Junker's misstress = Corina Cretu....hahaha...hihihihi

According a blueprint leaked to Greek media, Jean-Claude Juncker's "plan" to break Greece's deadlock includes a relaxation of Athens' primary budget surplus target to 0.75pc this year - half that previously sought by Greece's paymasters.  The proposals also include releasing €5bn to the government in June, and delaying a number of fiscal austerity measures until October. However, the blueprint maintained that Greece would have to retain a controversial property tax and push for flexible labour market reforms.   Despite refusing to confirm the plan, a spokesman for Mr Juncker said the EU chief was now "personally involved" in Greece's talks...Yep been saying it for months but still there are so many people out there who refuse to accept the horrible reality that the EU WILL become a unified political state with immense power.  Until they are immersed in it and can see the hard evidence right in their faces they won't accept it. They appear to lack the ability to see the warning signs...They will use every tactic possible if our in/out referendum looks like an out vote.  The Greeks know that they have the EU by the short and curlies so these ECB financial contortions are only to be expected...well...Juncker is 100% Merkel's puppet.  Search all the EU or Greek papers. Nothing about this "deal".  Merkel is getting nervous seeing the Tsunami of Target2 approaching in the wake of a Grexit.  Target2 will show the German people what their Government has been doing with their money - in hundreds of billions - under the counter - to silently support the failing EU.  So Juncker is just flying Merkel's kite. There is no money on the table - not a pfennig nor a cent. Juncker is handily "deniable" even on the few occasions he is sober.  Give this 'story' a few days and we shall see what pops up...The Euro would be better of without Greece.  The problem is no key politician in Brussels, Berlin, Paris, Frankfurt etc.  wants  to be blamed to have pushed Greece over the cliff and the Greeks are not aware that they are at the end of the rope. Tsipras is more afraid of his Greek electorate (red lines) and his own party than for the good of his country. There he is in line with all his predecessors. So left or right, Greek politicians are all rotten...or are they ????

The Euro is terminally ill. We are at the stage of chemo and radiation to keep it alive. The medecines will get progressively worse from here and may themselves kill the patient. But, make no mistake, the Euro is going to die.  I must admit that Draghi looks like one of those Sicilian chaps who would saw off your legs just below the knee with a rusty hacksaw, go to church with his extended family, have Sunday lunch on the terrace of a fine palazzo, then come back to scoop out your eyeballs with the silver teaspoon from his post-prandial espresso.There is no exit policy as the US is about to find out when it tries to raise rates later this year. This is obvious when you consider the wisdom behind fixing a problem of too much debt with more cheaper debt and ignoring all the structural issues that are strangling the real economy. In the UK they are in the same boat although its going to be a bit longer before we sink too. The housing market in the UK is a direct result of this misallocation of assets that he mentions as a risk. Its disguising the real problems in our economy and the longer it goes on the worse is going to be the adjustment. At 2% mortgage rates a one percent increase is a 50% in payments - how do our miracle workers at the bank think that is going to go down. Every year that rates stay this low more and more people take on homes AND debt that is mispriced.  Anyone who thinks this dont end badly are living in the same world as the policy clowns who devised this clueless tragedy.  "The premium on liquidity, when it is abundant, is very low, so people tend naturally to invest in assets which in other circumstances would be considered to be illiquid. This premium is expected to stay low as long as the abundant liquidity conditions last. That’s why exiting from abundant liquidity policies has to be done very, very carefully.”  Can someone explain this too me? What I'm getting is that once you have started QE you cannot stop - which seems to tie in with the experience in the USA.

The ECB is literally printing its own money by lending to Greece through creating very high risk assets and yet people are complaining about Varoufakis?  The ECB is temporarily preventing the economic failure of the Greek markets by employing high-risk techniques destined to fail eventually. Varoufakis is offering a solution which may fail, but may not (which has the side-benefit of improving the standard of living for the Greek populace). One of these methods is destined to fail whilst the other has the potential to succeed.  Varoufakis is actually being realistic in his demands, the Troika is not. At this rate though, Greece is destined to fail and become the gangrenous limb of the EU - I wonder how fast the infection will spread? There is 50+% youth unemployment in Spain and 60+% in Greece unemployment generally throughout the EU - except for Germany (I wonder why). Living standards wages and income for ordinary people is deteriorating rapidly.  These are the intended and desired results of the Neoliberal economic policies championed and shoved down the throats of European citizens (except Germany I wonder why) by Lagard and Dreghi. They are complete failures!!   Does anyone out there really believe that its some uncontrollable factors causing this depression for working people??? Do people really believe that continuation of existing policies is in any way good for working people?  Nothing could be more nauseating than to listen to them preen and fawn over each other.  Over and over evidence is presented and ignored by them and by a compliant Guardian which must have a budget for economic reporting of a shilling, or a drachma perhaps, it is so pathetic.  Can the Guardian not simply report on the projections and analysis of the IMF sense the crisis and compare them to what has actually happened?? You know, like the one that said unemployment in Greece would peak at 12% oh but its 26+% and rising ignore that. Just tooooo anti Neoliberal to present EVIDENCE.

