Grčka - enormni dug, protesti oko mera štednje

[Prospero]

Did Tsipras always want a euro exit?

By ERIC MAURICE

 

 

ATHENS, 5. JUL, 10:52

 

Alexis Tsipras called a referendum to let Greek people decide whether they accept the reforms asked by Greece's creditors in return for more money.

The Greek PM presented the move as a democratic choice and a matter of dignity for a people enduring their sixth year of crisis and faced with more austerity to come.

 

But his decision, announced when the EU, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Central Bank (ECB) thought they could conclude the negotiations, also raised questions about his real willingness to reach a deal or even to keep Greece in the eurozone.

"I want to reassure the Greek people of the government’s firm intention to reach an agreement with its partners," Tsipras said in a television address on 1 July.

"Sunday’s referendum is not about whether our country will stay in the Eurozone. This is a given and no one should question this."

But in Brussels and in Athens, some still doubt his real intentions.

For many weeks, Greek representatives and experts from the creditor institutions "talked more about the form of the negotiations than about the contents," a European Commission negotiator said after the talks broke down, suggesting the Greek government was never serious about reaching an agreement.

The president of the commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, said he felt "betrayed" by the Greek PM "after all the effort [he had] made”.

"I have my doubts," a Greek official also told EUobserver.

"I have come to think that all this maybe was planned from the start, with an ideological aim at pushing for a euro exit," the official said. He added that he is waiting for what happens after the referendum to see if he's wrong.

Omiros Tsapalos , a communication strategist, told this website: "This was clearly planned, it started right after the election in January”.

"Tsipras has been trying to turn Greek public opinion, which is friendly to the eurozone, into opinion friendly to the drachma. He did that step by step with [finance minister Yanis] Varoufakis”.

But Tsipras' chief negotiator, Euclid Tsakalotos, said the prime minister called the referendum only when he realized that he would not get parliamentary approval for a deal.

The creditors' proposal "would have never been ratified by the parliament and would have brought down the government,” he told the Skai TV broadcaster on Friday (3 July).

Even if Tsipras comes from the far left, he is probably more a victim of the scale of his task than someone driven by anti-euro ideology, journalist Nick Malkoutsis told EUobserver.

"Tsipras came in without a clear plan of what he would do," said Malkoutsis, who is deputy editor in chief of the English edition of Greek daily Kathimerini, and editor of the political and economic website Makropolis.

"Syriza [Tsipras' party] thought its victory would change the dynamic in the eurozone, that it would be able to push for a better deal, with the support of France and Italy. But they found out very early that it would be different”.

"The eurozone pushed back the negotiations to a technical level. Syriza had no technical skills and the negations became very difficult”, Malkoutsis said.

The turning point for Tsipras was when the IMF sent back, covered with red ink, the proposal he submitted to the creditors on 21 June.

"He could either come back to the parliament and fall without honour, or make one more move to change the dynamic”, Malkoutsis said.

Although Tsipras evoked the possibility of calling a referendum as early as April in an interview on Greek TV, the ultimate decision to do it seems to have been an attempt to avoid a battle he thought he would loose.

But he will now have to face the consequences of the people's vote.

"The situation is very complex”, economist and Syriza MP Costas Lapavitsas told EUobserver.

"If the Yes wins, Tsipras will be in a very difficult situation, because he will have to sign on austerity policies. That will put him in a contradictory position”.

"If the No wins, the situation will be even more difficult because the EU will probably not back down and the government will be confronted with a harsh dilemma”.

Juncker, France's Francois Hollande, Italy's Matteo Renzi, Germany's vice-chancellor Sigmar Gabriel and other EU leaders this week repeated that a No at the referendum would amount to a No to the euro.


Having called a referendum and passionately campaigned for the No, Tsipras may be faced with a unprecedented choice in the history of the EU.

"I really don't know which way he would choose”, Lapavitsas said about the choice between staying in or leaving the euro.

"But either way, I would not be surprised”.

 

 

 

IMHO, za Sirizu je opcija Grexita poželjnija od potpisivanja onog 2. bejlauta, ili potpisivanja sličnog 3. bejlauta bez otpisa dugova.

Ovo mi se čini kao lista poželjnih ishoda:

 

1. Otpis (dela) dugova, 3. bejlaut po povoljnim uslovima;

2. Grexit, ali da ispadne da je Grčka isterana radi mobilizacije masa i legitimisanja Sirizine politike;

3. Nema otpisa, neki strogi 3. bejlaut.

 

Prva tačka je gotovo nemoguća iz perspektive Brisela, pa ostaje Grexit kao najveorvatnije rešenje, uz sve svoje prateće elemente.

[Muwan]

Pitanja - ko je spreman da Grčkoj spakuje 3. bejlaut paket od 60 milijardi evra? Ko je u EU uveren da će Sirizina vlada sprovoditi bilo šta što se dogovore? Zašto bi bilo ko u EZ primio udar otpisa grčkih dugova na sebe? Da li si siguran da je to jeftinija opcija od Grexita čiju će rupu zatrpavati ECB sveže štampanim novcem a grčki dug ostati u knjigama u celosti do daljeg?

