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Why Europe Keeps Failing........ merged with "EU Seizes Cypriot Bank Accounts"

Brad Sallows said:
"Are we there yet?"


Nope!  ;D

The Economist says that, "MARKETS breathed a sigh of relief on Monday ... But today the talks are once again in trouble. The creditors, represented by the European Commission and the IMF, have tabled counter-proposals and Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, has already rejected them. Tempers are rising again on both sides ..."
 
Longest culmination in history...  :waiting:
 
And another twist and turn, according to an article in the Globe and Mail ... The Globe's Eric Reguly sums it up well, I think, in his opening paragraphs:

    "One way or another, the end is nigh for Greece.

      In a surprise announcement on Friday night, Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras said Greece will hold a national referendum on July 5 on whether his country should accept the new bailout terms demanded by its international creditors.
      If the vote is “No,” Greece will almost certainly default, putting in on a fast track exit from the euro zone. If the vote is “Yes,” Greece will accept creditors’ demands for more austerity in exchange for more emergency loans that it will
      never be able to repay. The former would trigger a quick economic collapse; the latter would grind it down for years – a slow-motion suicide."

He concludes, also accurately:

    "You can see where this is heading. When the new tax demands and spending cuts hit in a few months, Greece’s recession will deepen and the jobless rate, which is actually ratcheting up again, will remain at gruesome levels. Greece will
      require another bailout, ensuring it will remain a ward of the IMF, the ECB and the EU for many more years. The price of keeping the euro zone intact is keeping Greece in austerity hell."
 
The comments section for this article demonstrate the difficulty in coming up with the "right" solution.
Or the least painful one.
 
E.R. Campbell said:
And another twist and turn, according to an article in the Globe and Mail ... The Globe's Eric Reguly sums it up well, I think, in his opening paragraphs:

    "One way or another, the end is nigh for Greece.

      In a surprise announcement on Friday night, Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras said Greece will hold a national referendum on July 5 on whether his country should accept the new bailout terms demanded by its international creditors.
      If the vote is “No,” Greece will almost certainly default, putting in on a fast track exit from the euro zone. If the vote is “Yes,” Greece will accept creditors’ demands for more austerity in exchange for more emergency loans that it will
      never be able to repay. The former would trigger a quick economic collapse; the latter would grind it down for years – a slow-motion suicide."

He concludes, also accurately:

    "You can see where this is heading. When the new tax demands and spending cuts hit in a few months, Greece’s recession will deepen and the jobless rate, which is actually ratcheting up again, will remain at gruesome levels. Greece will
      require another bailout, ensuring it will remain a ward of the IMF, the ECB and the EU for many more years. The price of keeping the euro zone intact is keeping Greece in austerity hell."


More from Mr Reguly in a second article after Brussels rejected the Greek "offer:

    "The odds of Greece leaving the euro zone rose dramatically on Saturday, when the monetary association's finance ministers rejected Greece's request to extend the country's current bailout beyond its June 30 expiry date ... A No vote
      [in the referendum] -- rejection of the creditors’ offer -- would almost certainly lead to Greece’s default on billions of euros in debt payments owed to the ECB and IMF in the next month and exit from the euro zone (known as Grexit).
      Most Greeks, however, want Greece to stay in the euro zone. “If it’s a No, you get Grexit and, given Greek support of euro zone membership, that would mean the end of the government,” Ms. Green said. “If it’s a Yes, Tsipras would
      have to step down. If he refused to [step down], he would have to implement a program in which he doesn’t believe.”"
 
Austerity measures are necessary but the Greeks wont take the steps they need to remain solvent.An exit from the Eurozone is almost a certainty.

 
Given the tendency for various crisis to build together and form a rogue wave cable of overwhelming the system, this article from zerohenge has a lot of frightening implications. The only one I don't agree with fully is the "threat" of populist parties; since this is essentially a reaction by voters against the very "elites" who have created the crisis atmosphere in the first place and refused to take steps to end it. (If anything I would put immigration as one of the other factors causing dissent in Europe as being of higher priority).

