A senior Bank of England official has said that Greece will never be able to get rid of its enormous debt mountain, since the "political pain" that its leaders would suffer would make it impossible.

Alex Brazier said that Greece could, in theory, run a surplus large enough to shrink its debt mountain, which currently runs to 176pc of GDP, after bail-outs worth €245bn.   However, he said no elected government would be able to do so, suggesting that Greece will be left with an enormous debt overhang for some time.  Figures from the Bank of Greece released on Monday showed the country had fallen back into deficit over the first two months of the year. Greece was in the red by €684m January and February, compared to a €139m surplus it registered over the same period last year.   Mr Brazier is a senior figure at the Bank, as its executive director for financial stability strategy and risk and a member of the Financial Policy Committee, which tries to ensure financial stability in the UK.    I would like all of those who make the claims about "whining" Greeks and all these very 'humanitarian' comments to imagine what it is like to have 40-50% of their incomes lost due to adjustment policies. Fat chance these 'humanitarians' will and - what is worse - many of the people here making these comments are most likely Greeks themselves.  Apart from that, it is true that Greece has been tainted by corruption, malfunctioning and ailing institutions, and a mentality of extremely low trust - all these making a vicious circle.  But ask yourselves this (at least those of you who do bother to read and whose open mind is not narrower in reality than the margins of a school notebook):  This has been going on for decades if not centuries, any wonder why it came to a boil now, the debt especially? It is because of the whole banking crisis and more specifically banks lending Greece in the good-ol' years and now basically getting away with it in all of EU... "One can surely agree with the logical and legal demand for Greece to pay its debt, however, one thing I can't understand is: What continual logical sequence is connecting faulty banking system, obviously wrong political decisions leading to fiscal imbalance and bankruptcy, on the one side, with massive public cuts affecting only simple people, on the other side, in other words: "Why punish simple people for bankers and politicians wrongdoings?!"    Why are people making wrong decisions put automatically out of the equation and not took under consideration?"

Relations between Greece and its creditors reached breaking point on Thursday as the country's finance minister accused the European Central Bank of "asphyxiating" the cash-strapped economy.

In a series of traded insults, Yanis Varoufakis said the ECB, which has tightened the noose on the Leftist government, was "pursuing a policy that can be considered asphyxiating toward our government."   His comments came before Germany's Bundesbank chief Jens Weidmann said Athens had "squandered the trust" of its European partners.  As one of Greece's main three international creditors, the ECB has rebuffed Athens' requests to raise short-term debt to alleviate an impending funding crisis.   Greece, which has yet to be granted access to €7.2bn in bail-out funds, is scrambling to pay €1.2bn in loans to the IMF before the end of the month.

Athens has also been seeking a €2bn increase in emergency funding for its banks as deposit flight has accelerated over the past month. According to reports, the central bank decided to raise the ceiling by just €600m on Thursday. Greek lenders have been increasingly reliant on the expensive emergency funds from Frankfurt after the ECB stopped its ordinary lending to the country. The country's Eurosystem funding reached a 13-month high of €104bn, in February according to the Bank of Greece. But Mr Weidmann, who sits on the ECB's governing council, said the assistance had to be "temporary" and could only continue as long as Greek lenders remained solvent. 

The Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is in Brussels today to meet the European Commission’s President Jean-Claude Juncker.  The pair will attempt to make some progress on a way forward for Greece, after eurozone finance ministers rejected Athens’ reform proposals on Monday. Juncker said he was ready to make “proposals” to overcome the differences between Greece and its eurozone partners.  I’m not satisfied with the developments in recent weeks. I don’t think we have made sufficient progress.  I’m totally excluding a failure. I don’t want a failure. I would like Europeans to go together. This is not a time for division. This is a time for coming together.

Tsipras said he was optimistic the political will existed to find a solution soon. 

About time the ordinary elector of the EU rose up and threw these people out.