 

Nisam uopšte siguran - ali ne može lopta stalno da bude u grčkom dvorištu. Ovde se uporno ignoriše činjenica da su omladina i sirotinja u Grkoj teško postradali tokom petogodišnjeg programa koji se pokazao potpuno jalovim. Da je dao neke rezultate, pa da kažeš ajde podneli smo žrtve ali ima nekog napretka... ali nema nikakvog napretka, privreda je pukla 25% i ostala tamo. Koliko god da je nerealno da se sipa treći bailout u grčko bure bez dna, toliko je nerealno da se nastavi sa politikom koja je loše stanje učinila još gorim. Znači, ili neka u Briselu Berlinu smišljaju neko fundamentalno drugačije rešenje na nivou cele evrozone ili neka puštaju Grčku niz vodu i drže status quo u ostatku evrozone pa kako im bude. Ali ovo prozivanje grčke vlade da je upropastila 1 vrhunsku žurku tako što je uzela da radi ono za šta je izabrana (ne govorim sad o metodama, one mogu biti skroz pogrešne ali suštinski Syriza radi ono za šta su joj birači dali mandat) stvarno više nema nikakvog smisla.

 

Grcima se pet godina preti da će biti bačeni u more ako ne izguraju austerity do smrti, evo sad im je prekipelo i rešili su da će radije okušati sreću u moru. U Briselu Berlinu su mislili da je to jeftin blef, evo ispostavilo se da nije blef nego je ljudima stvarno pun kufer petogodišnjeg raspada koji nikakav pomak nije doneo. I sad kažu: "Ako vam je u interesu da nas nahranite uradite to, ako vam nije u interesu bacajte nas preko ograde i mršupm". Vreme je da ona nadrkana babuskera i njeni minioni iz raznoraznih Luksemburga shvate da je došlo vreme da i oni donesu neku sudbonosnu odluku. Ne mogu večito da svaljuju teške izbore na leđa nekom drugom i da se još ljute kada taj neko izabere onako kako njima nije po volji.

 

A što se tiče ovog medijskog spinovanja kako je grexit od početka Ciprasov plan, sviđa mi se argumentacija™: "Svi mi vrlo dobro znamo jasno je da je na tome radio još od januara i korak po korak je kuvao žabu da se navikne na drahmu". Nema potrebe za tamo nekim argumentima, tvrdnje su same po sebi dovoljno spektakularne.

 

U analizama koje si prenosio i koje se bave dvema strujama u Nemačkoj, jasno je argumentovano postojanje struje koja se zalaže za grkickout i koja u bilo kom trenutku može da odnese prevagu. Nasuprot tome, ove nedelje ima da se naslušamo izjava i nagledamo tvitova o "grčkom unapred isplaniranom samoubistvu". Odvratno.

Edited July 6, 2015 by beowl

[Frank Pembleton]

Svi naglašavaju da je popuštanje Brisela problematično najviše zbog ostalih članica koje su "u problemu".

E sad mene zanima , kojom bi pričom, ako bi uopšte to hteli, ovi nemci i ostali mogli da izdvoje grčku kao junik kejs?

 

Poslato sa WC šolje by BVK

[Muwan]

Mislim da nema te priče. Grčkoj se već izašlo u susret preko crte, da ostali uglavnom nisu do grla u dugovima možda bi imali sluha za neku solidarnu spiku ali na primeru migranata i izbornih rezultata širom Evrope možeš otprilike da vidiš kako se trenutno kotira solidarnost kao tekovina. Svako za sebe, plati pa se klati, marš iz moje avlije - to su aktuelni evropski trendovi.

[Lord Protector]

komentar:

 

Grci jos jednom za korak ispred. 

 

Dobar takticki potez, kao znak da Grci zele da postignu dogovor sa poveriocima, a ne da "zategnu" pregovore do nivoa pucanja I izlaska iz evra. 60% glasova jeste ozbiljan kapital, ali ga treba pametno iskoristiti. Ako poverioci vide Ciprasa kao kljucnog za dalje, onda on i treba da dalje vodi pregovore. Siguran sam da ce Varurakis naravno i nadalje biti tu, ali mozda vise iza scene a ne toliko pred kamerama.

Edited July 6, 2015 by slow

[vememah]

Dikson crta moguće razvoje događaja.

 

Cipras verovatno neće dozvoliti pad banaka i raspad platnog prometa zbog turista. Ili će štampati lovu ili će ošišati uloge. Najbolje što može da dobije od Evropljana je po svoj prilici plišani razvod.

 

 

Misery ahead
Hugo Dixon: Greece will struggle to stay in euro

05 July 2015 | By Hugo Dixon

The question Greeks answered on Sunday’s referendum ballot paper didn’t mention the euro. But after the people gave an emphatic “No” to proposals from the country’s creditors, Greece will struggle to stay in the single currency. Even if it does, all routes will bring economic hardship and social tension.

