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Schauble And Varoufakis Meeting Ends: "We Didn't Even Agreed To Disagree"
Less than 24 hours after the ECB showed it would only play hardball from now on, there were some hopes that either the Greek position would soften or that Germany would indicate it may agree to at least a modest compromise to avoid the worst possible outcome.
Alas, as the following photo from the ongoing press conference between the finance ministers of Greece and Germany shows...
... it was not meant to be.
- SCHAEUBLE SAYS HAD INTENSIVE TALKS WITH VAROUFAKIS
- SCHAEUBLE SAYS NO AGREEMENT YET WITH VAROUFAKIS ON WAY AHEAD
- SCHAEUBLE: GERMANY MUST HAVE UNDERSTANDING FOR GREEK WOES
- SCHAEUBLE: GREECE MUST WORK WITH TROIKA AS PER PRIOR AGREEMENTS
- SCHAEUBLE: SAYS SOME GREEK POLICY MEASURES GO IN WRONG DIRECTION
- SCHAEUBLE: DEBT CUT FOR GREECE IS NOT ON THE TABLE
- SCHAEUBLE: HAVE GONE TO THE LEGAL LIMITS IN PROVIDING AID
The punchline:
- SCHAEUBLE: MY PRESS SPOKESMAN ADVISED ME TO SAY "WE AGREED TO DISAGREE"
And the other side:
- VAROUFAKIS SAYS HAS NOT REACHED AGREEMENT WITH SCHAEUBLE
- VAROUFAKIS SAYS OUTLINED GREEK GOVT PRIORITIES TO SCHAEUBLE
- VAROUFAKIS SAYS AGREED WITH SCHAEUBLE TO ENTER A CONSULTATION
- VAROUFAKIS SAYS IT IS TIME TO PUT AN END TO GREECE'S ECONOMIC WOES, SURE PEOPLE OF GERMANY WANT TO GET OVER GREEK SAGA
- VAROUFAKIS SAYS WE DIDN'T DISCUSS GREECE'S DEBT REPAYMENT SCHEDULE OR DEBT HAIRCUT
Yanis' punchline:
- VAROUFAKIS SAYS "WE DIDN'T EVEN AGREE TO DISAGREE"
Said otherwise, if the ECB had hoped that by escalating the political fight by yanking the proverbial financial rug from under Greece it would lead to a quick submission of Greece, it has so far failed.
All of this happens after ECB member Peter Praet had some choice comments of his own as well:
- PRAET SAYS DECISION ON GREEK WAIVER WAS 'NOT AN EASY DECISION'
- PRAET SAYS DECISION ON GREEK WAIVER 'SHOULDN'T BE A SURPRISE'
It wasn't a surprise: as we noted on January 31, Vitor Constancio was kind enough to warn Greece this was coming several days ago. But the bigger question is why wasn't this an "easy decision" - after all isn't the ECB just following its rules? Because if it wasn't "easy" it implies there was much discretion in the choice, discretion which makes it very clear this latest escalation is nothing but a move by a central bank which is anything but, and is now clearly a political power broker to an increasingly troubled continent, which as some are starting to whisper, is starting to lose control.
Watch the press conference here:
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they will allow for budget expansion just like QE... Germany can be out voted every time and they will.. They have the rest of Europe locked into par exchange rate with them.. and their own interest rates are near or sub zero as they suck all the capital out of the other countries . Germany has economies of scale (larger population)
11 mill Greeks cant compete with 80 mill Germans, The only benifit for other countries is if they get the benifit of lower interest rates from the stronger currency and finding some neach markets.. Germany wont leave its too good a deal for them..
So being outvoted is somehow a good thing.
Do you even understand your own drivel?
"zerohedge @zerohedge 52m52 minutes ago
SCHAEUBLE SAYS HAVE GONE TO THE LEGAL LIMITS IN PROVIDING AID for insolvent banks"
Duh, .....Insolvent....
Insanity!
In game theory, when you have no leverage, the only leverage you can achieve is to keep your opponent off balance by not being rational and being obstinate. This is playing out exactly as I would do it. If the rules don't favor you then simply, change the rules.
The other key factor is that Greece really has nothing to lose as long as it has the balls to stick with the plan and no one defects.
