[Non-US] News That Makes You laugh/cry/neither...

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sun Jul 12, 2015 10:19 pm

Bahahaha! Remember how Germany is demanding that 50 billion USD worth of Greek state assets be transferred to an independent third party for privatization? The "independent" third party is owned by Germany. Schauble is a board member.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Sun Jul 12, 2015 11:12 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:After all that noise about demanding that Greece pony up a detailed plan, the Eurogroup's counter-offer is just Four Pages. It's blunt, it's unworkable, and it's laughable. They demand that the Greeks surrender their national sovereignty and transfer control of their fiscal decisions to an outside body while committing to pay the entire debt on time (which has already been established as impossible).
-Username17

Emphasis mine. Really?

I mean, what in the goat-fucking hell. I took a look at the PDF to see if I could find the specifics, but I'm short on time so I didn't have time to really peruse it.

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Sun Jul 12, 2015 11:27 pm

The deal doesn't directly say "You can't be trusted to manage your own affairs so we're going to ignore your democratically elected government and do it for you."

Uh...except, well, it really kinda does.

in line with the Greek government ambitions, to modernise and significantly strengthen the Greek administration, and to put in place a programme, under the auspices of the European Commission, for capacity-building and de-politicizing the Greek administration. A first proposal should be provided by 20 July after discussions with the institutions. The Greek government commits to reduce further the costs of the Greek administration, in line with a schedule agreed with the institutions;

...uh...

to fully normalize working methods with the institutions, including the necessary work on the ground in Athens, to improve programme implementation and monitoring. The government needs to consult and agree with the institutions on all draft legislation in relevant areas with adequate time before submitting it for public consultation or to Parliament. The Eurogroup stresses again that implementation is key, and in the context welcomes the intention of the Greek authorities to request by 20 July support from the institutions and Member States for technical assistance, and asks the European Commission to coordinate this support from Europe;

...uh...

[Provided that all the necessary conditions contained in this document are fulfilled, the Eurogroup and ESM Board of Governors may, in accordance with Article 13.2 of the ESM Treaty, mandate the institutions to negotiate a new ESM programme, if the preconditions of Article 13 of the ESM Treaty are met on the basis of the assessment referred to in Article 13.1.]

I mean, there's a lot more in there, but basically you would be forgiven for seeing this as the Eurogroup Germany trying to micromanage Greece and get as many assets from them as possible that they can without having actual bread riots or indentured servitude. I mean, when significant points of your proposal call for privatization of state resources and industries, a crack down on unions, a reduction in state health services and pensions, with no promise of any sort of reduction, forgiveness, or restructuring of debts... You'd be forgiven for thinking that this was a proposal designed to push Greece out of the EU.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 6:33 am

A lot of it's hidden in weird legalese gibberish that probably results from it being written in German, Dutch, and Finnish and then translated into English, possibly not directly. But some of it's surprisingly blunt:

The Eurogroup Demands wrote:[Moreover, valuable Greek assets of [EUR 50 bn] shall be transferred to an
existing external and independent fund like the Institution for Growth in
Luxembourg, to be privatized over time and decrease debt. Such fund
would be managed by the Greek authorities under the supervision of the
relevant European institutions;]

The Institute For Growth in Greece (Luxembourg Branch) is its actual name. It is a fund created by the German Federal Government and located in Luxembourg, apparently so to avoid being subject to laws or scrutiny from Greece or Germany. It does what the German government tells it to, without any pesky oversight from the German people.

-Username17

Morat · Post by **Morat** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 7:43 am

FrankTrollman wrote:The Institute For Growth in Greece (Luxembourg Branch) is its actual name. It is a fund created by the German Federal Government and located in Luxembourg, apparently so to avoid being subject to laws or scrutiny from Greece or Germany. It does what the German government tells it to, without any pesky oversight from the German people.

-Username17

And the Finance and Economy Ministers of Germany trade off who is the chair of the supervisory board every year. Schauble isn't just a member of the board, he was chairman last year and will likely be chairman again next year.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 10:11 am

Tsipras caves, highlights: more austerity, more privatization, less unions, less democracy, no haircut. None of those are jokes. The austerity demands Greek PM's already accepted have been made more stringent, the 50 billion USD privatization fund is a go (but not German-owned, at least), unions are to be crippled, Greece is to "de-politicize its public administration" (which is code for "let EU technocrats run it"), and the only debt relief Germany will consider is delaying repayments.