The first way of avoiding a reversion to Greece’s pre-euro currency would be if euro zone partners and the International Monetary Fund cut Alexis Tsipras a significantly better deal than they were offering 10 days ago. This is what the radical left prime minister said would result from a “No” vote. The government even promised to do a deal within 48 hours.

But the creditors probably won’t buckle. They would prefer to keep Greece in the euro if possible – for both financial and geopolitical reasons. But many of the leaders are fed up with Athens’ rhetoric and negotiating style. The day before the referendum, for example, Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis accused them of terrorism. Parliamentarians and electorates in some countries, such as Germany, are hostile to the idea of granting more soft loans to Greece.

The euro zone countries seem to have steeled themselves to the likelihood of a “Grexit” since talks broke down. Since then, despite the fact that Greece has closed its banks, financial contagion has been minimal. Several countries such as Spain will be nervous that, if they now cut Athens a soft deal, radical parties in their own countries will grow in strength.

What’s more, since Tsipras called his referendum, the country’s old bailout programme has expired and the country’s economic prospects have deteriorated. A comprehensive new deal for Greece would probably require around 70 billion euros. It is hard to see why the creditors would lend such a large sum of money to a government they don’t trust.

This doesn’t mean that the euro zone will refuse to talk to Greece. But they are likely to take a measured approach rather than snapping to attention. They probably won’t rush to provide debt relief, one of Tsipras’ key demands. They will also attach lots of conditions to any money they lend and insist on intrusive monitoring. Meanwhile, the European Central Bank seems unlikely to increase the amount of liquidity it is providing to Greece’s banks.

All this will be frustrating for Tsipras. Not only is the bank closure already hitting society and the economy, the cash machines could run out in days.

What’s more, things will take an even more dramatic turn for the worse on July 20, when Athens is due to pay the ECB 3.5 billion euros. If Greece misses that payment, the central bank will probably conclude that the state is bust and, because of the way the country’s banks are connected to the government, that they are insolvent too.

A bust bank is a more serious matter than a bank holiday. People would be unable to use their credit cards or make electronic transfers. Tourists, who are currently unaffected by the capital controls, would no longer be able to extract cash. That would hardly be a good advertisement for Greece’s most important industry. The economy would go into a tailspin.

Before the banks could be reopened, they would need to be recapitalised. One way to do this would be for Greece to leave the euro. The government could then print drachmas and invest those in the banks. The other option would be to “bail in” depositors – taking a portion of their savings and converting them into capital.

Since Tsipras has promised to do neither, he would be in a terrible bind. Indeed, it is possible that the strains on his government would become so great that it would fall. His majority is fairly slim, so there wouldn’t need to be that many defectors before he lost a vote of confidence.

That said, given the fat margin in the referendum, Tsipras looks secure for the moment. He might therefore be tempted to introduce a new currency, either to replace the euro or to run alongside it. Not only would this enable him to reopen the banks, it would also allow him to pay out salaries and pensions. The new currency would immediately fall to a big discount to the euro, perhaps half its value.

Were Tsipras determined to do this, his euro zone creditors might be willing to discuss a “velvet divorce”. This would involve giving Greece some transitional aid to reduce the most severe humanitarian hardship while allowing the country to stay in the European Union.

But the process of getting there will not be easy. Not only would it be a legal quagmire; it is not clear that the Greek people would let Tsipras bring back the drachma. The pro-European opposition would argue that he did not have a mandate to do so, as he has insisted that Sunday’s referendum was not about the euro.

Tsipras might also need a 60 percent majority in parliament, which he doesn’t have, to change the country’s currency, although the constitution isn’t absolutely clear on this point. If he insisted on going ahead, it is also possible that the country’s president would resign. In that scenario, there would probably have to be new elections – and, depending on what had happened in the intervening period, Tsipras might lose. If so, Greece might still hang on in the euro by its fingertips.

If this all sounds like a lot of “coulds” and “mights”, it’s because after the people’s “No” vote, Greece is sailing in uncharted waters. What is certain is that there is much more misery ahead.
 

http://www.breakingviews.com/hugo-dixon-greece-will-struggle-to-stay-in-euro/21206656.article

 

 

 

Pričard piše da je Cakalotos novi minfin.

https://twitter.com/AmbroseEP/status/617959646062469124

[Lord Protector]

 mislili su da mogu da prejebu lukave helene.....pa oni su se bavili trgovinom i pogadjanjem dok su ovi  još uvek mozgali kako da pripale vatru.

 

 

 

la scuola di atene

 

Edited July 6, 2015 by slow

[Prospero]

https://www.berenberg.de/uploads/tx_news/150706_Macro-news_Greece.pdf
 

With more than_ 60% of votes counted, the ,,no" side leads 61% to 39%. Tsipras has won his referendum

dearly. As this differs from the neck-on-neck opinion polls last week, it comes as a surprise for markets.

The referendum will not help Tsipras much in Europe. With a vote in one Eurozone country, you cannot

order the taxpayers of the other 18 countries to send more money.

 

But the clear margin of victory may embolden Tsipras to take Greece out of the euro if he fails to strike

a deal with Europe, claiming that it is all Europe's fault if Europe does not fulfil the impossible promises

he has made to his Greek voters.