Draghi, who was in Washington on Thursday to deliver a lecture on monetary policy, pointedly failed to mention the ongoing Greek crisis...  With Greece facing a severe cash crisis as it struggles to secure a rescue deal from its creditors, Varoufakis – who has been officially sidelined from the debt negotiations – told a conference in Athens that he would reject any agreement in which “the numbers do not add up”.  Greek GDP figures, published on Wednesday, revealed that the economy has already returned to recession.  “I wish we had the drachma, I wish we had never entered this monetary union,” Varoufakis said. “And I think that deep down all member states with the eurozone would agree with that now. Because it was very badly constructed. But once you are in, you don’t get out without a catastrophe”.  He also warned that a mooted proposal for a bond swap, to ease Athens’ cash-crunch, was likely to be rejected, because it struck “fear into the soul” of European Central Bank president Mario Draghi.  Despite his comments Greece on Thursday offered a concession to its international lenders by pushing ahead with the sale of its biggest port, Piraeus.  Greece has asked three firms to submit bids for a majority stake in the port, a senior privatization official told Reuters, unblocking a major sale of a public asset as creditors demand economic reforms from Athens.

The EU’s executive body is to unveil radical new proposals on immigration, imposing migrant quotas on the 28 countries of the union under a distribution “key” system set by Brussels.

The plan, which is supported by Germany and will be fiercely resisted by the new Conservative government, will be launched by the European commission on Wednesday in response to migrant boats crisis in the Mediterranean.  The bold move by Brussels comes as the EU draws up plans for military attacks in Libya to try to curb the flow of people across the Mediterranean by targeting the trafficking networks. The EU’s top diplomat is to unveil an attempt on Monday to secure a UN mandate for armed action in Libya’s territorial waters.  Britain is drafting the UN security council resolution that would authorise the mission, senior officials in Brussels said. It would come under Italian command, have the participation of about 10 EU countries – including Britain, France, Spain and Italy – and could also drag in Nato, although there are no plans for the initial involvement of the alliance.  While there is broad support within the EU for the military plans, the proposals for sharing the immigration burden are highly controversial and divisive.

The policy document, obtained by the Guardian, demands new and binding rules establishing a quota system of sharing refugees among the member states.

The migration agenda declares: “The EU needs a permanent system for sharing the responsibility for large numbers of refugees and asylum seekers among member states.”

Greece avoided an unprecedented default to the International Monetary Fund after raiding an emergency cash account at the Fund, in a major sign the country is edging ever closer to stiffing its senior creditor.  Athens tapped €650m from an escrow account held by the Bank of Greece at the IMF, scraping together a further €100bn in cash reserves to avoid going into arrears.

The news came after reports in Spanish paper El Mundo said the IMF was ready to pull the plug on the debt-stricken country.  Fund officials reportedly told European finance ministers they had grave concerns about Athens willingness to slash spending, raise tax revenues, and implement a raft of structural reforms, ruling themselves out of a fresh rescue which could be worth €30bn-€50bn. Seems like they are going to have to do what I said almost 5 years ago at the start of this, and that is to start issuing a local currency that is put into circulation by government spending, as long as that local currency cant be traded outside the country then it wont have much impact on the rest of us, it does mean that almost every euro the country earns will go towards paying of debt, so Greece will become a country that will become euro hungry and should offer the rest of us great holiday deals... Speaking in Brussels, the president of the eurogroup Jeroen Dijsselbloem said there would be no discussions over another programme for Greece until an agreement on its current deal is reached.

The latest meeting of finance ministers gave way to little substantive agreement on unlocking vital bail-out funds for Athens, but was conducted in a more "constructive" environment, said eurozone economics chief Pierre Moscovici. Greece's finance minister Yanis Varoufakis warned his country now faced an "urgent" liquidity situation.  

“In their attempt to respect their duties, the ECB’s policymakers have made themselves political,” Greece’s finance minister Yanis Varoufakis told an audience of academics and economists in Paris last month.   The refrain strikes at the heart of his government’s complaints against the notionally independent ECB.   As one of Greece’s three main creditors - alongside the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission - the central bank is unique in wielding the power that can ultimately force the country out of the single currency.  Despite not officially being party to the political negotiations over extending Greece’s bail-out, the ECB has made a number of discretionary moves since the Syriza government was elected just over 100 days ago.  When he first swept into power, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras appealed to Mr Draghi to provide some form of bridging finance to keep the country afloat as he sought to re-write the terms of Greece’s rescue programme.

It soon became clear the Italian would not be playing ball.  Not only has the ECB rebuffed requests for temporary financial relief, but its disciplinarian stance has led to accusations that it is acting ‘ultra vires’ - taking politically motivated action outside of its legal remit to ensure financial stability in the eurozone.  The ECB had no choice but to stop allowing Greece’s banks to post government debt as collateral for cheap cash. How could it do anything else? Otherwise, it was a blank cheque to Greece.  That said, there must be some justification complaining of ECB using its role in a political way - it's not many years ago that it was accused of deliberately bringing down the then Italian PM by refusing any further lending / financing.  The bottom line is that sovereign nationhood and one currency / central bank is a totally impossible combination. Either all the member nations of the Eurozone have to submit to one European government and have their countries treated as 'regions' controlled by Brussels, or they must return to independent currencies... Maybe one day we will wake up to the good news that the Greeks had defaulted to the IMF and as a consequence were kicked out of the Eurozone, since defaulting to the ECB won't do the trick with Germany too deeply involved with the ECB.  Will we be so lucky? Methinks not. This Greek farce will go on and on until the last reader of the DT will lose interest and resort to playing chess online, as I shall do right now. I am only here for the beer (i.e. AEP) but the beer is no longer on offer.