Greece: if austerity doesn't work... Try more austerity! | 287 comments (287 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Greece: if austerity doesn't work... (none / 0)

BBC News - Greece crisis: Not Europe's Lehman (it could be worse)

Eurozone finance ministers' overnight decision to withhold payment of 12bn euros (£10bn) of emergency loans to Greece, pending agreement by the Greek parliament on austerity measures and privatisations, would be rational and credible on the basis that Greece has more to lose from a disorderly Greek default than the eurozone itself.
Or to put it another way, threats are only worth making if those making the threats could actually carry them out.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Mon Jun 20th, 2011 at 06:54:00 AM EST

Re: Greece: if austerity doesn't work... (none / 0)

real economics

Germany was forced to agree to bail out Greece for the second time in a year under strong pressure from the International Monetary Fund following the resignation last month of its head, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the Guardian has learned.
Under its acting chief, the American John Lipsky, the IMF has taken a more hardline stance. The fund warned the Germans in recent weeks that it would withhold urgently needed funds and trigger a Greek sovereign default unless Berlin stopped delaying and pledged firmly that it would come to Greece's rescue.
Senior officials and diplomats in Brussels confirmed that the IMF threat to pull the plug on its funding, in stark contrast to the more emollient line of Strauss-Kahn, had been defused because of a German climbdown.

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Mon Jun 20th, 2011 at 02:15:38 PM EST
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Greece: if austerity doesn't work... Try more austerity! | 287 comments (287 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)