 

We expect Tsipras to ask for new negotiations about a softer bailout deal immediately and perhaps

offer a little cosmetic concession. He may even offer to sign de facto the deal he just rejected with minor

changes if he gets some extra debt relief on top of it. However, the formal basis for that deal no longer

exists after the expiry of the old bailout agreement. More importantly, the hole in Greece's public finances

keeps rising. As a result, striking a bailout deal that could be ratified by Greece, the IMF and the

Eurozone is getting ever more difficult as it would require more austerity and more money from

abroad to plug the hole. German vice chancellor Gabriel, head of the centre-left SPD, already warned

tonight that Tsipras "has torn down last bridges" over which Europe and Greece could have moved towards

a compromise. The referendum result makes it much more difficult to keep Greece in the euro.

 

Expect some lively political discussions within the Eurozone about how to deal with Greece. But as the

Tsilpras/Varoufakis government has annoyed its European (and IMF) creditors so much, we think that

the Euro zone will find a common approach.

 

As a major part of the consultations within the Eurozone, tomorrow's meeting between Merkel and

Hollande in Paris could be crudal. According to some media reports, the EU may convene a special

summit shortly, probably Tuesday.

 

Instead of a bailout deal with ESM money, Europe may possibly offer assistance from other EU funds to

contain the economic, finandaland possibly humanitarian crisis that Greece may soon be facing without

such support. But such assistance could end up being a way to smooth a Greek default and euro exit

rather than to keep Greece in the euro.

 

Europe will not push Greece out of the euro. But Greece needs a lot more euro which Europe may simply

not send unless Greece were to change its polides dramatically. That could force Greece to either relent

or issue its own currency with a tumultuous interlude with IOUs first.

 

If Grexit becomes inevitable as Greece issues a new currency for lack of euros, we would expect a significant

political effort for closer cooperation between the other 18 Eurozone members to strengthen

the cohesion of the club, possibly including some additional infra structure spending initiatives.

 

...

 

 

[Аврам Гојић]

Konkretno i u skladu sa onim cega se i sami secamo.

 

 

[Lord Protector]

 

ATINA - Predsednik Grčke Prokopis Pavlopulos izjavio je u nedelju, u razgovoru sa premijerom Aleksisom Ciprasom, da će Grčka ostati ostati u evrozoni i da je Evropa nešto o čemu se ne može pregovarati.

Grčki predsednik je naglasio važnost stavranja nacionalnog jedinstva i jednoglasnosti u oblikovanju zdravog i jakog nacionalnog fronta za vraćanje privrede u normalno stanje i hitno traženje rešenja za probleme u pregovorima sa partnerima, prenosi agencija ANA.

Pavlopulos se složio sa Ciprasovom izjavom o okončanju "davljenja privrede" i najavio da će grčki predlozi biti realni i logični i da će ona biti u poziciji da odmah uspostavi smislene pregovore i pronađe pouzdan i častan kompromis za dobro Evrope.

President Pavlopoulos: Eurozone is ‘one-way street’ for Greece -http://t.co/zm3xsciE4Y pic.twitter.com/I3SwLAdMf1

— enikos_en (@enikos_en) July 2, 2015

"Kreditori moraju shvatiti da Evropa radije prolazi kroz kompromis nego kroz podele", rekao je grčki predsednik.

Pavlopulos je prihvatio Ciprasov predlog i sazvao Savet političkih lidera. Sastanak je zakazan za 10 sati, uz učešće svih stranačkih lidera, uključujući i vođu Zlatne zore Nikosa Mihaloliakosa.

Edited July 6, 2015 by slow

[MancMellow]

1 zanimljiv blog

 

 

 

I am not criticizing Europe’s handling of Greece because banks deserved to take a hit and were treated too lightly. It is not the absence of pain and blame that troubles me, but its asymmetry. What was required was a Europe-wide solution to a European problem. What occurred, in my opinion, was the quarantining of a scapegoat. I blame Europe’s leaders for not framing the crisis in a different way, for acting as though it was about alms to Southern miscreants rather than explaining its roots in EU-wide regulatory errors and poor credit allocation incentives, Europe-wide problems that threatened many states. Framed this way, solutions would have looked very different. They would have addressed Germany’s problems and France’s problems as well as those of Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, and Cyprus. Framed this way, solutions would have been conducive to “ever closer union” one crisis at a time. Instead, leaders chose to inflame national stereotypes. They pretended that there were villains and angels, and that they (and their own constituents, of course) were the angels.

 

 

 

 

The 2010 assistance program was widely understood at the time to be motivated by the need to prevent disruptive write downs at non-Greek banks. The Guardian reported in February 2010 that France and Switzerland had exposures to Greece of €55B each ($119B @ 1.4266 $/€), and Germany €30B ($43B @ 1.4266 $/€), based on BIS data. The Wall Street Journal reported similar values, as does CRS. [1]

In early 2010, it was not the case that the majority of Greek debt was held by Greek banks, as people seem fond of saying. From the same Guardian piece:

 

 

• Analysts…dismissed as misplaced concerns that Greek banks might be holding all the €300bn of debt in issuance. “Greek banks own around €40bn of the total…implying most Greek debt is sitting on the balance sheets of non-domestic banks,” said Jagdeep Kalsi, an analyst at Credit Suisse.

