German Finance Minister lights a fire in Greece and German over his declaration Greece will need a third bailout - Merkel on the defensive . Might this give her opponents an opening at last ? Frankly , if the German vote for Merkel once again - knowing upfront she will do anything to save the euro and Euroland project ( including plunder Germany's treasury over and over again to bailout southern Europe ) , then they shouldn't cry later ! How might the German Constitution Court view this news though ?

Asmussen in Greece for talks as debate over bailout's future is rekindled European Central Bank Executive Board member Joerg Asmussen is due to meet Greek Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras in Athens on Wednesday. The meeting comes in the wake of German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble admitting that Greece would need a third bailout. Greek Finance Ministry sources said a range of issues, including possible debt relief, would be discussed during the meeting between Stournaras and Asmussen. The 2014-15 funding gap, which the International Monetary Fund estimates at 10.9 billion euros, will also be discussed. The possibility of Greece adopting further fiscal measures in 2015 and 2016 is also expected to be on the agenda. The Greek side is also keen to discuss the progress of the European banking union, given that it could lead to the 50 billion euros Athens has borrowed to recapitalize its lenders being passed over to the European Stability Mechanism rather than being recorded as national debt. Asmussen’s visit to Athens comes about month before the German federal elections and the date when troika officials are due to return to the Greek capital to review the progress of the adjustment program. "In the run-up to the next troika review mission, ECB Executive Board member Joerg Asmussen will visit Athens for bilateral meetings with Greek policy makers and representatives of society and the business community to discuss the Greek adjustment programme and wider euro area developments,» the ECB said in an emailed statement on Tuesday. Asmussen also visits Athens after Schaeuble admitted at an election campaign event on Tuesday that Greece will need further loans. "There will have to be another programme in Greece,» Schaeuble said on Tuesday during a rally in Ahrensburg. «They are not out of the woods yet." German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said Greece’s situation would be reassessed at the end of this year or beginning of 2014. European Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn also said that Greece’s needs would be examined following the troika review next month.

ekathimerini.com , Wednesday August 21, 2013 (11:46) German SPD pushes Merkel on to defensive over aid for Greece Patrick Donahue & Birgit Jennen German Social Democratic leaders stepped up their attacks on Chancellor Angela Merkel over the costs of the debt crisis, accusing her of trying to conceal the need for a third Greek aid program until after the election. SPD chancellor candidate Peer Steinbrueck seized on comments made by Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble yesterday that Greece will need additional funds, saying it was proof the government’s crisis policies weren’t working. Merkel wants to “shove all the hot potatoes” until after the ballot, he said. Former SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, joining Steinbrueck on the campaign trail in the western town of Detmold, mocked Merkel for having “the wrong glasses on” and contradicting her finance minister on Greece. “You won’t win the trust of voters by covering up and obscuring, only by telling them straight,” Schroeder said. Less than five weeks before the Sept. 22 vote, the SPD is trying to turn Merkel’s crisis-resolution policies of the past three years against her to narrow the gap in the polls. Merkel’s coalition extended its lead over the SPD and its Green party ally to 12 percentage points in a Forsa poll released today. “The poll scores clearly underline the lack of appetite in the electorate for change,” Peter Matuschek, chief political analyst for Forsa, said by phone. “It’s becoming very difficult to see where the SPD is going to get that winning issue, that winning persona who will motivate its former supporters.” Backing for Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, rose one point to 41 percent in the Forsa poll for Stern magazine and RTL television, while her Free Democratic coalition partner also gained a point to 6 percent. That score would allow Merkel to repeat her current government if replicated on Election Day. Steinbreuck’s SPD dropped a point to 22 percent and the Greens held at 13 percent. The anti-capitalist Left Party had 8 percent, also unchanged. Forsa polled 2,502 voters on Aug. 13- 19. The results have a margin of error of as much as 2.5 percentage points. Merkel continues campaigning in southern Germany today with stops in Baden-Wuerttemberg after visiting Bavaria yesterday, where she laid a wreath at the former Nazi concentration camp in Dachau, the first visit by a German chancellor. “We don’t want to forget that for six decades we’ve been living in peace,” Merkel told a rally later. Countries sharing a currency will never go to war, Merkel said, while warning that “solidarity isn’t enough in the end if you don’t create the conditions for all of us to be successful.” Schaeuble, speaking at the first of four campaign rallies he held yesterday in and around Hamburg, made his clearest indication yet that the euro region will eventually resort to the “further measures and assistance” for Greece that were agreed in principle by the bloc’s finance ministers in November last year. Steinbrueck and Schroeder sought to portray the comments as a reversal from prior policy and at odds with Merkel. “One gets the impression that this government suffers from short-term memory loss,” Steinbrueck said. “It may be that we have to help them again, but this time the money can’t just be sunk -- it has to be used to bring growth and jobs.” Matuschek at Forsa said it’s plausible that by airing Greece’s problems now rather than closer to the vote Schaeuble wanted “to nip the issue in the bud.” “The point is he’s not putting support for the CDU at risk as SPD criticism of Merkel’s handing of the crisis just bounces off her,” Matuschek said. “Voters very clearly credit Merkel with more