Greeks will vote their country out the EU and that's goooddd

Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras has called a referendum on the country's bailout deal with its European creditors.  The vote, which will take place on July 5, and will ask Greece's citizens whether they want to accept tough measures put forward by the International Monetary Fund, European Union and European Central Bank. A "no" vote would see Greece default on its debts and force the country out of the euro. It came as Greek rejected a €15bn rescue plan, lashing out at attempts to blackmail the country into submission. Greece's fate is due to be decided at a last-ditch meeting of eurozone finance ministers in Brussels on Saturday, as differences over tax rises and spending cuts continue to hold back an eleventh hour agreement. The meeting has been billed as the last possible opportunity for Greece to cede to creditor demands and stave off a default. In the absence of a deal, creditors are planning for a series of emergency default scenarios, as the banking system would likely face ruin. Capital controls in the form of enforced bank holidays and deposit withdrawal limits could come as early as Monday, according to analysts at Credit Suisse...

How about this for a headline -- "There was horror in Germany today, as the public there woke up and realized they are in a currency union with other countries they don't control"

This sort of thing was always implicit in a currency union. The Germans are just realising, it's not just a way of creating a de-facto European Deutchesmark which is tuned to Germany's advantage when it comes to exporting to her neighbors.  Germany is not entirely blameless in all this, nor are they the paragons of virtue either. A lot of the failings of the euro are at German insistence (for example, it's pure nonsense that there's no commonly issued euro-debt - the "euro bonds" - and no transfers of wealth between rich and poor parts, both have to exist for a successful currency union). Moreover, German banks were happy to lend money to Greece that was then spent buying German products - including a lot of military hardware. Moreover, Germany runs a huge surplus mainly by low domestic demand and effectively "beggar they neighbour" policies. They've already been warned by the Commission that excessive surpluses are also a breach of euro-rules and just as destabilising as excessive deficits  Of course, the creators of the euro knew all of this, knew there would be a crisis - they simply view it as an ideal opportunity to push more "integration" and don't give a stuff about the massive suffering in the meanwhile...No doubt people will say : "Why should Germany lend it's good name to other countries issuing debt, or transfer money to them?"

The answer is :"because they're in a currency union with them"

If the Germans didn't want to do those things, they shouldn't have signed up to the euro. Which would have killed it stone dead of course.

Berlin has delivered a blistering attack on Greece’s beleaguered radical prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, accusing him of lying to his own people and seeking scapegoats for the country’s misery everywhere but in his own ranks.  The German government dismissed desperate attempts by Athens to salvage some form of bailout, prompting Tsipras to hit back, accusing the country’s creditors of trying to “blackmail” Greek voters with dire warnings that a vote against austerity in this weekend’s referendum would be a vote to leave the euro.  Tsipras referred to leaders of other eurozone nations as “extremist conservative forces” and blamed them for the capital controls that have forced the banks to shut down and ration cash.  With relations between Greece and Germany now at their lowest point in the crisis, divisions have also opened up among the main EU powers over what to do about Greece after five years of bailout closed down on Tuesday and the country became the EU’s first to default on loans to the International Monetary Fund.   The trenchant criticism of Tsipras from Berlin reinforced the view that the German government might refuse to negotiate with the leftwing Syriza administration on any new rescue package after Sunday’s referendum in Greece – which Berlin insists is a vote on whether to stay in the euro.   The validity of the vote is now also being questioned. The Council of Europe said one week’s notice fell short of international standards and the wording was unclear, while Greece’s highest court has been asked to cancel the plebiscite on constitutional grounds. A judgement will not be made until Friday.

Greece is in Depression with a capital D. And what do the troika propose?... More austerity which will guarantee a deepening of the economic decline.
How can Greece possibly repay its debts with a shrinking economy? The ideological stupidity of the Northern Europeans is astounding. They appear to want to punish Greece for old transgressions, but this is not an economic argument for rectifying a problem that the Europeans help to create by admitting Greece into the Eurozone in the first place and then doing nothing about the behaviour of German and French banks.  The Germans seem to have forgotten the consequences of the Treaty of Versailles which imposed onerous reparation conditions which Germany could not afford and which triggered social and economic chaos in Germany.
Who knows where the meltdown in Greece will go, but at least they won't be marching on Europe and putting people in concentration camps.

Greek bail-out

Photo: Reuters

Total debt pile:

 

€320bn

Greece still owed:

         €7.2bn

Debt settled by:

          2057

---

How did Greece get here?

In January left-wing government Syriza promised to end years of austerity measures but remain a member of the eurozone

What went wrong?

Negotiations descended into acrimony. Creditors want economic reforms in return for more aid, but Syriza won't budge on key election promises

When is the deadline?

June 30 - when Greece's bail-out programme expires and it owes €1.6bn to the IMF

What if they don't pay?

