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[scot47]

61% said NO. Austerity on the way out ? Our rulers will not like this.

[Sashadroogie]

Beggars can't be choosers. Whatever way the beggars vote...

[scot47]

http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/

[Dedicated]

For a few hours on July 5th, after a majority of Greek voters had rejected a bailout meant to save their economy, thousands of people celebrated in the streets of Athens as if they had just won a great victory rather than spurned a financial lifeline.

However, if a primal scream felt cathartic on July 5th, Greeks woke up the following day to a more painful reality. Their wobbly banks had almost no money left; their government had all but defaulted on its debt; their political leaders had few friends in power around the continent; and their nation was precipitously close to giving up the euro as its currency, a step toward more chronic shortages of imported medications, machinery and fuel.

In 2010, in Greece, 89.5 per cent of the country's tax remained uncollected, compared to Germany's 2.3 per cent. Greeks chronically underreported their earnings and in the rare cases when they would get caught, an envelope of cash to the tax man would usually be enough to avoid punishment. Greece is still in denial over its debt.

Now Tsipras has done a complete U turn putting forward proposals that were previously rejected. The major discussion is whether Europe can prevent the loony left from doing more damage and implement sensible reforms instead.

[scot47]

Let me guess

Dedicated is a rabid Conservative ?

[Dedicated]

I used to live in Greece and have family and friends there.

[Dedicated]

The latest from Athens -

Greek politicians demanded answers from Tsipras yesterday after a leaked recording revealed former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis was planning to hack into government data-bases to help start a parallel currency.

Yesterday, the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum released a recording of the conversation between Varoufakis and investors.

Roughly translated ' We decided to hack into my minister's own software program to copy the code of the tax system's website onto a large computer in his office so he could work out how to design this parallel payments system.

We were planning to create, surreptitiously, reserve accounts attached to every tax file number, without telling anyone, just to have this system in a function under wraps'.

Varoufakis tried to defend the working group tasked with coming up with 'Plan B' saying it would have been remiss had it made no attempt to draw up contingency plans. He said the plans were drawn up at the behest of Tsipras which made all the other Greek political parties angry. To Potami which has 17 seats in the 300-seat Parliament, this was 'reminiscent of a bad thriller'.
On Twitter, Slovak Finance Minister, Peter Kazimir, who spent 5 months negotiating with Varoufakis this year, expressed his anger - 'Unveiled plans by Varoufakis to return to the drachma during ongoing talks with us show how unpredictable he was as a partner. We need to make sure that such two-faced games will be avoided when debating and drafting the third bailout package for Greece'.

[plumpy nut]

Greece's selection is clear, Austerity or running off to join the Third World.

[Dedicated]

So a bailout deal has been agreed ' in principle' and Athens is set to receive 86 billion Euros over the next three years in order to stave off bankruptcy.
Last month's eleventh hour agreement, following acrimonious talks in which German Minister of Finance, Wolfgang Schauble, openly talked of Grexit, almost inevitably paved the way for this latest settlement. Moreover, given the political capital sunk into this latest endeavour to keep Greece in the Eurozone, it is virtually certain that the deal, barring major political upheavals, will 'stick'.

The Greeks, with their attachment to the single currency, will swallow the medicine and swallow it whole. Doubtless the latest bailout, the nation's third, will patch up Greece's financial crisis for the time being. But there are few signs that the country's economic crisis is any nearer to resolution. For Greece to have a fighting chance of recovery, it should change tack, leave the Eurozone and pursue expansionary policies. The latest bailout, even assuming it sticks, is arguably just a distraction.