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-27/eu-officials-unleash-fearmongery-crisis-has-commenced

EU Officials Unleash The Fearmongery: "The Crisis Has Commenced"
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/27/2015 17:20 -0400

Presented with little comment aside to ask if someone is off-script?

*NOONAN: THE CRISIS HAS COMMENCED
*SCHAEUBLE SAYS `HELLISH DIFFICULT TASK' ON GREECE
*NOONAN: I HAVE SYMPATHY FOR THE GREEK PEOPLE

"Financial arrangement with Greece, without immediate prospects of a follow-up arrangement, will require measures by the Greek authorities, with the technical assistance of the institutions, to safeguard the stability of the Greek financial system,” ministers from 18 euro area member-states say today.

“The Eurogroup will monitor very closely the economic and financial situation in Greece and the Eurogroup stands ready to reconvene to take appropriate decisions where needed, in the interest of Greece as euro area member” ministers say in statement after informal meeting in Brussels
Translation: you are on your own, f##kers

*  *  *

But always remember, "Greece doesn't matter," which as Mohamed El-Erian explains, is somewhat true, since European leaders have two other existential issues to contend with also...

Via Project Syndicate,

Dark clouds are lowering over Europe’s economic future, as three distinct tempests gather: the Greek crisis, Russia’s incursion in Ukraine, and the rise of populist political parties. Though each poses a considerable threat, Europe, aided by the recent cyclical pickup, is in a position to address them individually, without risking more than a temporary set of disruptions. Should they converge into a kind of “perfect storm,” however, a return to sunny days will become extremely difficult to foresee any time soon.

As it stands, the three storms are at different stages of formation.

The Greek crisis, having been building for years, is blowing the hardest. Beyond the potential for the first eurozone exit, Greece could be at risk of becoming a failed state – an outcome that would pose a multi-dimensional threat to the rest of Europe. Mitigating the adverse humanitarian consequences (associated with cross-border migration), and geopolitical impact of this storm would be no easy feat.

The second storm, rolling in from the EU’s east, is the costly military conflict in Ukraine’s Donbas region. The crisis in eastern Ukraine has been contained only partly by the Minsk II ceasefire agreement, and reflects the deepest rupture in the West’s relationship with Russia since the Soviet Union’s collapse.

Further Russian interference in Ukraine – directly and/or through separatist proxies in Donbas – would present the West with a stark choice. It would either have to tighten sanctions on Russia, potentially tipping Western Europe into recession as Russia responds with counter-sanctions, or accommodate the Kremlin’s expansionist ambitions and jeopardize other countries with Russian-speaking minorities (including the EU’s Baltic members).

The third storm – political tumult brought about by the rise of populist political movements – poses yet another serious threat. Energized by broad voter dissatisfaction, particularly in struggling economies, these political movements tend to focus on a small handful of issues, opposing, say, immigrants, austerity, or the European Union – essentially whomever they can scapegoat for their countries’ troubles.

Already, Greek voters handed the far-left anti-austerity Syriza party a sweeping victory in January. France’s far-right National Front is currently second in opinion polls. The anti-immigration Danish People’s Party finished second in the country’s just-concluded general election, with 22% of the vote. And, in Spain, the leftist anti-austerity Podemos commands double-digit support.

These parties’ extremist tendencies and narrow platforms are limiting governments’ policy flexibility by driving relatively moderate parties and politicians to adopt more radical positions. It was concern about the United Kingdom Independence Party’s capacity to erode the Conservatives’ political base that pushed Prime Minister David Cameron to commit to a referendum on the country’s continued EU membership.

With three storms looming, Europe’s leaders must act fast to ensure that they can dissipate each before it merges with the others, and cope effectively with whatever disruptions they cause. The good news is that regional crisis-management tools have lately been strengthened considerably, especially since the summer of 2012, when the euro came very close to collapsing.

Indeed, not only are new institutional circuit breakers, such as the European Financial Stability Facility, in place; existing bodies have also been made more flexible and thus more effective. Moreover, the European Central Bank is engaged in a large-scale asset-purchasing initiative that could be easily and rapidly expanded. And countries like Ireland, Portugal, and Spain have, through hard and painful work, reduced their vulnerability to contagion from nearby crises.

