Popular Unity head Lafazanis says new party supports orderly #Grexit and does not accept #Greece being blackmailed by Merkel & Schäuble.
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Meanwhile In Greece, Pension Funds Tap Emergency Loans
Meanwhile In Greece, Pension Funds Tap Emergency Loans
This has not been a great year to be a pensioner in Greece.
Over the course of the country’s fraught bailout talks, Greece’s pension system was frequently in the troika’s crosshairs. As for PM Alexis Tsipras, pension cuts were generally considered to be a so-called “red line” and intractable disagreements over pension reform quite frequently resulted in the total breakdown of negotiations.
Meanwhile, the increasingly untenable financial situation and acute liquidity squeeze very often meant that payments to pensioners were in doubt, even as Athens went out of its way to assure the public that whatever funds were left in Greece’s depleted coffers would go to public sector employees before they would go to EU creditors or to Christine Lagarde.
The situation reached it’s “heartbreaking” low point on July 1 when Greek banks that had been shuttered after the institution of capital controls opened for a few hours to ration payments to long lines of pensioners who were forced to effectively beg for €120.
In theory, the bailout agreement – while promising more austerity and more pressure on the bloated pension system – should at least guarantee that there will be money in the banks to make monthly payments, but that assumption now looks to be in doubt because as Kathimerini reports, both IKA and ETAA are tapping a contingency fund that guarantees social security programs for fear that the provisions of the bailout will not provide for sufficient enough savings to fund the remainder of this year’s payouts. Here’s the story:
Greece’s state insurance funds are resorting to external loans to cover their needs as fears grow that the measures of the third bailout will not be enough to cover the rest of 2015’s liquidity needs.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Another Black Swan? Syriza Outcasts Form New Political Party, Will Push For Grexit
Another Black Swan? Syriza Outcasts Form New Political Party, Will Push For Grexit
Once upon a time, Panagiotis Lafazanis had a plan to save Greece.
On July 14, just two days after Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras sold out the Greek referendum “no” vote by agreeing to a shockingly punitive bailout deal in Brussels, Lafazanis convened a meeting of Syriza party “rebels” at a hotel in Athens. There, he allegedly attempted to convince his fellow lawmakers to storm the Greek mint, seize the country’s reserves, and arrest central bank governor Yannis Stournaras. “Obviously, it was a moment of high tension,”one activist who attended the secret meeting later told FT.
Yes, “obviously.” Equally obvious once news of the meeting leaked was that Lafazanis would not be Energy Minister for much longer and sure enough, he was sacked by Tsipras as the premier sought to pave the way for a series of votes in parliament on bailout prior actions.
Earlier this month, as rumors started to circulate that Tsipras might not have the support to survive a confidence vote, Lafazanis announced he was forming his own political party, which was funny right up until Thursday when Tsipras resigned, setting off a series of events that will see Greeks head back to the polls in September. Now, Lafazanis has seized the opportunity to convince 28 other Greek lawmakers to join him and his new party which will be called “Popular Unity,” an ironic choice, given that it grew out of the desire to split with a party leader who had become decisively unpopular among Syriza’s Left Platform.