More of my napkin scratch math suggests GDP will drop 30-40 billion USD, while the only debt relief being offered is half of the proceeds from the 50 billion USD privatization fund. If Tsipras gets this deal through his parliament, Greece will likely break 200% debt-GDP. If he doesn't, Greece will quite literally run out of currency notes around the same time and devolve into a barter and scrip economy.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 10:39 am

Dutch PM (Mark Rutte): I'm breaking my election promise, we are giving the Greeks moar money. But it is not all bad, because it won't affect the Dutch budget nor is there any further need for more Austerity.

Schleiermacher · Post by **Schleiermacher** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 11:17 am

So now it's up to the Greek parliament to say "Hell no" and refuse the deal? That seems to be the last resort, but it also seems very likely.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 2:37 pm

Tsipras caved? Holy shit. He won his referendum. Why on earth back down now?

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 3:31 pm

Best guess? In the Step 1 -> ??? -> Profit! flowchart, Tsipras & co. didn't have step #2 figured out. If he was playing chicken with the Eurogroup, the Greek government should have basically been preparing for grexit - maybe he was afraid that preparations for grexit would lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy of grexit, maybe he really doesn't want to be the guy that pulls Greece out of the European Union. Who knows? Unless Tsipras gets a really cushy job later, then we'll know it was just a bribe.

As it is, there's still a lot of victim-blaming going on with Greece, with everybody treating them like this is their own personal moral failing instead of a group fuck-up that exposes key flaws in the EU and exacerbated by bullshit politics and bad economics on the part of Germany.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 3:39 pm

Deal contents, according to Guardian

The new measures Greece must now implement

The final Euro Summit statement confirms that Greece has agreed to immediately implement sweeping measures, after a bruising battle in Brussels:

This includes pension reforms, liberalising its economy (from Sunday opening hours to opening up closed professions), privatising its energy transmission network, reforming its labour market practices (including new rules on industrial action, and collective dismissals), and action on non-performing loans:

That is on top of the austerity its MPs agreed on Friday:

Here are the key points:

carry out ambitious pension reforms and specify policies to fully compensate for the fiscal impact of the Constitutional Court ruling on the 2012 pension reform and to implement the zero deficit clause or mutually agreeable alternative measures by October 2015;
adopt more ambitious product market reforms with a clear timetable for implementation of all OECD toolkit I recommendations, including Sunday trade, sales periods, pharmacy ownership, milk and bakeries, except over-the-counter pharmaceutical products, which will be implemented in a next step, as well as for the opening of macro-critical closed professions (e.g. ferry transportation). On the follow-up of the OECD toolkit-II, manufacturing needs to be included in the prior action;
on energy markets, proceed with the privatisation of the electricity transmission network operator (ADMIE), unless replacement measures can be found that have equivalent effect on competition, as agreed by the Institutions;
on labour markets, undertake rigorous reviews and modernisation of collective bargaining, industrial action and, in line with the relevant EU directive and best practice, collective dismissals, along the timetable and the approach agreed with the Institutions. On the basis of these reviews, labour market policies should be aligned with international and European best practices, and should not involve a return to past policy settings which are not compatible with the goals of promoting sustainable and inclusive growth;
adopt the necessary steps to strengthen the financial sector, including decisive action on non-performing loans and measures to strengthen governance of the HFSF and the banks, in particular by eliminating any possibility for political interference especially in appointment processes.
And on top of that, Greece will also establish a new fund to sell off valuable assets to help repay its new bailout, and refinance its banks.

Or as the statement put it:

develop a significantly scaled up privatisation programme with improved governance; valuable Greek assets will be transferred to an independent fund that will monetize the assets through privatisations and other means. The monetization of the assets will be one source to make the scheduled repayment of the new loan of ESM and generate over the life of the new loan a targeted total of €50bn of which €25bn will be used for the repayment of recapitalization of banks and other assets and 50% of every remaining euro (i.e. 50% of €25bn) will be used for decreasing the debt to GDP ratio and the remaining 50% will be used for investments.

MisterDee · Post by **MisterDee** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 4:54 pm

IMO, the explanation is simply that Tsipras recognized that regardless of what he promises, he won't be able to deliver. In all likelyhood, Germany wiill veto the deal anyway, but even if it doesn't the deal probably won't pass the Greek parliament, and even if it does it will never get implemented because it would take time and cooperation from the Greek bureaucracy, which simply won't cooperate (if it is even capable of implementing it at this point, which is doubtful.)

In those circumstances, I think that he just went "Yeah, sure, whatever, send monies plz" to buy some more time to prepare for Grexit.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 5:06 pm

Germany will almost certainly pass it, and Syriza will probably (but not certainly) be able to scrape the votes together by rallying his opposition. Greece gets nothing until it's passed - not even liquidity from the ECB with which to reopen the banks. Tsipras has not bought time.

