Merkel's Bavarian ally says Grexit would cause 'utter chaos'

Wed Jul 29, 2015 3:38am EDT Related: WORLD, GREECE

BERLIN

Reuters

A Greek exit from the euro zone would cause "utter chaos" but would have to be accepted if Athens was not willing to implement reforms, Chancellor Angela Merkel's Bavarian ally Horst Seehofer told German newspaper Die Welt on Wednesday.

"No one can predict the consequences of a Grexit other than that a lot of Greece's debts would have to be written off and at the same time monetary help would be necessary," Seehofer, state premier of Bavaria, said to the paper.

Opinion: After Greece, everyone will want a Plan B to leave the euro

Published: July 29, 2015 3:00 a.m. ET

Market Watch

MATTHEW LYNN'S LONDON EYE

It sounds like a Jason Bourne movie. The Varoufakis Legacy, however, named after the recently departed Greek finance minister, might well be slightly more exciting that the fourth installment in the Bourne series was. Featuring hi-tech hacking, a sinister German villain, a complex financial heist, blackmail, bullying and last-minute rescues, it has every element of an action movie, minus only a high-speed car chase through the streets of Athens.

The entertainment value aside, however, Yanis Varoufakis also leaves behind him a far-more significant legacy, and one that will shape the course of the eurozone economy for at least a decade ahead.

Greece Isn't a Morality Tale

2 JUL 29, 2015 2:00 AM EDT

By Mark Buchanan

Bloomberg

One of the more troubling elements of the recent drama over Greece's debt was the urge by many to see a deficiency of national character, rather than euro-zone economics, as the problem. Right-leaning opinion, not only in Germany but around the world, put the trouble down to Greek corruption and, worse, laziness:  The bad people of Greece retire too early and produce less per capita than the European average, despite working longer hours.

Ρωμιο -Anonymous χάκερς

28-7-2015  12:33

Του Πάσχου Μανδραβέλη

Καθημερινή

Ας​ το πούμε όσο πιο ευγενικά και ήπια μπορούμε: ο άνθρωπος είναι για δέσιμο. Οχι γιατί είχε σχέδιο δραχμής, που κανείς δεν του ζήτησε, ούτε επειδή τα είπε φόρα παρτίδα σε μια τηλεδιάσκεψη η οποία μαγνητοσκοπείτο και το ήξερε. Είναι για δέσιμο επειδή πίστευε ότι με ένα χάκερ και την ασύγκριτη -για τον ίδιο- ευφυΐα του, το ελληνικό κράτος θα άλλαζε εν μια νυκτί και θα γινόταν ένας υπεραποτελεσματικός μηχανισμός που θα μπορούσε να διαχειριστεί τη μετάβαση σε άλλο νομισματικό σύστημα.

Greece Made Preparations to Exit Euro

By JACK EWING and NIKI KITSANTONISJULY 27, 2015

The New York Times

FRANKFURT — Already struggling with internal conflict, Greece’s government is facing new criticism over secret preparations that would have allowed the country to leave the euro if necessary.

In a recording released on Monday, Greece’s former finance minister detailed a contingency plan to create an alternative banking system that could switch to a new currency. The system would be “euro-denominated but at the drop of a hat it could be converted into a new drachma,” the former finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, said on the recording of a July 16 interview with an influential investment organization.

Tsipras’s Paradox Is Six Months of Pain and Enduring Popularity

by Maria Petrakis

July 27, 2015 — 12:00 AM EEST

Bloomberg

His party is split, government undermined and the economy lies in tatters. Yet in the rubble of Greece, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras reigns supreme.

In the six months since he became prime minister, Tsipras breezed past challengers at home, new and old, as he followed an election victory with backing for his anti-bailout message in a referendum. After yielding to his European peers, next month he may be signing a third financial rescue that he opposed, while capital controls keeping money in Greece remain.

Escaping the Greek Debt Trap

5 JUL 27, 2015 2:00 AM EDT

By Barry Eichengreen , Peter T. Allen & Gary Evans

Greece's debt is unsustainable. The International Monetary Fund has said so, and it's hard to find anyone who disagrees. The Greek government sees structural reform without debt reduction as politically and economically toxic. The main governing party, Syriza, has made debt reduction a central plank of its electoral platform and will find it hard to hold on to power -- much less implement painful structural measures -- absent this achievement.

