Something amusing happened in today's global capital markets: while European bond markets, especially in the periphery, are sliding following the Spanish downgrade and the Italian bond auction, one market has soared: that of Greece, which is up nearly double digits (not all that meaningful when you are at 20+ year lows), and whose bankrupt and deposit-free banks are up 20%. Which in turn is pushing US futures higher despit the Spanish record yield. What has caused this spike? Nothing but more political rhetoric and jawboning. Specifically, overnight Kathimerini [9]reported that "Stefanos Manos, the leader of the small liberal party Drasi, claims that leftist SYRIZA will not scrap Greece’s bailout if it comes to power because it is the only way it can guarantee salaries for its supporters in the civil service." Well, yes. Tspiras never said he will scrap the bailout. He merely said that he will end the memorandum in its current format. The decision then, and as always, would lie with Germany and the ECB, what to do about this latest Nash Equilibrium defection. In other words, the ultimate decision-maker was never Tsipras, and in fact even ND's Samaras has repeatedly said he would renegotiation the terms of the Greek bailout. But in this centrally-planned, robotically-traded market, confusion over cause and effect is to be widely expected.
“SYRIZA has taken over, mainly from PASOK, the patronage of the status quo created by labor groups,” he told party supporters during a rally on Wednesday night.
On Thursday, Manos repeated his position in an interview with Skai TV. «SYRIZA's customers are the civil servants, public enterprise employees and academics. [Alexis] Tsipras has to ensure that he can pay their wages. I wouldn't worry at all [about the bailout being rejected]."
Manos said that the real issue at these elections was not whether parties favour the memorandum or not. “The issue is restoring the balance between the rights and responsibilities of the privileged in the public sector and those without privileges in the productive sectors of the economy,” he said.
Drasi is cooperating with pro-business Dimiourgia Xana (Recreate Greece) and the Liberal Alliance for the June 17 elections.
So propaganda aside, what did Tsipras really say? Well, fast forward 2 hours in the same Kathimerini which reports [10]...
SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras says that if his party comes first in Sunday’s elections, it will signify the end of the EU-IMF memorandum but the leftist added that he is prepared to negotiate a new deal with Greece’s lenders.
In an interview aired on Antenna TV on Thursday morning, Tsipras said that voters, not SYRIZA would decide if the terms of Greece’s bailout should be cancelled. “The memorandum will be repudiated by the people’s vote, not us,” he said.
Tsipras said that he wants the policy of internal devaluation to stop but that he is prepared to discuss all these issues with Greece’s eurozone counterparts.
In other words, as explained over the past 2 months, the Greek politicians will likely send a bid for memorandum renegotiation in either case. What happens then is out of their hands. The bigger question is whether Germans will have the stomach for Greek bailout #3. If one judges by the comments after yesterday's Die Ziet article [11], and by the emergence of the #StoppESM twitter hashmark, futures have much more to be worried about than what some C-grade politician in Greece has to say.