{"id":9804,"date":"2015-07-08T06:22:31","date_gmt":"2015-07-08T11:22:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9804"},"modified":"2015-07-08T06:22:31","modified_gmt":"2015-07-08T11:22:31","slug":"europe-is-blowing-itself-apart-over-greece-and-nobody-seems-able-to-stop-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9804","title":{"rendered":"Europe is blowing itself apart over Greece – and nobody seems able to stop it"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Europe is blowing itself apart over Greece – and nobody seems able to stop it<\/a><\/h3>\n

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras never expected to win Sunday’s referendum. He is now trapped and hurtling towards Grexit<\/strong><\/p>\n

Like a tragedy from Euripides, the long struggle between Greece and Europe’s creditor powers is reaching a cataclysmic end that nobody planned, nobody seems able to escape, and that threatens to shatter the greater European order in the process.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Greek premier Alexis Tsipras never expected to win Sunday’s referendum on EMU bail-out terms, let alone to preside over a blazing national revolt against foreign control.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

He called the snap vote with the expectation – and intention – of losing it. The plan was to put up a good fight, accept honourable defeat, and hand over the keys of the Maximos Mansion, leaving it to others to implement the June 25 “ultimatum” and suffer the opprobrium.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\u2022\u00a0Greece crisis live on Wednesday<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

This ultimatum came as a shock to the Greek cabinet. They thought they were on the cusp of a deal, bad though it was. Mr Tsipras had already made the decision to acquiesce to austerity demands, recognizing that Syriza had failed to bring about a debtors’ cartel of southern EMU states and had seriously misjudged the mood across the eurozone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Instead they were confronted with a text from the creditors that upped the ante, demanding a rise in VAT on tourist hotels from 7pc (de facto) to 23pc at a single stroke.<\/p>\n

Creditors insisted on further pension cuts of 1pc of GDP by next year and a phase out of welfare assistance (EKAS) for poorer pensioners, even though pensions have already been cut by 44pc.<\/p>\n

They insisted on fiscal tightening equal to 2pc of GDP in an economy reeling from\u00a0six years of depression and devastating hysteresis<\/a>. They offered no debt relief. The Europeans intervened behind the scenes to suppress a report by the International Monetary Fund validating Greece’s claim that its debt is “unsustainable”. The IMF concluded that the country not only needs a 30pc haircut to restore viability, but also \u20ac52bn of fresh money to claw its way out of crisis.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Europe is blowing itself apart over Greece – and nobody seems able to stop it Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras never expected to win Sunday’s referendum. He is now trapped and hurtling towards Grexit Like a tragedy from Euripides, the long struggle between Greece and Europe’s creditor powers is reaching a cataclysmic end that nobody planned, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[2872,5151,2467,279,281,353,1167,6761,2598,7066],"class_list":["post-9804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-geopolitics","tag-alexis-tsipras","tag-ambrose-evans-pritchard","tag-emu","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-gdp","tag-greece","tag-greek-referendum","tag-grexit","tag-the-telegraph"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9804"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9805,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9804\/revisions\/9805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}