But these buffers would be severely strained if the gathering storms converged into a single devastating gale. Given the EU’s fundamental interconnectedness – in economic, financial, geopolitical, and social terms – the disruptive impact of each shock would amplify the others, overwhelming the region’s circuit breakers, leading to recession, reviving financial instability, and creating pockets of social tension. This would increase already-high unemployment, expose excessive financial risk-taking, embolden Russia, and strengthen populist movements further, thereby impeding comprehensive policy responses.

Fortunately, the possibility of such a perfect storm is more a risk than a baseline at this point. Nonetheless, given the extent of its destructive potential, it warrants serious attention by policymakers.

Securing Europe’s economic future in this context will require, first and foremost, a renewed commitment to regional integration efforts – completing the banking union, advancing fiscal union, and moving forward on political union – that have been crowded out by a never-ending series of meetings and summits on Greece. Likewise, on the national level, pro-growth economic-reform initiatives – which seem to have lost some urgency in the face of overly complacent and excessively accommodating financial markets – need to be revitalized. This would ease the policy burden on the ECB, which is currently being forced to pursue multiple ambitious objectives that far exceed its capacity to deliver sustainably good outcomes regarding growth, employment, inflation, and financial stability.

The current focus on the downpour in Greece is understandable. But policymakers should not be so distracted by it that they fail to prepare for the other two possible storms – and, much more worrisome, the possibility that they merge into a single more devastating one. Europe’s leaders must act now to minimize the risks, lest they find their shelters inadequate to the extreme weather that could lie ahead.
 
Euronation: 

The act of continuing to financially support a position long since proved to be beyond recovery.

Col.:
1.  Pour good money after bad.
2.  Pour money down a rat hole.

:nod:
 
calvin-pees.jpg
 
Greece hits the wall:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/06/greece-looks-certain-to-default-on.html

Greece looks certain to default on Tuesday

Cash-strapped Greece looks certain to miss its debt repayment to the IMF on Tuesday as Greece's European partners shut the door on extending a credit lifeline after Greece's surprise move to hold a referendum on bailout terms.

Fear of an imminent default by Greece hit Greek banks, a major buyer of Greek government bills, triggering bank runs over the weekend and forcing Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to announce a bank holiday and capital controls.

Some investors, however, are pinning their hopes on the possibility that Greek voters will back the creditors' bailout terms in next weekend's referendum, returning Athens to the negotiating table, despite Tsipras urging a no vote.

"Right now the surprise is that the euro is not weaker. The logic may either be that the Greek government will come back to the negotiating table or that it will not survive long, if 'Yes' prevails contrary to their recommendation," said Steven Englander, Global Head of G10 FX Strategy at CitiFX in New York.

Greece, which may default on an International Monetary Fund debt repayment due on Tuesday after talks with creditors broke down, owes its official lenders 242.8 billion euros ($271 billion), according to a Reuters calculation based on official data, with Germany by far the largest creditor.

Greece has a population of about 11.2 million.

Greece has about $25,000 worth of debt for every man, women and child.



Greek Capital Controls

Greece imposed capital controls and ordered banks to close temporarily after the European Central Bank froze a vital financial lifeline following the breakdown of bailout talks between Athens and foreign creditors.

Here are the main measures adopted by the government:

- Banks will close until to July 6. All credit institutions in Greece, including branches of foreign banks, are affected.

- The finance minister may shorten or extend the bank holiday period.

- ATMs will open from Monday afternoon. Daily cash withdrawals will be limited to 60 euros. The limit can be changed by the finance minister.

- Payments via debit or credit cards to accounts within Greece and online banking transactions within Greece will be allowed but payments and transfers to accounts outside Greece are prohibited.

- Cash withdrawals at ATMs with bank cards that have been issued by foreign banks will be allowed. Withdrawal limits may be set by the finance minister.

- All other transactions will not be permitted.
 
Well, now it's official: Greece is the first "developed" country to have defaulted on the IMF. That loan was due at midnight London time ...
 
Greek capital controls claim the first victims. How long before the very business that Greece needs to generate growth and jobs pull pole because they simply cannot function?

