Grekland EMU Greece

Greklandskrisen på 30 sekunder
Grekland kan betala sin förfallande skulder om de får nya lån.
Men det hjälper inte kostnadsläget.
Rolf Englund blog 19 sept 2011

Det finns de som försöker skylla den aktuella krisen på euron.
Peter Wolodarski, DN 2010-05-02

What happens when Greece defaults. Here are a few things:
Andrew Lilico, Daily Telegraph, May 20th, 2011

- Every bank in Greece will instantly go insolvent.
- The Greek government will nationalise every bank in Greece.
- The Greek government will forbid withdrawals from Greek banks.
- To prevent Greek depositors from rioting on the streets, Argentina-2002-style (when the Argentinian president had to flee by helicopter from the roof of the presidential palace to evade a mob of such depositors), the Greek government will declare a curfew, perhaps even general martial law.

Grekland står på randen av statsbankrutt.
EU:s valutaunion har visat att den inte håller måttet.
Att EU:s valutaunion spricker är inte realistiskt, men
att det ”otänkbara” faktiskt diskuteras säger åtskilligt om allvaret.
Signerat, Claes Arvidsson, SvD 7/5 2010

Grekland ett permanent bekymmer, som slutligen kan leda till att grekerna tvingas gå bankrutt och kanske även lämna euron.
Detta kan till sist visa sig som det minst dåliga, när brandväggarna väl finns på plats.
Johan Schück, DN Ekonomi 3 februari 2012

”Chicken Race” Voluntary
Eurozonen vill inte betala ut en slant till, så länge inte de privata långivarna har kommit överens om att efterskänka en stor del av sina skulder till Grekland.
De privata långivarna vill inte efterskänka någonting förrän eurozonen har kommit överens med Grekland om nya stora åtstramningar.
De privata långivarna kräver att också den Europeiska centralbanken ska ta förluster på lånen till Grekland. Men ECB vägrar.
Det är bara några dagar kvar till dess det är för sent för Grekland att kunna betala nästa stora avbetalning på sin gigantiska statsskuld.
Staffan Sonning, Ekot 3 februari 2012

Ledaren för eurozonens finansministrar, Luxemburgs Jean-Claude Junker, beskriver förhandlingarna som "extremt svåra".

Regeringskälla: Den grekiska regeringens förhandlingar med internationella borgenärer går bra
Källan sade även att dessa diskussioner inte skulle komma att slutföras under fredagen
DI 2012-02-03 21:51, men,men

Ah, but what do we have here, at 3:36 AM (via my London partner, Niels Jensen),
but an article by Nick Doms on Examiner.com, asserting that, yes indeed, Greece will default:

“Greece plans an orderly exit out of the Eurozone according to two sources close to Mr. Papademos, Greek Prime Minister, who spoke on condition of anonymity earlier today. The sources confirmed that plans are ready to return to a legacy currency given the current circumstances and that such exit would be dealt with, quote ‘in as orderly a fashion as possible’ unquote….

Voluntary
As reported on January 22, it initially looked as though Greece might hold off on an actual default announcement until late March
after the next scheduled payment date of its maturing sovereign debt and, perhaps, not even until after the 2012 German and French elections.
A number of events and realizations appear to be moving the schedule forward such that the official default announcement could come at any time.
seekingalpha.com, 1 February 2012

The Greek default will have only the most minor effect on the United States - except that it will give the White House and its Federal Reserve appointees someone other than themselves to blame for the economy not recovering in 2012.

Voluntary
Greek officials are scrambling to meet a deadline on Friday to restructure
€200bn of debt controlled by private bondholders, an essential condition for the next rescue plan.
The leader of the rightwing Laos party, junior partner in the Greek coalition government, has appealed to the EU
to ease the terms of the country’s second €130bn bail-out, or risk triggering a “social explosion”.
Financial Times, February 1 2012 6:24 pm

While Laos (People’s party) has only 16 seats in the Greek parliament, its anti-European line is echoed by lawmakers in Pasok, the socialist party that lost power in November but is now part of the three-party coalition headed by Lucas Papademos, Greece’s technocrat prime minister.

Antonis Samaras, the conservative leader, has also warned that Greece cannot take more austerity

Portugal - The next special case?
The country’s task is to regain wage and price competitiveness so that it can grow its way out of its debts
Amid recession, the country ran a current-account deficit of more than 8% last year
The Economist prinst 4 February 2012

Voluntary
'There Is No European Emergency Plan'
Greece is struggling to reach an agreement on debt relief with its private-sector creditors.
But even if it ultimately does, the country may need vastly more funding than has been envisioned so far.
Der Spiegel, 27 January 2012

German commentators on Friday say it's time for a bit of honesty from Europe's leaders.

"Europe's citizens are growing accustomed to only being told a small part of the truth. In the end, Olli Rehn's vague comments could mean that the European Central Bank will have to waive a portion of its Greek bond claims. That could, in turn, make itself felt in the budgets of euro-zone member states. European taxpayers, though, will never be told the full extent of the damage.... Even should there be debt relief for Greece, it will not put a stop to the country's thirst for borrowing. Debt relief would change nothing when it comes to the shocking inability of the Greek economy to compete internationally. Yet, without economic growth, there is no foundation for healthy state finances."

Grekisk tvångsförvaltning
The Greek reaction was one of outrage.
Finance minister Evangelos Venizelos was quoted by Kathimerini:
“Whoever puts before a people the dilemma of choosing between financial assistance and national dignity disregards basic historical lessons.”
Education Minister Anna Diamantopoulou /tidigare EU-kommissionär/ slammed the plan as “the product of a sick imagination.”
Eurointelligence 30 januari 2012

Anna Diamantopoulou 1999-2004 EU-kommissionär med ansvar för sysselsättning och socialpolitik i Prodi-kommissionen. Wikipedia

Forderung nach Sparkommissar Griechen-Presse pöbelt gegen Berlin „Merkel fordert bedingungslose Kapitulation“
Bild-Zeitung

Unconditional surrender The use of the term was revived during World War II at the Casablanca conference when American President Franklin D. Roosevelt sprang it on the other Allies and the press as the objective of the war against the Axis Powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan. The term was also used at the end of World War II when Japan surrendered to the Allies. Both Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin disapproved of the demand for unconditional surrender, as did most senior U.S. officials (except General Dwight D. Eisenhower).

It has been estimated that it helped prolong the war in Europe through its usefulness to German domestic propaganda that used it to encourage further resistance against the Allied armies, and its suppressive effect on the German resistance movement since even after a coup against Adolf Hitler:
Wikipedia

Tyskland vill att en ny budgetkommissionär, utsedd av eurozonen,
ska få makt att lägga in veto mot den grekiska regeringens budgetbeslut
om de inte är i linje med de mål som satts upp av långivare.
DN/TT 28 januari 2012

I dokumentet, som lämnades till medlemmarna i eurozonen på fredagen, skriver Tyskland: "Med tanke på det misslyckade uppfyllandet hittills måste Grekland acceptera att lämna över bestämmanderätten över budgeten till Europanivå under en viss tid".

Logiken i det hela rör sig i federativ riktning... Sch! säger Kohl åt mig när jag tar upp det.
Göran Person

Acropolis now The Greek debt crisis is spreading. Europe needs a bolder, broader solution—and quickly
The Economist print Apr 29th 2010

Speaking on the fringes of the forum, George Soros, the financier, blamed Germany for many of the eurozone’s woes.
“The austerity that Germany wants to impose will push Europe into a deflationary spiral,” he told journalists.
“The fact that an unsustainable target is being imposed creates a very dangerous political dynamic.
Instead of pulling countries together, it will drive them to mutual recrimination.”
Financial Times 25 January 2012

Involuntary
Hedge funds, more than any others, stand to profit,
and are betting that the voluntary debt rescheduling will fail
Stefan Kaiser, Der Spiegel 25 January 2012

"Hedge funds don't need to worry about their public image," one banker says. Their reputation has already been destroyed. Therefore, they can be relatively cavalier in gambling with the possibility of a Greek bankruptcy.

Greece Involuntary
Step one is to force private bondholders to take more losses.
They have been treated with kid gloves so far because European governments insist the debt deal must be voluntary,
thanks in part to a misplaced fear of triggering credit-default swaps. That must change.
The Economist print, 28 January 2012

Discard the veneer of voluntarism and Greece can be tougher on its creditors. It should pass a law that retroactively introduces collective-action clauses into all domestic-debt contracts (making it easier to impose debt deals on recalcitrant bondholders).

If it does this now there is still, just, enough time to organise a big, coercive, but orderly, restructuring of Greek bonds by March 20th.

The creditors, represented in the negotiations by the Institute of International Finance, have said that they won't agree to interest rates of less than 4% on the new bonds.
The EU and Greece say the interest rate can't be more than 3.5% if Greece's debt burden is to remain sustainable.
Half a percentage point might not seem like a big deal. But when you're looking at €100 billion in debt and a 30-year time frame,
it comes out to a cool €15 billion — still not pocket change.
Wall Street Journal, 27 January 2012

And then there's the European Central Bank, which owns around €45 billion of Greece's debt, purchased on the secondary market.

European finance ministers balked at putting up more public money for Greece,
calling on bondholders to provide greater debt relief
Bloomberg, Jan 24, 2012 2:02 AM GMT+0100

Greek bondholders draw line in the sand
Private owners of Greek debt have made their “maximum” offer for the losses they are willing to accept, the bondholders’ lead negotiator has said, implying that any further demands could kill off a “voluntary” deal and trigger a default.
Financial Times, January 22, 2012 7:21 pm

Now, the bankers and leaders of Europe are getting ready to walk to the edge of the Abyss.
If they /Greece/ walk away and there is an uncoordinated default, it will guarantee chaos.
Bank collateral will collapse and credit default swaps will be triggered, including many sold by European banks that are already essentially insolvent.
John Mauldin, 21 January 2012

if relatively big economies like Italy and Spain got into trouble
The eurozone crisis has been blowing for two years. It has not abated.
In that time there have been, at least, 15 summits. Maybe more.
A long grinding, gruelling marathon to hang on to a European dream.
Gavin Hewitt, BBC Europe editor, 29 January 2012

One of the unresolved problems hanging over the eurozone was what would happen if relatively big economies like Italy and Spain got into trouble. There was neither a fund big enough to rescue them nor a firewall large enough to prevent contagion.

A permanent rescue fund, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), has been brought forward and should be in place by the summer. It will have a lending capacity of 500bn euros.

There are still 250bn euros in the existing rescue fund, the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF). One plan is to run these two funds in parallel.

The Germans are currently under enormous pressure to boost the fund to over a trillion.

That won't be settled at this summit but it won't go away either.

The sticking point is the interest paid on the new bonds, bearing in mind they will not mature for 30 years.
If the rate is too low - say less than 3.8% - the investors will cry foul and insist the deal is no longer voluntary.
If it isn't voluntary then Greece is in default.
Gavin Hewitt, BBC Europe editor, 23 January 2012, 10:00 GMT

Greece, Voluntary...
Talks dragged on past midnight as Prime Minister Lucas Papademos met for a third day with negotiators which represents the private creditors.
They are being asked to take a loss on their bond holdings to lighten Greece’s debt load by €100 billion ($129 billion).
Washington Post, 20 January 2012

Greece was closing in on an initial deal with private bond holders on Friday
that would prevent it from tumbling into a chaotic default
but lose investors up to 70 percent of the loans they have given to Athens.
CNBC, Friday, 20 Jan 2012, 9:42 AM ET

The agreement, to be followed up by technical talks over the weekend, could come later in the day, sources close to the negotiations said.

Private bondholders would most likely incur a real loss of 65 to 70 percent, with the new bonds having a 30-year maturity and offering a progressive coupon, or interest rate, averaging out at 4 percent, a banking official close to the talks told Reuters.

Standard & Poor´s motiveringar till sina nedgraderade kreditbetyg för en lång rad euroländer drar ner byxorna på euroetablissemanget,
vars lösningar får betyget Icke Godkänt på de flesta fronter.
Per Lindvall, e24, 2012-01-16

Angela Merkel om "frivillig" nedskrivning med 50 procent av Greklands skulder
"The second Greek aid package, including this [debt] restructuring, must be in place quickly.
Otherwise it won't be possible to pay out the next tranche for Greece," she told a news conference.
The rescue, worth 130bn euros would include a voluntary restructuring of Greek debt - meaning bondholders would have to write off 50% of the Greek bonds' value.
BBC, 9 January 2012

As one senior figure who has long played a role in the euro negotiations says, politicians hate being pushed around by markets
but “Trotskyists in London understand markets better than conservatives in Europe.”

Ms Merkel’s scepticism also stems from bitter experience.
She followed investors’ advice and called for private holders of Greek bonds to share the burden of a second bail-out for Greece.
Those who have spoken to the chancellor say she feels duped by those investors, who urged her to agree to a restructuring of Greece’s massive debt burden
but then told the chancellor that she had also made all other eurozone bonds suspect.
Financial Times, 4 December 2011

The European Central Bank and Mr Sarkozy had warned that such contagion would happen.

Merkel signed up to a commitment that private sector bondholders
would not in future be asked to bear some of the losses in sovereign debt restructurings,
as she insisted on earlier this year in the case of Greece.
Financial Times 5 December 2011

The “haircut” on Greek debt sparked investor fears that the debts of other heavily indebted countries such as Italy and Spain might also not be honoured, contributing to a sharp increase in their bond yields. Ms Merkel said it was imperative to show that Europe was a “safe place to invest”.

ECB-ledamoten Athanasios Orphanides, centralbankschef i Cypern
"Nedskrivningen /av Greklands skulder/ ett fruktansvärt misstag"
DI/TT 2011-12-05

Ett "fruktansvärt misstag" och "jag vet inte hur det kan lösas", sade Athanasios Orphanides.

I en första uppgörelse i juli föreslogs en skuldlättnad på motsvarande 21 procent. Denna uppgörelse har dock rivits upp och ersatts av ett förslag på att halvera skulderna, vilket motsvarar en nedskrivning på cirka 100 miljarder euro.

Men skratta inte för tidigt. Bankerna på Cypern har en inlåning på 93 miljarder dollar.

Nov. 28 (Bloomberg) - Deposits in Cyprus’s banks fell 0.2 percent to 69.7 billion euros ($93 billion) in October compared to the prior, the Central Bank of Cyprus said.

Interndevalvering
Grekland står sannolikt inför en nationell kollaps.
Den europeiska makteliten har fastslagit att vägen till ekonomisk balans i de sydeuropeiska eurokrisländerna är s k interndevalvering.
Nils Lundgren, Newsmill, 2011-11-08

Statens budgetunderskott kan inledningsvis komma att stiga i stället för att minska, eftersom skatteunderlaget krymper samtidigt som utgifterna för arbetslöshetsunderstöd o dyl. stiger.

Tanken är emellertid att detta stålbad skall pågå i tillräckligt många år, så att priser och löner kan falla rejält jämfört med dessa länders handelspartner.

Då kan sysselsättning och produktion börja stiga genom att förbättrad konkurrenskraft får exporten att öka samtidigt som import kan ersättas av inhemsk produktion.

Unga och välutbildade kommer att utvandra, vilket är en nödvändig säkerhetsventil i en valutaunion. Det är så den USA:s valutaunion överlever.

Och slutligen, när deflationen är igång, stiger realvärdet av alla skulder och kan tvinga fram ökat sparande, som sänker efterfrågan ytterligare. Deflation är inte att leka med.

I Sverige och Finland klarade vi liknande grundproblem 1991-1993 med ganska små påfrestningar. Det berodde på att åtstramningarna kunde kombineras med nominell devalvering, eftersom vi hade egna valutor. Valutaunioner är inte heller att leka med.

