Venizelos retains some hope but also prepares for elections
Speaking after party leaders met President Karolos Papoulias on Sunday, PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos told party members that he held out some hope that a new government would be formed but also warned them to prepare for new elections.
Venizelos devoted much of his speech to attacking the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA) and its leader Alexis Tsipras for refusing to accept a role on a unity government.
“Mr Tsipras told us that holding new elections would not be a disaster,” he said. “The three parties (New Democracy, PASOK and Democratic Left) have a majority, you form a government and we will be the opposition party, he said,” added the PASOK leader.
“Despite the impasse during the meeting with the President of the Republic, I maintain some hope that a government can be formed,” Venizelos told party members. “But despite that, we are preparing for new elections.”
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EUROBLOWN: Why the Greeks should ignore the scaremongering, and dump the euro. Yes, Greek citizens, this sight could be yours at no extra cost!
The twice-daily soap opera Euroblown is now pretty much into its stride as far as the format is concerned. Head Scriptwriter Wolfgang Schäuble briefs the cast on Mondays, after which the others learn their lines and dutifully do their best to make the wooden fantasy sound right.
“Greece leaving the eurozone is no big deal,” said Wolfie last Monday, “We are prepared now”.
And so…
Europe is “certainly more resilient” to a possible Greek exit than it was two years ago, when the bloc would have been “massively underprepared,” European Union Economic and Monetary commissioner Olli Rehn said Wednesday.
A Greek exit from the euro could be “technically” managed, European Central Bank Governing Council member Patrick Honohan assured regular listeners in a cameo role Friday.
But by Saturday morning, a new secret poll (which of course doesn’t exist) showed anti-Troika support growing in the light of this “see if we care” line. So Saturday afternoon, senior MP and generally respected figure Theodoros Pangalos was ordered to change tack, and steer south by south west at full-ahead both naked scarey shit:
“We will be in wild bankruptcy, out-of-control bankruptcy,” Theo averred. Would it be hysterically feral bankruptcy? He didn’t know. But it would be…..something not at all nice:
“The state will not be able to pay salaries and pensions. This is not recognised by the citizens. We have got until June before we run out of money….I am very much afraid of what is going to happen”.
Er, hang on Mr Panicalogos, you just told us: you’ll all have no money.
And no euro. No jackbooting pillocks telling you what to do. No creditors on your back, on account of having defaulted. A new currency worth a quarter as much…which will make exporting a breeze.
But you will have no less money than you have now, Theodoomoros my friend, because all the bloody money is in an escrow account ready for the bondholers – and it’s only a bit of toilet roll Draghi decided to sign after taking a dump a month ago anyway.
It’s a scam, chum. Maybe the first few months will be very tough. But Greece has lots of things to sell: olive oil, holidays, fruit, kebabs, Retsina, Taramasalata – all sorts of stuff that nobody does better. You can charge the German holidaymakers double as they’re doing so well; and whatever money you make from selling State assets will go to you, not the creditors.
The sky will still be there: an azure blue thing of beauty beaming down on a glistening Aegean full of fish…at the bottom of which is more oil and rare earths than China could mine in a century. And Turkey will be a threat. And so Israel will be an ally. And you know what all that means?
LOTS OF LOVELY PENTAGON AND WALL STREET MUNNNNEEEEE….only this time it won’t be loans. This time, they’ll be paying you for the rights to everything from gold to feta salad.
By the time the Fuherin in Berlin has finished bailing out Spain and France, Greece will be richer than Germany….and debt free. Think about it: You’ll be able to call Germans sausage-munching tramps, and the French cheese-eating surrender monkeys. Your car factories will employ German bankers at a cost of one souflaki and chips day-rate. You’ll be able to force Goldman Sachs to apologise for screwing you up and lying to Brussels. You could make Lloyd Blankfein wear an ill-fitting ginger wig for the rest of his life. You could spend endless hilarious hours forcing Mario Draghi to listen to puerile Italian tank gags.
All my readers in Hellenica…please, get this put out far and wide:
TELL THE EU TO GO FORTH AND MULTIPLY. YOU HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR EXCEPT FEAR ITSELF. YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR CHAINS.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9262068/Greece-will-run-out-of-money-soon-warns-deputy-prime-minister.html
7:00PM BST 12 May 2012
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Speaking exclusively to The Sunday Telegraph, Theodoros Pangalos said he was "very much afraid of what is going to happen" after Greek voters rejected the deal in elections last Sunday.
"The majority of the people voted for a very strange mental construction," he said. "We want to be in the EU and the euro, but we don't want to pay anything for the past."
The main beneficiary of the election, the hard-Left Syriza coalition, came a startling second on a promise to tear up the deal, which promises EU loans to keep massively-indebted Greece afloat, but demands crippling spending cuts in return. Germany, the principal lender, has said it will stop payments if Greece breaks its promises on spending.
