With most of our media here incorrectly claiming the deal has been done between the troika and Greece, you could be forgiven for thinking the crisis has passed and it is business as usual for Greece and Ireland, in terms of dealing with the bailout. Of course the only agreement at this stage is “staff-level”, that is, the troika teams on the ground in Athens who apparently flew out of town Friday, agreed that if Greece follows the privatisation and austerity programmes proposed by the Greek prime minister and his immediate team, then Greece should get the next €12bn tranche of its €110bn bailout (bringing the total to €65bn overall). What happens now is that the principals at the troika organisations need to assess Greece’s plans for feasibility. And in Greece itself, the prime minister and his immediate team needs to convince his own PASOK political party as well as the country that the new measures are acceptable. As the saying goes, “there’s many a slip betwixt cup and lip”
InGreeceitself protests continue each evening outside parliament in Athens. So far protests have lacked focus but once the tangible austerity and privatisation programme is laid before parliament, that’s likely to change – to be clear, the agreement with the troika has not been published and most of the Greek parliament and the Greek public have still to learn the detail of what has been promised on their behalf. And the immediate prospects for peace on the streets is not good as Athens heads into another sweltering summer, with 15.9% unemployment in April 2011 (May’s figures will be released tomorrow) and with previous rounds of austerity already causing pain. Also this week we should get provisional Q1, 2011 GDP figures which might reveal deeper problems than hitherto recognised. The unionists will be marching this Thursday 9th June and also the following week 15th June, and so far in Greece it is the unionists that attract huge crowds.
Outside Greece, you can expect to hear from the principals in the troika as the details of what has been agreed at staff-level gets thrashed out. There still remains the mystery as to how Greece will fund maturing debt – another bailout? private bondholder agreement? Vienna Initiative? And if there is another bailout, will German/Dutch/Finnish national governments have difficulty getting local parliamentary approval?
The ECB said today, or rather one of 17 of its governing council members, the Dutch central bank governor Nout Wellink said, that private banks are being pressed to roll-over maturing debt.
The troika report should be published in the coming week, and that should set out in detail how Greece will meet targets. Thus far it seems that at the very least, the handing-over of the next tranche has been deferred from 29th June 2011 to “early July”. Greece has substantial debt maturing after 15th July and that would seem to be the real crunch date. This temporary GreekWatch feature will conclude tomorrow.
NAMA Wine Lake 
“This temporary GreekWatch feature will conclude tomorrow.”
Say it ain’t so NWL. Greekwatch was fast becoming my favourite daily internet fix!
@Karl, sorry but it seems there’s going to be an odyssey over the next six weeks before Ulysses is re-united with Penelope. There will be occasional round-ups but this has all the appearances of a messy, uncoordinated botch job, and will likely last a great many weeks, at least until the end of June.
@NWL
Please replace the above with corrected version.
Your integrity and diligence on the NAMA front is obvious and well documented. Your foray into the Greek tragedy demonstrates that you are truly capable of following all the planets.
The EU came one step closer to the financial abyss today with highly sensitive reports that the Nation of Greece , unable to placate tax dodging civilians, unsustainable pensions and perks for government workers was going to take the easy way out and just walk away from their debts.
Members of a disconsolate troika, boarding their Gulfstream G5 back to Frankfurt, said that the Greek government is contemplating printing their own currency, an act which if it comes to fruition will lay waste, not only to its own country, but the member nations in the EU.
Experts say if Greece prints it’s own money, the value will be 50% of the Euro, making each and every one of it’s banks insolvent.
Financial experts in the US administration were not so gloomy, ” Print, baby, Print’ said Treasury Secretary Tom Geithner, “don’t mean nothin’….when you start wipin’ your arse with Benjamin’s, then you know you’re in trouble!”
The European Central Bank, located in Frankfurt, is on the hook for 27% of circa €40B in bonds. The rest of the EU has already laid out €55B in loans to the Olive Oil country, and looks like they could be stuck with just the pits when Greece declares bankruptcy and defaults on ALL its obligations.
Insiders say if that happens, Ireland, Portugal and Spain won’t be far behind and capital markets and sources of money for new investments will dry up overnight. A spokesman for prominent Wall Street bondholders Goldman Sachs said that “With the threat that one can just agree to wipe out business and sovereign debts with the stroke of a pen, much like Obama did when he took over General Motors and left hundreds of thousands of investors, bond holders and suppliers out in the cold by wiping out their claims no-one is going to lend these PIGs any more money.”