Även om man, på något sätt, skulle kunna ta hand om medlemsländernas skulder
så återstår arbetslöshet och stagnation förorsakat av felaktigt kostnadsläge.
Att klara det genom nominella lönesänkningar, Ådals-metoden, är inte praktikabelt.
Rolf Englund blog 2011-10-21

(Reuters) - Greeks protesting at austerity measures demanded by foreign lenders blocked a major national parade on Friday
to commemorate Greek resistance in World War Two, shouting "traitors" at President Karolos Papoulias and other officials.
The annual military parade in the northern city is one of the most symbolic events in Greece's political calendar and commemorates the rejection of Italy's ultimatum to surrender in 1940. It was the first time it had been canceled.
We must unite to overcome this crisis," Papoulias said, adding that he had fought the Germans as a 15-year-old boy. "So who is a traitor?
2011-10-28

Grekland ska folkomrösta om det nya EU-stödpaketet,
meddelade det hårt ansatta landets premiärminister Giorgos Papandreou på måndagskvällen, rapporterar Reuters.
DI/TT 2011-10-31 20:36

"Om det grekiska folket inte vill ha det så kommer det inte att godkännas", säger Papandreou till nyhetsbyrån AFP.

EU-ledarna: Räcker inte 50 % nedskrivning för Grekland, det hade vi ingen aaning om?
Rolf Englund blog 2011-10-25
Credit Danne Nordling, Staffan Sonning och Lucas Papademos

Jag har lyssnat i nästan tre timmar idag 12/10 på Studio 1:s genomlysning av den europeiska skuldkrisen utan att ha blivit så mycket klokare.

Hur kan det vara klart att Grekland ska få sina 8 miljarder euro om man samtidigt tror att Grekland ska gå i konkurs
med en skuldnedskrivning på 60-70 procent som nämndes i programmet.
Betalar man ut 8 miljarder som efter någgra veckor eller månader bara är värda kanske 2,5 miljarder?
Danne Nordling 12 oktober 2011

Borde Grekland behålla euron?
Ref. till Mats Persson, Harry Flam, Gunnar Örn, Nouriel Roubinin och Otmar Issing
Danne Nordling, väldokumenterad som alltid, 3 oktober 2011

Det som Örn visar i ett diagram om den grekiska valutans övervärdering är något som Persson och Flam borde ta till sig.

Från början av 1980-talet till Greklands inträde i EMU i januari 2001 följde den reala växelkursen Tysklands utveckling i grova drag. Detta gällde faktiskt ytterligare ett år till januari 2002 då eurosedlar och mynt infördes. Med real växelkurs menas grekiska lönekostnader i relation till tyska i gemensam valuta. Orsaken till följsamheten är naturligtvis återkommande grekiska devalveringar.

Efter eurons införande har emellertid den nominella växelkursen låsts (vid 175 drachm/DM). Samtidigt har den reala växelkursen försämrats med nästan 20 procent genom snabbare löneökningar i Grekland än i Tyskland. Det betyder att den grekiska valutan borde devalveras med nästan 25 procent för att komma i paritet med Tyskland. Om inte annat brukar det finnas mycket tyska turister i Grekland, som nu tycker att det blivit dyrt att turista där.

Att långsamt sänka de grekiska lönerna i den ordinarie lönebildningen? Varför skulle det vara enklare? Jag tror att folk i allmänhet lider av penningillusion och inte är konstruerade som rationella nationalekonomer.

Försöken att motivera att Grekland ska finnas kvar i EMU och behålla euron för att det är bäst för grekerna själva verkar inte speciellt välgrundade och trovärdiga.

Der frühere Chefvolkswirt der Europäischen Zentralbank, Otmar Issing, fordert einen Schuldenschnitt für Griechenland und hält in der Folge einen Ausstieg des Landes aus der Eurozone für unvermeidlich.

In einem Interview mit dem stern sagte der langjährige Notenbanker, er halte es für "ausgeschlossen" dass Griechenland mithilfe radikaler Sparmaßnahmen wieder auf die Beine komme.

Das Land würde im kommenden Jahr eine Schuldenquote von 160 Prozent des Bruttoinlandsprodukts erreichen

Mats Persson, Grekland och de rationella förväntningarna
Rolf Englund blog

Grekland borde aldrig ha gått med i euron, det vet vi nu.
Grekland är redan i djup depression – som kommer att fördjupas, so oder so
EU, IMF och ECB vill undvika att Grekland tvingas lämna euron på ett sätt som skapar ännu värre sprickor.
Klas Eklund, kolumn SvD 2 oktober 2011

Det är obegripligt hur EU kunde blunda för att hela Europa inte är som Tyskland.
Aten och Berlin är två helt skilda världar.
Richard Swartz, Kolumn DN 1 okt 2011

Greklands konkurs - en studie i panik?
Kan den grekiska konkursen begränsas till enbart en nedskrivning av lånen?
Det finns en risk att grekerna tror att drachman ska återinföras.
I så fall blir det bankrusning och panik om man inte också förberett en ny valuta.
Danne Nordling 26 sept 2011

Om sparpaketet inte går igenom blir det inte några 8 mdr € i övertagande av förfallande lån. Då har vi kris på onsdag.

Går paketet igenom fordras godkännande av de 8 mdr € av åtminstone Finlands parlament. Varför ska Finland godkänna sin del av räddningspaketet om pengarna bara blir hälften så mycket värda efter några veckor?

Arga greker som skriker antikapitalistiska slagord utanför parlamentet fördjupar krisen,
och för varje ny repris av Skuldkris hoppar någon Pasok-ledamot av.
Frågan är nu bara vad som kommer först: en regeringskris eller beskedet om att Grekland ställer in betalningarna?
Expressen 25 sept 2011

Arga greker gör andra européer arga. En våg av bitterhet drabbar invånarna i EU:s nettobetalande länder; här har EU pumpat in otaliga miljarder sedan Grekland kom med 1981! Hårt arbetande tyskar frågar sig varför de ska subventionera den grekiska livsstilen.

Någonstans i Berlin hukar så Angela Merkel och tänker på hur väljarna straffat henne i tidigare delstatsval. Medan desperata liberaler i FDP försöker svida om till euroskeptiker.

Grekland måste rimligen gå i konkurs, ingen kan förstås säkert överblicka konsekvenserna. Men det finns kalkyler som pekar på att det blir betydligt billigare för Tyskland och Frankrike att rädda sina egna banker i stället för att köra fler repriser av programmet Skuldkris.

Låt också Grekland stanna i EMU, för det är också vad grekerna vill.
Den verkliga mardrömmen börjar om Grekland skulle konkurrensdevalvera

Grekland
BNP sjunker med över 5 procent i år, det var nästan lika illa i fjol och 2012 fortsätter ekonomin att krympa.
Arbetslösheten har passerat 16 procent.
Hur någon med de förutsättningarna ska betala ett växande skuldberg är en gåta.
DN, signerat Gunnar Jonsson, 25 sept 2011

En grekisk statsbankrutt skulle inte i sig välta hela euroområdet. Kruxet är att åtskilliga länders banker sitter med stora innehav av statsobligationer i både Grekland, Italien och resten av Sydeuropa. Ingen vet exakt hur riskbilden ser ut och allt färre litar på varandra.

Kommentar av Rolf Englund: Rubriken för ledaren är: "Eurokrisen: Fler behöver visa skuldmedvetenhet"

Rubriken fick mig att tro att det skulle handla om att de som arbetat för införandet av euron, DN, Svenska Dagbladet och nästan hela det övriga etablisemanget, som inbillar sig vara en elit, skulle visa skuldmedvetenhet och ånger. Men icke.

Fler behöver visa skuldmedvetenhet, skriver DN
De ansvariga försöker skjuta över skulden på de greker, spanjorer, italienare med mera som utnyttjat låneerbjudandena från bankerna
som kunnat locka med de låga räntor som euromedlemskapet, till en början, medförde.
Men de som införde euron är de ytterst ansvariga.
Rolf Englund blog 25 sept 2011

Förut ledde väl inte budgetbekymmer i Grekland till risk för sammanbrott i världsekonomin ?
Kan det ha något med euron att göra ?
Rolf Englund blog 24 september 2011

Charles Gave beskriver situationen i Grekland som ett ”lågintensivt inbördeskrig”.
”Och det kommer att sprida sig till Frankrike, Portugal och Spanien och andra länder”
”Många känner sig lurade. Eurokraterna försökte genomföra en politisk kupp när euron infördes, i syfte att skapa en europeisk stat.
Men befolkningen i Europa vill inte ha en sådan stat. Nu ser vi motreaktionen”
DI 23 sept 2011

Även om Grekland misskött sin ekonomi går det inte att komma ifrån att
problemen blir hart när olösliga på grund av den gemensamma valutan.
Göran Greider, Metro 20 sept 2011

Ett av de centrala argumenten på nej-sidan mot euron var att Europa inte är ett ”optimalt valutaområde” – vilket betyder att euroländernas ekonomier helt enkelt är så olika och aldrig helt kan vara i fas med varandra att en gemensam valuta och ränta inte kan passa alla samtidigt.

Som nejsägare till euron kan jag uttala de fruktansvärda men underbara orden: Vad var det vi sa?

Greklandskrisen på 30 sekunder
Grekland kan betala sin förfallande skulder om de får nya lån.
Men det hjälper inte kostnadsläget.
Rolf Englund blog 19 sept 2011

Ledaren för Greklands största konservativa oppositionsparti säger att det enda sättet
att få det skuldtyngda landet ur dess ekonomiska kris är att utlysa nyval.
Ekot, 17 september kl 21:55

– Enda lösningen är val, så att folket vilja kommer till uttryck, sade Ny demokratis ledare Antonis Samaras i ett tal i Thessaloniki på lördagen.
Ny Demokrati leder för närvarande över det styrande Socialistpartiet i opinionsmätningarna.
Partiet motsätter sig stödpaketen för Grekland och säger att sparåtgärderna hämmar ekonomisk tillväxt.

Sveriges erfarenheter från 1990-talskrisen kan tas som exempel.
I brist på andra utvägar närmar sig en situation där Grekland tvingas ställa in betalningarna.
Det kan förhoppningsvis ske i ordnade former, där den grekiska regeringen gör upp om villkoren med sina långivare.
Men faran finns att det i stället blir en plötslig kollaps, där tiden inte räcker för sådana hänsyn.
Johan Schück, DN 16 september 2011

Vad som kan locka med att överge euron är att Grekland får möjlighet till devalvering.
Snabb kostnadsanpassning nedåt skulle kunna ge ekonomin en behövlig nystart. Sveriges erfarenheter från 1990-talskrisen kan tas som exempel.

Problemet för till exempel Grekland är att kostnaderna under ett antal år stigit i förhållande till andra euroländer.
Landet behöver sänka sina kostnader kraftigt för att få fart på exporten och därmed skapa tillväxt.
Att göra det genom lönesänkningar är plågsamt och tidsödande.
Att återinföra en nationell valuta som får falla i värde skulle snabba på processen.
Lars Calmfors, DN 13 September 2011

Grekland ska införa en ny fastighetsskatt
Den grekiska regeringen hävdade att det beror på recessionen.
DI/TT 11 september 2011

I lördags sade Venizelos att Greklands ekonomi i år väntas krympa med 5,3 procent i år, vilket är mer än man trodde tidigare.

Greklands kassa slut om tre veckor
IMF bedömer att den grekiska ekonomin kommer att krympa med 5,5 procent under 2011
och att recessionen kommer att fortsätta under nästa år med en nedgång på ytterligare 2,5 procent.
DN 2011-09-19

Greklands BNP krympte med 2 procent i fjol. I år (2010) och nästa år (2011) väntas BNP minska med 4 respektive 2,6 procent,
enligt Sardelius (föreläsare på SNS, tidigare chef för den grekiska Riksgälden).

- Men vad är det som får BNP att vända upp, trots åtstramningarna, vid fast växelkurs, frågade jag från golvet.

Sardelius svarade att det var genom utbudspolitiken, borttagande av onödig byråkrati mm.

Det är ju, som Sardelius själv visade i ett annat diagram, nödvändigt med en stark tillväxt för att kunna beta av statsskulden.

Jag är väl inte så mycket skickligare ekonom än dom andra i salen, från Riksbank och Finansdepartement med mera.

"When the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry VI (1190-1197), demanded money and men for his projected crusade,
Alexios III (of Byzantium) humiliatingly complied by introducing a nex tax, the infamous Alamanikon or "German tax".
A History of Greece, Nicholas Doumanis

Portugisiska och grekiska bönder vill helt enkelt inte att nogräknade tyskar och svenskar i demokratisk ordning reformerar, det vill säga lägger ned, deras jordbruk.
Carl Hamilton i Aftonbladet 1999-06-10

Möte på torsdag mellan Frankrikes nye finansminister Francois Baroin och hans tyske kollega Wolfgang Schäuble
Målet är att en fjärdedel ska komma från privata eftergifter, men kreditvärderare har hittills sågat alla förslag.
Förutom grekiska banker är det främst tyska och franska banker som via obligationer i portföljen är exponerade mot den grekiska skuldkrisen.
DN/TT 7 juli 2011

”Mordet på EU-expressen”
”Vem dödade Europa?” frågade historikern Neil Ferguson i Newsweek
Han jämförde spelet runt den kraschande euron vid en Agatha Christie-deckare
Katrine Kielos, ledare Aftonbladet 30 juni 2011

Irlands underskott exploderade efter att landet tvingades rädda sina banker och i Spanien är problemen lika mycket situationen i banksystemet som misskötta statsfinanser.

Tyska banker har lånat ut 500 miljarder euro till Portugal, Irland, Grekland och Spanien. Skulle de skriva ner sina skulder kommer förlusterna i det statligt ägda tyska Landesbanken att bli enorma.

Varför ingen har skrivit en avslöjande insiderskildring från Ja till euro-kampanjen 2003, måste vara ett av de största mysterierna i svensk politik.
Katrine Kielos, Fokus, 27 maj 2011

Skulle Grekland brännmärkas med "default" av S & P eller Fitch kan den grekiska skuldkrisen förvärras snabbt.
Bedömare befarar en akut likviditetskris på kreditmarknaden långt utanför Greklands gränser, som när Lehman Brothers gick omkull 2008
DI 4 juli 2011

Grekisk stötesen
De 17 euroländernas finansministrar gav grönt ljus för den femte delutbetalningen av nödlånet till Grekland. En utbetalning på sammanlagt 12 miljarder euro, nästan 110 miljarder kronor.
Nu fortsätter arbetet med att skapa helt nytt stödpaket till landet, ett paket som troligtvis kommer att bli ungefär lika stort som det första på 110 miljarder euro eller cirka 1 000 miljarder kronor
Ekot 2 juli 2011

Förhoppningen är att banker och andra investerare frivilligt ska gå med på en förlängning av skulderna, att de ska köpa nya grekiska statsobligationer när de gamla löper ut.

Mer om hur nästa grekiska stödpaket kommer att utformas lär beslutas den 11 juli då euroländernas finansministrar träffas på nytt.

Grekland
Ett land i en sådan situation - välbekant för svenska politiker som överlevt sjuttiotalet - har två utvägar.
Den första är att devalvera, dvs sänka värdet av den egna valutan. Det innebär att korrigeringen tas upp i växelkursen. Exporten gynnas, importen fördyras.
Den andra är att ta korrigeringen i produktion och sysselsättning. BNP faller, arbetslösheten ökar.
Grekland hör inte hemma i eurozonen.
Nils-Eric Samdberg, Kristianstadsbladet 30 juni 2011

Det första alternativet innebär att hunden viftar på svansen, det andra att svansen ska vifta på hunden.

