The Greek government RESIGNED AND NEW ELECTIONS WILL BE HELD ON SEPT. 20th. 2015 but, it  has rowed back on promises to halt the fire sales of the country's strategic assets by approving the sale of its airports to a German company. In fact the Tzipras Government sold it's country to the 4th, Reich, so much in charge of Europe. Operating rights to 14 regional airports, including those on popular holiday destinations such as Crete, will now fall under the control of German company Fraport AG, the operator of Frankfurt airport.   The €1.23bn deal represents a significant climb-down for Alexis Tsipras who had denounced attempts by the Troika to force various Greek governments to de-nationalize the country's ports, electricity networks and airports.  But the embattled prime minister has been forced into a number of concessions in return for an €86bn aid package to keep the country in the euro for the next three years. The deal comes as Germany's Bundestag prepares to vote on the package on Wednesday... more than 60 of Ms Merkel's parliamentarians already voted to reject new bail-out talks in July. The rebellion is set to escalate to around 100 out of her 311 MPs.  The Chancellor and her finance minister have been on a charm offensive to convince skeptical lawmakers that Greece will be able to carry out the raft of reforms in return for a first disbursement of €26bn due to be made by Thursday.  Disquiet in Berlin has also grown over the position of the International Monetary Fund, which is only likely to release its own funds to Greece in October.  The Dutch parliament, another tough creditor nation, will also convene for a vote on Wednesday. Eurosceptics such as Geert Wilders have threatened to issue a motion of no confidence in Prime Minister Mark Rutte over the deal.   Parliaments in Portugal and Austria are also due to vote on the measures before Greece is due to repay €3.2bn to the European Central Bank of the package.

As a relatively detached observer (I live in neither the Eurozone nor the EU), I find this ongoing wrangling between Greece and the German-led austerity bloc extremely interesting, but I also find myself unable to completely take anyone's side. As a fiscal conservative my sympathies tend naturally toward Germany, and I have a certain degree of respect for Merkel and Schauble in standing up for the their own people and for the principles which underpin Germany's own economic success.

However, I'm also in the same camp as British right-wingers who dislike the EU and find the concept of a single currency (and those who continue to try to prop it up) utterly ludicrous. As much as I sympathize with the Germans, I can't see an agreement which imposes ever more austerity on the Greeks while keeping them tethered to the euro as any kind of successful outcome. We keep hearing that Greece leaving the euro wouldn't solve its problems, that what it really needs are structural reforms.   That may be true, but I also think that those problems can't be solved without Greece first recovering its own monetary sovereignty, so that in the short term it can devalue and regain some degree of competitiveness. Unfortunately all sides in this, from German fiscal hawks to Greek socialists, see Greece remaining in the euro as a best case scenario. That's why any agreement reached is doomed to failure...Europe is stuck on a roundabout and cant find an exit; For the last 5 years its been fixated on a failed Euro conceit. Fire hosing our money at the Greek and other receiving nations, whilst policies for boosting growth across Europe have been cast aside. What a Joke. Lets get out fast. Cant wait for 2016 referendum...The IMF should have nothing to do with this deal. It was not created to prop up a currency union, when the policies of the major player in the currency union are making a bad situation even worse.  Not much point the Greeks holding further elections either. If they remain in the Euro, no Greek Government will be able to change the terms of their serfdom. They need to leave the Euro and reclaim the ability to govern their own country.  Varofakis leaving the Tsipras Government after the Referendum is looking like a clever move. Perhaps he's readying himself for a comeback.

Greece - It looks as if the new agreement will have lower surplus targets. But it's not as if there's been a change in the contractionary measures that will be adopted by Greece - these have already been voted in, they were part of the prior actions. What has happened is the lenders and the Greek government have realised that this year, the Greek economy will contract by between 2pc and 3pc and therefore the target for a surplus of 1pc this year and 2pc next year are ludicrous. To lower the targets because the economy is in recession is one thing, to present this as lightening the recessionary burden is quite another and wrong. Nothing has been lightened because the taxes have been voted in. Also, what exactly happened to the debt? What is the understanding with regards to the debt? I have no idea. We're completely in the dark about that.   So we don't have a change of measures and a change of policy. The measures and the policies are the same. It's just that the targets have been adjusted downwards. What this means for the debt, I’m not entirely certain. To me it looks like the lenders have had their way and have won hands down. We knew this from early July. The government has accepted austerity and the lenders' policies - those same policies that have been tried in Greece for the last five years and have failed.  For such a small unimportant country (I am not passing qualitative judgement here) to have hogged the headlines, day after day after day, for the best part of a year and virtually every other day for the five years before this, takes a special kind of incompetence.  I don't blame the Greeks. They are not the incompetence ones, they are just the subject of the EU/EZ institutional incompetence, which has brought us to the present day farce. There is not a hope in Hades, this latest 'bail out' will resolve the Greek/EZ crisis.

We are about to throw yet another €100 billion into the bottomless pit of Greek cash consumption. It will achieve nothing, beyond delaying the eventual decision for another year, if that. We used to laugh, at the stupidity of the FinMin group who spend an increasing amount of their time trying to make the financial systems they control fit the political demands of the Europhiles. Now we just pity the group. They have lost all credibility. If the FinMins were a hopeless failing animal, we would have put them out of their misery, a long time ago. When is someone going to come out and tell the uncomfortable truth to power that needs to be spoken? 