Schleiermacher · Post by **Schleiermacher** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 7:00 pm

But do you think they want to pass it, even when the alternative is Grexit? If the deal goes through Tsipras will be the most hated man in Greece (he won't be popular if it falls through either, but at least he can say that Syriza didn't betray the will of the Greek people) and the Greeks will be taking it in the fiscal ass from Schauble's cronies for the foreseeable future. Refusing to pass the deal seems like their last chance to get a win out of this debacle, even if it's a pyrrhic one.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 7:34 pm

Tsipras wants to pass it, yes. Tsipras does not believe that Grexit is a viable strategy, and he has spent so long failing to prepare for it at this point he may well be right. Greece runs out of currency, period, in a matter of days. Businesses are trying to pay their suppliers and their employees in company scrip right now. Greek ports are currently clogged with imports that the owners are refusing to release until they're paid; payments that cannot come until the banks reopen, which cannot happen until the ECB restores liquidity. The businesses which depend on those imports will run out of necessary supplies and begin laying off their employees in days.

The Greek economy - what little of it remains - is collapsing right now. It's a country which runs on the euro and does not actually have any fucking euros. There is no longer a medium of exchange in which to do commerce - not amongst themselves and especially not with the outside world.

Tsipras was bluffing all along. Germany called his bluff, and now Greece will burn - one way or another - for having the audacity to try and save itself.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 10:55 pm

At this point the various leaks, rumors and known events seem to indicate that Tsipras is actually very much honest in his "will not leave Euro at any cost" claims. Suggestions in fact ARE that he never prepared the "plan B" of actually executing a Grexit because he simple refused to even consider it a real option.

I would suggest that the resignation of Yanis Varoufakis probably marks the point (give or take a referendum) where Yanis said to Tsipras "Now, finally, you can no longer refuse, we MUST prepare our Grexit plan B" and Tsipras said "No, never, anything but that, even now, no".

Roog · Post by **Roog** » Tue Jul 14, 2015 12:28 am

PhoneLobster wrote:I would suggest that the resignation of Yanis Varoufakis probably marks the point (give or take a referendum) where Yanis said to Tsipras "Now, finally, you can no longer refuse, we MUST prepare our Grexit plan B" and Tsipras said "No, never, anything but that, even now, no".

He basically said as mutch
www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/2015 ... ave-greece

HL: You must have been thinking about a Grexit from day one...
YV: Yes, absolutely.
HL: ...have preparations been made?
YV: The answer is yes and no. We had a small group, a ‘war cabinet’ within the ministry, of about five people that were doing this: so we worked out in theory, on paper, everything that had to be done [to prepare for/in the event of a Grexit]. But it’s one thing to do that at the level of 4-5 people, it’s quite another to prepare the country for it. To prepare the country an executive decision had to be taken, and that decision was never taken.
HL: And in the past week, was that a decision you felt you were leaning towards [preparing for Grexit]?
YV: My view was, we should be very careful not to activate it. I didn’t want this to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I didn’t want this to be like Nietzsche’s famous dictum that if you stare into the abyss long enough, the abyss will stare back at you. But I also believed that at the moment the Eurogroup shut out banks down, we should energise this process.
HL: Right. So there were two options as far as I can see – an immediate Grexit, or printing IOUs and taking bank control of the Bank of Greece [potentially but not necessarily precipitating a Grexit]?
YV: Sure, sure. I never believed we should go straight to a new currency. My view was – and I put this to the government –that if they dared shut our banks down, which I considered to be an aggressive move of incredible potency, we should respond aggressively but without crossing the point of no return.
We should issue our own IOUs, or even at least announce that we’re going to issue our own euro-denominated liquidity; we should haircut the Greek 2012 bonds that the ECB held, or announce we were going to do it; and we should take control of the Bank of Greece. This was the triptych, the three things, which I thought we should respond with if the ECB shut down our banks.
… I was warning the Cabinet this was going to happen [the ECB shut our banks] for a month, in order to drag us into a humiliating agreement. When it happened – and many of my colleagues couldn’t believe it happened – my recommendation for responding “energetically”, let’s say, was voted down.
HL: And how close was it to happening?
YV: Well let me say that out of six people we were in a minority of two. … Once it didn’t happen I got my orders to close down the banks consensually with the ECB and the Bank of Greece, which I was against, but I did because I’m a team player, I believe in collective responsibility.
And then the referendum happened, and the referendum gave us an amazing boost, one that would have justified this type of energetic response [his plan] against the ECB, but then that very night the government decided that the will of the people, this resounding ‘No’, should not be what energised the energetic approach [his plan].
Instead it should lead to major concessions to the other side: the meeting of the council of political leaders, with our Prime Minister accepting the premise that whatever happens, whatever the other side does, we will never respond in any way that challenges them. And essentially that means folding. … You cease to negotiate.

nockermensch · Post by **nockermensch** » Tue Jul 14, 2015 1:48 am

Unless Tsipras proves himself to be a chessmaster with a godly Keikaku (TN: Keikaku means plan) to save Greece, the ones who will benefit more from this debacle are the Golden Dawn. And I don't mean the occultists.