Problemet är att Grekland som medlem i eurozonen inte har en egen valuta, och därmed inte kan devalvera. Alltså rekommenderar IMF, ECB och euroländerna det senare alternativet.

Men Greklands ekonomi är inte i sådant skick att landet kan hålla jämna steg, i konkurrenskraft och tillväxt, med de dominerande euroländerna. Grekland hör inte hemma i eurozonen.

Den amerikanske ekonomen Herbert Stein har skrivit: ”If anything cannot go on forever, it will stop.” Hans slutsats kan kritiseras för att vara ytterst deprimerande. Härav följer inte att den är felaktig.
Grekland kan inte betala räntan på sina utlandslån. IMF, ECB och euroländerna beviljar därför Grekland nya lån till denna ränta.

Jeffrey Sachs, Grekland och Persson
Inte ens Jeffrey Sachs har funnit den Holy Grail som skall få Grekland att, inom Euroland, återfå sin tillväxt utan D-ordet, Default.
Rolf Englund blog 1 juli 2011

Man bör inte avfärda alternativet att landet lämnar valutasamarbetet.
Politisk prestige ska inte hålla kvar Grekland oavsett pris för landet eller eurozonen som helhet.
DN, huvudledare 30 juni 2011

Stefan Fölster menar att en nedskrivning av Greklands skulder är oundviklig.
– Det är egentligen inte en Greklandskris utan en bankkris
Stefan Fölster intervjuad i Sv D Näringsliv 28 juni 2011

Han pekar på att Grekland faktiskt genomfört många åtgärder vilket kanske inte är det intryck man får när media rapporterar från landet.
Stefan Fölster räknar upp ett antal av de drastiska åtgärder som regeringen genomfört:
Lönerna inom offentlig sektor har sänkts med 15-30 procent.
Pensionerna har sänkts med 10 procent.
Anställda inom offentliga sektorn har minskat med 10 procent.
2 000 skolor har stängts.
Skatten på bränsle och, alkohol och cigaretter har höjts.
– De har gjort mycket men mycket återstår ändå att göra, bland annat behöver regeringen genomföra olika tillväxtreformer, tillägger han.

Det finns egentligen inte någon Eurokris.
Tvärtom tvingar euron fram reformer som sedan länge varit nödvändiga, vilket alltid har varit ett av de starkaste argumenten för en gemensam valuta.
Stefan Fölster, Magasinet Neo 2010-06-15

Det är en i Sverige vanlig uppfattning att det var Göran Perssons motsvarande nedskärningar som satte fart på den svenska ekonomin. Nedskärningarna räddade landet, tror många.
Det som satte fart på den svenska ekonomin var att kronan sjönk och dollarn steg när Carl Bildt hade gjort sitt misslyckande.
Rolf Englund blog 29 juni 2011

Innan månadsslutet ska man dessutom kunna visa upp konkreta, klubbade besparingsplaner för statskassan på 28,4 miljarder euro, exempelvis genom att sälja ut några statsägda bolag till privata intressenter, helst så många som ett stort bolag var tionde dag om kalkylen ska hålla.
Hur det nu ska gå till: Grekland har under det senaste året lyckas att sälja så lite som ungefär ingenting, och att privata köpare helt plötsligt skulle börja köa för att ta över företag i ett land som på investeringsmarknader och i finanskretsar bara har några rossliga andetag kvar till döden, ter sig osannolikt

/Grekland skall/ sälja ut några statsägda bolag till privata intressenter, helst så många som ett stort bolag var tionde dag om kalkylen ska hålla.
På frågan om vad man då ska göra om Greklands parlament inte antar reformpaketet före månadsslutet, kunde Juncker inte svara, bara rycka på axlarna.
Teresa Küchler, SvD Näringsliv 21 juni 2011

En klentrogen journalist frågade hur i all sin dar man kunde tro att den grekiska regeringen skulle kunna sälja av ett statligt företag var tionde dag från och med nu. –De bara måste göra det, svarade eurogruppens ledare Jean-Claude Juncker kort.

Baksidan av de massiva nedskärningarna är att ekonomin krymper,
vilket bara gör det svårare att betala skuldberget.
DN-ledare, signerad Gunnar Jonsson, 18 juni 2011

Tyskland och Frankrike har enats om att snällt be privata investerare i grekiska statsobligationer att ta en liten del av notan. Men Grekland skulle behöva hjälp av några antika gudar för att ta sig upp ur dödsriket. Alternativt en ordnad nedskrivning av skulderna.

Tyskland vill att privata investerare som banker och försäkringsbolag,
är med och tar en del av smällen i Grekland så att inte hela tyngden ligger på skattebetalarna.
Anders Borg håller med.

Men andra varnar för att det skulle ses som att Grekland ställer in sina betalningar och därmed är statsbankrutt.
- Den uppfattningen delar jag också. Det är absolut nödvändigt att hitta en kompromiss som uppfyller de villkoren.

Greklands kris är så djup att landet kan tvingas att lämna eurosamarbetet.
Detta skulle i sin tur kunna äventyra hela valutaunionens framtid.
SEB:s chefsekonom Robert Bergqvist DN 2010-05-08

Svenska Dagbladet åter i EMU-debatten!
Strukturreformerna är bra oavsett om de på sikt klarar av att blåsa tillräckligt liv i landet
Rolf Englund blog 17 juni 2011

Slutsatsen i ledaren om Grekland är att "Ännu kan det faktiskt sluta lyckligt", en ovanlig men därför kanske intressant uppfattning.

Strukturreformerna är bra anser SvD "oavsett om de på sikt klarar av att blåsa tillräckligt liv i landet för att vända den ständigt stigande statsskuldskurvan".

Men avsikten med reformerna/nedskärningarna är väl just att "att blåsa tillräckligt liv i landet för att vända den ständigt stigande statsskuldskurvan" och därmed återupprätta Greklands kreditvärdighet?

The bail-out strategy that rescued Europe’s peripheral economies is proving insufficient.
This threatens the whole project of European integration
The Economist print Jun 16th 2011

Resultatet kommer att bli en helt och hållet frivillig skuldomläggning
vilket är en eufemism för "ingen omläggning",
vilket ingen fordringsägare med sinnet i behåll frivilligt skulle acceptera, och i den omfattning de gör det, kommer kreditvärderingsinstituten,
och alla andra, dra slutsatsen att de tvingats.
Eurointelligence 15 juni 2011

Det centrala problemet är ett dödläge mellan bailout-rädda politiker och instabilitetsfruktande centralbanker.
Man har antagit att de skulle komma till sina sinnen och göra en uppgörelse för att förebygga katastrofen.
Men deras lilla omgång om kyckling/chicken/souvlaki hotar nu att föra Europa och kanske världen
mot en ny ekonomisk katastrof.
CNN 15 Juni 2011

New York Times dömer ut försöken att "vinna tid" genom nya pålagor på det grekiska folket
Rolf Englund blog 7 juni 2011

Fast i skuldfällan - Grekland stramar åt men inget hjälper
EU:s och IMF:s krisrecept har prövats i ett år, men medicinen verkar inte.
DN-ledare 30 maj 2011

Att skriva ned skulderna, och låta privata investerare ta sin del av förlusten, är den ekonomiskt realistiska lösningen. Utan tvekan finns det risker. Banker i Grekland, och i andra EU-länder, kan gå omkull och det måste finnas beredskap att stötta finanssystemet där det behövs.

Diskussioner har förts om så kallad mjuk nedskrivning av Greklands skulder, genom att man förlänger löptiden på statspapper. Men kreditvärderingsinstituten hotar att likställa det med statsbankrutt.

Och ECB säger tvärt nej till alla sorters nedskrivningar, bland annat för att banken själv äger massor av grekiska obligationer som skulle förlora i värde.

Snaran dras åt kring Grekland
Grekland allt närmare utländsk tvångsförvaltning
Europeiska ledare förhandlar om ett avtal som kommer att innebära en oöverträffad intervention i Grekland ekonomi, med utländskt inflytande över skattepolitiken och privatiseringar i utbyte mot nya nödlån
DI 30 maj 2011

Förhoppningarna är att hälften av de 60-70 miljarder euro som Grekland behöver till 2013 ska kunna klaras av utan ytterligare lån.

Enligt en plan som stöds av vissa ledare ska en stor del kunna täckas av privatiseringar och förlängd återbetalningstid för nuvarande obligationer.

Detta skulle göra att EU och IMF får låna ytterligare 30-35 miljarder euro till Grekland.

Can Greece learn the economic lessons Argentina missed?
By Robert Plummer Business reporter, BBC News 28 June 2011

In Argentina's case, the government struggled to keep the economy on the rails, even though it had help from the International Monetary Fund, for most of 2000 and 2001, before President Fernando de la Rua was forced to resign.

His replacement, Adolfo Rodriguez Saa, lasted just a week in office. But before stepping down, he triggered a $102bn debt default which the country is still trying to remedy.

Ordinary Argentines suffered the consequences of the crisis. The unemployment rate hit 21.5% and did not return to single digits until the end of 2006.

For a vision of how the Greek debt meltdown is going to end, look no further than the International Monetary Fund's post mortem into a similar crisis that came to a head almost exactly a decade ago - Lessons From The Crisis In Argentina.
Originally published in October 2003, this policy review document was signed off by a then relatively unknown IMF official called Tim Geithner, now the US Treasury Secretary no less.
Jeremy Warner, Daily Telegraph, 4 July 2011

The parallels with Argentina are so strikingly exact as to bear repeating at length. Substitute the word Greece for Argentina in the IMF's analysis, and euro for currency board, and you'd have a near perfect account of the present crisis, all written nearly eight years ago.

Lessons from the Crisis in Argentina
Prepared by the Policy Development and Review Department
Approved by Timothy Geithner, October 8, 2003

Default, Devaluation, Or What?
it looks quite possible that Greece will spiral into domestic as well as debt crisis, and be forced to take emergency measures. And that makes me think of Argentina in 2001
Paul Krugman May 4, 2010

Officials warned, however, that almost every element of the new package faced significant opposition from at least one of the governments and institutions involved in the current negotiations and a deal could still unravel.
In the latest setback, the Greek government failed on Friday to win cross-party agreement on the new austerity measures, which European Union lenders have insisted is a prerequisite to another bail-out.
In addition, the European Central Bank remains opposed to any restructuring of Greek debt that could be considered a “credit event” – a change in terms that could technically be ruled a default.
Financial Times May 29 2011 22:30

One senior European official involved in the talks, however, said ECB objections could be overcome if the rescheduling was structured properly.

Officials think Greece will be unable to return to the financial markets to raise money on its own in March
– as originally planned in the current €110bn package –
meaning that the IMF is now forbidden from distributing any additional cash.

Without the IMF funds, eurozone governments would either be forced to fill the gap or Athens could default.

Grekland står nu på randen till statsbankrutt.
Detta efter att ledarna för landets politiska partier i dag har misslyckats att enas
om åtgärder för att lösa den akuta ekonomiska krisen.
Ekot 27 maj 2011

Tusentals greker i fredlig protest mot sparplaner
De kom från alla håll och kanter till Syntagmatorget och ställde sig framför det grekiska parlamentet i Aten. Unga, gamla, föräldrar med barn i barnvagn och på axlarna.
Kravallpolisen var där som vanligt. Fullt utrustad med gasmaskerna på. Beredda att använda tårgas vilken sekund som helst på nytt. Men efter en halvtimma tog de av sig maskerna.
Ekot 26 maj 2011

För första gången under den pågående grekiska ekonomiska krisen anordnades inte en demonstration av några fackföreningar, organisationer eller politiska partier, utan spontant via internet, via Facebook

Bundesbank President och Grekland – “the central bank equivalent of nuclear deterrence:
defy us and we will blow up the world”
Rolf Englund blog 25 maj 2011

Kaos väntar om Grekland faller
Allt fler ifrågasätter om Grekland kan undvika en statsbankrutt.
Men om landet ger upp och ställer in betalningarna hotar svåra banksmällar över hela Europa och argentinskt kaos i Aten, spår bedömare.
Dagens Industri 24 maj 2011

Greklands regering antog ett nytt paket med utgiftsnedskärningar och försäljningar av statlig egendom
Regeringen söker nu rådgivare för försäljning av statens andelar i Hellenic Telecommunication, Public Power Corp och ett flertal ytterligare företag.
Dagens Industri 24 maj 2011

Greklands regering kommer inom de närmaste dagarna att annonsera åtgärder för att
minska budgetunderskottet med mer än 6 miljarder euro /SEK 54 miljarder/
e24 2011-05-18

Rolf Englund: Grekland har cirka elva miljoner invånare. Den nya besparingen/nedskärningen motsvarar cirka 5.000 kr per capita,
eller 20.000 kr för en tvåbarnsfamilj.
Men dom löser väl det med kreativ bokföring genom att ta inkomsterna från försäljning av statliga bolag som en löpande intäkt.

Euroländernas del av det lån på 110 miljarder euro som förhandlades fram förra våren ligger på 80 miljarder euro.
Pengarna betalas ut kvartalsvis och hittills har Grekland kunnat kvittera ut 38,4 miljarder.
På den summan betalar grekerna ränta.
SvD/e24 16/5 2011

Dels den ränta som exempelvis Tyskland eller Frankrike själva betalar för att låna, men även en extra riskpremie som förra året bestämdes skulle ligga på 3 procent. Det gör att Grekland hittills har betalat över 6 miljarder kronor i riskpremie – en summa som flutit direkt in på eurostaternas konton runt om i Europa.

Om Grekland ställer in betalningarna, alternativt skriver ned värdet på sina utestående lån,
kommer den största förlusten att drabba Europeiska centralbanken.
ECB, har blivit Greklands enskilt största fordringsägare.
Gunnar Örn, Dagens Industri Papper, 12 maj 2011

Greklands affärsbanker har använt grekiska statsobligationer som säkerhet för att få låna pengar av centralbanken i Frankfurt. Vid årsskiftet var bankernas skulder till ECB uppe i 94 miljarder euro.

Grekland har ingen chans att klara sig undan en omstrukturering av sina skulder.
Då är lika bra att använda pengarna till att rädda de tyska bankerna som är engagerade i Grekland med 40 miljarder euro, anser Schäffler.Frank Schäffler, FDP, medlem i parlamentets finansutskott
Tomas Lundin, SvD Näringsliv 13 maj 2011

Läget i Grekland blir allt allvarligare. Ekonomin skenar och missnöjet bland människor växer.
Vilka politiska konsekvenser får den ekonomiska krisen i Grekland? Giorgios Logothetis är författare och journalist och före detta borgmästare på Lefkas, nu på besök i Sverige.
Vår korrespondent Vladislav Savic rapporterar från gatorna i Aten
Ekot 11/5 2011

Hans Werner Sinn, chef för det ansedda IFO-institutet. I helgen aktualiserade den ansedda ekonomen alternativet att Grekland lämnar eurozonen.
Alternativet, att Grekland försöker bli mer konkurrenskraftigt inom eurozonen, riskerar att leda till inbördeskrig.
Ekot 10 maj 2011

Financial Secretary to the Treasury Mark Hoban, MP and Jack Straw, a former foreign minister, about Greece and the euro
EU Observer 21 June 2011

Eventually, governments pursuing ever more austerity
with little or nothing to show for it throw in the towel.
WSJ 8 July 2011

Jan Kees de Jager, the Dutch finance minister
wants to force participation of private bondholders, irrespective of what the rating agencies say.
“I think we have to accept that a voluntary contribution is unrealistic... If a mandatory contribution from the banks leads to a short-term and isolated rating event, that is not so bad, because Greece cannot go to the credit markets anyway now or in the near future.”
Eurointelligence 8 July 2011

Germany and Greece flirt with mutual assured destruction
Let us be clear, the chief reason why Greece cannot meet its deficit targets is
because the EU has imposed the most violent fiscal deflation ever inflicted on a modern developed economy
- 16pc of GDP of net tightening in three years - without offsetting monetary stimulus, debt relief, or devaluation.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 11 September 2011

Bild Zeitung populism has prevailed. Germany is pushing Greece towards a hard default, risking the uncontrollable chain reaction so long feared by markets.

