01-31-2015, 11:20 PM
you can think of European policy as involving a bailout, not of Greece, but of creditor-country banks, with the Greek government simply acting as the middleman
Europe’s Greek Test - NYTimes.com
The battle lines between Greece and its creditors were drawn in Athens as the Greek finance minister announced that the new government would refuse to engage with representatives of the country’s hated “troika” of lenders. Standing his ground after talks in the capital with Jeroen Dijsselbloem, head of the Eurogroup of EU finance ministers, Yanis Varoufakis said Greece would not pursue further negotiations with the body of technocrats that has regularly descended on the country to monitor its economy. Nor would it be rowing back on election-winning pledges by asking for an extension to its €240bn (£180bn) bailout programme. “This platform enabled us to win the confidence of the Greek people,” Varoufakis said, insisting that the logic of austerity had been repudiated by voters when the far-left Syriza party stormed to victory in Sunday’s election. Greece has lost more than a quarter of its GDP, the worst slump in modern times, as a result of consecutive waves of budget cuts and tax rises enforced at the behest of creditors. Varoufakis and the new Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, who also met Dijsselbloem on Friday, are adamant that the government will deal only with individual institutions and on a minister-to-minister basis within the EU. They have vowed to shun auditors appointed by the so-called troika of the EU, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Greece’s finance minister vows to shun officials from ‘troika’ | Business | The Guardian
This time the odds have changed. Grexit would look more like the Greeks' fault, Europe's economy is stronger and 80% of Greece's debt is in the hands of other governments or official bodies. Above all the politics are different. The Finns and the Dutch, like the Germans, want Greece to stick to promises it made when they twice bailed it out. And in southern Europe centrist governments fear that a successful Greek blackmail would push voters towards their own populist opposition parties, like Spain's Podemos (see Charlemagne).
Why Syriza's win is good the euro - Business Insider
The situation in Greece will deteriorate significantly over the coming months, but anti-austerity party Syriza has a big incentive to stay in the euro zone, Eurasia Group's senior European analyst told CNBC on Monday.
Why Syriza is not heading for the Grexit: Experts
Syriza faces further pressure because political turmoil and uncertainty has offset economic progress in Greece during the last two months as elections were announced, Rahman said. Before that, growth was picking up, tax revenues were increasing, and Greece had a primary surplus, he added.