German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble and Yanis Varoufakis today
Greece’s new finance minister has urged Germany to help end the “gross indignity” of the Greek debt crisis. Yanis Varoufakis said “too much time, hopes, lives” had been wasted by Greece’s forced austerity programme….
Some club, in fairness.
End ‘gross indignity’, Greek FM Varoufakis tells Germany (BBC)
Meanwhile…
FTSE Eurofirst falls 0.4 after impass in Greek debt deal
Shares in Greece’s biggest banks fall 8pc
Denmark slashes rates to -0.75pc on currency fears
Varoufakis calls more for time and emergency bridging loans
Markets rocked by surprise ECB move to cut Greek bank funding (Telegraph)
Earlier: Making A Drachma Out of A Crisis
(AFP)
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Fupp the ECB. It’s a undemocratic, authoritarian plague. The people of Europe support the Greeks.
No they don’t
I certainly don’t…..
I do. And I support the majority of normal Germans, French, Spanish, yanks, afghanis and Togolese getting spitroasted by their spineless institutions and global financial systems
I do. I support human dignity way over some bunch of c*nts who are already rich, wanting their money back.
You support the Greeks.
The people of Europe have diverse views.
In fact, you could say that of any continent, the greatest political diversity by far is found in Europe.
You quite literally couldn’t be more wrong than to ascribe a blanket political opinion on all the people of Europe.
The people of Europe = those in Europe minus rightwing, neoliberal nutjobs.
I think that you’re actually Jock trying out a new shtick.
The people of Europe minus rightwing, neoliberal nutjobs have diverse views.
In fact, you could say that of any continent, the greatest political diversity by far is found in Europe minus rightwing, neoliberal nutjobs.
You quite literally couldn’t be more wrong than to ascribe a blanket political opinion on all the people of Europe minus rightwing, neoliberal nutjobs.
This could go on for a while, might just be best for you to stop projecting your own opinion onto millions of people.
I was at a work dinner with two Greek guys last week. Both in their early 30s, very well educated with good jobs etc. I was so surprised by their attitude to the Greek debt situation. One of the guys was convinced that the whole thing was a big conspiracy by Germany. Basically he said that Germany knew Greece would never be able to repay the money so should not have lent money to Greece in the first place. It was Germany’s fault for lending them the money! When I questioned him about Greece’s part in this whole fiasco, he refused point blank to acknowledge that Greece should accept ANY blame for its current situation.
You had dinner with George Papandreou?
What did you have for mains?
Ha
The blame game is pointless, it’s like today being told the Irish Bank Guarantee was “insane”, like duh?! Who’s got the time machine?
The average Greek probably feels like they were sold a pup, and in anyways, much like Ireland, it was an elite few politicians and bankers who benefitted from firstly their fast and loose tax policy and then the ECB bailouts. Who knows, maybe they’re right and this has been Germany’s game plan from way back when…
Whatever way you point the finger, it doesn’t change the fact that getting breathing space and breaking the spiral of debt will ensure a far brighter future for the country rather then taking the Irish route of endless self flagellation. It’s genuinely exciting to hear Greece take a stand for it’s common everyday citizen and their childrens future. Enda et al could learn a lot…
I should add that when I told them I was Irish, the conspiracy theory guy asked me how I voted in the referendum for Scottish Independence.
Did they leave you to pay the dinner bill?
Ha ha ha, yes I paid for dinner and drinks beforehand.
Markets rocked?
you “forgot” to add that EUR:USD has now recovered to $1.1426
You have to wonder how long the Greek cluelessness is going to go on..
Their prime minister is doing a superb impersonation of Comic Ali in his refusal to accept the real-world facts as they are and it looks like the Greece economy is going to end up in a similar state of disaster as Iraq ended up in.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-05/schauble-and-varoufakis-meeting-ends-we-didnt-even-agreed-disagree
And – talkin’ tough
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-05/greece-refuses-back-down-government-will-do-promised-tsipras-says
Germany, the country which has had hundreds of billions written off in the last 100 years. time to get out of emu.
Well it didn’t take someone long to bring up the war in relation to Germany. Go you.
bring up the war? piss off!
“The largest loan in history was granted to the most insolvent of EU nations… With a list of reforms that was just a fig leaf,”
One on the one hand, the Greek state is a financial nightmare – tax evasion off the charts etc. Massive amounts of reform still need to be enacted to ensure it can function correctly as a modern state. On the other, the ECB (and Germany)’s obsession with low inflation rates and punitive austerity measures is counter-productive, and has resulted in an unnecessarily deepened and prolonged recession in many debtor states. The current bailout terms will almost certainly need to be adjusted somewhat in favour of the debtors, to allow them more freedom for economic stimulus.
Basically, despite most of the media focusing solely on either EVIL GERMANS or LAZY GREEKS, both sides are partly responsible for the current impasse and will need to compromise to meet somewhere in the middle. Less austerity, but still more government reform in Greece.
I think the general view in Germany is that they bailed Greece out already and now they are getting it thrown in their faces.
The new government in Greece seem to have noble aims but are utterly clueless when it comes to the real-world economics of actually paying for what they want to achieve. It’s no use saying that you are different from the last lot in power, to the Germans you’re all still all Greeks to them.
I’m really enjoying this Greece situation. Playing hardball on a populist mandate doesn’t work when you require monthly loans just to run your country,
Greece has the monetrary nuclear option, all they need to do is drag out
the process and watch the Euro devalue, if they pull the plug and the
rest do the same all over Europe, its all over for Germany….the canny
Swiss have already removed their currency cap…so it will take a lot
more Euro’s to buy Swiss Frank’s….so there little point in running
to Switzerland to hide it.
Its a delight to see the heirs to Third Reich getting their bluff called by above
all people…… the Greeks.
Where have all our “School Teacher Negotiotators” gone.
You have it backwards. Greece doesn’t matter to the euro anymore. They are the ones that are having their bluff called. It will hopefully send them back to the dark ages and bury these populist SF type parties around Europe.
SF are gas craic when you put them up against Golden Dawn. They do not exist as a bargaining tool for the current Greek government to use. They are a very real treat to Greek society and if you look at their pages they are only gaining more support as the E.C.B plays “hardball”.
To say that Greece doesn’t mean anything to the euro anymore is you being silly, right? Yeah it is. Rog. Good man. LOL.
It simply doesn’t. It’s dispoasble and the euro will easily survive if not prosper.
Fair point.
… http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/the-eus-culture-war-against-the-people/15931#.VNPUS9KsV1M
It doesn’t matter anymore who owes who. Money is generated from thin air by central banks. All they create is debt and that is what makes them rich. The debt industry is a the new slavery. It imprisons people for lifetimes.
Europe is in danger of breaking apart and weakening if the debt peddlers are allowed to continue influencing and controlling our governments.
They need to be ousted and routed from our societies.