Greece can, if provoked, pull the pin on the European banking system and inflict huge damage on Germany itself, and Greece has certainly been provoked.

Germany’s EU commissioner Günther Oettinger said Europe should send blue helmets to take control of Greek tax collection and liquidate state assets.

This has sent the economy into a self-feeding downward spiral, crushing tax revenues.

För både Moderater och Folkpartister verkar eurokrisen bara handla om att justera några tekniska detaljer,
sedan är det bara att köra vidare som om ingenting hade hänt.
Har de ingenting förstått? Har de ingenting lärt?
Det är ju hela grundvalen för EMU-projektet som skakar.
Peeter-Jaan Kask, ledare Norrländska Socialdemokraten, 8 august 2011
Boken "Den som är satt i skuld är icke fri", Göran Persson tillsammans med Peeter-Jaan Kask

The German chancellor remains a believer.
This weekend she said that Greece could rebuild its economy despite austerity.
She accepts that spending cuts alone won't work, but she believes that structural reforms have to be forcefully implemented although they take time.
Gavin Hewitt, BBC Europe editor, 16 January 2012

"voluntarily"
Athens had hoped to reach a deal with its creditors on a 50 percent debt haircut,
but banks have now made it clear that efforts to reach an agreement could fail.
Should the country go bankrupt, the European Central Bank stands to lose the most.
Der Spiegel, 13 January 2012

The current conflict centers on the planned second bailout package for Greece, worth €130 billion and agreed to in principle at an EU summit last October. Greece needs the first payment of this fund in March to avoid insolvency.

Part of this package is the 50 percent debt haircut for Greece that is now under negotiation. It envisions Greece's private creditors - primarily banks, insurance companies, investment funds and hedge funds - voluntarily agreeing to the write downs.

Since May 2010, the ECB has purchased sovereign bonds from crisis-stricken euro-zone member states worth €213 billion. An estimated €55 billion of that are Greek bonds.

when Greek banks borrow from the ECB, they post Greek sovereign bonds as collateral.

Increasingly, however, they are taking advantage of the ability to issue bonds themselves, which are then guaranteed by the Greek state.

Those bonds too are accepted by the ECB as collateral.

The committee representing Greece's lenders said that some parties
had not responded constructively to the proposed 50% debt write-off.
BBC, 13 January 2012

It said discussions were "paused for reflection on the benefits of a voluntary approach" without stating when they would resume.

The alternative to a voluntary debt write-off is likely to be an outright default by Greece - a failure to continue repaying its debts.

Some lenders have also privately expressed their objection to the agreement, because it is being devised in a way to avoid causing payouts on credit default swaps - financial contracts taken out to provide insurance on a Greek debt default.

The European Central Bank - which has bought up a significant share of Greece's debts as part of efforts to rescue the country - is not participating in the talks and will not accept any write-off of the debts it holds.

The biggest danger is Greece
Greece has a €14.4 billion bond due on March 20th.
The country’s slow-motion bank run has continued
The Economist print, 14 January 2012

An IMF report on Greece just before Christmas was sobering. It says GDP probably shrank by 5.5-6% last year and may fall by a further 3% in 2012. Deepening recession makes it harder for Greece to meet its budgetary targets.

The delay in reaching an agreement with private-sector creditors on the losses that they should bear on Greek government bonds has not helped.

The IMF reckons that, if all private bondholders agreed to take a 50% “haircut” (ie, lose half the value of their bonds) and if Greece were to meet its fiscal targets, public debt might eventually fall to 120% of GDP.

Horst Reichenbach
The Greek press has dubbed him the "German Premier"
- one of the friendlier terms used.
Der Spiegel, 21 december 2011

It would be Europe’s worst nightmare: after weeks of rumors,
the Greek prime minister announces late on a Saturday night that the country will abandon the euro currency and return to the drachma.
Soon, the country’s international credit lines are cut after Greece, as part of the prime minister’s move, defaults on its debt.
As the country descends into chaos, the military seizes control of the government.
New York Times, December 12, 2011

We’re not occupiers, says Greek task force
Horst Reichenbach, who was appointed leader of the task force in September, acknowledged in an interview he had
underestimated how much his German nationality would inflame local sensitivities and complicate his mission.
Financial Times November 25, 2011

The one form of adjustment that is made a condition of financial support is ever more severe fiscal austerity.
Never mind that Greek national output is already more than 9 per cent below its 2008 level and industrial production nearly 23 per cent down.
Never mind that unemployment has soared to 17 per cent.
The Greeks are being told by international institutions and creditor countries to squeeze, squeeze and squeeze again.
I know how I would have voted in a Greek referendum on the package, were it to have gone ahead.
Samuel Brittan, Financial Times November 3, 2011

Vad journalisterna och EU-eliten missade
Research by The Slog has revealed that the Referendum Law being invoked by George Papandreou is a mere 29 days old.
There is evidence that the Greek leader purposefully promoted the man behind it, and that thus his use of it was premeditated.
But his exact motive remains unclear.
The Slog blog, 1 November 2011

George Papandreou also personally promoted the man behind the drafting of this Referendum Law. He is Interior Minister Haris Kastanidis, and in the past he has called into question whether the austerity measures being applied to Greece are too painful. A passionate believer in democracy and human rights, Kastanidis’ attitudes have been framed by a youth spent under the Colonels: his father was persecuted by the Colonels, to the point where his health failed and he died young.

Greece’s prime minister unexpectedly announced a referendum to approve a second EU bail-out deal for his austerity-hit country,
less than a week after it was agreed with international creditors at a European Union summit.
Financial Times 31 Oct 2011

Europe’s crisis is all about the north-south split
Anticipating the euro, drachma-denominated 10-year sovereign bonds fell more than 450 basis points
relative to German Bund rates in the three years leading up to Greece’s adoption of the euro in 2001.
Likewise, Portugal and Italy
Alan Greenspan, FT October 6, 2011

Greece prepares to default within the euro – the worst of all possible worlds
Daniel Hannan, September 25th, 2011

Such a package would be tremendously expensive: in the trillions.

It would be disastrous for Greece, which would remain nailed to its artificially high exchange rate. And it would involve yet another transfer of wealth from ordinary taxpayers to wealthy bankers and bondholders.

Yet, unerringly, this is the option for which EU leaders are plumping.

Daniel Hannan about illelgal eurobonds
"The Union shall not be liable for or assume the commitments of central governments, regional, local or other public authorities, other bodies governed by public law, or public undertakings of any Member State."
Click

Calmfors pekar på Eurokrisens huvudproblem, kostnadsläget
Rolf Englund blog

The Greek people are increasingly asking what the point is of this pain.
Gavin Hewitt, BBC Europe editor, 22 Sept 2011

They see years and years of austerity ahead. In their view, they are being forced to accept deep cuts to protect the French and German banks.

During the last two years the economy has shrunk by 10%. It is one of the reasons why Greece failed to meet its targets.

Time is bought for Europe's banks to make their balance sheets better able to withstand losses.

Democracy: The European crisis
Europeans leaders and officials are running out of ideas as was witnessed at the Sarkozy-Merkel summit in August.
The dilemma is that the EU project has got way ahead of where most people are.
Gavin Hewitt, BBC Europe editor 5 September 2011

Sixteen months after a landmark bailout
and seven weeks after a fresh deal to pull it back from the brink of collapse,
Greece remains in danger of descending into a messy, destabilizing default.
Wall Street Journal, 10 September 2011

In a vertiginous trading session Friday that also saw the surprise resignation of a top European Central Bank official, Greek woes once again unnerved investors. The euro slumped sharply against the dollar, falling under $1.37. Bourses in Paris and Frankfurt suffered big losses, led by banks, who would bear the brunt of a meltdown in Europe's periphery.

Will the eurozone break up?
"The short-term banking crisis is the biggest concern Europe is facing,"
said the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) Deputy Managing Director, Min Zhu, second in command at the IMF
"There is no room for politicians to muddle through. They have to take decisive action today."
Well, did they? They had a teleconference at which they assured Greece it would stay in the euro,
and urged Greece to meet the conditions of the 21 July 2011 re-bailout agreement.
Paul Mason Economics editor, BBC Newsnight, 15 September 2011

Lagarde warns major economies of recession
“This vicious cycle is gaining momentum, and, frankly, it has been exacerbated by policy uncertainty and political lack of resolve,” said Lagarde,
who as the former French finance minister is a key player in the clique of European leaders she is now criticizing.
Washington Post 15 Sept 2011

In an eloquent speech in Washington today, the head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, repeated her call for policymakers to act together to confront today's troubling times. "They must reclaim the spirit of 2008, or the spirit of 1944. The Wilsonian spirits".
Stephanie Flanders, BBC Economics editor, 15 September 2011

Investors are right to be relieved that central banks have today reclaimed 'the spirit of 2008'. But we should not forget to be disappointed that it is still required.

As I said on the 10 o'clock news last night,
it is not clear why investors should be so thrilled by such an anodyne statement.
It didn't say anything that had not been said before - indeed, the words from the French and German side didn't do much more than
confirm that Greece was part of the eurozone.
That much, we already knew. The question is whether it will stay there.

For Europe's elite, the idea of a country leaving the euro is anathema. And that will push them towards shouldering Greece's debt.
But that will only really be possible if the eurozone takes a giant leap towards economic union, and that can only be underpinned by a major shift towards political union.
Gavin Hewitt, BBC Europe editor, 5 July 2011

International lenders put Greece on notice that it is in danger of losing its next €8bn tranche of bail-out loans
without taking action to catch up with its austerity programme and plug a new black hole in this year’s budget.
Financial Times 3 September 2011

Officials from the “troika” – made up of the European Union, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank – abruptly suspended talks and left Greece on Friday in a warning to Athens before negotiations resume in 10 days.

Evangelos Venizelos, the finance minister, said the government had no plans to adopt extra austerity measures, blaming a deeper than expected recession for spending overruns and missed revenue targets.

"Det gäller bara Grekland", Mycket fiffigt, Too clever by half,
men allt var fel från början
Rolf Englund blog 2011-07-22

Cconcern at the approach taken by BNP Paribas and CNP Assurances
In a private letter sent to the European Securities and Markets Authority, the European Union’s market regulator,
the International Accounting Standards Board, the body that sets their accounting rules,
criticised the inconsistent way in which banks and insurers have been writing down the value of their Greek sovereign debt.
Financial Times, 29 August 2011

Banks and insurers that used market prices suffered a bigger hit. Royal Bank of Scotland wiped £733m from the value of a £1.45bn Greek government bond portfolio – a 51 per cent cut.

Griechenland könnte laut dem weltweit führenden Versicherungsmakler Aon ein Bürgerkrieg drohen.
Risiko für eine „Revolution, einen Staatsstreich oder einen Bürgerkrieg“ als „hoch“
Griechenland liegt damit gleichauf mit Algerien, Bahrain und Iran.
Schlechter sind nur Libyen, Ägypten und Somalia.
Bild-Zeitung 10 Juli 2011

East Germany Was and Is Greece
More than 20 years later, the former East Germany is still an economic backwater, with unemployment rates double what they are in the west of the country.
WSJ blog July 7, 2011

Wolfgang Schäuble, German finance minister, said a rethink was needed
as talks about “a quantifiable private-sector contribution... had produced no result”
Financal Times, 6 July 2011

Greece, Portugal and Ireland
Most economists, in fact, any serious observer of the situation,
says there will be no solution without a major reduction in the debt of the governments in trouble
The only question is whether private investors will bear the loss or European governments will
Stephanie Flanders, BBC Economics editor, 6 July 2011

Within just five years, the Greeks want to cut spending by the equivalent of 17 percent of their total GDP in 2010.
Similar Measures Would Crush German Economy
Applying this to Germany would amount to a savings goal of €425 billion -
a gigantic sum that would mean the complete collapse of the German economy
Der Spiegel, 1 July 2011

The Greek rollover pact is like a toxic CDO
By Wolfgang Münchau, Financial Times 4 July 2011

If you take some time to work through the arrows and boxes, you see relatively quickly that this complex structure is not a private sector participation at all. Rather it is a private sector bail-out.

It is also inevitable that Greece will default on its coupon payment at some point.

The interest will be 8 per cent under a benign growth scenario, and 5.5 per cent under a not so benign one.

Either way, Greece cannot pay such a high level of interest.

Greece’s austerity plan looks doomed to fail.
It does too little to prevent the epic folly of Greece’s railways and other ruinous schemes.
It will screw down too hard on ordinary Greeks, with new taxes, spending cuts and a rushed privatisation scheme.
And it will almost certainly condemn Greece to recession, strife and an eventual debt default.
The Economist print June 30th 2011

Greece’s politicians reckon that so long as they pretend to fix their country, the EU will hand over the money whether the plan succeeds or not. After all, who wants to pull the plug on Greece if that risks contagion across the euro zone?

The plan seems to do too little to help Greece, and too much to help the banks.
The Economist print June 30th 2011

It reduces the potential loss they might suffer were Greece to default and lets them take some money out now. It also rewards them with interest payments that may rise to 8% if the Greek economy rebounds.

For Greece, the bargain is far less compelling. The 30-year plan does nothing to reduce Greece’s debt burden and could complicate any eventual restructuring.

The difficulties facing the real economy, the contraction of bank credit in combination with ongoing capital flight and record unemployment, in particularly among young people, make Papandreou’s endeavors this week a herculean task.
Greece’s social fabric and its economic stability are being challenged like never before since 1945.
Jens Bastian, Visiting Fellow for the Political Economy of Southeast Europe at St Antony’s College in Oxford, Eurointelligence 1 July 2011

What we are currently witnessing on the streets and squares across Greece is the next stage of the country’s two-year long crisis. It now involves the collapse in trust between citizens and Greek-style parliamentary democracy.

Jens Bastian is a senior economic research fellow at the Athens-based think tank ELIAMEP (Hellenic Foundation for European & Foreign Policy).

He is currently a Visiting Fellow for the Political Economy of Southeast Europe at St Antony’s College in Oxford, U.K.

Throughout the eurozone crisis the EU has insisted that Greece carry out the impossible
in order to stave off the inevitable.
This approach cannot succeed indefinitely.
Lex, Financial Times, 29 June 2011

When an outcome is inevitable, it is necessary to plan for it.
A default is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for a return to economic health.
Martin Wolf, Financial Times 21 June 2011

The economy looks extraordinarily uncompetitive. The most telling indicator is the combination of the still huge current account deficit with a deep recession

Without a surge in exports, it will be impossible to return to sustainable growth.

If this is feasible at all, which I doubt, this will raise the ratio of debt to GDP still more.

What is the case for persisting with lending ever more and, in the process, taking a larger proportion of the liabilities of the Greek government on to public sector balance sheets?

Other countries have achieved the kind of permanent budgetary adjustment that the IMF is looking for in Greece,
but it is hard to find one that has done so without the benefit of a cheaper currency.
Stephanie Flanders, BBC Economics editor, 21 June 2011

You're talking about going from a primary deficit - that's the deficit, before interest payments on the debt are considered - of 4-5% of GDP in 2010 to a primary surplus of around 10% of GDP.