Frankfurt, the euro area’s financial capital and home of the common currency, is bracing for demonstrations and sit-ins on Wednesday at locations throughout the city by anti-austerity groups and organizations sympathizing with the plight of Greece.   At the ECB’s €1.3bn premises in the east end, police have erected barbed wire and barricades to keep the protesters at least 10 meters away.   “We want a march open to anyone, peaceful and not harming anyone,” Ulrich Wilken, a lawmaker for the Left Party in the Hesse state parliament, said on Tuesday after meeting with police to outline the marchers’ objectives. “We want an atmosphere of peaceful protest, not the kind of situation the police prepares for with its tanks.”   Nine days after the ECB started buying sovereign debt in a €1.1 trillion plan to revive inflation and rescue the economy, protesters are laying the blame for recession and unemployment in the 19-nation euro area at the doors of ECB President Mario Draghi and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.   A new government in Greece, led by the leftist Syriza party, is preparing emergency measures to boost liquidity as the cash-starved country braces for more than €2bn in debt payments on Friday. The country is unable to access bailout funding as it haggles with euro-area governments over the terms of its aid program. Its lenders have been cut off from regular ECB finance lines and pushed onto emergency credit from the Greek central bank. ...  hope they burn it down.  This sort of waste of taxpayers money by an unelected and unaccountable organization, the EU, is exactly what is wrong with the EU. The Billions they have stolen from the poor taxpayers across the continent forcing them into abject misery whilst lavishing it on themselves in grandiose edifices such as this and their gold plated pay and pensions. It is just like the old soviet union.  About time the ordinary elector of the EU rose up and threw these people out.

Greece back in the fold

After days of fractious exchanges with its international creditors, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has urged Europe to show solidarity with his country as it awaits the approval of a vital bail-out extension.   Speaking after a meeting with European officials in Brussels, Mr Tsipras said his government was doing all it could to fulfill the conditions of its bail-out and called on Greece's partners to do the same.  Striking a more optimistic tone than in recent days, Mr Tsipras said: "we will find a solution because I strongly believe that this is our common interest.

"I believe that there is no Greek problem, there is a European problem."

His comments came after Germany's Wolfgang Schaeuble warned that Athens' brinkmanship over implementing economic reforms could result in a disorderly Greek exit from the eurozone - dubbed a "Grexident".   "To the extent that Greece is solely responsible and decides what is to happen, and we don't know exactly what Greek leaders are doing, we can't exclude it," said Mr Schaeuble.  The claims are unlikely to soothe tensions between Greece and the eurozone's largest creditor country.  Mr Schaeuble was the subject of an official complaint from Athens who accused the finance minister of making derogatory comments about his Greek counterpart Yanis Varoufakis.

But there were tentative signs of a thawing between the two sides, with reports suggesting Berlin was willing to stand down over its opposition to Greek plans to issue short-term debt to alleviate its funding crisis.  The European Cental Bank has so far rebuffed Athens' requests to raise the ceiling on the issuance of Treasury bonds.  Instead the ECB has been drip feeding its emergency assistance (ELA) to Greece's banks which have suffered from rising desposit flight since Syriza came into power. There we are then...Greece back in the fold...after all that hype...

Madness is in the air. Greece cannot stay in the Euro as it is presently engineered, and the threats and bluster will not change reality. One of the causes of the Second WW was Germany's parlous economic state caused in large measure by the punitive reparations demanded of Germany after the Treaty of Versailles. Countries are not single entities, they are the cultural conglomeration of millions of people with a common identity. When a country is put under duress like this, whether this arises internally or externally, that common identity becomes fractured and the country fails as a working institution. The risks are massive both for the people of Greece and the rest of Europe. Add in the problems in Ukraine, we're seeing some very worrying issues in Europe that desperately need cool heads and an ability to compromise. Instead we see a hardening of rhetoric and attitude and an ever widening gap between reality and reckless idealism... Why is Greece being allowed to use a fund set up, presumably to protect Greek bank depositors, to be used to pay off Greek government debts, pensions and salaries. If a private company diverted money like this they officers of that company would be arrested and put in prison and that is exactly where Klaus Regling deserves to be! Does the EU not have any law at all? A prosecutor to stop funds from being siphoned from one place to be used in another to suit the arbitrary desires of some unelected official?