Mr Pangalos warned: "There is a school of thought that says the Germans are bluffing. They need Greece and will never throw us out of the eurozone. But what will happen, which is almost certain, is they will not give us the money to pay our debts.
"We will be in wild bankruptcy, out-of-control bankruptcy. The state will not be able to pay salaries and pensions. This is not recognised by the citizens. We have got until June before we run out of money."We have been spending the future for half a century. What [the anti-bailout forces] are really asking from the EU is not just to pay our bills, but also to pay for the deficit which we are still creating.
"I'm sure the Germans don't want Greece to leave the euro. What I don't know is how much they're willing to pay. It depends on the German man on the street. Is he willing to pay his taxes to save Greece? I doubt it."
After each of the top three parties at the election failed to form a government, Greece's president, Karolos Papoulias, will on Sunday hold last-ditch talks to cobble together a national unity coalition. The alternative is a fresh election next month which polls show Syriza is likely to win.
Mr Pangalos compared Syriza's charismatic leader, Alexis Tsipras, to Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.
"Are the Germans going to pay for a guy that wants to imitate Chavez?" he said. "Except that Chavez has oil, and an army."
The deputy prime minister also warned that chaos could boost the neo-fascist Golden Dawn party, which won an unprecedented seven per cent of the vote, and 21 seats, in Sunday's election.
"In the places where the police voted, the fascists got 25 per cent," he said. "They are a serious threat. They have used violence already – you don't know where it will stop.
"You know how it happened in Germany – it started with the Jews, then the Communists, then everybody – it could happen here. This is the country, after the Soviet Union and Germany itself, with the biggest percentage of [Second World War] casualties in its population."
Mr Pangalos's Pasok, the Greek Socialist Party, lost three-quarters of its seats at the election after voters blamed it for the bailout deal and the cuts, which have caused enormous hardship but failed significantly to reduce Greece's debt.
The economy has shrunk by 8.5 per cent in the last year. More than a fifth of the population is out of work and youth unemployment is almost 54 per cent.
Pasok, together with the main conservative party, New Democracy, previously won up to four-fifths of the vote. Last week, the two established pro-bailout parties were reduced to 32 per cent between them.
The streets are calmer since the election. Though Greeks are fearful, there's also satisfaction at the blow they've dealt to their former rulers.
But the casualties of the bailout are everywhere. On the pavements, junkies openly inject in the middle of the day. And what is striking about Athens beggars is how clean and well-groomed so many are: not stereotypical street-dwellers, but working and professional people deep down on their luck.
As we talked to Mr Pangalos in an upmarket cafe, one man sold lottery tickets wearing a very decent suit.
Yiannis Bournos, Syriza's European policy spokesman, told The Sunday Telegraph that Greece could afford to reject the bailout deal because European policymakers dared not risk Greece triggering a domino effect – and a potential depression - across Europe.
"Mr Schaeuble [Germany's finance minister] is pretending to be the fearless cowboy on the radio, saying the euro is secure [against a Greek exit]. But there's no way they will kick us out," he said.
"If we left the euro, the financial markets would attack Italy. If you owe 3000 euros to the bank and don't pay, they will kill you. If you owe 10 billion euros, they will do everything for you."
He criticised the deputy prime minister's remarks, saying: "Mr Pangalos is in his own sphere. When reality does not agree with him, reality has a problem. It's unbelievable to see the same representatives of the banking interests and of neoliberalism saying that nothing can change. It reminds me of religious fundamentalism. There have been so many changes in Europe in the last two weeks."
Mr Bournos said that even if the EU cut off payments the Greek government could still pay salaries and pensions from its domestic tax revenues. He said the country would seek alternative sources of financing from China, Russia and the Middle East.
Left-wingers hope that the election of a new socialist president in France, together with concerns expressed in Italy and the Netherlands about the austerity package, will soften hearts in Berlin. At least in public, however, German officials continued cranking up the pressure yesterday.
"If Athens doesn't stand by its word, that is a democratic decision," said the Bundesbank chief, Jens Weidmann, in an interview with theSuddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. "But that means the basis for further financial aid falls away."
Mr Weidmann insisted the consquences of Greece leaving the euro "would be more serious for Greece than the rest of the eurozone".
It's still possible that everyone could pull back from the brink. The Germans could soften their demands – next month, Greece is supposed to be outlining further billions in cuts, something which even pro-bailout politicians are starting to balk at. The Greek Left could change its simplistic stand. The can could be kicked down the road some more.
But the euro's fundamental problems will remain. And it's equally possible that the EU will merely use the time to erect bigger financial walls around Greece, hoping they can leave it to its fate.