On the beaches of Greece, Anarchists were celebrating with Ouzo , fig kabobs and ceremonial dances. “The rich must pay,” said one reveler known locally as Zorba, “Let those Bastards ab-Zorba our debts…we’ll just start over in the morning after we sleep this off! ”
Meanwhile in Spain, the Minister for horticulture began a PR campaign to counteract Germany’s invidious undermining of the country’s commercial base. “They are trying to achieve a takeover of the Iberian peninsula, something they could not do even with Franco’s help.” “We want todas las chicas in Europe to know that our Spanish growers have the finest cucumbers and gourds in the world. We have produced 20 statistics that prove it” he stated. “They need to be made aware that:
1. The average Spanish cucumber is at least 6 inches long.
2. The Spanish cucumbers stay hard for a week.
3. They don’t get too excited – unlike los hombres espanoles.
4. Cucumbers never suffer from performance anxiety.
5. Cucumbers are easy to pick up – like los hombres espanoles
6. A cucumber will always respect you in the morning.
7. You can go to a movie with a cucumber…. and see the movie.
8. You can go to a drive-in with a cucumber…. and you can stay in the front seat.
9. A cucumber won’t eat all the popcorn.
10. A cucumber won’t drag you to a John Wayne Film Festival.
11. A cucumber won’t ask: “Am I the first?”.
12. A cucumber doesn’t care if you’re a virgin.
13. Cucumbers won’t tell other cucumbers you’re a virgin.
15. Cucumbers won’t pout if you have a headache.
16. Cucumbers won’t write your name and number on the men’s room wall.
17. Cucumbers won’t make you wear kinky clothes or go to bed with your boots on.
18. With a cucumber, the toilet seat is always the way you left it.
19. Cucumbers never expect you to have little cucumbers.
20. A cucumber won’t insist the little cukes be raised Catholic, Jewish, or Orthodox Vegetarian.
21. No matter how you slice it, you can have your cuke and eat it too”
Ah… the Spanish can’t count either. Maybe that was part of the problem…. Any of our teachers out there teach maths?
EU demands now a further 6,4 bln to be sucked from the economy, VAT on food shall increase, more severe fiscal extortion attacks on low income earners. Greece is deliberately ‘austeritized’ into a recession so deep that it can trigger a civil war like situation. The spread sheet schizophrenics were hard at work to certify Greece a successful fiscal reduction.
Greece’s sovereign debts are sky rocketing by the forced upon EU protracted default policies. Every month wasted now increases the pain of a future default, which is inevitable, and the same counts for Ireland. ECB tactics is clear, the nearly full burden of debts will be handed to the taxpayer, this is the result of ECB’s purchase of bonds and forced upon bailouts.
oh, and btw. the punchline for the public now is private sector participation, right! So what happens if the private sector refuses to participate, that’s right, Greece would be burdened with the additional debt package, bailout nevertheless, there is absolutely no doubt about it!
A major oil spill continues to threaten the Mediterranean and the European Union as thousands of Greek rioters dump millions of barrels of Virgin Olive Oil into the Aegean Sea!
After bloody rioting and burning of effigies of Nicholas Sarkozy and Poul Thomsen, head of The IMF mission To Greece, the angry mob broke into the country’s warehouses where the only export the country had, Olive Oil, was gleefully rolled down to the docks, spilt open and dumped into the sea.
Scenes shown from Google Earth on RTE show that the oil is spreading into the Mediterranean threatening to move towards Spain, Portugal, France and eventually Ireland.
Italy is already affected with olive oil drenched sea weed being washed up on shore. Considering it a free boost to the economy, the Italians rushed to reopen disused factories and have begun exporting it to Health Food stores in China. There are also reports that Spanish horticulturalists are harvesting the seaborne virgin oil and packaging it with cucumbers following their exclusive marketing deal with Ann Summers.
In an emergency EU meeting, France has committed to dropping 2.5M loaves of French Bread into the spill in hopes it can be absorbed, while Portugal vows it will send a fleet of sardine trawlers to the area to scoop, brine, and can as much of the oil coated fish a as possible.
Meanwhile the spot market for Olive Oil has quadrupled now said to be rivaling the price of Gold as the ill fated European Union continues to flounder.
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