From Swiss Daily Tagesanzeiger as translated by Ed Harrison:

• According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), about two thirds of the debt of Greece is held by foreign creditors — an above average value.

After the program was announced, European economists (but not politicians) frequently explained it as intended to shore up non-Greek banks. Here’s former IMF staffer Gary O’Callaghan, writing in 2011:

• The new Portuguese programme is set to be launched in the context of a continuing lack of market credibility in the other two — the Greek and Irish…

 

• [W]hy are [Eurozone finance ministers] supporting these financial assistance programmes? Because, if they are not implemented, the non-payment of debt — including bank debt — by the nations on the periphery would lead to severe banking crises and a return to recession in the core of the eurozone.

Former Bundesbank head Karl Otto Pöhl, just after the 2010 program for Greece was approved:

• Pöhl: …a small, indeed a tiny, country like Greece, one with no industrial base, would never be in a position to pay back €300 billion worth of debt.
•  
• SPIEGEL: According to the rescue plan, it’s actually €350 billion …
•  
• Pöhl: … which that country has even less chance of paying back. Without a “haircut,” a partial debt waiver, it cannot and will not ever happen. So why not immediately? That would have been one alternative. The European Union should have declared half a year ago — or even earlier — that Greek debt needed restructuring.
•  
• SPIEGEL: But according to Chancellor Angela Merkel, that would have led to a domino effect, with repercussions for other European states facing debt crises of their own.
•  
• Pöhl: I do not believe that. I think it was about something altogether different… It was about protecting German banks, but especially the French banks, from debt write offs. On the day that the rescue package was agreed on, shares of French banks rose by up to 24 percent. Looking at that, you can see what this was really about — namely, rescuing the banks and the rich Greeks.

 

Pöhl, by the way, agreed with the now-(in)famous Yanis Varoufakis that from Greece’s perspective, a partial default would have been superior to the 2010 package. Here’s Pöhl again:

•  
• Pöhl: …They could have slashed the debts by one-third. The banks would then have had to write off a third of their securities.
•  
• SPIEGEL: There was fear that investors would not have touched Greek government bonds for years, nor would they have touched the bonds of any other southern European countries.
•  
• Pöhl: I believe the opposite would have happened. Investors would quickly have seen that Greece could get a handle on its debt problems. And for that reason, trust would quickly have been restored. But that moment has passed. Now we have this mess.

Strange bedfellows, perhaps.

If this is all nonsense (as a correspondent alleges) because of errors in the BIS exposures data widely known four years ago, I’m not the only one who’s missed the memo. I’m in pretty good company. Here’s banking scholar Anil Kashyap writing just a few days ago:

• By the spring of 2010 the excessive debt problem became unbearable and there was open speculation that Greece would default. The country had done this on four occasions previously since 1800. Much of the government debt was owed to banks outside of Greece, with the largest amounts in France and Germany. So if Greece had stopped paying, the French and German banks would have suffered substantial losses.

 

• Greece was lent new money in 2010, but as Karl Otto Pohl former head of the German central bank observed at the time much of that money was used to repay the obligations owned by the French and German banks. The new lending was advertised by the politicians across Europe as a rescue for Greece. But it was at least as much a deal to buy time for the banks and other owners of Greek debt to avoid a default.

2012 Private Sector Involvement (PSI)

In 2012, private sector creditors were indeed asked to take a hit. As I mentioned in the intro, my view is that “PSI” was undertaken in deference to the politics of creditor moral hazard only when, thanks to the 2010 intervention, non-Greek banks were able to reduce their exposure. I’m hardly alone in that view. Again, Anil Kashyap:

• By continuing to allow banks everywhere to use Greek debt as collateral, the ECB also created conditions that supported the trading of Greek debt. By this time the French and German banks had shed their exposure to Greece so that they would no longer be directly harmed if there was a default. So the stealth rescue of the non-Greek banks was completed with little public attention and the narrative that all the problems were self-inflicted by the Greeks became more pronounced.

By June 2011, Greek banks did hold the majority of Greek debt, and other banks’ exposure was small enough that large write-downs would be manageable. (Here’s a spreadsheet, published by the Guardian, with data apparently from UBS.)

According to the best discussion of PSI I’ve found, by Jeromin Zettelmeyer, Christoph Trebesch, and Mitu Gulati, the debt exchange was large, affecting €199B of debt at face-value, with a present value of roughly €130B at the time of the exchange (using a discount rate of 15.3%, see Table 4, p. 23). The authors estimate the total debt relief to Greece from the operation to be €98B. Of that €98B, €15.8B are accounted for by subsidies embedded in two below-market loans from official lenders: €8.2B in underpriced borrowing to buy notes from the EFSF (to be distributed as a “sweetener” to encourage creditors to make the exchange), and €7.6B in the form of an underpriced loan to partially recapitalize Greece’s banks (which would be impaired following their own participation in the write-down). That left a subsidy of €98B – €15.8B = €82.2B which had to have been provided by surrendering €130B in debt, for an average write down of 63.2%.