Moreover, tax increases and spending cuts by themselves will only deepen the Greek slump. Other measures are needed to attract the investment required to jump-start growth. Reducing the debt and its implicit claim on future incomes is an obvious first step.

Greek PM Tsipras under pressure over covert Syriza drachma plan reports

ATHENS | BY ANGELIKI KOUTANTOU

Sun Jul 26, 2015 9:05pm EDT Related: WORLD, GREECE

Some members of Greece's leftist government wanted to raid central bank reserves and hack taxpayer accounts to prepare a return to the drachma, according to reports on Sunday that highlighted the chaos in the ruling Syriza party.

It is not clear how seriously the plans, attributed to former Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis and former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, were considered by the government and both ministers were sacked earlier this month. However the reports have been seized on by opposition parties who have demanded an explanation.

Greece's Debt May Not Be So Daunting

11 JUL 20, 2015 3:13 PM EDT

By Leonid Bershidsky

Bloomberg

Greece's debt burden has taken on mythological attributes and questions about the dominant narrative have become a form of heresy. I, too, have repeated the line that "even the IMF considers Greece's debt unsustainable." Yet that is a half-truth and it has the potential to distort policy.

The assertion comes from a June 26 International Monetary Fund document that Greece's former finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, called a "fascinating read." In his bombastic style, he went on to assert: "Never before has a veritable institution advocated policies that clashed so mercilessly with its own research. Never before has the IMF agreed, on economic analysis, with a government it sought to devastate."

Greece Said to Make ECB Debt Deadline as Banks Reopen

by Eleni ChrepaPaul GordonCarolynn Look

July 20, 2015 — 2:01 AM EEST Updated on July 20, 2015 — 4:22 PM EES

Bloomberg

Greece’s government said it’s repaying 6.8 billion euros ($7.4 billion) to creditors and depositors queued at reopened banks in the first signs of stabilization after last week’s bailout deal.

The country ordered payments on Monday to the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Greek central bank, a Greek Finance Ministry official said on condition of anonymity. The euro rose on the news.

Repaying the ECB was the deadline Greece couldn’t afford to miss because a default would probably have forced the central bank to pull support from Greek lenders, all but ensuring the exit from the currency union. While banks reopened Monday, Greek financial markets will remain closed at least through Wednesday, two officials said.

How Greece’s David fought the Goliath of Europe — and lost

The Washington Post

By Griff Witte, Michael Birnbaum and Anthony Faiola July 19 at 4:06 PM

ATHENS — On a January evening four days before he became the first radical leftist to lead a country in the European Union, Alexis Tsipras bounded to the stage at an outdoor rally in a grubby corner of Athens and proclaimed the imminent end to “our national humiliation.”

Evidence of Greece’s severely degraded state was all around: the graffiti-saturated walls, the abandoned storefronts, the tattered clothes of the thousands who had turned out that night to cheer a man who vowed to not only remake Greece but also transform all of Europe by inspiring leftist movements continent-wide.

Special Report: The man who cost Greece billions

Mon Jul 20, 2015 5:41am EDT

ATHENS | BY DINA KYRIAKIDOU

Reuters

Once again Alexis Tsipras was struggling to make a decision. For hours on July 13, the Greek prime minister and Europe's leaders had been trying to thrash out a new deal to bail out bankrupt Greece and keep the country in the euro zone.

Now a clean copy of the latest text had been printed, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and European Council President Donald Tusk were satisfied with the terms. So too appeared Tsipras – but he left the room to check the details one more time with colleagues in his leftist party Syriza.

ECB Weighs Emergency Funding After Tsipras Wins Greece Bailout Vote

by Eleni ChrepaNikos ChrysolorasMatthew Campbell

July 16, 2015 — 1:55 AM EEST Updated on July 16, 2015 — 10:13 AM EEST

Bloomberg

Greek lawmakers passed a bailout agreement that keeps the country in the euro for now, shifting attention to the European Central Bank as it weighs whether to pump more money into the country’s hobbled financial system.