The Eurozone is screwed because they are playing by the old rules and Greece just made up a new batch.
Go Greece.
A lady that I know just came from Artemida
She smiled because I did not understand
Then she held out a big stack of Greek bonds
She said they were the best in all the land
And I said
"No, no, no, no, I don't trade ‘em no more
I'm not sure when they’ll find a floor
No, thank you, please, should Merkel sneeze
It might be too hard to find the door."
It's more than I could have dreamed.
Schauble plays arrogant, self absorbed bureaucrat to a "T".
There is halo about YV.
Tax payers will take it in the shorts but that was the plan anyway. Eurocrats are just pissed because these guy are not reading from the scrip are exposing the monetary system for the scam that it is.
We need Syriza in US but things will have to get a lot worse before we are ready to deal with our problems. So for today ompa - BTFD!
Better would be the EU + Germany.
Well, the ECB has been keeping the Greek people barely alive in the EU basement, cannibalizing them slowly by sawing their limbs off one by one. Now the Greeks have stood up to their captors, and the ECB stopped feeding them. Next the gun comes out of its holster?
Germany says...Greece must give in and become our future servants.
Greece says....we need do nothing except wait for you to shit your pants and give in.
Germany and ECB is doing the right thing for europe...when Marxists come begging extorting threatening to blow up the common market unless we get treated special and get MORE MORE free money...the only response is to send them packing with a big dose of reality.
As it turns out the only one the greeks are blowing up are themselves, euro and eurostoxx doing just fine...
Greeks are a bunch of wellfare pork barrell spending drug addicts. Eurstat shows that greek gov spending of 90B EUR is the same in 2014 as it was in 2006 with little inflation interim. Reducing unsustainable deficit spending IS NOT austerity.
So grow up greeks, the irish said thank you and got to work after their bailout...they didnt tried to keep scamming the EU/germans..enough is enough.
That's the trouble with liar loans. Everybody ends up unhappy.
Except the guys who get the fees up front/interest and offload them at par to the ECB.
"when Marxists come begging extorting "
what a naive child you are. lol
Where is the US Fed when you need it ? Instead of giving fiat aid to israel, help out poor, victimized greece! ZH'rs need to show fraternal concern themselves and buy more greek government bonds and lots of low-taxed greek real estate./sarc
Why would Greece 'austerity' for the sake of passing money from one bank to another whilst the country sinks into eternal servitude.
Greece Must leave the Euro or have no hope. HOW can Greece ever recover or grow when it has trade with the same currency as Germany??
Picture Caption:
"Look Schauble, I'm not happy about this either, but you should have kept your dog out of the driveway."
This is the real game the greeks are playing, http://business.financialpost.com/2015/01/26/terence-corcoran-stop-the-handwringing-greece-is-going-nowhere/
Europe is not a country...though a handful of unelected Beligians with their French/German etc masters.. want there to be no European countries, and all the existing diversity to dissapear under their control. Such ideas to doom Europe to eternal strife...
It's a German empire knit together using Credit Default Swaps To keep the provinces in line.
Paradoxically, All you have to do to gain power is NOT take the money.
For once, hopefully, only once, in my life, I find myself agreeing with one V. Noodleham.
FUCK THE EU.
Greece is a sovereign nation. The bottom line is, that sovereign nations can do whatever the fuck they like. You can sanction and fine and attempt to control, but there is no limit to the number of 'fuck you's that can be dished out. It might seem rash and cause a confidence crisis, but if the country in question agrees that this is the path they will take and damn the consequences, the only way you can change that is by invading.
absolutely
If they want to turn nations like Iraq and Syria into piles of rubble, that is a sovereign nation's right. And if Obama wants to bomb the Acropolis into pea gravel, that's what NATO was created for.
Sieg Heil EU.
Some are more sovereign than others.
mirror mirror on the walll
who's the sovereignest of them all? (wink wink)
You guys blither a lot sometimes, even if snarkily, which is sometimes amusing.
Varoufakis I admire for his intellectual rigor and honesty. This cannot be faulted. It's healthy that we'd probably consider different alternatives in resolving a conflict such as the one we're watching here. So long as we can work openly on a synthesis, and it appears that Yanis is asking for no more than this at the moment.