If that's not going to happen, Dumas says Greece will suffer more from prolonging the agony.

The country owes about 325 billion euros and has an annual gross domestic product of about €225 billion.
Within two years, debt will rise to 160% of GDP, from 140% now, notes Lombard economist Charles Dumas.
Greece pays roughly 10% of GDP in interest costs alone and is staring at a likely third straight year of GDP contraction, says Dumas
RACANELLI

Why spend seven hours behind closed doors, only to decide to wait and see?
After seven gruelling hours in Luxembourg, which included a video conference with colleagues from G7 countries, the finance ministers of the 17 countries of the euro zone decided to delay until July the disbursement of €12 billion ($17 billion)
Charlemagne's notebook, The Economist June 20th 2011

Threats are only worth making if those making the threats could actually carry them out
If this eurozone brinkmanship nudges the Greek parliament to reject the further budget squeeze,
we'll be closer than is remotely prudent or sensible to a 1930s-style financial and economic disaster.
Robert Peston, BBC Business editor, 20 June 2011

Every intervention so far has pretended that the crisis is one of liquidity, which can be solved by making loans to the troubled banks and governments in question.
Since there has been no open admission of default or debt restructuring by any of the troubled nations, the banking sector has not been forced to write down debt and raise more capital.
Gavyn Davies, FT blog June 19, 2011

Fiffigheten är stor i Eurokrisen
I och med att det är likviditetsproblem, inte solvensproblem, kan bankerna och de andra kreditgivarna fortsätta att låtsas som om deras fordringar är OK och inte behöver skrivas ner.
Rolf Englund blog 20 juni 2011

Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, the head of the eurozone group of finance ministers said
Germany was "playing with fire" with a plan to involve private creditors in resolving the crisis.
His comments come as finance ministers prepare to meet in Luxembourg.
BBC 19 June 2011

Mrs Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have stressed such involvement should be voluntary, but that private creditors should "show solidarity".

But Mr Juncker told German paper the Suddeutsche Zeitung on Saturday that this proposal was "playing with fire" as it would send the wrong signal to ratings agencies who could then decide Greece had defaulted on its repayments.

Ett förslag är att privata ägare av grekiska statsobligationer frivilligt ska gå med på att förlänga sin utlåning till landet när den grekiska statsskulden förfaller. Istället för pengar i handen ska de privata långivarna alltså acceptera en nytryckt obligation.

- Man vill att det ska kallas frivilligt.
För om det inte vore frivilligt utlöses ett så kallat credit event, och det skulle få enorma konsekvenser,
säger Pär Magnusson, Royal Bank of Scotlands skandinaviske chefsanalytiker.
SvD Näringsliv 20 juni 2011

Eurokrisen:
När är en händelse som i Wien inte ett event?
Ett event som kan utlösa Credit Default Swaps?
Rolf Englund blog 19 juni 2011

Om Du hör att Din granne har tagit anbudet att få pengarna om några år i stället, tror Du då att han, eller hon, har gjort det frivilligt eller har varit utsatt för påtryckningar?

Förmodligen tror Du att grannen har varit utsatt för påtryckningar.
Det tror ratingsinstituten också.
Därför är sannolikheten mycket hög för att de förklarar att ett credit event har inträffat och därmed utlöses, om jag har fattat det rätt, Credit Default Swaps, ett instrument som har gjort många fattiga och några få rika.
Läs mer här

Could Greek default equal Lehman's bust?
Richard Quest explains if Greece defaults on its sovereign debt
CNN Video 17 June 2011

Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy became the latest in a series of EU leaders to cite the so-called Vienna Initiative as a template for how private creditors might agree to roll over Greece’s debts.
The initiative was mainly a commitment by Western banks to keep capital in their subsidiaries in Romania, Hungary, Serbia, Latvia and Bosnia and Herzegovina and maintain loan volumes in those countries.
Wall Street Journal June 17, 2011

The more gentle plans for private-sector contribution involve Greece’s creditors agreeing to buy new Greek bonds once their old bonds mature. But the new bonds would surely have coupons well-below the current stratospheric market yields for long-term Greek debt.

The ratings agencies have all said this is almost certain to be considered a default.

“The original promise to bondholders didn’t involve a commitment to reinvest the proceeds of those bonds at a non-market rate,” said David Riley, managing director at Fitch Ratings.

But consider the differences, and the Vienna initiative appears more like a metaphor than an actual template for solving the Greek dilemma.

The initiative was mainly a commitment by Western banks to keep capital in their subsidiaries in Romania, Hungary, Serbia, Latvia and Bosnia and Herzegovina and maintain loan volumes in those countries.

The banks were not asked to finance specific loans or sovereign debts at below-market rates; in fact, significant amounts of bank liquidity in these subsidiaries lay idle, showing that banks had the flexibility to decide if and whether their money should be lent.

The bail-out strategy that rescued Europe’s peripheral economies is proving insufficient.
This threatens the whole project of European integration
The Economist print Jun 16th 2011

French banks had the most exposure, at $65 billion
U.S. banks had total exposure of $41 billion to Greece by the end of 2010,
according to the latest figures, issued June 9, from BIS.
About 83% is tied to “guarantees” that range from protection for sellers of credit-derivative contracts to other obligations owed to third parties
Market Watdch 16 June 2011

French banks had the most exposure, at $65 billion, the bulk of which was in the form of debt issued by the Greek government, Greek banks and corporations.

Whenever a big bank becomes insolvent, the Chancellor is faced with a stark choice.
Either you can bail the bank out with taxpayers’ money, his officials will tell him, or tomorrow there will be mayhem in the markets followed by economic collapse.
With the gun placed firmly against his head, the Chancellor will always opt for the apparent lesser of the two evils, and order a bail-out.
Jeremy Warner, Daily Telegraph 15 Jun 2011

EU:s räddningsfond för krisländer måste byggas ut kraftigt. Det säger nu Nout Wellink, styrelseledamot i ECB.
EU:s kommande permanenta räddningsfond är tänkt att innehålla 750 miljarder euro, nästan 7 000 miljarder svenska kronor,
men Nout Wellink säger nu att fonden bör dubbleras, upp till 1 500 miljarder euro, eller runt 14 000 miljarder kr.
Ekot 16 juni 2011

The humiliation of Greece
Some say that Greece has become a protectorate of the EU.
Certainly the intervention from outside in Greece's internal affairs is unprecedented.
The Greek Prime Minister, George Papandreou, flies off to meetings to learn the terms of his surrender.
Gavin Hewitt, BBC Europe editor 15 June 2011

The pain might have been endurable if it had worked. A year after Greek Bail-out I (worth 110bn euros) Greece has seen industrial production slump by 11%. Unemployment is up to 16%. The number of Greeks out of work is up 40% from a year earlier. And the debt mountain has ballooned - heading towards 153% of GDP.

Man vinner tid, sägs det. Kanske man kan skjuta upp kraschen till efter nästa val? Men under tiden lider det grekiska folket under en åtstramning som alla förstår inte kommer att lyckas att återställa den grekiska ekonomin.
Kanske NATO skulle bomba Bryssel för att skydda den grekiska civilbefolkningen?
Rolf Englund blog 2011-06-11

Svenska Dagbladet åter i EMU-debatten!
Strukturreformerna är bra oavsett om de på sikt klarar av att blåsa tillräckligt liv i landet
Rolf Englund blog 17 juni 2011

June 19
“If the no confidence motion fails, the market reaction is just the beginning,” Charles Diebel, head of market strategy at Lloyds Bank Corporate Markets in London, wrote in a note.
“Then Armageddon scenarios come into play, which include default and potentially the whole contagion scenario plays out.”
Papandreou said he would announce his new lineup today and then call the confidence vote. Such debates typically take three days with the ballot at midnight,
making the vote likely on the evening of June 19
Bloomberg 16 June 2011

De stora pojkarna, stats- och regeringscheferna i Europeiska Rådet, Europeiska Unionens motsvarighet till Sovjetunionens Politbyrå, skall träffas den 23-24 juni. Men
deras finansministrar skall nu åter träffas den 19 juni,
en dag tidigare än planerat, förmodligen är tanken att de då skall ställa sig bakom Den Fransk-Tyska lösningen.
Rolf Englund blog 15 Juni 2011

The Nonsense of purely voluntary Bail-ins
Nouriel Roubini Eurointelligence 16 June 2011

If it is done properly, it is no different from the sort of clean debt exchange that the ECB and others abhor; and if it is done on a “voluntary” basis, it creates an even bigger and more unsustainable debt monster for the sovereign. As in the case of Argentina, which attempted a voluntary mega debt exchange at unsustainable market yields—it would ensure that a disorderly default will occur in 2012 or 2013. Thus, claiming that one can apply a voluntary Vienna Initiative to the case of Greece is just a continuation of the big fudge and delusional kicking of the can down the road that the ECB and the official sector has indulged in for over a year now in Greece.

The outcome will be a purely voluntary rescheduling,
which is a euphemism for “no rescheduling”,
as nobody in their right mind would voluntarily take up any exchange offer,
and to the extent they do, the rating agencies, and everybody else, will conclude that they have been forced.
Eurointelligence 15 June 2011

The central problem is a standoff between bailout-shy politicians and instability-fearing central bankers.
The assumption has been that they would come to their senses and make a deal to forestall catastrophe.
But their little game of chicken souvlaki now threatens to jolt Europe and perhaps the world
with a new financial disaster.
CNN 15 June 2011

WarGames: Chicken-Race mellan Berlin och Frankfurt
“The central bank equivalent of nuclear deterrence: defy us and we will blow up the world”
Rolf Englund blog 10 juni 2011

Without mentioning Greece directly, Ms. Merkel said
"we simply mustn't permit the uncontrolled default of a country."
Ms. Merkel compared the situation to the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
The repetition of "such a thing absolutely needs to be avoided," she warned.
Wall Street Journal 11 June 2011

Euro disintegration was never a great risk.
The real danger was and remains a collapse of Europe’s financial system
and the slump this would trigger. A sovereign default could easily have repercussions exceeding even those of the Lehman bankruptcy two years ago.
The fact that the aid to Greece was a surreptitious /Obtained, done, or made by clandestine or stealthy means/ rescue of German banks was an important, if unmentioned, reason for Berlin’s willingness to play along.
Financial Times editorial October 12 2010

"serious consequences"
Finance Minister Schäuble warned of the consequences of a Greek default.
"The situation in Greece, and hence in Europe, is serious," he said. He insisted on the importance of securing the next round of aid payments for Greece, worth €12 billion ($17.4 billion), which is due at the start of July.
"If this tranche is not paid out, there is an acute danger of a Greek insolvency, with serious consequences for the stability of the whole euro zone," he said.
Der Spiegel 10 June 2011

The Financial Times Deutschland writes:
"When it comes to the construction of the next bailout for Greece, all the stakeholders are lying through their teeth to such a degree that one hardly knows who one should point the finger at first. The thing that unites them is that none of them want a solution that will really involve private creditors, irrespective of whether you want to call that a default, rollover or debt restructuring."

Handelsblatt writes:
"The ECB should not support any poorly prepared restructuring measures for Greece, which would ultimately involve it preventing the collapse of the financial system by vastly overstretching its own rules. Instead, it should help to lay the groundwork for a sound debt restructuring."

When the European politicians who are managing the sovereign debt crisis bailed out Greece, Ireland and Portugal
they did not merely do something that exceeded their powers, they violated an explicit prohibition on such bail-outs.
Jamie Whyte, Financial Times, 8 June 2011

WarGames: Chicken-Race mellan Berlin och Frankfurt
“The central bank equivalent of nuclear deterrence: defy us and we will blow up the world”
Rolf Englund blog 10 juni 2011

Tyskland och Frankrike har "funnit en lösning" i frågan om den privata sektorns deltagande i stödet för Grekland.
"Detta är ett genombrott" i frågan om obligationsinnehavarnas deltagande.
e24, 2011-06-17

"Vi skulle vilja ha ett deltagande från privata kreditgivare på frivillig basis. Detta bör arbetas fram tillsammas med ECB. Det bör inte vara någon dispyt med ECB om detta", sade Angela Merkel.

Deltagande från den privata sektorn måste vara frivilligt, uppger Sarkozy enligt Reuters. Uppgörelsen ska gå i linje med det så kallade Wien-initiativet, där bankerna accepterade att rulla över lån till länder i Östeuropa under finanskrisen 2009.

"There is no need for private-sector involvement," ECB executive board member Jürgen Stark told reporters
"I see it only as a political issue for political reasons, not for economic reasons."
Mr. Stark's opposition to any Greek debt restructuring echoed the position staked out by ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet
But Mr. Stark's remarks were more blunt, and suggested the ECB's antirestructuring position is so entrenched
that it can't compromise without seriously eroding its credibility.
Wall Street Journal 10 June 2011

Neither Frankfurt nor Berlin is backing down. On Friday, Germany's parliament approved a motion that private bond holders and the IMF bear partial responsibility for any further aid to Greece, putting more pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel's government to pursue the very measures that Mr. Stark resists.

Mr. Stark didn't specifically address Mr. Schäuble's position. But he warned government officials not to assume that the ECB would continue to support Greek banks in the event of a restructuring.

Such a scenario "prevents us from continuing to accept Greek bonds as collateral," Mr. Stark said, advising officials to "know what they're talking about" when it comes to the implications of a Greek restructuring.

“We have to insist on the participation of the private sector,”
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told lawmakers in Berlin today,
ignoring warnings from credit-rating firms that his proposal to extend Greek debt maturities by seven years
would be deemed a default.
A working group set up this week is charged with indentifying
“a good solution for the involvement of the private sector that can and has to be supported by the European Central Bank,” he said.
Bloomberg, 10 June 2011

As politicians try to find a plan by June 24 that would share the cost of a new rescue with bondholders, Trichet yesterday ruled out the Frankfurt-based ECB setting an example with its own assets. While the bank has said it could accept a plan in which investors voluntarily agree to buy Greek bonds to replace maturing debt, President Trichet said the ECB has no intention of rolling over its own Greek holdings.

IMF has blinked in the battle over how - and when - to agree a second European rescue package for Greece.
It is now almost certain that Greece will get the official money it needs to stay above water a few more weeks
Stephanie Flanders, BBC Economics editor, 16 June 2011

All the eurozone ministers have to do is agree in principle to fill the funding gap in the Greek economic programme, which they will now do on Sunday.
The trouble is, they have always agreed on the principle: indeed, the only thing that France, Germany and the ECB can agree is that a second support programme for Greece is essential. Rightly or wrongly, they are united in the belief that letting Greece go it alone would be a catastrophe - for Greece and for the eurozone.
Where they disagree is on the form that support should take and - as I have discussed many times here - the role of the private sector. By refusing to disburse the next 12bn-euro tranche of last year's 110bn-euro bailout, the Fund had hoped to force eurozone ministers' hands. It hasn't worked. As was made abundantly clear by their special meeting on Tuesday, Germany is sticking to its guns.

IMF's statutes stipulate that the organization can only lend a country money if it is certain that the state will be able to meet its payment obligations for the next 12 months.
The new report has now made it clear that Greece is not in a position to guarantee that, meaning that the IMF cannot transfer any more money
"The next disbursement cannot take place before this underfinancing is resolved," the report concludes.
This in turn means that Europe will have to come up with a new rescue package.
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble estimates that Greece will need €90 billion /drygt 800 miljarder kronor/ to cover its funding needs between 2012 and 2014
Der Spiegel, 9 June 2011

Many experts believe that a Greek default could have horrendous consequences, with some even fearing it would cause the breakup of the euro zone and lead to turmoil in the financial markets. The fallout might even exceed the impact of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in 2008, which triggered the global financial crisis.