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-07-02/greece-s-problems-extend-to-the-cloud

Greece's Problems Extend to the Cloud
3 JUL 2, 2015 12:21 PM EDT
By Virginia Postrel

Starting a technology company has become much cheaper and easier in recent years. Businesses can contract out functions, from cloud computing to e-mail list management, that once would have required in-house equipment and expertise. Amazon Web Services, for instance, boasts that more than “a million active customers in more than 190 countries” are using its hosting services instead of relying on their own servers.

Now some of those customers suddenly can’t pay their bills -- not because they don’t have the funds but because the Greek government won’t let their money leave the country. Just as individual Greeks are losing access to Apple’s iCloud, as the Athens staff of Bloomberg News recently discovered, so companies are finding themselves cut off from services critical to their ongoing operations.

The problem demonstrates a hidden risk in today’s otherwise efficient vertical disintegration. Taking for granted the easy flow of money across borders, system designers never foresaw a situation in which companies with adequate funds would find that they couldn’t pay foreign vendors.

“Greek companies are not able at this moment to pay for hosting (Amazon), storage (Dropbox), email services (MailChimp) and many other services,” says Jon Vlachogiannis, a Bay Area entrepreneur, in an email. Without these services, otherwise viable businesses are in trouble.

Vlachogiannis and fellow expat entrepreneur Panos Papadopoulos have teamed up to keep such Greek enterprises going in the most straightforward way possible: They’re paying their bills from California.

The money comes out of their own pockets, and those of other Silicon Valley contributors. The effort is a small but remarkable example of entrepreneurial solidarity, benefiting for-profit businesses without expecting a return. While most donors are Greek, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen tweeted that he’d contribute and has promoted the project to his 346,900 Twitter followers.

The amounts involved are astonishingly low.

The first 10 companies received only about €1,000, says Vlachogiannis. “The problem you see, is not that they don't have the money,” he says. “These are healthy businesses.” Just a little help can keep their doors open, and their workers employed, until they find a long-term solution.

The money is a gift, Vlachogiannis says, not a loan or investment. “If people want to repay us, all they have to do is to keep working :)

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg View's editorial board or Bloomberg LP, its owners and investors.

To contact the author on this story:
Virginia Postrel at vpostrel@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor on this story:
James Gibney at jgibney5@bloomberg.net
 
Returning the EU from a political integration and bureaucratic empire building project to a free trade zone is probably teh best possible outcome, however I'm not clear that there is either the will or even plausible mechanisms (outside of a hard crash that breaks things) for this to happen:

http://www.the-american-interest.com/2015/07/02/grexit-may-be-europes-teaching-moment/

Grexit May Be Europe’s Teaching Moment
Andrew A. Michta

The unfolding Greek tragedy is about more than economics. It’s also about the EU’s democracy deficit.

There is no denying that the Greek default—whatever its final outcome—will bring Greece economic dislocation and even more pain, and there’s no doubt that it will launch further shockwaves across the Continent and the Atlantic. But at its foundation the unfolding “Greek tragedy” is about more than the Athenian political class’s lies and pandering and the Greek citizenry’s unsustainable expectations. It is ultimately about the European Union, the limits of top-down state engineering, and European elites’ hubris and disregard for the effects of their schemes on the ordinary citizen. It is telling indeed that Europe’s postmodern elites, as they berate the Greek Prime Minister for daring to demand a referendum on his country’s most consequential decision in decades, seem still to believe in the non-negotiable character of the European Union project. For them, institutions will always trump cultures, and economic inducements will always overcome deeply rooted national identities. Germany and France are prosperous, and they surely have the right to engage in democratic processes. Does Greece not have that right, simply because it has driven itself into bankruptcy?

