Cain called it. Greece defaults.

[LMNO]

Well, they sure as hell weren't doing very well under the enormous amount of austerity they were forced into -- austerity that has more or less been proven not to work in their scenario.

[Faust]

It can get worse for them, considering burning their debts is to all their trading partners who surround them.

I think they could be better off on the drachma, but not out of europe.

[Cain]

It can get worse for them, considering burning their debts is to all their trading partners who surround them.

I think they could be better off on the drachma, but not out of europe.

Almost definitely.  However the EU would never allow it, for the simple reason is that it would open the door to other states opting out and thus undermining the Euro as a currency.

[Doktor Howl]

Well, they sure as hell weren't doing very well under the enormous amount of austerity they were forced into -- austerity that has more or less been proven not to work in their scenario.

This is a "bad" vs "worse" situation, and one that was made inevitable by austerity.

Doesn't mean the situation is going to improve.  Economic collapse is never pretty.

[maphdet]

It can get worse for them, considering burning their debts is to all their trading partners who surround them.

I think they could be better off on the drachma, but not out of europe.

Almost definitely.  However the EU would never allow it, for the simple reason is that it would open the door to other states opting out and thus undermining the Euro as a currency.

Yes.
And also, undermining Europe as a union.
Fuck their union and currency.

[Reginald Ret]

Damn.

I was hoping for another Iceland but I don't think the Greeks can pull it off.

[Demolition Squid]

In all likelihood, if the Greeks default, things will be very bad for them in the short term and they won't be able to borrow money - so things would get worse for a while (1-5 years).

HOWEVER, there's an important caveat here. Dropping out of the Euro (which would be a necessity) will allow them to devalue their currency and make Greece a very attractive proposition for tourists - which is already one of their major sources of income. It would also make Greece tempting for foreign investors - albeit the sort you get in risky, unstable situations - so shady sorts with bad work practices, but probably more than they are getting at the moment.

Defaulting won't erase the debt, either. Eventually, Greece will be forced to pay it back - the kind of people who lend in billions have a very long memory. But, they won't have to pay it back until they are in a position to do so - they can take all the money they are currently putting into paying off debt and use that to drive an economic recovery. In ten, twenty, fifty years time, when that recovery has taken place - that's the point where Greece can make the decision to start paying off its debts.

It would, in the short term, see the situation get very bad, but in the middle-longer term, it is the only sensible option IMO. The current situation sees Greece crippling itself in order to get more money borrowed to keep paying back the people they are borrowing money from. This will go on indefinitely - its already been going on for close to a decade - if Greece does not take a radical step to break the cycle.

The creditors also need to realize that if they act unreasonably - as they have done - they will hurt themselves as much as they hurt their debtors. If the people who leant the money today see that the Greek's grandchildren will be paying it back to THEIR grandchildren, and not to them, they might be inclined to act more reasonably in future - though probably not.

ETA: It is also worth keeping in mind that a large part of the problem here is that Greece does not have a sovereign currency. If they still had the drachma and had borrowed in drachma, they would be able to devalue their currency and cut down the debt that way - which is what the UK did following Black Wednesday when we exited the ERM and were fortunate to have valued our debt in GBP. Unfortunately, that isn't an option to Greece because the value of the Euro is not something they can control, and all their debt is valued in Euros.

[Cain]

Yeah.  If the idea was to effect a Greece exit from the Eurozone, the EU has done a sterling job.

If it was to get their money back on a timetable that suited them....yeah, not so likely.

[Demolition Squid]

The greeks have voted no to austerity!

The coolest Finance Minister in the world has resigned!

Polls are proven - again - to be worth less than nothing!

It'll be interesting to see what happens from here on out. The chiding from the press and politicians has already been pretty great. I might hunt out some favourite quotes later on, but it looks like a Greek exit from the Euro - and possibly Europe as an institution - is very likely in the near future.

[Faust]

The greeks have voted no to austerity!

The coolest Finance Minister in the world has resigned!

Polls are proven - again - to be worth less than nothing!