Jean-Claude Trichet is apoplectic at the loose talk of debt restructuring.
The ECB’s president fully appreciates the real risks of contagion from a Greek debt restructuring to the rest of the periphery.
He also knows that all too much of the cumulative $1,000bn in sovereign debt of Greece, Ireland, and Portugal sits on the French and German banks’ balance sheets.
Desmond Lachmann, Financial Times May 30 2011

A compelling justification for Mr Trichet’s antipathy to any form of soft Greek debt restructuring is how little this would improve Greece’s fundamental fiscal policy challenge. Stuck in the straitjacket of euro membership, Greece is having to make a Herculean effort to restore fiscal sustainability, without the ability to resort to exchange rate devaluation and so boost exports as a much-needed offset to the adverse effects of fiscal consolidation.

Apoplectic
of a kind to cause or apparently cause stroke ; also : greatly excited or angered

ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet yesterday gave his first signal endorsing measures to encourage investors to buy new Greek bonds to replace maturing securities. While Trichet said he’s against imposing losses on creditors, he indicated he’d approve of financial institutions maintaining their level of outstanding credit. “That is not a default,” he said at an event in Montreal late yesterday.
“That is something the ECB would consider appropriate.”
Bloomberg 7 juni 2011

While Europe is preoccupied with a possible restructuring of Greece's debt, huge risks lurk elsewhere
-- in the balance sheet of the European Central Bank.
The guardian of the single currency has taken on billions of euros worth of risky securities as collateral for loans to shore up the banks of struggling nations.
Der Spiegel 24/5 2011 with good links

The EU's Fisheries Commissioner, Greece's Maria Damanaki, warned that - The scenario of removing Greece from the euro is now on the table.
Of course, there were quick denials by the government and the prime minister that there were even any discussions of leaving the eurozone, which I find rather odd. I mean, if you are not having discussions about all the options (behind closed doors) then you are being derelict in your duties. We shall learn soon enough that there have in fact been such discussions. The Greels may in fact reject the idea of leaving the euro, but to think they did not have such a discussion rather strains credulity.

Greek leaders meeting in Athens have failed to agree
on Prime Minister George Papandreou's new austerity plan.
Conservative leader Antonis Samaras rejected the measures,
saying they would "flatten the Greek economy and destroy Greek society".
BBC 27 May 2011

Mr Papandreou, a Socialist, had been trying to secure cross-party agreement for further cuts

It’s now clear that Greece, Ireland and Portugal can’t and won’t repay their debts in full, although Spain might manage to tough it out
Paul Krugman, New York Times, 22 May 2011

Eurogroup’s Jean-Claude Juncker has just lobbed this hand grenade into the market place
IMF will only release the next tranche of its funding for Greece if the source of Greece’s funding needs over the next twelve months is clear. Which it isn’t.
Neil Hume, FT Alphaville May 26 2011

EUROGROUP’S JUNCKER SAYS IF PAYMENT OF IMF TRANCHE OF AID TO GREECE IN JUNE NOT BE OPERATIONALLY POSSIBLE, EUROPEANS EXPECTED BY IMF TO STEP IN.

Now, the IMF will only release the next tranche of its funding for Greece if the source of Greece’s funding needs over the next twelve months is clear.

“Events in Greece have brought the euro area to a crossroads:
the future character of European monetary union will be determined by the way in which this situation is handled.”
Jens Weidmann, Bundesbank president and European Central Bank governing council member, Hamburg, 20 May, 2011
Financial Times, Ralph Atkins, May 24 2011 22:35

The confusing debate about “reprofiling” or soft restructuring pays testimony to the sheer incompetence of eurozone’s finance ministers,
who are now effectively talking Greece into a damaging, and most likely contagious default.
The FT reports that Jean-Claude Trichet walked out of a recent meeting chaired by Jean-Claude Juncker in protest.
FT Deutschland reports this morning that Trichet told finance ministers on Monday night that the ECB would respond to a reprofiling by refusing to buy any new Greek debt instruments (meaning it will not be part of any voluntary arrangement in respect of its own Greek debt portfolio).
Furthermore, the ECB would refuse to supply the Greek banking system with any further liquidity.
Eurointelligence 19 May 2011

The underlying economics of the /Euro/crises are clear
The domestic counterparts of these external deficits could be huge fiscal deficits (as in Greece),
huge private financial deficits (as in Ireland and Spain) or a combination of the two (as in Portugal).
Martin Wolf, Financial Times 18 May 2011

Greece
No country save Britain at the height of its empire has ever recovered from a debt-to-GDP ratio of over 150% without a default. None.
And the reason is simple arithmetic. Even a nominal interest rate of 6% means that it takes 10% of your national income just to pay the interest.
Not 10% of tax revenues, mind you; 10% of your total domestic production.
That is a huge burden on any country. It sucks up half your tax revenues (or more), leaving not enough to pay for ordinary government services like police, defense, education, pensions, health care, etc.
John Mauldin 14/5 2011

Greece runs a massive trade deficit with the rest of Europe, which just makes the problems worse. Unemployment in Greece is now 15% and rising. And everyone can clearly see that the current loan facility will run out at the beginning of 2010, yet Greece will need at least another 30 billion euros right after that.

The total exposure of foreign banks to the struggling quartet of
Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain tops $2.5 trillion
once all forms or risk are included, according to the latest data from BIS
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard 14 Mar 2011

Greek 10-year yield reached a eurozone record, of 12.9%,
as the markets are now overwhelming expecting a debt restructuring
Eurointelligence 9/3 2011

Greece’s increasing jobless rate may become a “bomb in the foundations of society”
Economy and Competitiveness Minister Michalis Chrisochoides said.
Bloomberg 28/3 2011

“The economic problem will at some point be solved but the social problems are getting continually more toxic,” Chrisochoides said in an interview on March 22 in Athens. “At the moment we have a society that is patient and dealing with the problem, but we have to show people that what we are doing is working.”

Greece’s unemployment rate surged to a record 14.8 percent in December, making it the second highest after Spain in the 17- member euro region

FT Deutschland noted that the Greek rating was now below that of Egypt, and on the same level as that of Angola.
The downgrade was a testimony how dangerous the euro crisis can still be at a time when political leaders had become more relaxed.
Eurointelligence 8/3 2011

Frankfurter Allgemeine writes in a comment that Greece was a clear-cut case for a debt restructuring.
Even if the Greek adjustment strategy went to plan, the country would be straddled with an extremely high burden of debt.
But Athens, Berlin, and Brussels, in cohorts with the ECB, are serving the interests of the banks, by refusing to accept this.
Eurointelligence 8/3 2011

At the time of the Greek bailout, the real question was:
"If €750 billion isn't enough, what is?"
The heavily indebted European states face USD 2850 billion of maturing debt up to 2013.
Satyajit Das, January 19, 2011

Belgium is really two ethnic groups that share a king and high levels of debt (about €470 billion [$630 billion], 100%of gross domestic product), and little else.

On 11 May 1931, the failure of a European bank – Austria’s Credit-Anstalt – was a pivotal event in the ensuing global financial crisis and the Great Depression.

The European Economic Advisory Group (EEAG), a group of leading European economists, has warned that Greece may need another bailout by 2013 at the latest. creditors might have to write off more than 30 percent of their loans.
Greece might even have to reintroduce the drachma to overcome its debt crisis
Der Spiegel 02/22/2011

The EEAG, which is collectively responsible for each chapter in this report, consists of a team of seven economists from seven European countries. This year, the Group is chaired by Jan-Egbert Sturm (KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich) and includes Giancarlo Corsetti (University of Cambridge), Michael Devereux (University of Oxford), John Hassler (Stockholm University)...

The unemployment rate in Greece jumped to 13.5 percent
A record 684,047 people were officially without work, a 39 percent increase year-on-year.
CNBC 12/1 2011

Unemployment stung young people hardest, with the jobless rate reaching 35 percent in the 15-24 age group and 18 percent for those aged 25 to 34.

Greece has become the world's riskiest borrower in the fourth quarter of 2010, surpassing Venezuela,
while Spain, Portugal and Ireland were riskier than Iraq
CNBC 7 Jan 2011

De som försöker skuldbelägga Europeiska centralbankens låga ränta för den ohållbara låneexpansionen har en poäng.
Skeptiker till euron vädrar morgonluft och upprepar sin gamla kritik mot den gemensamma valutan:
– Vad var det vi sa, säger de. Euron passade inte för Greklands behov och den passar inte heller för Irlands.
Vad som krävs är en nationell räntepolitik och nationella valutor, som går att devalvera.
Peter Wolodarski, DN Signerat 21/11 2010

What were investors thinking when they bought Greek 10-year bonds at 26 basis points over Bunds in 2007, below the spread between British Columbia and Quebec?

If you strip out the humbug, the Greek package allows banks and funds to shift roughly €150bn of liabilities onto EU governments, or the European Central Bank, or the IMF.
Greek citizens are being subjected to the full pain of austerity under false pretences, without being offered the cure of debt relief.

Greece to run a budget deficit for 2010 greater than the 8.1 percent it agreed to as part of a rescue package,
according to a person briefed on the matter but not authorized to speak about it.
At worst a deficit of 8.9 percent, latest revision in Greece’s 2009 deficit — to about 15.5 percent
New York Times, tips by Eurointelligence, 27/10 2010

Greece may ultimately be forced to restructure its mountain of debt with foreign investors.

China wants to impose a deflationary adjustment on the US,
just as Germany is doing to Greece.
Martin Wolf 12 october 2010

The international community has postponed bank stress tests for Greece
Financial Times September 19 2010

The international community has postponed bank stress tests for Greece to give the country breathing space as Athens prepares to test the success of its European roadshow last week by raising more money in the capital markets.

The so-called “troika” – the International Monetary Fund, European Commission and European Central Bank – has agreed with Greece’s central bank to delay testing the solvency of the country’s struggling bank sector by one month to the end of October.

Is the crisis coming back?
After the downgrading of Ireland by S&P, Irish sovereign bond spreads rose from 318bp to 344bp to level higher than before May, and even Greece spreads are now back at close to 10%, the level before the agreement on the EFSF. This means that the European rescue package have failed to calm down the market stress that triggered on those package in the first place.
There was further bad news from the US, where existing home sales declined by a record amount for July, giving rise to expectations of another decline in US house prices.
As ever, Calculated Risk has the best coverage of this.
The Wall Street Journal says in a comment that even a downturn to annualised growth rates of under 2% will feel like a recession.
In a 2% economy, there won’t be any job creation, or wage increases.
Eurointelligence 25/8 2010

Greece
Banks had lost 8pc of their entire deposit base in the five months to May
Households and companies are running down savings to make ends meet
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 19 Aug 2010

Greek lenders are covering their funding gap through loans from the European Central Bank (ECB), which reached a record €96bn in July.

The green light from Brussels failed to offer any respite for Greek bonds. Spreads on 10-year Greek debt rose to 835 basis points over German debt. They are trading once again at the crisis levels of early May, before the EU launched its "shock and awe" rescue and the ECB began purchasing Greek bonds.

The Euro Crisis
Entering a Death Spiral?
Tensions Rise in Greece as Austerity Measures Backfire
The austerity measures that were supposed to fix Greece's problems are dragging down the country's economy. Stores are closing, tax revenues are falling
Der Spiegel 18/8 2010

The entire country is in the grip of a depression. Everything seems to be going downhill. The spiral is continuing unabated, and there is no clear way out. The worse part, however, is the fact that hardly anyone still hopes that things will improve one day.

In May, the EU and the IMF agreed to loan Greece 110bn euros over three years.
A 9bn-euros loan is due to be given to Greece on 13 September, and is dependent upon the government meeting progress targets.
BBC 5 August 2010

Hungary's IMF revolt augurs ill for Greece
"Austerity is extremely hard to sell to electorates.
The risk is that this moves from a wider financial and economic crisis to a European political crisis as governments are punished by voters.
The approval rating for Lithuanian's prime minister has fallen to 7pc."
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 19 July 2010

Det största problemet:
har risken för att exempelvis Grekland ställer in betalningarna verkligen lagts in i testerna på ett ärligt sätt?
Enligt Financial Times har marknaderna tagit höjd för förluster på 60 procent på grekiska statsobligationer – medan regleringsorganen har sagt åt bankerna att räkna med 17 procent.
DN-ledare, signerad Gunnar Jonsson, 20 juli 2010

Alan Beattie bevakar internationell handel för Financial times.
Han tror helt enkelt inte att Grekland kommer lyckas få sin ekonomi att växa samtidigt som de genomför massiva besparingar.
Och när de inser det om ett halvår eller ett år så blir en skuldavskrivning den enda möjliga lösningen.
Och det här räknar finansmarknaderna med säger Alan Beattie, Ekot 16/7 2010

Franska, spanska och tyska banker skulle kunna få hjälp från den nyskapade europeiska räddningsfonden.

Alla kan inte exportera sig ur krisen, för då är det ingen som köper.
Grekland och Spanien måste skära ned drastiskt, inget annat kan återställa finansmarknadernas förtroende.
Tyskland ska ha ordning på statsfinanserna, men ....
DN-ledare 29 juni 2010

The snag with Germany’s idea (insolvency rules)is that it goes too far
It is hard to see how such a plan could be imposed, let alone enforced. It would place the debtor nation in a position of colonial submission.
If ever agreed to, this would be politically explosive.
FT editorial July 13 2010

The Folly of Currency Pegs
Notwithstanding the highly touted Greek rescue package
Greece will probably default on its debt sometime within the next year
John H. Makin (May 2010

Moody's cuts Greece to junk
The rating agency warns that a $1 trillion bailout package may not be enough.
CNN June 14, 2010

Moody's cut its rating on Greek debt four notches to Ba1, a speculative rating that the firm says connotes "questionable" credit quality.

ECB Buying Up Greek Bonds
German Central Bankers Suspect French Conspiracy
gives French banks the perfect opportunity to get rid of their Greek assets
Der Spiegel 31 May 2010

Greece is implementing a sweeping austerity plan.
But the underlying maths of its fiscal problems – with its public debt to gross domestic product forecast to hit 150 per cent – makes it extremely hard to believe that Greece will really fix its woes before the aid runs out.
Gillian Tett, FT May 27 2010

Slightly more than two weeks ago, eurozone leaders and the International Monetary Fund unveiled a €750bn ($920bn) package that, in effect, guarantees that Greece will be funded for the next couple of years. That pot is also big enough to cover Portugal and Spain, if those countries needed aid.

So far, so good. But what is crucially unclear is what happens after that point.
Right now, of course, Greece is implementing a sweeping austerity plan. But the underlying maths of its fiscal problems – with its public debt to gross domestic product forecast to hit 150 per cent – makes it extremely hard to believe that Greece will really fix its woes before the aid runs out.

So the worry for Greek bondholders today is that they are now becoming subordinate to the IMF and the eurozone, but without any guarantee that this bail-out will work.

Greece budget deficit worse than thought
The Greek government has brought in a string of draconian spending cuts and tax rises
Greece's two-year cost of borrowing rose further in bond markets to more than 23 procent
BBC 26 April 2011

The Greek government has brought in a string of draconian spending cuts and tax rises demanded by European peers and the International Monetary Fund as part of its bail-out last year.

The measures succeeded in bringing the government's deficit down from 15.4% of GDP in 2009, but still fell well short of what was hoped.

Greece's two-year cost of borrowing rose further in bond markets to more than 23% per annum following the data release.