After more than four hours of debate stretching into the early hours of Thursday, 229 members of the 300-seat parliament in Athens approved new austerity measures that are a precondition of as much as 86 billion euros ($94 billion) in aid. Among those who opposed the bill were 32 members of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s Coalition of the Radical Left, or Syriza, a sign the premier may have lost his majority.

Leaving Euro Is Better Than Eternal Greek Crisis

JUL 15, 2015 2:50 PM EDT

By Justin Fox

Bloomberg

You may believe that Greece’s economic pain is mostly the doing of heartless and inept decision makers in Brussels, Frankfurt and Berlin. You may believe that the Greeks’ fecklessness has been so extreme that cutting them any kind of slack will destroy the credibility of the euro.

Either way, by this point you can probably agree that it was a mistake for Greece to join the European common currency in 2001. Maybe you think it was a mistake because doing so put the Greeks at the mercy of a bunch of austerity-crazed Northern European politicians. Maybe you think it was a mistake because the Greeks cheated to get in to the euro and have no business pretending to be part of a modern developed economy. I’m guessing hardly anyone would argue, though, that Greece and Europe would be worse off today if drachmas had never been traded in for euros.

Greece, Its Back to the Wall, Adopts Austerity Steps

By SUZANNE DALEY and JAMES KANTERJULY 15, 2015

The New York Times

ATHENS — Under threat from the nation’s creditors to move quickly or lose any chance of obtaining a desperately needed new bailout package, Greece’s Parliament approved painful new austerity measures early Thursday, virtually guaranteeing that life would get harder for millions of Greeks.

With banks closed and the economy on the verge of collapse, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras had urged the adoption of the measures, saying that while it was a difficult deal the creditors were offering, it was the only one available and would avert a humanitarian and fiscal disaster.

Saving Greece, Saving Europe

JUL 13, 2015

By BARRY EICHENGREEN

BERKELEY – Whatever one thinks about the tactics of Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s government in negotiations with the country’s creditors, the Greek people deserve better than what they are being offered. Germany wants Greece to choose between economic collapse and leaving the eurozone. Both options would mean economic disaster; the first, if not both, would be politically disastrous as well.

Greek crisis: One sentence that explains the epic disaster Syriza has been for Greece

Updated by Ezra Klein on July 13, 2015, 2:30 p.m. ET

http://www.vox.com/2015/7/13/8949925/greece-syriza

This, from Wonkblog's Matt O'Brien, is the pithiest summary I've seen of the disaster Syriza has visited upon Greece:

Syriza has incurred a lot of the costs of leaving the euro—like a financial crisis—at the same time that it’s kept the costs of staying in the euro.

That's exactly right — and it has to count as one of the greatest policymaking failures in recent economic history.

Greece May Have to Sell Islands and Ruins Under Its Bailout Deal

Simon Shuster / Athens @shustry  July 13, 2015

TIME

Of all the aspects of Monday’s bailout deal that Greeks found humiliating, nothing drilled into their sense of pride quite like their government’s promise to sell off “valuable Greek assets” to the tune of 50 billion euros. The seven-page agreement, which European leaders thrashed out over the weekend, made no mention of where Greece is supposed to find that much property to sell. But as they scrambled for options, officials in Athens saw no way around the blood-curdling prospect of auctioning off Greek islands, nature preserves or even ancient ruins.

Greece Needs €74 Billion in Fresh Funding

Assessment comes from three institutions overseeing the eurozone bailout program

The Wall Street Journal

By GABRIELE STEINHAUSER and  VIKTORIA DENDRINOU

July 11, 2015 4:42 a.m. ET

BRUSSELS—Greece will need €74 billion ($82.55 billion) in fresh funding, the three institutions overseeing the eurozone bailout program said in their assessment of the country’s request for a new aid package, according to three European officials.

Setting a Deadline for Greece Proves Much Easier Than Sealing a Fate

By ANDREW HIGGINSJULY 8, 2015

The New York Times

BRUSSELS — After five years of crises, conflicts and deadlines that have come and gone without resolution, Greece and the European countries that have been propping it up financially have come to what they all insist is a final reckoning, with just days to decide whether Greece stays in the euro system or is cast out.