If we assume that the Guardian/UBS exposures linked above are valued at comparable discount rates, we can compute the distribution of the incidence of this cost-to-debt-holders / subsidy-to-Greece. According to that data, Greek banks would have accounted for 45.3% of the €130B debt exchanged, non-Greek banks would have accounted for 25.3%, and unknown non-European-bank holders would account for an additional 29.4%. In absolute € terms, then, Greek banks representing €58.9B of exposure would have transfered €37.3B; non-Greek banks representing €32.9B of exposure would have transfered €20.8B; and unknown non-European-bank holders representing €38.2B of exposure would have transfered €24.2B.

I’d say that non-Greek European banks got off pretty easy in this exercise. If you believe the Credit Suisse analyst cited by The Guardian above, Greek banks held only 13% of Greece’s debt when the 2010 bailout began. Yet in the 2012 exchange, Greek banks were responsible for substantially more of the debt relief than non-Greek banks, even net of the recapitalization subsidy. (€29.7B vs €20.8B)

There’s lots you can quibble with here. Maybe the Guardian/UBS exposures are valued at a very different discount than our 15.3%. Maybe that data’s no good (it’s just the only data I could find). I’m treating all debt as incurring the same write-down. In fact, the size of the write-downs were maturity sensitive, with short maturities incurring larger haircuts than longer maturities, and there’s no reason to think the maturity profile of our three subgroups was identical. Maybe the assumptions beneath the pieces I’m borrowing from Zettelmeyer, Trebesch, and Gulati are wrong. Maybe I’m just screwing something up. (Let me know! Trashy spreadsheet!) But this is about the best I can do on the evidence we actually have. And, tentatively, it doesn’t look like Greece’s pre-2010 bank creditors had it very rough at all, especially when compared to 2010 BIS exposures.

Profile of Greece’s overall finance, 2010 – 2012

There’s a wonderful analysis at Greek Default Watch of Greece’s sources and uses of external finance from 2010 – 2012. It seems like a good way to conclude this piece:

• The Greek government needed €247 billion in the period from 2010—2012. Of that, a mere 7.7% went to finance the government’s deficit—the rest went for other purposes. Around 15.4% went to pay interest on debt—this money went to both domestic and foreign investors. Another 12.3% went to repay Greek investors who held government bonds that were expiring in that period. A full 24.3%, the largest item, went to repay foreign holders of Greek government bonds—in sum, almost €60 billion. Around 18% went to recapitalize banks, 14% went to support the PSI (such as buying back debt) and 8.6% went for other operations.
•  
• In other words, more than 50% of the money that Greece needed in that period was to deal with the country’s excessive debt burden (interest on debt and repaying residents and non-residents). Given that the bank recapitalization and PSI were both, ultimately, linked to the country’s debt, almost 84%, or €206 billion, was ultimately devoted to Greece’s debt—which, at year-end 2009, was €299 billion. Importantly, however, a large sum (€60 billion) went to bailout foreign banks and other investors. So this operation was minimally about covering the current profligacy of the Greek state—it was mostly about covering its pass excesses.

I think that covers it.

Notes

[1] By Twitter, Dave Rabinowitz disputes these values, citing 2011 data and some earlier not-so-accessible investment bank research. It’s not disputed, I think, that exposures were much lower by 2011. That’s much of what buying time with a bailout would be intended to enable. (If Rabinowitz does have better information than the BIS on exposures at the time of the program, and what policymakers at the time would have understood those exposures to be, I hope that he’ll provide it. I’d be glad to offer links in an update.)

Steve Randy Waldman — Sunday, July 5th, 2015 at 2:21 pm PDT [ 1 comment ]

 

 

http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/date/2015/07

[vememah]

Piketijev intervju za Cajt od pre neki dan u kome oštro kritikuje nemačku politiku prema Grčkoj konačno preveden na engleski, zbog dužine u spojleru:

 

 

 

Thomas Piketty: “Germany has never repaid.”

In a forceful interview with German newspaper Die Zeit, the star economist Thomas Piketty calls for a major conference on debt. Germany, in particular, should not withhold help from Greece.

This interview has been translated from the original German.

Since his successful book, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” the Frenchman Thomas Piketty has been considered one of the most influential economists in the world. His argument for the redistribution of income and wealth launched a worldwide discussion. In a interview with Georg Blume of DIE ZEIT, he gives his clear opinions on the European debt debate.

DIE ZEIT: Should we Germans be happy that even the French government is aligned with the German dogma of austerity?

Thomas Piketty: Absolutely not. This is neither a reason for France, nor Germany, and especially not for Europe, to be happy. I am much more afraid that the conservatives, especially in Germany, are about to destroy Europe and the European idea, all because of their shocking ignorance of history.

ZEIT: But we Germans have already reckoned with our own history.