The level indicates that markets believe the country's debts are unmanageable and Athens is very likely to impose losses on bondholders when its existing bail-out loans expire in 2013.

Greece - A year after agreeing a €110bn European Union and IMF bail-out and economic reform plan, times are hard.
Each evening, as darkness descends on Athens, police in riot gear wait in buses that line the side streets of the city centre. Some fidget with mobile phones, others stare into the night. What they are waiting for, nobody is sure. But everyone in the Greek capital agrees something could happen any time.
FT May 1 2011

If Mr Papandreou fails, policymakers in other European capitals and Washington will face a dilemma – whether to give Greece another chance or let the country fall into the abyss of default, with potentially devastating consequences on financial systems and economic confidence across the eurozone.

De nödlån som nu ges till Grekland, Irland och senast Portugal av IMF, ECB och EU-kommissionen ger ett visst andrum
Man får väl utgå ifrån att dessa nödlån inte hade givits om inte de tre institutionerna gjort analyser som visar att det faktiskt är möjligt att ta sig ur krisen.
Mats Hallgren, SvD Näringsliv 5 maj 2011

En skuldrekonstruktion i till exempel Grekland innebär inte bara en stor risk för det grekiska banksystemet, utan för stora delar av banksystemet i hela euroområdet. En ”blodpropp” på ett ställe kan drabba hela cirkulationen. Greklands stora statsskuld på 350 miljarder euro ligger till 80 procent placerad utanför landet.

Enligt en färsk beräkning från det tyska institutet IMK och Deutsche Bank skulle inställda betalningar på Greklands statsskuld drabba Tyskland med över 40 miljarder euro, varar 25 miljarder i tyska banker. Läget torde vara likartat i Frankrike och flera andra länder.

Ett försök att lösa den grekiska skuldkrisen med en rekonstruktion skulle kunna utlösa nya kriser i andra länder, till exempel i Spanien, med snabbt stigande räntor som följd. Och tyska banker innehar även de stora mängder spanska statspapper.

SNS, Pagrotsky och Greklands återhämtning
Sedan kommer vändningen, i Sardelius (tidigare Greklands Bo Lundgren) diagram. - Men vad är det som får BNP att vända upp, trots åtstramningarna, vid fast växelkurs, frågade jag från golvet.
Sardelius svarade att det var genom utbudspolitiken, borttagande av onödig byråkrati mm. Jag skrattade. - Skrattar Du, sade Sardelius. Ja, sade jag. Rolf Englund blog 2010-05-28

IMF-rapport varnar
Givet att Grekland ingår i eurosamarbetet är en devalvering inte en möjlig utväg för landet.
Tjänstemännen bedömer i rapporten att Greklands "effektiva växelkurs", inom eurosamarbetet, är övervärderad med upp till 30 procent,
och denna övervärdering måste pressas ut ur den grekiska ekonomin i en "lång och smärtsam process"
Washington Post/DI 12 maj 2010

Ländernas konkurrenskraft har också betydelse för valutans stabilitet.
DN huvudledare 7/5 2010

Deutsche-Bank-Chef Ackermann: Greece won’t repay all of its debt
there is no alternative to helping Greece because otherwise the eurozone would have melted down
Eurointelligence 14/5 2010

We do not know quite what Deutsche Bank is up to, but the bank has been very forthright, about the Greek situation. In a German talk show, Josef Ackerman said that Greece won’t repay all of its debt, and that rescheduling was very likely

But he also added that there is no alternative to helping Greece because otherwise the eurozone would have melted down.

The best course of action to take is to push through austerity now, and if this is not enough, to restructure and to reschedule debt, according to Der Spiegel.

Finanskrisens härjningar. Kronans svängningar. Greklands ekonomiska kaos.
Plötsligt har euron blivit het inför valet.
Sydsvenskan har talat med alla de fyra borgerliga partiledarna.
De är djupt oeniga i fråga om folkomröstning.
Fredrik Reinfeldt anger två villkor för att han ska lova en folkomröstning.
Sydsvenskan 3 april 2010

Greek crisis exposes default lines running through the eurozone
Initially, it was thought that the eurozone would not be subject to such market brutality /as in 1992/ because, in complete contrast to the ERM, once countries have joined the euro, there is no exchange rate against which speculators can take out positions.
Roger Bootle, Daily Telegraph 2 May 2010

Ett intressant inlägg kommer från tankesmedjan Bruegel i Bryssel. I rapporten ”Two crises, two responses” skriver ekonomerna André Sapir och Jean Pisani-Ferry om stora och viktiga skillnader mellan de krisdrabbade ekonomierna. Som exempel tar de Grekland och Spanien, två länder med olika typer av problem som varken kan eller bör lösas på samma sätt.
DN 7/5 2010

Varför reagerade ingen i Bryssel?
Det var ett allvarligt misstag. I EU:s korridorer talades det öppet om det grekiska fusket under många år.
2004 inledde EU-kommissionen ett rättsligt förfarande rörande falska rapporter, som aldrig fullföljdes.
DN 7/5 2010

Mrs Merkel made a moving plea to the Bundestag to support the €110bn (£93bn) rescue for Greece.
"Nothing less than the future of Europe is at stake. The happy tale of German history since World War Two and our emergence as a free, united, and strong country cannot be separated from the European Union.
We owe decades of peace and prosperity to the understanding of our neighbours," she said.
Daily Telegraph 6/5 2010

To Angela Merkel and Germany’s political class, the state elections in North-Rhine Westphalia are infinitely more important than the future of the eurozone.
The opinion polls seem to support this attitude. Greek aid is unbelievably unpopular, with 86 per cent opposed according to a poll published last Sunday.
Come to think of it, there are not many issues in a democracy on which 86 per cent of the people agree on.
Wolfgang Münchau, Eurointelligence 29/4 2010

A bail-out for Greece is just the beginning
It is overtly a rescue of Greece, but covertly a bail-out of banks.
Martin Wolf, May 4 2010

Given the huge fiscal retrenchment now planned and the absence of exchange rate or monetary policy offsets, Greece is likely to find itself in a prolonged slump.

Would structural reform do the trick? Not unless it delivers a huge fall in nominal unit labour costs, since Greece will need a prolonged surge in net exports to offset the fiscal tightening. The alternative would be a huge expansion in the financial deficit of the Greek private sector. That seems inconceivable.

Moreover, if nominal wages did fall, the debt burden would become worse than forecast.

The crises now unfolding confirm the wisdom of those who saw the euro as a highly risky venture. These shocks are not that surprising. On the contrary, they could have been expected. The fear that yoking together such diverse countries would increase tension, rather than reduce it, also appears vindicated: look at the surge of anti-European sentiment inside Germany.

Satsa på en hästkur av samma kraft som Lettland!
Den Atenska smittan kan sprida sig och få förfärliga effekter
Från svensk horisont är det inte så mycket annat att göra än att hoppas
PJ Anders Linder, SvD 2 maj 2010

Den grekiska budgetkrisen har nått en kulmen.
EU reagerade på krisen som om den vore den första lånekris som någonsin inträffat.
Redan idag kan vi se kraven – och önskemålen – på att EU-samarbetet fördjupas. Här bör Sverige vara med fullt ut.
Olle Schmidt (fp) och Wolf Klinz (FDP) samt folkpartiets talesperson för ekonomi- och näringspolitik,
Carl B Hamilton, SvD Brännpunkt 30 april 2010

Från att euron infördes som gemensam valuta har både anhängare och skeptiker sett problemet med att penning- och skattepolitiken inte är helgjutet konstruerad. Penningpolitiken överfördes till europeiska centralbanken medan skattepolitiken hör till medlemsstaternas kompetenssfär. I avsaknad av en gemensam skattepolitik antog man inom EU istället den så kallade stabilitets- och tillväxtpakten. Pakten har en ensidig inriktning på offentliga finanser. Andra aspekter som finansiell stabilitet och konkurrenskraft finns bara med indirekt.

Redan idag kan vi se kraven – och önskemålen – på att EU-samarbetet fördjupas. Här bör Sverige vara med fullt ut. Annars kommer Sverige att förlora än mer i inflytande.

Det är målsättningen om ett ständigt fastare förbund - "ever closer union" - som är själva grundbultsfelet med EU.
Rolf Englund Barometerns website 7/6 2005

Europe stumbles upon closer union
The giant currency union has bound 16 European Union states into a monetary bloc. The member countries, however, remain sovereign states with control over their own taxes and spending.
If it organises a rescue of Greece, the EU will cross a political Rubicon, heading towards a more complete union.
Financial Times editorial, February 12 2010

Tio års test av euron visar att domedagsprofetiorna kommit på skam.
Under krisen har euron visat sig vara en trygg hamn för euroländerna, och en tillflyktsort globalt.
Carl B Hamilton blog 8 februari 2010

EMU:s första dödsoffer
Tre döda i grekisk bankbrand
Publicerat: kl 13:41, 5/5 2010 Ekot, Uppdaterad: 15:01

And that’s why a devaluation would help Greece — it wouldn’t reduce the need for fiscal adjustment, but it would reduce the costs associated with fiscal adjustment.
As I argued yesterday, this difference is an important reason why Britain, with a primary deficit as large as Greece’s, isn’t in anything like the same amount of trouble.
Paul Kruman, May 1st 2010

Den franska storbanken BNP Paribas har en exponering mot grekiska statsobligationer på 5 miljarder euro (49 miljarder kronor).
E24 6/5 2010

European governments are hoping that Greece’s 110 billion-euro bailout will stop a crisis that Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says threatens the currency’s survival.
European Central Bank council member Axel Weber today warned about the “threat of grave contagion” as investors speculate that Spain and Portugal may also need aid.
Bloomberg 5/5 2010

While Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero dismissed such talk as “complete madness” yesterday, the risk premium on his country’s 10-year bonds rose to 126 basis points today. Spain’s benchmark IBEX Index, the euro region’s worst performer this year after Greece, fell 1 percent, extending yesterday’s 5.4 percent drop. Portugal’s spread increased to 270 basis points.

De övriga euroländernas finansministrar planerar ett möte på söndag för att ta ställning till
ett förslag till överenskommelse om nedskärningar utan tidigare motstycke.
Ekot 30 april 2010 med bra länkar

Acropolis now
Europe's sovereign-debt crisis
The Greek debt crisis is spreading.
The Economist print 29/4 2010

There comes a moment in many debt crises when events spiral out of control. As panic sets in, bond yields lurch sickeningly upwards and fear spreads to shares and currencies.

In September 2008 the failure of once-stellar Lehman Brothers almost brought down the world’s banking system. A decade earlier, Russia’s chaotic default on its sovereign debt rocked the credit markets, felling Long Term Capital Management, a hugely profitable American hedge fund. When the unthinkable suddenly becomes the inevitable, without pausing in the realm of the improbable, then you have contagion.

The Greek crisis—or more properly Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis—looks dangerously close to that

ECB Drops Minimum Rating Threshold for Greek Collateral: QE Next?
The ECB decided to remove the BBB-rating threshold for Greek collateral on May 3, in contrast to prior statements that the ECB would not apply different eligibility rules for different countries.
Roubini 6 May 2010

When the ECB Governing Council meets on May 6, the bank's head, Jean-Claude Trichet, will have to explain the U-turn on collateral rules and lay out the organization's future strategy. Options include resuming longer-term refinancing operations; cutting rates from 1% and starting quantitative easing by buying government bonds in the secondary market.

“The unthinkable -- that the ECB would not accept sovereign securities from a member as collateral --
has become a measurable risk, and one exclusively controlled by Moody’s,” Nielsen said. Moody’s is now the “de factor decision maker on Greek eligibility.”
Bloomberg 18 december 2009

SOME REALLY BAD NEWS FROM GREECE – OPPOSITION DECIDES TO VOTE AGAINST THE DEAL
The EU/IMF deal will find a majority in the Greek parliament but last night’s decision by Antonis Samaras, leader of the opposition New Democracy, to vote against the IMF/EU package destroys any hopes of a lasting consensus for reform.
Eurointelligence 5.05.2010

Vem ska i så fall betala den avskrivningen, är det skattebetalarna i euroländerna?

– Det ska de som äger grekiska obligationer göra, de som dumdristigt har köpt dem till alltför höga priser och alltför låga räntor. Det gäller då framför allt banker i södra och centrala Europa, säger Åslund.
Ekot 30 april 2010

Den enda fördelen med den aktuella situationen är att katastrofen är lika monumental som uppenbar. Till att börja med måste Europa sluta att förneka verkligheten och se den i vitögat.

Grekland: Tiden börjar rinna ut
Om åtstramningen går att klara, dödar den i så fall tillväxten?
Gunnar Jonsson Signerat DN 2010-04-29

The EU-IMF "therapy" of deflation for Greece repeats the catastrophic errors of Chancellor Heinrich Bruning in the early 1930s and must lead to a depression, he said.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 25 Apr 2010

Den 9 maj är det val i Tysklands största delstat Nordrhein-Westfalen med 18 miljoner invånare.
Händelsevis har eurozonens ledare nu bestämt datum för ett toppmöte om Grekland till dagen efter valet.
Gunnar Jonsson Signerat DN 2010-04-29

Framöver ställer krisen frågan om en valutaunion är möjlig utan gemensam finanspolitik.
Gunnar Jonsson Signerat DN 2010-04-29

Det är målsättningen om ett ständigt fastare förbund - "ever closer union" - som är själva grundbultsfelet med EU. Rolf Englund Barometerns website 7/6 2005

What about an outright default? How bad could it be?
Well, it would be big. Bigger than Russia's 1998 default and Argentina's 2001 default put together, in fact.
Robert Plummer, BBC 28/4

So what are the possible scenarios? Can Greece find an exit strategy or is it just forestalling disaster?

This is going to be the most important week in the 11-year history of Europe’s monetary union.
By the end of it we will know whether the Greek fiscal crisis can be contained or whether it will metastasise to other parts of the eurozone.
What we are seeing here is Europe’s equivalent of the US subprime crisis. Unless we hear some implausibly good news from Athens by Friday, it will soon blow up.
Wolfgang Münchau, FT April 25 2010

Under existing law Greece cannot be pushed out. In fact Greece cannot leave the eurozone voluntarily, without having to leave the EU as well. In any case, it is smarter for Greece to default inside the eurozone than outside. So what happens if the Bundestag blocks the aid? Greece will simply default, and this will put several German and French banks that hold large chunks of Greek sovereign and private debt at risk.

Germany
Four professors will launch a legal challenge in early May at the Verfassungsgericht (high court).
Should they secure an injunction, EMU may fly apart.
EMU shut the warning signals, disguising risk.
What investors overlooked is that currency risk mutates into default risk in a monetary union
The EU-IMF "therapy" of deflation for Greece repeats the catastrophic errors of Chancellor Heinrich Bruning in the early 1930s and must lead to a depression
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 25 Apr 2010

Friday will be remembered as the day the euro needed rescuing.
Sure it is Greece that has asked to be bailed out but it was still a day that the architects of the single currency had never envisaged.
For when it came to it, there were no plans to save a euro member in trouble.
Gavin Hewitt, the BBC's Europe editor, 24 April 2010

77 milarder kronor
It has been estimated that Germany will have to contribute over eight billion Euros to the relief effort.
For Merkel, whose coalition government is facing an important regional election in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia on May 9, that steep bill is becoming reality sooner than she would have liked.
Spiegel Online 23/4 2010

"The only effective remedy that remains is deflation," Strauss-Kahn told Austrian magazine profil in an interview.