Greece will still be in the eurozone, but will get no further aid. The central bank could stop providing money to Greek banks forcing the government to issue an alternative currency

Merkel repeats there can be no negotiations on new bailout before referendum - The German chancellor is giving a speech at the Bundestag, where she has maintained her position against on pre-referendum negotiations. Merkel said: "I will reiterate over and over that the doors remains open for talks - we owe it to Greek people and to Europe," adding that any further talks would have to involve the IMF.  She also said that a referendum is a legitimate democratic exercise. "But I also want to be clear - it is democratic and legitimate right for the EZ-18 (eurozone minus Greece) to have opinion on the Greek referendum - because it affects all." She added that Greece can't cause "economic catastrophe in Europe", but added "compromise at any cost is not possible. Otherwise Europe will be lost." 

"This is not about several billion Euros - this is fundamentally about how EU can stay competitive in the world"...European Commission vice president Valdis Dombrovskis is speaking in Brussels today. He confirms that Brusels has received two letters from Athens, and the Commission is discussing a new two year request after yesterday's expiration.  What will the conditions be?

We still don't know the terms attached to the loan. Mr Dombrovskis says any new ESM loan has a “procedure under the ESM treaty as to how this request is evaluated. And should the eurogroup decide to support the request, discussions will be held on the conditionality of the new programme”.

“We do not have a programme on which conditionality we can discuss, but those discussions on those prior actions will build in a possible new ESM programme" he says.

I think the Best Economic System is a proper combination of Publicly Owned Essential Industries, and the rest of the Economy would be Regulated Free Enterprise with Free and Fair Competition, and where Every country had its Own Publicly Ownership of the Banking System.  I met a Person who told me that the reason the Capitalists cannot create Full Employment, and why they will Not allow Socialists to create Full Employment is because they are working for the Evil Invisible Demons, and the Evil Invisible Demons who control the European Union want People to suffer, and they Lament that their former Servant Hitler is not here today.  There is one thing that Evil Capitalists need their Money for, and it is Not to make more Money, because they have enough and they can Print as much as they want.  According to what a Person told me, that the Real Reason is to Satisfy their Secret Activity of having Trained Themselves to enjoy the Best Orgasms Only because an Invisible Demon or Rebel Angel has entered into them, because they have caused Suffering to other People, and that is what their Money buys them, and this includes some of the Females and some of the Males in Euro-America.  He said that these Euro-American Capitalists are the Psychopathic Big Bankers and their Puppet Psychopathic Euro-American Elites who are Hopelessly Addicted to this Evil Sickness, and that they need Therapy.  He said that Euro-American Plutocrats and their Puppet Politicians both Male and Female know how to present themselves in Public as being Normal People, but in Reality are Deranged, and these Facts are not exaggerations, but they are Facts with the Abundant Evidence for those who have Studied these Facts.   I found a News Article which is more Honest than the Euro Reich Nazis are, and it is Titled: The only reason the EU would force Greece to leave the euro is to punish it , at http://www.smh.com.au/world/th...

There's plenty of talk about ELA being pulled from Greece at the end of the month, but the ECB could still significantly tighten the squeeze on banks while keeping the umbilical cord of emergency funding alive.  The governing council could do this by raising the haircut they demand from the banks in return for the emergency funding. President Draghi has said the current haircut will be reviewed. Any more to tighten the screw through the collateral rules may inexorably lead to some for of capital controls.  More from Barclays:  If there is overwhelming evidence that a deal is out of reach, the quality of Greek collateral would drop and the ECB would very likely have to react by increasing haircuts as early as next week, before the end-of-month expiration of the IMF programme. In turn, this could lead to temporary bank controls, possibly of the type imposed in Cyprus in 2013. The ECB's governing council is set to reassess the state of the banking system on Monday, report Reuters.   This is the day EU leaders have convened an emergency meeting to thrash out their differences. It also the day when ECB representatives told finance ministers on Thursday that the banks might not be able to open.  Well, they've been handed a reprieve today for a while at least. Interesting to note that the €3bn buffer had previously been enough to keep the banks afloat for a week. Now it seems, it's barely enough for two days.

A €131m program which will help break down digital barriers in the Digital Single Market (DSM) was adopted in the European Parliament’s Industry, Research and Energy Committee today.

"Many new digital services in Europe such as electronic mobile health applications crucially depend on EU-wide standards and smooth operation across our internal borders. This new programme will help interoperability and give more flexibility and thus take us a huge step forward to achieving a true internal Digital Single Market", said Michał Boni MEP, the EPP Group Shadow Rapporteur on the dossier.  The Industry Committee adopted the update of the so-called ISA2 Programme which will bring public administration, businesses and citizens all over the EU closer to speaking the same language when they use digital services on their computer, tablet or smartphone. The ISA Programme was first introduced in 1995 and the new ISA2 Programme covers the period from 2016-2020. The aims of the programme are to establish electronic connections, foster cooperation among public administrators in Europe, make information accessible on the internet and to help implement electronic services across Europe. "Better connections in the digital Europe are essential because more and more citizens are working and relocating inside the EU and businesses trade and operate cross-border. They often have to deal electronically with administrations in different Member States", Boni concluded.  Boni emphasised that many areas in the EU such as the internal market, environment, justice and home affairs, customs and taxation, health and public procurement will benefit from the new ISA2 Program.