a regime for purposes that do not serve the best interests of the nation, should not be enforceable. Such debts are thus considered by this doctrine to be personal debts of the regime that incurred them and not debts of the state. In some respects, the concept is analogous to the invalidity of contracts signed under coercion.
Today, nearly four years later, Odious Debt is now a reality in Greece, where Zoi Konstantopoulou, the head of the Greek parliament and a SYRIZA member, released two videos which have promptly gone viral, designed to promote the investigative parliamentary committee to look into the circumstances surrounding the signing of the country’s two bailout agreements that led Greece to implement its austerity measures.
The short video spots, shown below, end with the message “Check it, Erase it” referring to the country’s 320 billion-euro debt.
That this concept emerges now is perhaps confusing: it was just a few days ago when the Greek FinMin promised to the IMF that Greece would honor all of its debt commitments. Should Greece decide that some (or all) of its debt was illegal and unenforceable, this will clearly not happen. Then again, this is the same political party that made pre-election promises whose execution would require about €30 billion according to German calculation, so the relentless flipflopping is not very surprising.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Is Greece planning to print energy?
Is Greece planning to print energy?
Over the past couple of months the story keeping many people on the edge of their seats has been the ongoing dilemma of Greece’s detested debt burden, its Great Depression-worthy 25% contraction of its economy, and its voluntary or even forced withdrawal from the eurozone – the fabled “Grexit.”
For about five years now, heavy austerity policies (cutbacks in government spending) have contributed to what is being described by some as a “humanitarian crisis.” As per stated in the conditions of €240 billion in loans that Greece has received over these years, the Greek government has had to significantly cut back on expenditures, which has included laid off government workers, reduced pensions, a gutted minimum wage, and the selling of state institutions. Partially as a result of this, general unemployment is a bit above 25% while youth unemployment is at nearly 60%; suicide rates are up by 35%; rates of divorce, depression, children suffering from malnutrition, children suffering from physical and emotional abuse, and hospitals lacking basic equipment and medicines are all up; infant mortality has increased 43%; and married women are begging brothels to let them work, but who are then turned away because, well, it’s apparently illegal to sell oneself for sex if one is already betrothed.
Nonetheless, and to the acclaim of many alternative media outlets, late-January saw the stunning election-win of what is called a far-left political party, Syriza. The prime mandate on which it was voted in on by the Greek electorate was to reverse the five-year policy of austerity and to essentially tell its Troika creditors (the European Union, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund) to shove it where the sun don’t shine.
…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…
Eurasian Pivot? Moscow Expects “Progress” From Tsipras Visit
Eurasian Pivot? Moscow Expects “Progress” From Tsipras Visit
As Athens prepares to try and convince eurozone creditors that its latest set of proposed reforms represents a credible attempt to address Greece’s fiscal crisis, and as Greek depositors face the very real possibility that they will soon be Cyprus’d, a leverage-less Alexis Tsipras faces a rather unpalatable choice: bow to the Troika which “wants real reforms… meaning that Greece finally has to implement some/any of the long ago promised and never delivered redundancies in the government sector,” or to quote Credit Suisse, be “digitally bombed back to barter status.” Unfortunately for the Greek populace, the latter seems to be far more likely than the former. Here’s WSJ:
Greek proposals for a revised bailout program don’t have enough detail to satisfy the government’s international creditors, eurozone officials said, making it more likely that Athens will need to go several more weeks without a new infusion of desperately-needed cash…“The proposals were piecemeal, vague and the Greek colleagues could not explain technically what some of them actually implied,” a eurozone official said. “So, let’s hope that they present something more competent next week.”
Senior eurozone finance officials will hold a teleconference on Wednesday to discuss the situation, officials said. But they said it is highly unlikely eurozone ministers will meet before mid-April to release more money for Greece. That means Athens will have to scrape together cash to pay salaries and pensions at the end of the month and make a €460 million debt repayment to the IMF on April 9.
As a reminder, here are two charts which demonstrate the urgency of the situation:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