Planning for a Greek exit, now seen as likely by many, has stepped up a gear. Vodafone, a major presence in the Greek telecoms market, said it now sends all cash earned in Greece to the UK "every evening."
Andrew Witty, chief executive of Glaxo SmithKline, said no cash was left in Greece or "most European countries." Several other British multinationals have made similar statements.
Jonathan Tepper, an economist with Variant Perception, said a debt default and Greek euro exit would happen at only moments' notice after weeks of denials by all concerned.
"To avoid immediate runs on banks, it would be done in a 'surprise' announcement over a weekend when markets and banks are closed," he said. "If necessary, Monday and Tuesday would be declared bank holidays as well."
During this period, diplomats in Athens have been told, cash machines would be turned off and all banks closed. Inside, staff would be "redenominating" euro notes into the new drachma, probably by rubber-stamping them. Capital controls would be imposed to stop Greeks transferring money out of the country electronically and border checks would be reinstated to prevent them taking out unstamped euros in suitcases.
Mr Tepper is one of a growing number of economists who believe that the so-called "Grexit" might actually be better than years and years of EU-mandated misery.
"In the past century, 69 countries have exited currency areas with little downward volatility," he says. "The experience of emerging-market countries, such as Argentina, Russia and the 'Asian tigers,' shows that the pain of devaluation would be brief, and rapid growth and recovery would follow."
Greece, however, is not Russia, Argentina or the Far East, with massive mineral wealth and untapped human capital. And everyone concedes that exit would, in the short and medium term, cause Greeks even more terrible pain.
Most economists think that a new, free-floating drachma would immediately crash by up to 50 per cent against the euro and other currencies, effectively halving the value of everyone's savings and spelling catastrophe for those on fixed incomes, like pensioners.
EU diplomats in Athens have been warned to expect substantial disorder during this period, which would, said one, be "a dream moment for Golden Dawn".
The Sunday Telegraph on Saturday joined the neo-fascists on "patrol" – their word – around Attiki, a poor, inner-city Athens neighbourhood which Golden Dawn says it has "cleaned up".
"This square used to be occupied," said the patrol leader, Nassos Rendekakos. "Full of illegal immigrants. We took it back. We just emptied the square of everyone: Greeks, foreigners, whatever."
But what if they refused to leave?
"There's a good way and a bad way," said Mr Rendekakos. "We know both ways."
They weren't in their black T-shirts on Saturday, but they were still pretty easy to spot. Their hair was shaved at the sides but not at the top; they wore near-identical sunglasses, plus biker jackets and gloves, though the day was warm and sunny.
Certainly the immigrants, not that there are many on these streets just now, knew who they were, and crossed the road or stepped quietly into doorways as they passed.
They weren't Nazis, they insisted, just nationalists.
"It's not Hitler we like," said Mr Rendekakos. "It's the way he used to make the best for his country. Hitler took a country with so much debt, unemployment, just before the edge, as we are here – and he managed to make that country great."
On Golden Dawn, there are signs of what might be termed buyers' remorse. The Sunday Telegraph found a number of people who'd voted for them but claimed they now regretted it, and their score in the latest post-election polls is down. Many other residents, however, were genuinely grateful to the fascists.
"Six months ago, no-one could walk here," said Christos Yiannis, drinking coffee in Attiki's main square. "Last summer, we didn't come out like this at all. The police did nothing. Golden Dawn cleaned up the squares and made them human for people to enjoy, because the state is absent. The state has collapsed."As two little girls rode pink tricycles round our table, and the old men sat reading their newspapers in the sun, it was tempting, so tempting, to believe there are easy answers to tough problems – none tougher than the mess Greece now finds itself in.
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Last throw of the dice on Sunday
The President's office announced on Saturday that he has invited the leaders of the three parties that had taken the exploratory mandate to form a government, i.e. New Democracy's Antonis Samaras, SYRIZA's Alexis Tsipras and PASOK's Evangelos Venizelos, to meet him at noon on Sunday. He will then have separate meetings with the leaders of the other four parties in the new Parliament, i.e. with Panos Kammenos of Independent Greeks, Aleka Papariga of the Communist Party, Nikos Michaloliakos of Golden Dawn and, crucially, Fotis Kouvelis of the Democratic Left.
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Aid could fall away, warns Bundesbank chief
Bundesbank chief Jens Weidmann was quoted on Saturday as telling the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung: «If Athens doesn't stand by its word, that is a democratic decision – but that means the basis for further financial aid falls away." Weidmann's comments come as Greek politicians, divided over the value of austerity and reform measures that creditors demanded in exchange for rescue loans, flounder in efforts to form a new government. Weidmann says that if Greece ended up leaving the euro «the consequences would be more serious for Greece would be more serious than for the rest of the eurozone." |