I also admire that the only interests he is beholden to are the voters who agreed to his leadership. It's a sort of enviable position in the political.
Where Yanis stands on Schaübel and the Europeople is hardly mysterious. Read the man's website for God's sake
http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2013/07/21/the-annotated-wolfgang-schauble-commentary-on-his-guardian-article-19th-july-2013/
Here he is responding to a Shaübel op ed in the Guardian 19,07,2013:
.....[T]hey disbanded social security and reduced public heath provision to a cruel joke, and they called it ‘reformed social security’. They closed down public radio and tv, and ensured that Greeks have no income from which to pay their increasing tax bill, and they called it ‘reformed public administration’. They shrank wages to third world levels and put armies of workers on the dole, and they called it ‘more competitiveness’. They pushed investment into negative territory, and they called it ‘investor confidence’....
George Orwell eat your heart out! They fashioned the most fragile crisis-resolution mechanism possible and described is as ‘robust’. They sent debt-to-GDP ratios into the stratosphere and have the audacity to speak of ‘sound budgets’. They introduced more of the Maastricht-like limitations that Germany was the first to violate (quite rightly) when it faced a public finance crisis; and they congratulate themselves like latter-day King Canutes who will stem a future tide of troubles by a mere command of their debt brakes.
Yeah, their first conversation in this context almost had to be refractory, and that's ok. It has to happen. Whether it is a beginning or end we've yet to see, but there will be a synthesis. Of that we can be sure.
The Greeks are already screwed about as bad as they can be and that they got there is everyone's fault. The "fix" of debt to pay debt... to pay debt is plainly stupid and appears to have reached its logical conclusion in this tiny nation of 13 million not as productive as a lot of other souls.
It'd be real inconvienient for a while, that time depending on how clever anyone is, but fiscal autonomy for Greece really doesn't look like a poorer option to continuing to pretend that what's going now is viable. It'd be ugly for CDSlândia, but that's part of the game, too.
interesting talk that YV gave at Columbia a couple years back:
The Global Minotaur: The Crash of 2008 and the Euro-Zone Crisis in Historical Perspectivehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVxaTC7Qp44
Fan fucking tastic. I think the new Greek minister should have a fan page.
these greek commies have no gravitas, what is tsipras other than an upstart student protester and very opportunist demagogue. Yahoofakis claim to fame is that he works for a game company; RL is not a game. Maybe you guys should read up on schauble...he has immense integrity and is rightly respected both outside and inside germany.
I think the greeks have deluded themselves into thinking that just because they vote for these jokers, they can extort more money to spend on 55 year old retirements with full indexed pensions and 30 hr work weeks....and never having to repay their debts, just as they're used to doing...bk every few decades before they joined the eu.
Guess what, greece gave up its sovereignty when it joined the EU. They better wise up fast before they go the way of cyprus
"these greek commies "
what a jerk you are. lol
http://business.financialpost.com/2015/01/26/terence-corcoran-stop-the-handwringing-greece-is-going-nowhere/
The only solution is a major haircut and normalization of trade with Russia and investment projects with the BRICS. You can't get yourself out of a debt grave by continually digging with an IMF spade. Deaths is the result with this approach. Troika's ultimate goal is total grab on the assets on the penny. Greece is deconstructing the Troika death trap!
If the Troika's so-called "asset grab" is eventually successful all it means is that it will have confirmed Greece's financial failure and that having failed, their financial and economic condition will then be all but terminal.
Varafoukis : We will keep our election promises.
Schauble : We would have won WW2 had you not delayed Barbarossa for two fucking months.
Varafoukis : Our mandate is to end the crippling austerity driving us to bankruptcy.
Schauble : We would be still be in Moscow now with all that lovely oil except for you bastards.
Varafoukis : For you, no beach towel on our gorgeous beaches no more, try Heligoland, the North Sea is quite bracing this time of year.
etc etc
Greek deadbeats want a debt reduction. Germany wants the money Greece borrowed in good faith. Syriza wants more government hand outs and socialist unicorn rides. Germany wants them to live within their means so they won't come groveling for more money.
Unemployment has been dropping in Grease..... hahahha - how can you negotiate with a delusional tool.
.