Friday 20 May 2011

Greek tragedy rolls on. Who loses? You do! Youtube clip at bottom

Implementation of policy is of no interest to policy makers. The late unlamented DSK's brilliant Greek bail out mark one failed this test as did his mark 2. Probably for the best that DSK has resigned to concentrate on his courtroom performance which I hope is better than his Greek one which the natives simply ignored. As a result the IMF team has refused to sign off the Greek bail out package marks 1 and 2 so what is the EU's solution. Why bail out mark 3 with yet more of your money thrown at the Greeks.

Part of the IMF package was the privatisation of state owned assets with the proceeds a la Thatcher used to pay down the Greek debt Olympus. I was vastly amused to hear the only privatisation so far was of the Piraeus container terminal. Nice one Zorba! If there is one group who worldwide are renowned for bloody minded strikes its the dockers. Think of Liverpool, Tilbury and the New York longshoremen over the years and you can see trouble ahead. I should point out the Port of New York police were responsible for the arrest of DSK so they must be classed as good guys.

Much of the talk about rescheduling etc is hogwash. To keep the Euro and the EU afloat the privately owned Greek bonds will have to be redeemed at par by issuing yet more Greek debt to its monopoly buyer the publicly owned ECB. Its the old story, privatise the profits and nationalise the losses. The only solution is for the Greeks to leave the Euro and, sacre bleu, for the great retreat for the EU to begin. They have met their Borodino and Stalingrad all rolled into one.

The markets are already passing judgement. Two year Greek rates are now over 16%! The ten year rate is now 16.64%, the Portuguese 10 year is at 9.2% and the Spanish rate is nudging up to 5.44% anticipating troubles ahead.

The Greeks should be left to go bust, fire their politicians, leave the Euro and tackle their endemic tax evasion.

I give my take on the IMF succession on Youtube. Quality is a bit amateurish. My previous efforts were made more professionally by Doug Dawson

To watch and listen click on IMF

1 comment:

Peter H. Rogers said...

Hello there, I think you will be interested on today’s article on the British Gazette:

http://www.british-gazette.co.uk/2011/05/20/the-euro-on-course-for-disaster/

Home URL: http://www.british-gazette.co.uk/

Kind Regards,

Peter Rogers