Piketty: But not when it comes to repaying debts! Germany’s past, in this respect, should be of great significance to today’s Germans. Look at the history of national debt: Great Britain, Germany, and France were all once in the situation of today’s Greece, and in fact had been far more indebted. The first lesson that we can take from the history of government debt is that we are not facing a brand new problem. There have been many ways to repay debts, and not just one, which is what Berlin and Paris would have the Greeks believe.

“Germany is the country that has never repaid its debts. It has no standing to lecture other nations.”

ZEIT: But shouldn’t they repay their debts?

Piketty: My book recounts the history of income and wealth, including that of nations. What struck me while I was writing is that Germany is really the single best example of a country that, throughout its history, has never repaid its external debt. Neither after the First nor the Second World War. However, it has frequently made other nations pay up, such as after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, when it demanded massive reparations from France and indeed received them. The French state suffered for decades under this debt. The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.

ZEIT: But surely we can’t draw the conclusion that we can do no better today?

Piketty: When I hear the Germans say that they maintain a very moral stance about debt and strongly believe that debts must be repaid, then I think: what a huge joke! Germany is the country that has never repaid its debts. It has no standing to lecture other nations.

ZEIT: Are you trying to depict states that don’t pay back their debts as winners?

Piketty: Germany is just such a state. But wait: history shows us two ways for an indebted state to leave delinquency. One was demonstrated by the British Empire in the 19th century after its expensive wars with Napoleon. It is the slow method that is now being recommended to Greece. The Empire repaid its debts through strict budgetary discipline. This worked, but it took an extremely long time. For over 100 years, the British gave up two to three percent of their economy to repay its debts, which was more than they spent on schools and education. That didn’t have to happen, and it shouldn’t happen today. The second method is much faster. Germany proved it in the 20th century. Essentially, it consists of three components: inflation, a special tax on private wealth, and debt relief.

ZEIT: So you’re telling us that the German Wirtschaftswunder [“economic miracle”] was based on the same kind of debt relief that we deny Greece today?

Piketty: Exactly. After the war ended in 1945, Germany’s debt amounted to over 200% of its GDP. Ten years later, little of that remained: public debt was less than 20% of GDP. Around the same time, France managed a similarly artful turnaround. We never would have managed this unbelievably fast reduction in debt through the fiscal discipline that we today recommend to Greece. Instead, both of our states employed the second method with the three components that I mentioned, including debt relief. Think about the London Debt Agreement of 1953, where 60% of German foreign debt was cancelled and its internal debts were restructured.

“We need a conference on all of Europe’s debts, just like after World War II. A restructuring of all debt, not just in Greece but in several European countries, is inevitable.”

 

ZEIT: That happened because people recognized that the high reparations demanded of Germany after World War I were one of the causes of the Second World War. People wanted to forgive Germany’s sins this time!

Piketty: Nonsense! This had nothing to do with moral clarity; it was a rational political and economic decision. They correctly recognized that, after large crises that created huge debt loads, at some point people need to look toward the future. We cannot demand that new generations must pay for decades for the mistakes of their parents. The Greeks have, without a doubt, made big mistakes. Until 2009, the government in Athens forged its books. But despite this, the younger generation of Greeks carries no more responsibility for the mistakes of its elders than the younger generation of Germans did in the 1950s and 1960s. We need to look ahead. Europe was founded on debt forgiveness and investment in the future. Not on the idea of endless penance. We need to remember this.

ZEIT: The end of the Second World War was a breakdown of civilization. Europe was a killing field. Today is different.

Piketty: To deny the historical parallels to the postwar period would be wrong. Let’s think about the financial crisis of 2008/2009. This wasn’t just any crisis. It was the biggest financial crisis since 1929. So the comparison is quite valid. This is equally true for the Greek economy: between 2009 and 2015, its GDP has fallen by 25%. This is comparable to the recessions in Germany and France between 1929 and 1935.

ZEIT: Many Germans believe that the Greeks still have not recognized their mistakes and want to continue their free-spending ways.

Piketty: If we had told you Germans in the 1950s that you have not properly recognized your failures, you would still be repaying your debts. Luckily, we were more intelligent than that.

ZEIT: The German Minister of Finance, on the other hand, seems to believe that a Greek exit from the Eurozone could foster greater unity within Europe.

Piketty: If we start kicking states out, then the crisis of confidence in which the Eurozone finds itself today will only worsen. Financial markets will immediately turn on the next country. This would be the beginning of a long, drawn-out period of agony, in whose grasp we risk sacrificing Europe’s social model, its democracy, indeed its civilization on the altar of a conservative, irrational austerity policy.

ZEIT: Do you believe that we Germans aren’t generous enough?

Piketty: What are you talking about? Generous? Currently, Germany is profiting from Greece as it extends loans at comparatively high interest rates.

ZEIT: What solution would you suggest for this crisis?