competence to manage the twists and turns of the crisis than Steinbrueck and the SPD and, more to the point, Steinbrueck isn’t saying he’d do anything differently.” Schroeder, who served as Germany’s chancellor from 1998 to 2005, said his party had a shot at victory in the final weeks. He referred to the 2005 election, in which he narrowed Merkel’s lead of about 14 points at a similar stage in the campaign to 1 percentage point on Election Day. “That was just about the same situation as now: the opinion polls put us at less than 30 percent,” Schroeder, 69, told the Detmold rally. “Many people were writing ‘Schroeder, you don’t even need to run.’” Schroeder’s performance eight years ago forced Merkel into a so-called grand coalition with the SPD, a configuration that polls show parties may have to resort to again. He said that the economic improvement Germany has witnessed was down to his policies and not Merkel. Under Merkel “as good as nothing has been done,” Schroeder said. In economic policy and education, Germany “is taking a step backwards.” [Bloomberg] ekathimerini.com , Wednesday August 21, 2013 (13:25) EU's Rehn says new bailout for Greece not the only option EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn does not rule out Greece needing a third bailout package but the country's lenders have other options to keep its aid programme going, a Finnish newspaper quoted him as saying. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said on Tuesday that Greece will need another bailout, triggering a storm of protest from opposition parties five weeks before an election in Europe's biggest economy. Greece's troika of lenders from the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund plan to run the rule over its aid programme in the autumn. "Then we will also review Greece's programme's possible continuation and financing. The debt sustainability can be improved for instance by extending the loan periods,» Helsingin Sanomat quoted Rehn as saying on Wednesday. He said the key question was Greece's ability to carry out the economic reforms under its current programme and its ability to run a surplus in its public finances. Greece has received two bailouts totalling about 240 billion euros (206 billion pounds). [Reuters] ekathimerini.com , Wednesday August 21, 2013 (10:18) http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/german-report-new-greece-aid-package-could-come-from-eu-budget-a-917762.html ( To circumvent a politically unpalatable third bailout and admitting failure , will the maniacs in Europe raid EU structural funds or national budgets ( like Germany ? ) Would raiding structural funds of the Eu even be legal for bailout ? ) That Greece will ultimately need more money to stave off insolvency has largely become common knowledge in the halls of power in Brussels. Indeed, SPIEGEL reported on a financing shortfall of up to €11 billion back in early July. The hope in Berlin, though, was that this uncomfortable truth could be somehow avoided until after the September general election in Germany so as not to endanger Chancellor Angela Merkel's bid for a third term. On Tuesday morning, however, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble of Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union party said during a campaign event that Athens would indeed need a third aid package. And on Wednesday, the Munich-based daily Süddeutsche Zeitung is reporting that the bailout money may have to come out of the European Union budget for lack of other options. The paper reports that Brussels is considering tapping EU structural funds so as to avoid the massive political problems -- first and foremost in Berlin -- that a third bailout would cause. Furthermore, a second debt haircut for Greece has been ruled out by Schäuble and is seen with skepticism elsewhere as well. There is also concern that additional loans would only serve to inflate Greece's already untenable debt load. "The only option besides debt forgiveness remains a transfer from the EU budget or from the budgets of its partners," the paper cites an unnamed source familiar with the negotiations as saying. Greece has already benefited from two bailout packages totalling €230 billion, €22 billion of which is still to be paid. The aid money was designed to keep Athens liquid through the end of 2014, at which time it was hoped the country could return to international financial markets. Most experts, however, believe that the timeline is far too optimistic. The third bailout package, however, is likely to be much smaller than the previous two, an unnamed government source told the Süddeutsche. Greece Enters the Campaign Schäuble's public comments about the need for additional Greece aid came as a surprise, given Berlin's previous unwillingness to directly confront the issue. The finance minister said on Tuesday that "the public had always been told" about the need for a third bailout package. In the past, however, Schäuble had opted for vague statements, saying in February of 2012, for instance, that "one can't entirely rule out" the possibility that Athens will need additional help. When the second bailout package was rubber stamped by German parliament that same month, he said it "likely wasn't the last time that the Bundestag will have to address financial assistance for Greece." Chancellor Merkel declined on Tuesday to be as forthcoming as Schäuble, telling the daily Ruhr Nachrichten only that "we in the euro zone have always said that we will have to re-evaluate the situation in Greece at the end of 2014 or the beginning of 2015." The center-left Social Democrats recently sought to turn the topic of aid for Greece into a campaign issue, with chancellor candidate Peer Steinbrück questioning whether Merkel is being honest with German voters. SPD budget expert Carsten Schneider likewise accused Merkel of "breaking a taboo" and said that Schäuble has "let the cat out of the bag." Not surprisingly, however, the most energetic attack came from Gerhard Schröder, the former chancellor who has hit the campaign trail on behalf of Steinbrück. He is widely considered to be Germany's best campaigner and he didn't disappoint on Tuesday. "You can't win the trust of the electorate with deception and obfuscation," he said. "Only with truth." He then went on to accuse Merkel of promulgating "a great lie" when it comes to the costs associated with the euro crisis.