Looks like that optimism over Greece caving in to reality was a bit premature, since Alexis Tsipras is back to his old tricks again, proclaiming loudly that he won’t be “blackmailed.” Because we all know that agreeing to cuts in your bloated welfare state to pay for the loans you already agreed to is “blackmail.”
He’s called for a national referendum on bailout agreement terms. The problem is, that vote is July 5 while $1.7 billion payment Greece owes the IMF is due June 30, and the IMF can’t offer extensions, and Greece is too broke to make its debt payment.
Greek banks are closed until July 7, and the “European Central Bank (ECB) said it was not increasing emergency funding to Greek banks.” ATMs are running dry and withdrawals are bveing limited to 60 euros.”
Stocks in Europe and China are in freefall, with bank stocks in Europe particularly hard hit. Greek stocks are off 17% despite their stock market being closed.
The bill for Greece’s profligate spending and fake austerity was always going to come due sooner or later. Tsipras’s disasterous term in office merely ensured that it would come sooner and with a maximum of economic pain for the Greek people…
At least that’s what Zero Hedge has taken away from the various news stories on Greece’s latest proposal to beat the looming end-of-month deadline for making the payment they owe to the IMF.
From the troika’s perspective, breaking Greece and forcing PM Alexis Tsipras to concede to pension cuts and a VAT hike is paramount, and not necessarily because anyone believes these measures will put the perpetually indebted periphery country on a sustainable fiscal path, but because of the message such concessions would send to Syriza sympathizers in Spain and Portugal. In short, the troika cannot set a precedent of allowing debtor nations to obtain austerity concessions by threatening to expose the euro as dissoluble.
The pension changes are evidently types of “austerity” that let Greek PM Alexis Tsipras claim he didn’t actually cut pensions:
Under the proposal submitted to eurozone ministers, the Greek government would raise just under €2.7 billion in extra revenue this year, followed by a further €5.2 billion in 2016.
The blueprint, which will now be assessed by Greece’s creditors ahead of a second meeting of finance ministers on Wednesday and an EU leader’s summit the following day, includes concessions that go far beyond previous offers made by the left-wing Syriza government.
Greece’s main concession is on pensions, long regarded as the major sticking point by its creditors, where it has unveiled plans to make almost €2.5 billion in savings.
Having vowed not to reduce state pensions during his successful election campaign in January, Tsipras’ government has proposed to raise €645 million over the next two years by increasing health contributions to 5 percent. Other savings will come from restricting early retirement and increasing state pension contributions.
Greece has also agreed to raise the retirement age to 67 by 2025.
The pension savings are equivalent to 0.37 percent and 1.05 percent of GDP in 2015 and 2016, moving closer to, but still below the 1 percent each year demanded by the eurozone.
On top of these savings, a regime of government payments to the poorest pensioners – known as Ekas – will be replaced in 2020. Public spending on pensions currently amounts to 16 percent of Greece’s GDP.
The fact that more than 2/3rds of the savings are back-loaded into 2016 suggests we’ll end up doing this same dance sometime next year. Greece may have (finally) agreed to enough reform that, if implemented (a big if) would at least keep it afloat until next year. But until they stop racking up debt to keep funding their welfare state, more economic pain inevitably lies ahead…
The economic collapse of Greece is unfolding pretty much exactly as observers predicted it would: “Greek banks have imposed an unofficial ceiling of €3,000 on walk-in withdrawals, the commercial banker added.”
More capital controls are most likely coming, especially since bank runs have meant that Greek banks “will soon exhaust eligible assets they can pledge to the Bank of Greece for cash under the Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA) scheme.” The ECB backstopping of Greeek banks has been extended for today only. And today’s Eurozone talks have already broken off.
Despite that, Greece’s feckless ruling Syriza Party is still insisting on ignoring reality: “I repeat: The deal will either be compatible with the basic lines of Syriza’s election manifesto, or there will be no deal.”
Translation: “Europe must continue to throw money down the rat-hole of our bankrupt welfare state, or else!” What the “or else” might be when the country is already too bankrupt to pay pensions and keeps the lights on remains a mystery. The problem with holding a gun to your own head is that eventually someone will call your bluff.