The European idea of a common market expanding into a larger community of nations remains as valid today as it was in the 1950s. Trade, cross-investment, and the sharing of resources for infrastructure projects, insofar as they benefit economic growth, are all part of the manifest successes of the original vision of a European community. Still, the EU as it is presently conceived has produced more than its share of hubris and bad ideas, beyond the notion of bringing Greece into the Eurozone. The partial de-nationalization of the state and the partial limits on state sovereignty in the name of peace still lie at the foundation of the original European project, but they have since given way, especially since the end of the Cold War, to a European bureaucratic fantasy of what should constitute the “Union.” The idea of a common market has been knocked out from its central place by the vision of a pan-European quasi-state entity, whose workings few in Europe understand, and which, most importantly, has consistently failed to generate a new Europe-wide identity in place of national allegiances. This is not just a Greek problem; bureaucratic empire building has its limits, and we call those limits “citizens.” The stirrings across Europe, from the United Kingdom through Spain to Poland, show that the issues at hand are not purely economic, and that traditional national identity, citizen participation and sovereignty remain just as relevant to democracy today as they were in years past.

It is particularly poignant that Greece and its demos are what may ultimately force Europe to rediscover the original premises underlying the European project and the meaning of democratic processes.It is particularly poignant that Greece and its demos are what may ultimately force Europe to rediscover the original premises underlying the European project and the meaning of democratic processes. In the hubbub of the past months, as Grexit inched closer, commentaries emanating from Europe (and at times from the U.S.) often lost sight of the fact that in the final analysis Greece is a democratic society (one which has faults, not least a tendency to live beyond its means). The Greeks have the right to make their own choices, and likewise the responsibility to live with the consequences. The European project should be about creating a community of democratic nations whose voices and aspirations are not lost in the larger whole. Or perhaps the problem is that what analysts have often called Europe’s “democracy deficit” goes deeper than what they suspected. We shall know soon enough.
It is perhaps pointless to re-hash the euro’s original sin of disconnecting fiscal and monetary policies, or whether this was an overreach from the start. Europe’s common currency, notwithstanding economic arguments then and now, remains a quintessentially political project. As it happens, a nation’s inability to control and thereby assume responsibility for the consequences of its monetary policy remains one of the most disruptive aspects of the euro when it comes to the functioning of a democracy. This is less about economics than about the deepest fundamentals of democratic politics and self-government. This dilemma could perhaps be glossed over in times of stability and prosperity (especially if the government, as in the Greek case, simply cheats and lies and others pretend they don’t notice). But to expect that, at a time of national emergency, Mr. Tsipras will bend to Ms. Merkel’s and Mr. Juncker’s will without a fight is to misread the basics of democratic politics. He may still fail, and Greece may still accept the terms of another bailout (desperate people can be cowed), but let us not confuse such a move with democratic process.

Despite the dangerous economic winds ahead, there may ultimately be a silver lining to the “Greek tragedy”: Europe may begin to return the grand elite project it has always been to its proper and necessary democratic context. Economic market integration is a workable path to peace, but EU leaders should never have lost sight of the limitations of this project imposed by the enduring primacy of national sovereignty. In the end, the European Union is not a state but a treaty-based organization, and it is unreasonable therefore to expect that its members will surrender all sovereignty on the most fundamental aspects of their existence.

Asking the Greeks to forgo for decades any reasonable prospects of economic recovery just so that the euro idea remains pristine is a bridge too far. For Greece, being on EU welfare for a generation is not a solution. It is time to let the Greeks return to the drachma and start the painful process of putting their economy back together. And for EU leaders, it is time to learn some humility as they craft policy.

Andrew A. Michta is the M. W. Buckman Professor of International Studies at Rhodes College and an adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
 
Brad Sallows said:
Any guesses as to which finger Greeks are dipping in ink as they vote today?

It must only be a question of left or right hand, the digit would be the same no matter.  ;)
 
Good2Golf said:
It must only be a question of left or right hand, the digit would be the same no matter.  ;)

Sounds like a good comparison to the outcome of this whole mess.

Damned if they do, damned if they don't. The result will be the same. They'll still be bankrupt and will still have to deal with the same financial institutions and trading partners whether they vote yes or no.
 
What happens if the banking system collapses ?People cant get cash.Gas stations close.Grocery stores close.Utilities shut down.This could end up bringing Europe down and spread to the US.Frightening.
 
This referendum is a confidence vote, nothing more. The result will likely not change anything to the near future of Greece. As mentionned above, either way they are screwed; a country cannot become unbankrupt with a popular vote.
 
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