The Greek majority that voted for the No must be feeling angry and betrayed right now, and the misery that the super austerity measures are bound to cause in the next months / years will do nothing to soothe these feelings. So it's very hard to imagine the fascists not making huge gains on their next elections with a platform consisting solely of "TOLD YOU SO" and "NOT TSIPRAS" image macros.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Tue Jul 14, 2015 10:37 am

nockermensch wrote:Unless Tsipras proves himself to be a chessmaster with a godly Keikaku (TN: Keikaku means plan) to save Greece, the ones who will benefit more from this debacle are the Golden Dawn. And I don't mean the occultists.

The Greek majority that voted for the No must be feeling angry and betrayed right now, and the misery that the super austerity measures are bound to cause in the next months / years will do nothing to soothe these feelings. So it's very hard to imagine the fascists not making huge gains on their next elections with a platform consisting solely of "TOLD YOU SO" and "NOT TSIPRAS" image macros.

The sad part is, that they will then proceed to demand more austerity.

Like when Republicans talk about how ObamaCare is evil because people are uninsured.

Can't we just have an actual left wing party anywhere in the world?

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Tue Jul 14, 2015 12:56 pm

Kaelik wrote:Can't we just have an actual left wing party anywhere in the world?

Last time we had one in power here in Australia your government helped overthrow it.

You know. Just in case you were wondering why it's so hard for real left wing governments to exist.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Tue Jul 14, 2015 1:35 pm

Scandiwegia is doing pretty well for a group of left wing governments. Now sure, they've moved to the right a bit, and aren't as great as their people would like, and give it another ten years and they might end up like the rest of Europe, but at the moment they're basically being proper left wing.

Of course their banks benefit pretty well from other countries going into mad austerity and right wing policies, so that's not exactly helping.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Tue Jul 14, 2015 5:10 pm

So, there's a leaked IMF report floating around from a couple days ago (i.e. before the conclusion of the latest "negotiations" - yes, the European hardliners had seen it, and yes, the European hardliners are the reason it wasn't released to the public during the negotiations). It projects that as a result of the damage done to the Greek economy through the termination of emergency liquidity assistance Greece will peak just shy of 200% debt-GDP, and will drop down to the pre-latest-round-of-crisis level of 170% debt-GDP by 2022.

Note: every fucking IMF report so far has underestimated the extent of the crisis, and this report does not include the effects of the austerity package Greece signed, which will likely constitute at least a 20 billion USD drop in GDP, which would be enough to push the debt-GDP up to around ~225%. Again, these are conservative estimates. The IMF is always fucking wrong, and the 20 billion USD is based on Syriza's original proposal - not the one ultimately accepted. 225% debt-GDP is essentially the floor.

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Tue Jul 14, 2015 10:25 pm

When does #WW3 become appropriate?
Or maybe #4thReich?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Jul 14, 2015 10:50 pm

At this point, we're just talking about #SackOfAthens.

Remember that Greece is just ten million people, they could all die and it wouldn't really be that big of a deal in terms of percentages. The issue is that this gross and deliberate mishandling of Greece exposes the leaders of the world's largest economic bloc as dangerous vindictive fools.

It's worse than a crime. It's a mistake.

-Username17

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Wed Jul 15, 2015 12:40 am

FrankTrollman wrote:At this point, we're just talking about #SackOfAthens.

Remember that Greece is just ten million people, they could all die and it wouldn't really be that big of a deal in terms of percentages. The issue is that this gross and deliberate mishandling of Greece exposes the leaders of the world's largest economic bloc as dangerous vindictive fools.

It's worse than a crime. It's a mistake.

-Username17

Pfftt, the USA invaded a country on the basis of them having weapons of mass destruction that were never found, leading to a chain of destructive events leading to a decade and half of neverending conflicts and the forming of a whole country of bloodthirsty fanatics, hundreds of thousands of deads piling up from the direct violence and millions suffering.

And the USA is doing pretty well despite said "mistake" of thinking that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, nor the mistake of failing to have any actual plan on what exactly to do after conquering liberating that country.

Really, when the pope calls for a holy crusade against the infidels and people start shooting assault rifles on the streets of Europe when not blowing themselves up, then we may start talking about a real mistake having been done.