Greece is finally finished with the “gradually” phase of their bankruptcy and is now in the “suddenly” phase…
Even though this whiteboard animation is from 2012, it’s still mostly accurate.
My only quibbles would be:
It doesn’t mention how Greece lied about it’s finances to get into the Euro in the first place.
It doesn’t discuss what that debt was spent on, i.e., mainly an overly generous and unsustainable welfare state.
Because it was made in 2012, it overstates how exposed European banks will be to a Greek default. By now, banks and insiders have managed to offload the vast majority of their default exposure to Greek default onto the European taxpayer (which, of course, was the real primary purpose of the bailout).
But it gets the big picture right, namely how out-of-control debt destroys nations…
The bank runs have started in Greece. Why the Greek peeople would even keep their money in banks, having the example of Cyprus’s bank “bail-ins” before them, would keep any but the most minimal amout of cash in a Greek bank is a mystery.
There’s talk of a “new” Greek proposal, which could mean Tsipras and Syriza are finally coming to their senses and giving in to EU demands, or it could be just another smokescreen. I mean, we’ve only seen about a dozen “new” Greek proposals this year that didn’t offer meaningful reform. What’s one more?
Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but Google News is once again filled with Greece on the Brink headlines and the Telegraph has started a live update page for the Greek debt crisis. Today’s Eurogroup meeting ended without any deal, Merkel says she won’t budge, and Greece admits they have no money to make their bundled payment to the IMF at the end of the month.
And the IMF has said there will be no grace period if Greece misses their June 30 deadline.
Also, tomorrow Greece owes €85 million to the European Central Bank. Since the ECB backstop is the only reason Greek banks aren’t already insolvent, I suspect Greece will find some way to make that payment, even if it means raiding the Emergency Transplants for Crippled Orphans fund.
Other than that, things are going swimmingly.
The sticking point, as always, is Greece’s insistence that the rest of Europe lend it more so as to allow Greece to continue spending insanely more money than it actually has on its bloated welfare state, and that it absolutely will not cut government pensions (the pensions it will be unable to pay without a loan anyway) at all. But “Greece still spends more than any other country in the European Union on pensions as a proportion to GDP – with the country shelling out a whopping 17.5 percent.”
It looks like the rest of Europe has finally wised up to the fact that Alexis Tsipras has been playing them for chumps. It should be obvious to everyone now that Tsipras and his far-left Syriza party have no intention of reforming Greece’s bloated welfare state, they just wanted to pretend to as long as the rest of Europe was willing to underwrite it in exchange for pretending to reform. But lately even the pretense of reform has become intolerable. They want debt forgiveness and Europe to continue paying their bills, and they’re not going to budge until they get it, or until they totally destroy the Greek economy. You know, whichever.
Europe seems to finally have said “Enough!”
Other Greek links:
Might the European Central Bank impose capital controls on Greece (ala Cyprus) to force a change in the Greek government? Since the Greek banking system only exists at the mercy of ECB-backstopping, this could very well be the easiest way out of the crisis for everyone (even, weirdly, Tsipras and Syriza, who will still be able to claim they never gave in to Troika demands…)
“The latest Greek negotiating strategy is to demand a ransom to desist threatening suicide. Such blackmail might work for a suicide bomber. But Greece is just holding a gun to its own head — and Europe does not need to care very much if it pulls the trigger.”
“For the creditors, the test of whether Mr. Tsipras really wants Greece to remain in the eurozone comes down to a simple question: Is Syriza willing or able to reform Greece’s public sector?” Syriza wants to reform Greece’s public sector the way O. J. Simpson wants to find the real killers.
The IMF just said to Greece “Screw you guys, I’m going home.” (Note: For the full effect, you have to say the preceding in the voice of Eric Cartman.)
The International Monetary Fund said it was halting bailout talks with Greece in a stark signal of its exasperation about a lack of progress toward a deal needed to avert a Greek default, as European leaders suggested the negotiations were nearing their endgame without an agreement in sight.
And keep in mind that these are transnational bureaucrats whose entire job description is long, drawn-out economic negotiations. And they’ve finally had enough of talking to Greece.