It'll be interesting to see what happens from here on out. The chiding from the press and politicians has already been pretty great. I might hunt out some favourite quotes later on, but it looks like a Greek exit from the Euro - and possibly Europe as an institution - is very likely in the near future.

I saw someone saying that a eurozone exit has to come with a european exit because if they are part of europe and under the european courts, people can bring law suits against them for loss of business by leaving the currency. So the only reasonable thing to do is exit so those courts have no relevance. I could be completely misinterpreting third hand information though.

[Demolition Squid]

The greeks have voted no to austerity!

The coolest Finance Minister in the world has resigned!

Polls are proven - again - to be worth less than nothing!

It'll be interesting to see what happens from here on out. The chiding from the press and politicians has already been pretty great. I might hunt out some favourite quotes later on, but it looks like a Greek exit from the Euro - and possibly Europe as an institution - is very likely in the near future.

I saw someone saying that a eurozone exit has to come with a european exit because if they are part of europe and under the european courts, people can bring law suits against them for loss of business by leaving the currency. So the only reasonable thing to do is exit so those courts have no relevance. I could be completely misinterpreting third hand information though.

That sounds like a misinterpretation of the upcoming TTIP to me. It will soon be possible for some corporations to sue governments for loss of business resulting from broken/changed contracts made with previous governments (which they cannot currently do). Even if it did apply in this case, though, the TTIP isn't law yet and the exit will happen before it is.

[Faust]

Ah fair enough, sounds like someone shouting the sky is falling so.

I've seen some weird stuff around international companies operating in Greece at the moment. The Greek incorporated branches are subject to the capital control so are running into restrictions on trade and are having to ask the other branches to cover purchasing and large transfers.

This seems to me to be really irresponsible, and jeopardises  jobs in other countries due to these restrictions. Creating problems in companies that might have previously been healthy.

[Demolition Squid]

The Guardian has been getting some really good guest writers in recently.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/06/yanis-varoufakis-angela-merkel-crisis-global-minotaur-capitalism-europe

Picture the scene when a sheepish finance minister enters the chancellor's Berlin office bearing a control panel featuring one yellow and one red button, and telling her that she must choose to press one or the other. This is how he explains what each button will do:

The red button
If you press it, chancellor, the euro crisis ends immediately, with a general rise in growth throughout Europe, a sudden collapse of debt for each member state to below its Maastricht limit, no pain for Greek citizens (or for the Italians, Portuguese, etc), no guarantees for the periphery's debts (states or banks) to be provided by German and Dutch taxpayers, interest rate spreads below 3% throughout the eurozone, a diminution in the eurozone's internal imbalances, and a wholesale rise in aggregate investment.

The yellow button
If you press it, chancellor, the situation in the eurozone remains more or less as it is for a decade. The euro crisis continues to bubble along, albeit in a controlled fashion. While the probability of a break-up, which will be a calamity for Germany, remains non-trivial, the chances are that, if you push the yellow button, the eurozone will not break up (with a little help from the European Central Bank), German interest rates will remain extremely low, the euro will be nicely depressed ('nicely' from the perspective of German exporters), the periphery's spreads will be sky-high (but not explosive), Italy and Spain will enter deeper into a debt-deflationary spiral that sees to a reduction of their national income by 15% over the next three years, France shall slip steadily into quasi-insolvency, GDP per capita will rise slowly in the surplus countries and fall precipitously in the periphery. As for the first "fallen" nations (Greece, Ireland and Portugal), they shall become little Latvias, or indeed Kosovos: devastated lands (after the loss of between 25% and 40% of national income, a massive exodus of their skilled labour) on which our people will holiday and buy cheap real estate. In aggregate, if you choose the yellow button, chancellor, eurozone unemployment will remain well above UK and US levels, investment will be anaemic, growth negative and poverty on the up and up.

Which button do you think, dear reader, the chancellor would want to push?

I think the whole thing would have been better if he'd stuck with 'Wall Street' instead of 'The Global Minotaur' but hey... the whole thing is still worth a good read.

