Is the end nigh for the Euro? [vol. 3]

[Mermaid]

Steffan said:

..

Angela Merkel, Hollande and all the other players within the EU are reduced to waiting on the decisions of the Greek Prime Minister which they will then agree to and try to find some way to actually make possible. They have lost the control of this affair. The Debtors have competely outfoxed the Creditors. I have seen this before,on occasion, but never on a scale like ths. The most powerful politicians waiting for a decision by an inexperience government of one of the smallest countries within the EU.

You could not make it up. But Greece have done just that and are the leaders of the pack in this affair. Madness.

It's a game, so far well played by the Greeks. I would not wish to bet on the likely outcome.

[turbobloke]

Gargamel said:

Interesting to see Hollande leading the Doves, guess which countries banks have the most exposure to Greek debts?

Axionknight said:

I'm not sure on the French banks themselves, but the country has stumped up some 42 billion Euros via the bailout fund. They'll never see a penny, olive branch or no, IMO.

As of September 2014 apparently it looked like this:

http://www.bruegel.org/nc/blog/detail/article/1557...

I didn't confirm each figure personally.

[Borghetto]

turbobloke said:

As of September 2014 apparently it looked like this:

http://www.bruegel.org/nc/blog/detail/article/1557...

I didn't confirm each figure personally.

It looks like those highly paid "experts" in the City of London, have managed to increase their exposure at the expense of the competition. I guess they could always find jobs in the EU after they've hosed their long suffering shareholders capital up the wall

[Gargamel]

Borghetto said:

It looks like those highly paid "experts" in the City of London, have managed to increase their exposure at the expense of the competition. I guess they could always find jobs in the EU after they've hosed their long suffering shareholders capital up the wall

It is extremely difficult to parse out those numbers though. We know for example that the Greeks have been selling three month bonds. So is the rise in UK Bank exposure at 5 year bonds, three months, 10 years - no idea.

I suspect too that "banks" is a very loose term, I know some US Vulture funds have bought Greek Debt, something the greeks should be VERY concerned about, as the legal cases arising from a default will be extensive and long lived (Venezula for example has fought an almost 10 year case against a US Vulture that paid around 0.05c to the $ for the debt and is insisting it is repaid in full)

[Stig]

Exchange down from 1.415 at 09:00hrs to 1.407 at midday.

What do Forex traders know that the rest of us don't (if anything)?

[RYH64E]

Stig said:

Exchange down from 1.415 at 09:00hrs to 1.407 at midday.

What do Forex traders know that the rest of us don't (if anything)?

The pound has dropped a cent and a half against the dollar today as well, so probably not Greece related.

[fido]

Stig said:

Exchange down from 1.415 at 09:00hrs to 1.407 at midday.

UK manufacturing declined 0.6% in May - we're just less screwed than Euroland.

[AJS-]

Stig said:

Exchange down from 1.415 at 09:00hrs to 1.407 at midday.

What do Forex traders know that the rest of us don't (if anything)?

I'm surprised how little anything has really moved so far!

[roachcoach]

Mermaid said:

Steffan said:

..

Angela Merkel, Hollande and all the other players within the EU are reduced to waiting on the decisions of the Greek Prime Minister which they will then agree to and try to find some way to actually make possible. They have lost the control of this affair. The Debtors have competely outfoxed the Creditors. I have seen this before,on occasion, but never on a scale like ths. The most powerful politicians waiting for a decision by an inexperience government of one of the smallest countries within the EU.

You could not make it up. But Greece have done just that and are the leaders of the pack in this affair. Madness.

It's a game, so far well played by the Greeks. I would not wish to bet on the likely outcome.

On the flip side, the creditors also have to play said game - they probably want to avoid seeming cruel, harsh or unreasonable. If they do not afford Greece an opportunity to react based on the vote result, they will leave themselves open to all sorts of emotive accusations.

I suspect they have to be seen to be offering every flexibility at this stage.

Could very much go either way, but I think there are a lot of poker faces on the go right now.

[Digga]

fido said:

UK manufacturing declined 0.6% in May - we're just less screwed than Euroland.

Temporary effect of election - big spending often gets postponed in these situations and take a little while to feed back in.

[Wills2]

fblm said:

Wills2 said:

I've found this list (truncated) the figures seem to chime with my memory of the reports at the time.

That list is a matter of public record and reproduced in great detail here;

https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/list/simpl...

Yes I know, that's where I got it from....

[andy-xr]

Mermaid said:

It's a game, so far well played by the Greeks. I would not wish to bet on the likely outcome.

I think if people are viewing what happens next couple of days/next week/month as a full and final outcome they're way off, the fall out from this is going to go on for years. If Greece exit the Euro, or if they stay in the Euro, that's the start of the next bit, it's not a conclusion to anything

If it's exit, and I dont think it will be a full exit at any rate, the full effects wont be felt til 20-30 years down the line. When people retire. When the Greek economy dies or outgrows what it would have done inside the Euro. What Portugal and Spain do. There's way too much stuff still to come to draw any conclusions yet

[Digga]

andy-xr said:

I think if people are viewing what happens next couple of days/next week/month as a full and final outcome they're way off...