That’s not the fat lady warming up, that’s the fat lady striding boldly on stage and waiting for the cue to open her mouth.
The Greek debt crisis was always going to come to a bad end. The least bad alternative was introducing real austerity when the crisis hit, paring back their welfare state, reforming their economy, and living within their means for several years until their economy started growing again.
But by electing the far-left Syriza party, Greece has ended up opting for a far worse fate: They’re going to end up absolutely broke, absolutely in debt, and they won’t even be able to fund the day-to-day operations of their bloated welfare state. Unless the Greek parliament can somehow force a snap election and replace Alexis Tsipras’s lying, farcical government with one actually capable of recognizing reality, Greece is in for a level of economic pain that’s going to make the Great Depression look like a picnic…
Looks like all of Greece’s creditors have finally decided it’s put up or shut up time for reform. “Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is expected to face demands for tough reforms of Greece’s pension system, labor laws and other areas, as well as creditors’ insistence on painful budget measures to ensure that Greece runs a fiscal surplus before interest.”
At this point Greece seems completely and utterly broke, unless there’s more upfront money in that still unsigned Russian pipeline deal than reports indicate (doubtful, given Russia’s own financial straits), or Tsipras finds yet another hidden money reserve to tap (“We can can pay pensions from the children’s bone marrow fund!”). So despite Tsipras’ insistence that they be allowed to keep spending other people’s money on their bankrupt welfare state, this time the jig may finally, finally, really, we mean it this time, for sure, be up.
Now, as long as the EU keeps Greece in the Eurozone then the Tsipras administration will find itself forced to either exit the Eurozone or apply the austerity it promised to end. Not only would such an outcome send a clear signal to other Eurozone nations that exiting was foolhardy, it would also indicate that radical, nationalist, anti-establishment and anti-austerity parties cannot deliver on their promises.
The EU won’t force Greece to exit the Eurozone but it won’t offer anything to keep Syriza in power, either. The EU simply needs to keep negotiating without offering anything but strict compliance with what was already agreed upon, which is continued austerity in return for loans. In effect, to use a sports analogy, the EU just needs to “run out the clock.” In the end, it appears that Tsipras will either be forced out of office or forced to break up his coalition and form a new government with the mainstream parties, the outcome that EU and Germany have been angling for all along.
(Though make no mistake: that “primary surplus” was always illusory.)
A few more Greek debt crisis links:
Now Greece is threatening not to pay this week’s debt payment to the IMF unless a deal is agreed on. Once again, Tsipras is playing chicken with a Yugo, while his opponents are driving a Tiger tank…
Tsipras needs to stop making empty promises and get a clue. “He cannot expect Germans to volunteer the money Greece needs, so he can spend it on the kind of leftist economic fantasy that was discredited all over Europe in the 1970s and 1980s. Just ask Argentina where default followed by populist economics leads.”
Germany has good reason to stop subsidizing Greece, namely their own crashing demographics: “Germany’s birth rate has collapsed to the lowest level in the world and its workforce will start plunging at a faster rate than Japan’s by the early 2020s, seriously threatening the long-term viability of Europe’s leading economy.” (Hat tip: Powerline.)
Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis said “Greece must escape the ‘strictness trap’ of budget measures that might hurt the economy and so prevent the country from reducing its debt mountain to manageable levels.” In other words: “We absolutely refuse to stop spending other people’s money to prop up our welfare state.”
So the farce will continue on a little longer, at least.
In other Greek debt news:
Greece is “back” in recession. Assuming you believe it ever actually left it.
“The German Finance Ministry 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.” Hmm, recognize economic reality or exit the Euro. Decisions…
And if you thought Greece had abandoned their stupid “German war reparations” idea, think again: “Archival video footage highlighting Nazi atrocities in Greece is being shown to commuters on the Athens subway as part of a campaign demanding war reparations from Germany.” I’m sure that will get them on Angela Merkel’s good side.
The Two Greeces: “Official Greece is dysfunctional; unofficial Greece works quite well. The official, theoretical Greece has checks and balances. The unofficial, reality-based Greece turns a blind eye when people break rules and dodge taxes.” I’m not nearly as positive as the author that the corrupt one can be swept away, or that Syriza wants to.
