Welcome to the Gaming Den.
http://www.tgdmb.com/phpBB3/
Emphasis mine. Really?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
...uh...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;
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.[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.]
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.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;]
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.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
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.
He basically said as mutchPhoneLobster 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".
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.
The sad part is, that they will then proceed to demand more austerity.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.
Last time we had one in power here in Australia your government helped overthrow it.Kaelik wrote:Can't we just have an actual left wing party anywhere in the world?
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.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