Agreed, except you've missed another country off the list which has yet to receive full scrutiny of it's own economic malaise; France. They might not be as screwed as the others, but it's bad, not (culturally) easy to fix and makes up a very significant chunk of the political and economic weight of the EU and EZ.

[majordad]

The culture part of France that's causing the trouble is from the lefties, a Gaulist type government would sort that out.

[Digga]

majordad said:

The culture part of France that's causing the trouble is from the lefties, a Gaulist type government would sort that out.

IMHO it runs deeper than that alone. Even businesses tend to be very regional in dealings and procurement. There is very little price competition in a lot of sectors, very few parallel channels for parts and equipment, save the main OEM route. Talking to ex-pats working out there, there's often huge, whopping great gaps in markets.

[Andy Zarse]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Can you not find out what bonds they're buying then piggyback on the quiet, letting them do all the hard yakka? Yes, I know there's no real fun in it but...

[andy-xr]

Digga said:

France.

I think Ireland would kick off about Greece before France gets properly looked at, so they may escape scrutiny. Infact, if I were French, I'd be over to Dublin fairly quickly this week with some €'s and feta in hand

[Andy Zarse]

RYH64E said:

Rather than debating whether the euro is a good or a bad thing it would interesting to consider whether the UK would have benefitted from membership...

Stop it I can't breathe!

We'd have been a bloody great big Ireland; think where house prices would have gone, what kind of crazy mortgage schemes would the retail mortgage lenders have come up with, the FCA would have been even more hands-off, Winky would have got even more drunk on spending on "investment" and the financial crash would made NR and RBS look as genteel as the content of an old maid's chamber pot.

Edited by Andy Zarse on Tuesday 7th July 14:36

[Steffan]

andy-xr said:

Mermaid said:

It's a game, so far well played by the Greeks. I would not wish to bet on the likely outcome.

I think if people are viewing what happens next couple of days/next week/month as a full and final outcome they're way off, the fall out from this is going to go on for years. If Greece exit the Euro, or if they stay in the Euro, that's the start of the next bit, it's not a conclusion to anything

If it's exit, and I dont think it will be a full exit at any rate, the full effects wont be felt til 20-30 years down the line. When people retire. When the Greek economy dies or outgrows what it would have done inside the Euro. What Portugal and Spain do. There's way too much stuff still to come to draw any conclusions yet

Mermaid makes point that the Greeks have played this exceptionally well. Which they have. Greece realised long ago that the EU were wedded to the ahorrence of any withdrawals from the EU and traded on that weakness. This is why the EU are now twiddling their thumbs whilst Tsiparis ans Co decide what the deal will actually be. Quite unprecedented as far as I know?

The incompetent, over reaching ambitions of the EU and the badly constructed format, combined with inadequate supervision and ineffective management by the EU handed the opportunity to Greece to screw the EU. Greece siezed upon that opportunity and have achieved the result they require. Having made the basic mistake of trying to solve someone else's problems the EU failed totally to ensurie that Greece was actually adopting appropriate policies from the start and putting them into effect. Which the Greeks will never do.

In fact Greece continued in exactly the same vein of economic failure year upon year for over five years. Nothing was done by the EU to recognise the dangers of that failure or ensure that these changes were actually ever impliented by Greece. In direct consequence the continued failure by Greece to recover has been inevitable from the start. The EU have demonstrated very effectively that they cannot manage this currency union. And have not managed it. Greece are still going bust and the EU are about to throw yet more Billions of Euros onto the costs of this nonsence.

What the EU cannot do is actually manage this position. Which is why they are waiting for the decision of the debtor, Greece. Madness.

Andy-xr may well be right that the fallout from this will go on year upon year. It has so far and again entirely the fault of the EU. However it does seem to me that the immediate consequences of this nonsence, have already seriously damaged the EU and are continuing to damage the reputation of the EU. The drip, drip, drip of constant criticism, commenting the complete inadequacy of the management of this by the EU has become blindingly apparent despite all the spin the EU is desperately putting on this nonsence.. It will not succeed and I do think major changes are going to be forced upon the EU.

I have said before that I remain a supporter of Britain remaining within the EU. But with the constant battering the EU is receiving over this and the blindingly apparent ineffective weakness that the EU have been showing in this affair, this is having an most serious and damaging effect already. I cannot see Cameron getting the votes that he is seeking from the UK in the forthcoming Referendum for the all reasons I have elicited before on here. I think the UK will withdraw, although I hope they do not.

Going to be a very very difficult time for the EU, trying to hide the losses and explain why Greece is a special case. Which Greece us not. I do not think they can actually manage this mess at all: as the last five years have shown.

[anonymous-user]

Borghetto said:

It looks like those highly paid "experts" in the City of London, have managed to increase their exposure at the expense of the competition. I guess they could always find jobs in the EU after they've hosed their long suffering shareholders capital up the wall

It looks to me like the "experts" on the internet have never heard of CDS or vulture funds.