Piketty: We need a conference on all of Europe’s debts, just like after World War II. A restructuring of all debt, not just in Greece but in several European countries, is inevitable. Just now, we’ve lost six months in the completely intransparent negotiations with Athens. The Eurogroup’s notion that Greece will reach a budgetary surplus of 4% of GDP and will pay back its debts within 30 to 40 years is still on the table. Allegedly, they will reach one percent surplus in 2015, then two percent in 2016, and three and a half percent in 2017. Completely ridiculous! This will never happen. Yet we keep postponing the necessary debate until the cows come home.

ZEIT: And what would happen after the major debt cuts?

Piketty: A new European institution would be required to determine the maximum allowable budget deficit in order to prevent the regrowth of debt. For example, this could be a commmittee in the European Parliament consisting of legislators from national parliaments. Budgetary decisions should not be off-limits to legislatures. To undermine European democracy, which is what Germany is doing today by insisting that states remain in penury under mechanisms that Berlin itself is muscling through, is a grievous mistake.

“If we had told you Germans in the 1950s that you have not properly recognized your failures, you would still be repaying your debts. Luckily, we were more intelligent than that.”

 

ZEIT: Your president, François Hollande, recently failed to criticize the fiscal pact.

Piketty: This does not improve anything. If, in past years, decisions in Europe had been reached in more democratic ways, the current austerity policy in Europe would be less strict.

ZEIT: But no political party in France is participating. National sovereignty is considered holy.

Piketty: Indeed, in Germany many more people are entertaining thoughts of reestablishing European democracy, in contrast to France with its countless believers in sovereignty. What’s more, our president still portrays himself as a prisoner of the failed 2005 referendum on a European Constitution, which failed in France. François Hollande does not understand that a lot has changed because of the financial crisis. We have to overcome our own national egoism.

ZEIT: What sort of national egoism do you see in Germany?

Piketty: I think that Germany was greatly shaped by its reunification. It was long feared that it would lead to economic stagnation. But then reunification turned out to be a great success thanks to a functioning social safety net and an intact industrial sector. Meanwhile, Germany has become so proud of its success that it dispenses lectures to all other countries. This is a little infantile. Of course, I understand how important the successful reunification was to the personal history of Chancellor Angela Merkel. But now Germany has to rethink things. Otherwise, its position on the debt crisis will be a grave danger to Europe.

ZEIT: What advice do you have for the Chancellor?

Piketty: Those who want to chase Greece out of the Eurozone today will end up on the trash heap of history. If the Chancellor wants to secure her place in the history books, just like [Helmut] Kohl did during reunification, then she must forge a solution to the Greek question, including a debt conference where we can start with a clean slate. But with renewed, much stronger fiscal discipline.

This interview was translated by Gavin Schalliol.

 

https://medium.com/@gavinschalliol/thomas-piketty-germany-has-never-repaid-7b5e7add6fff

 

 

Edited July 6, 2015 by vememah

[Prospero]

...

A što se tiče ovog medijskog spinovanja kako je grexit od početka Ciprasov plan, sviđa mi se argumentacija™: "Svi mi vrlo dobro znamo jasno je da je na tome radio još od januara i korak po korak je kuvao žabu da se navikne na drahmu". Nema potrebe za tamo nekim argumentima, tvrdnje su same po sebi dovoljno spektakularne.

 

U analizama koje si prenosio i koje se bave dvema strujama u Nemačkoj, jasno je argumentovano postojanje struje koja se zalaže za grkickout i koja u bilo kom trenutku može da odnese prevagu. Nasuprot tome, ove nedelje ima da se naslušamo izjava i nagledamo tvitova o "grčkom unapred isplaniranom samoubistvu". Odvratno.

 

MIslim da sam prilično jasno govorio da je izlazak grčke iz EZ preferabilno rešenje u kombinaciji želja CDUa i Sirize. CDU se spremao za taj slučaj odavno (kačio sam tekstove), Siriza je, IMHO, držala tu opciju otvorenom.

 

U njihovoj igri je pitanje ko će biti "kriv", mene iskreno to ne interesuje (čak mi je to i pošteno rešenje osim što mislim da je za Grke gore od ovakvog osteritija) osim da primetim da je grčka pozicija problem i odogovornost prvo grčke vlasti, pa onda tek drugih faktora.

[April]

Sve u svemu, oxi day je grčki 27.mart. Mnogo nacionalnog patosa i nimalo plana šta dalje.

[Prospero]

Piketijev intervju za Cajt od pre neki dan u kome oštro kritikuje nemačku politiku prema Grčkoj konačno preveden na engleski, zbog dužine u spojleru:

ZEIT: And what would happen after the major debt cuts?

 

Piketty: A new European institution would be required to determine the maximum allowable budget deficit in order to prevent the regrowth of debt. For example, this could be a commmittee in the European Parliament consisting of legislators from national parliaments. Budgetary decisions should not be off-limits to legislatures. To undermine European democracy, which is what Germany is doing today by insisting that states remain in penury under mechanisms that Berlin itself is muscling through, is a grievous mistake.

 

 

 

Čekaj bre, pa i sada postoje ciljevi budžetskih deficita, Mastriht je označio 3%, i 60% od BDPa, pa je to pretočeno u SGP i nije se posebno poštovalo.

 

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