[Cain]

That's a subtle nod (or plug) for his 2011 book The Global Minotaur.

Ah, I remember when Yanis just used to write for Naked Capitalism.  Then he got to be Greek finance minister and now everyone will publish him...

[Cain]

Even Stratfor, the rent-a-cop of global capitalism, can see this for a fuck up:

In a result that should surprise no one, the Greeks voted to reject European demands for additional austerity measures as the price for providing funds to allow Greek banks to operate. There are three reasons this should have been no surprise. First, the ruling Coalition of the Radical Left, or Syriza party, is ruling because it has an understanding of the Greek mood. Second, the constant scorn and contempt that the European leadership heaped on the prime minister and finance minister convinced the Greeks not only that the scorn was meant for them as well, but also that anyone so despised by the European leadership wasn't all bad. Finally, and most important, the European leadership put the Greek voters in a position in which they had nothing to lose. The Greeks were left to choose between two forms of devastation — one that was immediate but possible to recover from, and one that was a longer-term strangulation with no exit.

The Europeans' Mistaken Reasoning

As the International Monetary Fund noted (while maintaining a very hard line on Greece), the Greeks cannot repay their loans or escape from their economic nightmare without a substantial restructuring of the Greek debt, including significant debt forgiveness and a willingness to create a multidecade solution. The IMF also made clear that increased austerity, apart from posing an impossible burden for the Greeks, will actually retard either a Greek recovery or debt repayment.

The Greeks knew this as well. What was obvious is that austerity without radical restructuring would inevitably lead to default, if not now, then somewhere not too far down the line. Focusing on pensions made the Europeans appear tough but was actually quite foolish. All of the austerity measures demanded would not have provided nearly enough money to repay debts without restructuring. In due course, Greece would default, or the debt would be restructured.

Since Europe's leaders are not stupid, it is important to understand the game they were playing. They knew perfectly well the austerity measures were between irrelevant and damaging to debt repayment. They insisted on this battle at this time because they thought they would win it, and it was important for them to get Greece to capitulate for broader reasons.

No other EU country is in a condition as bad as Greece's. However, a number of EU countries, particularly in Southern Europe, carry a debt burden they would like to renegotiate. They are doing better than Greece this year, but with persistent high unemployment — for example, 22.5 percent in Spain as of May — two things are not clear: first, what shape these countries will be in next year or the year after that, and second, what governments would come into office, and what the new governments' positions would be. Greece accounts for less than 2 percent of the European Union's gross domestic product. Italy and Spain are far more important. The problem of restructuring debt is once it is done for one country, others will want to restructure as well. The European Union did not want to set any precedents for future crises or anti-EU governments.

In Greece, Europe's leaders had a crisis and a hostile government. It was the perfect place to take a stand, they thought. They became inflexible on debt restructuring, demanding prior increased austerity measures in a country where unemployment exceeded 25 percent and youth unemployment was over 50 percent. The EU strategy in the past had been psychological: spreading fear about what default might mean, spreading fear of the consequences of leaving the eurozone and arguing that it was the European Union that lacked the ability to make concessions. In the past, the EU strategy had been to make agreements that it never thought the Greeks would be able to keep in order to kick the problem down the road. Europe's leaders demanded austerity measures but tied them to postponing repayments. They expected Greece to continue playing the game. They did not realize, for some reason, that Syriza came to power on a pledge to end the game. They thought that under pressure, the party would fold.

But Syriza couldn't fold, and not just for political reasons. If Syriza betrayed its election pledge, as the European leadership was sure it would, the party would split and a new anti-European party would form in Greece. But on a deeper level, the Greeks simply could not give any more. With their economy in shambles and Europe insisting that the solution was not stimulus but austerity — an increasingly dubious claim — the Greeks were at the point where default, and the short-term wrenching crisis that would ensue, would be worth the price.

The European leaders miscalculated. They thought Greece could be more flexible, and they wanted to demonstrate to any other country or party that might consider a similar maneuver in the future just what the cost would be. The Europeans feared the moral risk of compromising with the Greeks. They created a more dangerous situation for themselves.