European governments offered Greece a rescue package worth as much as 45 billion euros ($61 billion) in three-year loans at below-market interest rates.
Bloomberg April 11 2010

"Tyskland vek sig för trycket - vi ska inte lura oss själva att sådana lån är något annat än subventioner", sa Frank Schaeffler, biträdande finanstalesman för regeringskoalitionspartiet FDP.
DI/Direkt 2010-04-12

What if the Greek loans cannot be repaid? Will they just be rolled over?
And what if other countries like Portugal or even Spain run into difficulty? Will the same facility be made available to them and who will ultimately finance it?
m Gavin Hewitt, the BBC's Europe editor, 12/4 2010

Down the road, other questions will come into play. What if Greece - deep in recession - cannot meet its target to reduce its deficit by 4% this year? What if the economy goes into freefall? What if countries sense they may not get their money back? If it appeared others might want rescuing, when would the German taxpayer cry "enough"? Can the single currency prosper without fiscal union - a step with profound political implications?

Greece debt to foreign banks, total: 302.6 Billion dollars
- (source FAZ –Finanzmarkt - 09.04.2010)
comment by Dr Jonathan Wilson at Ambrose Daily Telegraph

Germany - 43.2
France - 75.5
Switzerland - 64.0
USA - 16.4
Great Britain - 12.3
Holland - 11.8
Others - 79.4
Total: 302.6 Billion Dollars

As I write, it appears that EU experts have agreed on a package of €20bn to €25bn at 350 points above the IMF tariff, or 5pc.
This achieves nothing. Such wishful thinking has plagued the Greek/EMU crisis from the start.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 11 Apr 2010

Greece must squeeze a further 13pc of GDP from the budget to stabilise debt costs by 2012, and do so during a slump when every euro of tightening leads to €1.5 to €2 in lost demand.

EU officials react with outrage to comparisons with Argentina, but as Mr Johnson says "Greece is far more indebted, is much less competitive in global markets, and needs a greater fiscal and wage adjustment".

Yet let us be honest. This is not a bail-out for Greece. It is a bail-out for European creditors that account for most of Greece's €391bn external debt (163pc of GDP). As such it is the first line of defence against greater sums at risk across Club Med. The EU rescue shifts the debacle onto taxpayers in order to prevent a systemic crisis, just like the bank bail-outs after the Lehman failure. The question is whether German Landesbanken with wafer-thin capital ratios can withstand a second crisis after losing so much already on US subprime debt.

This has echoes of Credit Anstalt, the Austrian bank that collapsed in June 1931, exposing the underlying rot of Europe's banks. It set off an earthquake across Germany and Central Europe. Contagion spread back into the Anglosphere, snuffing out the recovery of early 1931. The global financial order came crashing down. The Great Depression began in earnest.

Leaders of the 16 eurozone nations have agreed to fund up to 30 bn euros in emergency loans for Greece
Its total debt stands at nearly 300 bn euros.
BBC, Sunday, 11 April 2010 16:33 UK

Greece has to find around 11.5 bn euros by next month to meet its financial obligations.

Det finns ändå anledning till viss optimism.
Politikerna försöker tona ned problemen och hoppas samtidigt att EU:s löfte om solidaritet ska skapa lugn, utan att behöva omsättas i handling. Men marknadens aktörer låter sig inte övertygas.
Men för alla som anser att EU behövs finns det egentligen bara en slutsats. Den grekiska krisen måste och kan lösas, eftersom den i grunden handlar om EU-samarbetets framtid.
DN-ledare 10/4 2010

Redan nästa vecka måste Grekland försöka förlänga en del av landets stora statslån. Under de fem kommande veckorna behöver Aten låna motsvarande hundra miljarder kronor för att täcka det stora underskottet i den grekiska statsbudgeten

Germany's Bundesbank has fired a warning shot at Chancellor Angela Merkel, attacking the joint EU-IMF rescue plan for Greece as
a threat to economic stability and probably illegal.
Leaked extracts from an internal report appeared in the Frankfurter Rundschau
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 8 Apr 2010

Barclays Capital said any rescue would have to be at least €40bn-€45bn to restore confidence and provide Greece the funding it needs to buy time for reform.

"Jag hoppas att man, någonstans djupt nere i källarvalven hos ECB och det grekiska finansdepartementet, börja tänka det otänkbara. För detta fruktansvärda utfall börjar se bättre ut än alternativen", skriver Paul Krugman.

Any announcement of plans to leave the euro would, as Eichengreen points out, trigger disastrous bank runs.

I hope that somewhere, deep in the bowels of the ECB and the Greek Ministry of Finance, people are thinking about the unthinkable. Because this awful outcome is starting to look better than the alternatives.

The key thing to understand about Greece’s predicament is that
it’s not just a matter of excessive debt.
Unfortunately, Greece can’t expect a similar performance as US.
Why? Because of the euro.
Paul Krugman, New York Times April 8, 2010

Until recently, being a member of the euro zone seemed like a good thing for Greece, bringing with it cheap loans and large inflows of capital. But those capital inflows also led to inflation — and when the music stopped, Greece found itself with costs and prices way out of line with Europe’s big economies.

Over time, Greek prices will have to come back down. And that means that unlike postwar America, which inflated away part of its debt, Greece will see its debt burden worsened by deflation.

Greece could alleviate some of its problems by leaving the euro, and devaluing. But it’s hard to see how Greece could do that without triggering a catastrophic run on its banking system. Indeed, worried depositors have already begun pulling cash out of Greek banks.

There are no good answers here — actually, no nonterrible answers.

I’ve always been a mild euroskeptic —
I’m one of the American economists that Jonung and Drea, in a spectacularly ill-timed piece, mock for their doubts about EMU.
Paul Krugman NYT February 15, 2010

As I’ve tried to point out in a number of posts, Spain’s troubles are not, despite what you may have read, the result of fiscal irresponsibility.
Instead, they reflect “asymmetric shocks” within the eurozone, which were always known to be a problem, but have turned out to be an even worse problem than the euroskeptics feared.
There’s a kind of classic simplicity about the story — it’s almost like a textbook example. Unfortunately, millions of people are suffering the consequences.
Paul Krugman, New York Times, 9/2 2010

Marknadens oro för en betalningsinställelse är uppenbart rimlig oavsett om ECB:s Trichet vägrar se det på sin karta utan fortsätter tillåta att grekiska statsobligationer används som panter i banken.
Det är ett högt spel för Trichet vet att det tyska och inte minst franska banksystemet är kontaminerat med grekiska statsobligationer. Och han vet att det lurar ännu större kreditbomber runt hörnet i form av portugisiska, men framför allt irländska och spanska skuldberg.

Why the Greek rescue isn’t going to plan
Worries are mounting about the health of the Greek banking system,
raising the spectre of disorderly outflows of deposits
Mohamed El-Erian,FT April 7 2010

Markets around the world have yet to recognise the complexity of this situation. When they do, it will also become apparent that Greece is part of a wider, and historically unfamiliar phenomenon – that of a simultaneous and large disruption to the balance sheet of many industrial countries. Tighten your seat belts.

George Papaconstantinou, finance minister, said on Wednesday that the banks “have asked for access to the remaining funds of the support plan” – a $37bn government package that was put together during the 2008 global credit crunch.

Many savers had chosen to move funds to their banks’ subsidiaries outside Greece, including Cyprus and Luxembourg, rather than switch to foreign institutions. Others had transferred funds to local subsidiaries of foreign banks, the banker added.

Mr. Van Rompuy and many investors fear a sovereign default would start a chain reaction of panic and failures, perhaps breaking up the euro zone.
The worries are certainly not groundless, even if Greece’s debt of 270 billion euros is only 4 percent of all euro zone sovereign obligations. A write-down could reduce Greek banks to insolvency.
EDWARD HADAS, NYT April 5, 2010

Other fragile European banks would suffer. Other weak sovereign borrowers might follow, intentionally or not, creating a cascade of traumatic defaults.

For months, politicians like Mr. Van Rompuy have been trying to convince a doubtful world that a Greek default is unthinkable. A change would cause a shock, but on reflection investors might actually welcome a more realistic approach.

The Greek problem is important for the world, because the country has a particularly acute case of a common financial disease: debts that are too large to be serviced by its current incomes

The leverage-fed global bubble in asset prices has left many individuals, some companies and a daunting list of countries at credible risk of default whenever interest rates rise from their current ultralow levels.

Grekiska statspapper "massakreras" i en marknad med starkt säljtryck och dålig likviditet.
Tvååriga grekiska statspappersräntor steg drygt 40 punkter på förmiddagen på uppgifter om att Grekland vill omförhandla villkoren i stödmekanismen med EU och IMF. Under eftermiddagen har ränteuppgången förstärkts kraftigt och räntan noteras nu omkring 132 punkter högre, medan den tyska tvåårsräntan endast noteras 2 punkter högre än på torsdagen.
DI/Direkt 2010-04-06 15:39

I am willing to risk two predictions.
The first is that Greece will not default this year.
The second is that Greece will default.
Wolfgang Münchau, FT April 4 2010 19:14

The Greek government has demonstrated that it can still borrow at a rate of about 6 per cent but if you do the maths on the public debt dynamics, as I did recently, it would be hard to arrive at any other scenario than an eventual default.

As a member of a large monetary union Greece can improve its competitiveness only through relative disinflation against the eurozone average, which in effect means through deflation. But as the French economist Jacques Delpla* has pointed out, this will invariably produce a debt-deflation dynamic in the Greek private sector of the kind described by the economist Irving Fisher during the 1930s.

Southern Europe's problem is essentially a competitiveness problem, and not a fiscal one,
and if many states have been having growing difficulty with their negative fiscal balances, this is a symptom of the problem, and not its cause.
Even in the worst of cases - countries like Greece and Portugal - the rising recourse to fiscal outlays has been a response to lack of "healthy" growth, and the root cause of this continuing difficulty in generating real growth has been the underlying lack of competitiveness, and the inability to export your way out of trouble once the burden of debt starts to rise,
so simply pruning the fiscal side isn't going to cure the problem, and by now that simple point should be obvious, I would have thought.
Edward Hugh, Spain Economy Watch March 24, 2010

The fix was in. The deal done.
Just a couple of weeks back Greece had been saved
Gavin Hewitt, the BBC's Europe editor blog 9 April 2010

As I sat at breakfast that morning a thought nagged away at me. I could not think of a serious economist who did not believe the euro was a flawed currency.
Even friends of the euro had shaken their heads; you couldn't have monetary union without fiscal union. The differences between countries within the zone were too great.

The French president also got written into the draft a phrase that mentioned "the economic government of the European Union". It was the Irish, initially, that choked on the words. The Dutch and the British were not far behind. Officials emerged to say there had been "asymmetrical translation" and the word "government" was replaced by "governance".

In truth the Germans and French mean different things by the words "economic governance". The Germans want a tougher regulatory regime that won't tolerate cheats. The French want to see closer economic co-operation.

The IMF should impose default on Greece to end the charade
I just had lunch with Carmen Reinhart, author of `This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly” and a world authority on sovereign defaults.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Economics April 2nd, 2010

Suitably, she was wearing a medallion of a Spanish silver coin dating from 1580, celebrating Philip II’s third default in eighteen years. These magnificent defaults did not stop Spain launching the Armada against Elizabethan England a little later, or attempting to roll back the Protestant Reformation in a last maniacal attempt to impose Habsburg-Papal absolutism on free thinkers, but it did cripple some great European banking dynasties — about 20 in all.

A country can in theory deflate its way back to competitiveness by an `internal devaluation’, ie relative wage cuts, in this case by 20pc to 25pc. Benito Mussolini cut wages by 20pc or so in 1928 when Italy returned to Gold with his Lira Forte policy, but he had Fascist controls on the unions, and Camicie Nere to assist. Italy was not in any case facing the aftermath of a property boom.

It may not be possible for a country to execute such a policy when it already has a public debt above 100pc of GDP, or in Greece’s case nearing 130pc by next year. Debt dynamics take over. The policy leads to a self-feeding spiral in compound interest. This will become evident very soon if — as some economists predict — Greece’s economy contracts by 4pc to 5pc this year.

Read: “Lending to the Borrower From Hell: Debt Default In the Age of Phillip II, 1556-1598? by Maucio Drelichman and Hans-Joachim Voth for details on why the banks kept lending after each default.

I am aware of the commitment of Europe’s elite to the success of the European project.
But the crisis is profound – for the eurozone, the European Union and the world.
As Wolfgang Münchau has pointed out, last week’s European Council was not a solution but a fudge.
Martin Wolf FT March 30 2010

Prime Minister George Papandreou’s government must raise about 53 billion euros this year,
15.5 billion euros of it by the end of May.
Bloomberg March 29 2010

Failure to do so could spark a new round of the fiscal crisis and trigger the use of the aid plan to help Greece finance its budget deficit by standing behind the nation’s debt crafted by EU leaders in Brussels March 25.

The euro’s big fat failed wedding
The European Union was banking on three forms of convergence: economic, political and popular.
Gideon Rachman March 29 2010

The creators of the euro were like parents fixing an arranged marriage. They knew that they were locking together countries with very different economies and political cultures. But they hoped that, over time, the new partners would grow together and form a genuine union.

Once Europeans were using the same notes and coins, they would feel how much they had in common, develop shared loyalties and deepen their political union.

Finally, the designers of the single currency were hoping for a third form of convergence, between elite and popular opinion. They knew that in certain crucial countries, in particular Germany, the public did not share the political elite’s enthusiasm for the creation of the euro. But they hoped that, in time, ordinary people would embrace the new single European currency.

It is also now obvious that countries such as Greece, Spain and Portugal are struggling to compete with the much more productive German economy. In a currency union they cannot devalue their way out of trouble. The only alternative solution on offer is a long and painful period of austerity to reduce their costs through cuts in wages and living standards.

When the euro was launched, leading German politicians used to argue, with evident relish, that monetary union would eventually require political union. The Greek crisis was precisely the sort of event that was expected to force the pace.

Greece Borrows After EU Deal
The bond looked set to be priced at around 6.0 percent
more than twice what Germany pays
CNBC 29 Mar 2010

The aspect that puzzled me most was the announcement that a rescue would come in the form of a loan at market interest rates.
This surely must imply that the market would not be willing to lend money to Greece at market interest rates.
That is an absurd proposition.
Wolfgang Münchau, FT March 28 2010

Greece would have to be cut off from the capital markets; in such a situation it is difficult to imagine that a loan from the EU – at prohibitively high interest rates – would solve any problems.

The Greek problem is not simply access to capital – which has not been a problem during its crisis so far – but the interest rates the country has to pay for its debt

The Greek government recently announced an austerity package that aims to shave 4 percentage points off the deficit-to-gross domestic product ratio. This will result in a deep and probably long recession.

When a country adopts an austerity package of such magnitude it needs some form of relief, simply to make it through the recession. This would normally come either through devaluation or from a low-interest loan, usually from the International Monetary Fund, or ideally both.

Nu är problemet att Papandreou, eller vad han heter, den socialist som är statsminister i Grekland efter att ha fått sin utbildning i Sverige, har sagt att han vill att Grekland skall kunna låna till samma ränta som Tyskland gör.
Hur i hela fridens namn skall det gå till?
Det sitter EMU-ländernas finansministrar och funderar på. Det skall bli spännande att se vad de kommer fram till. Inte bara spännande, ganska lustigt också, faktiskt.
Rolf Englund blog 15/3 2010

David McWilliams has advocated in his SBP column that Ireland should choose to ’leave the Euro’. Please explain, in great detail (this is not a transition-year project) precisely
- how the introduction of a new currency in current circumstances would be executed, and
- how it would pan out in macro-policy terms.
German and other advocates of an expulsion option might join David in this exercise.

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