The people of Europe need to start killing their EU overlords if this is how they are going to operate.

It seems the HFSF fund was set up by the Greek banks (ie before the 2010 EFSF), so it'd need to be protected by a Greek law. As it is though, only a few inches and a hand-grasp separate the central bank from the maw of the state.  The Greek social security funds are a different matter - they have their own funds and trustees. Syriza is trying to get at them, but they're resisting. It seems there's some long-forgotten 60-year old law that technically prevents the funds holding 'surpluses' in a separate bank account outside the Central Bank of Greece for more than 15 days. But if it goes to a higher court instance or needs legislation, that could be overtaken by what Macmillan called 'events dear boy, events!' ie default.  The EZ and ECB are (I was horrified to read) quietly gung-ho about the idea of the Greek unemployed and pensioned being robbed if the money goes to repay ECB/EZ loans. ('That's what all states do...')  This is all so disgusting, I don't think I can watch.

Deşi a tipărit cantităţi uriaşe de bani şi a dat drumul unui nou program imens de relaxare cantitativă, prin care va ajuta statele europene să se împrumute mai ieftin, cumpărând obligaţiuni guvernamentale de peste un trilion de euro, Banca Centrală Europeană este considerată responsabilă pentru „politicile de austeritae” din Europa.  „Principalul motiv al protestelor este faptul că BCE face parte din Troika, iar Troika e responsabilă pentru politicile de austeritate care i-au împins pe atât de mulţi în sărăcie”, a declarat, pentru Reuters, Ulrich Wilken, unul dintre organizatorii “Blockupy”, protescul care se va desfăşura în apropierea noului sediu de 1,3 miliarde de euro al BCE.  Troika include, alături de BCE. Comisia Europeană şi Fondul Monetar Internaţional şi monitorizează ţări precum Grecia şi Cipru care au beneficiat de programe de salvare, inclusiv prin iertarea de datorii. BCE este şi furnizor de finanţare pentru bănci din ţările cu probleme. Ministrul elen de Finanţe, Yanis Varoufakis, a criticat săptămâna trecută politica instituţiei, pe care o consideră “sufocantă”, critic făcută şi de organizatorii protestului.  “Cei de la BCE nu sunt aleşi în mod democratic şi, totuşi. Presează guvernele să acţioneze într+un anume fel tot timpul. Am văzut asta din nou în maniera în care au îngreunat posibilitatea Greciei de a se finanţa după alegeri”, a spus Wilken.  Recent, BCE a încetat să accepte titluri de stat emise de statul elen în schimbul finanţării, când noul govern ales a anunţat că nu va respecta termenii conveniţi iniţial în programul de ajutor. 

The European Central Bank has also taken a tough line with Athens, banning the acceptance on Greek bonds as collateral for its cheap loans. Greece is now asking the ECB to raise the cap on the emergency funding (ELA) it provides to the country's banks as capital has fled the country. The ECB could provide some relief for lenders at an emergency meeting to discuss ELA on Thursday, according to Bloomberg.  Half a billion taken from the HFSF (=the Greek banks' recapitalization fund) won't go far. Greece needs to repay 1.2bn by end March, and still doesn't have enough to pay salaries and pensions. Now they're trying to raid the social security funds, starting with 150m out of the unemployment fund, but meeting resistance from the guy who oversees it. (He realizes he'll never get it back.) Syriza are drawing on an old and tricksy law, but it looks to me as if they may have to pass further legislation to get at that money. OK, they 'only'(!) need 448m to repay the IMF in April - but then 747m in May, 1.5bn in June, 448m in July, plus 2bn ECB, plus 1.3bn EZ central banks repayments, 3bn ECB in August. Tax coffers are e-m-p-t-y.  The FT (apparently firm believers in fairies) think that "by April the left-wing government may have advanced far enough with structural economic reforms to draw down part of a 7.2bn loan tranche being withheld..."

Oh, come on! WTF, FT!

Guys, guys, enough already - it can't be done with a few iphone-wielding students shopping a few tavernas to the tax office.