It is over for Greece in the €uro zone.

There's an interesting symmetry between the Greek and German parliaments. So far, Syriza has lost a chunk of its own MPs during debates, but it's counted on the support of the Opposition to get through its prior actions (at least, the selected few measures it's presented so far). The angry mob outside the Vouli is ignored.Merkel too knows that even with the angry dissent of many of 'her own' CDU MPs she has the supine SPD as part of the Grand Coalition, jumping nearly as high as she dictates, with only the unpopular Gyzi and die Linke opposing her.  That the Bundestag is acting against the will of 85% of the German people seems not to worry its MPs at all.  Only concerted opposition from CDU and SPD against their own leaderships would change anything in the Bundestag. or new elections.

Ditto in Greece,, It seems Greek MPs are also "completely in the dark" about whether Greece will receive any debt relief - and if yes, when. I've just got off the phone with Costas Lapavitsas, a Syriza MP and professor of economics at SOAS university in London, who has described today's agreement in principle as "outrageous", misleading and based on policies that have failed over the past five years.  He described claims by officials that Greece will avoid austerity measures worth around €20bn because of the relaxed primary surplus targets attached to the new debt deal as "wrong".

He said the debt deal had "bypassed democratic procedure" because MPs had not been consulted before it was announced. "When were these conclusions [on prior actions and targets] made? Who decided on that? It's outrageous, it's absolutaely outrageous," he said. 

Alexis Tsipras resigns and calls September snap election !!!!!!!!!!!

Embattled prime minister will stand down after losing backing from his MPs over Greece's punishing new bail-out agreement ... The rumour mill is well under way, with talk suggesting that speaker of the Greek parliament Zoe Constantopoulou will join a breakaway Leftist faction. Ms Constantopoulou has been a constant thorn in the side of the PM, and is one of the most vocal critics of the new bail-out deal in the government.  However, former minister Yanis Varoufakis - who is not affiliated with the Left Platform - is likely to stick by his prime minister and current finance chief Euclid Tsakolotos.  An election will create more political uncertainty, delay economic recovery and impede reform implementation.  However, it appears to be unavoidable if Greece is to have a government committed to implementing the bail-out agreement. An election will give Mr Tsipras the opportunity to secure a mandate for the reform programme and remove troublesome left-wingers from parliament.  Under Greek electoral law, if an election is held within 18 months of the previous poll, the order in which candidates are listed on ballots is also the order in which they are elected, and that order is set by the party leader.  The mind-boggling scope of the reforms in the new agreement, which extend into virtually every area of the economy and polity, exceed anything visited upon even the post-communist states of eastern Europe. The referendum result of 5 July, in which 61pc of voters rejected austerity measures demanded by Greece's creditors, revealed that there is a large body of opinion that is prepared to countenance a break with the euro. In coming months and years, support for remaining within the euro zone "at all costs" will diminish significantly.

Market growth means in fact INFLATION !!!!!

"An estimated $4 trillion has been wiped off the value of Chinese equities in just three weeks earlier this year, although they are still higher than they were this time a year ago."  China's stock markets swung wildly on Wednesday as the authorities battled to restore investor confidence.  Shares on China’s main market - the Shanghai Composite - ended the day 1.2pc higher having earlier plunged by as much as 5pc. 

The recovery late in the day was apparently due to state-backed companies gobbling up shares as trading drew to a close.  A turbulent day on the markets reflected concerns that the housing market could be overheating, and that Beijing might stop propping up equity prices. They have been doing so for weeks. Not only the Chinese though, Swiss, UK and USA. There are NO markets anymore; there is NO price discovery anymore and how can you quantify risk in a market that is so distorted. This will not end nicely. They already tried this back in 1929 and they never altered the trend then. If you don't read history you are condemned to repeat it...Remind me what percentage growth is the American economy growing at & how much overseas owned debt does it have & how much are American stocks over-valued by & how much has the dollar been devalued over a similar period of time?...Some experts had been expecting China to boost exports in a bid to shore up growth. Beijing's decision to weaken the Yuan - also known as the renminbi - last week appeared to support this view, as a weaker currency should make China's exports cheaper. However, the Commerce Ministry appeared to quash this theory on Wednesday by saying that China’s exports could continue falling in the months to come. Analysts at Barclays expect that China’s moves will just be the first steps in a larger depreciation of the Yuan, which they expect to fall by 6pc against the dollar by the end of the year. The devaluation added to concerns that the world’s second-largest economy is in a more fragile state than official numbers reveal. Chinese officials are targeting economic growth of 7pc this year, though many China watchers estimate that growth is far more tepid than Beijing’s GDP numbers would suggest. Fears of a “hard landing” for Chinese growth have plagued stocks the world over.

 

It was once seen as a British disease. But Euroscepticism has  now spread across the continent like a virus. As data from  Eurobarometer shows, trust in the European project has fallen even faster than growth rates. Since the beginning of the euro crisis, trust in the European Union has fallen fro  +10 to -22 percent in France, from +20 to -29 percent in  Germany, from +30 to -22 percent in Italy, from +42 to -52  percent in Spain, from +50 to +6 percent in Poland, and from -13 to -49 percent in the United Kingdom.  What is so striking is that everyone in the EU has been losing  faith in the project: both creditors and debtors, and Eurozone  countries, would-be members, and “opt-outs”