HJ: The Slog gives us a fresh glimpse inside the behind the scenes antics of a Europe struggling to avoid a Greek default by any underhanded means necessary. The ECB is making all kinds of special provisions decided in back room meetings without public oversight to keep Greece on life support. However, it is all futile and it is only a matter of time until 1) Greece defaults and the whole charade ends, or 2) The powers that be in Europe come up with some more ridiculous financial maneuvers to postpone the inevitable. – Truth
Brussels, the European Central Bank, and the IMF are following different agendas – and it shows.
The European Central Bank has snatched Greek survival from the jaws of sovereign bankruptcy. It’s done this by securing interim financing in the form of additional emergency loans from the Bank of Greece, Die Welt reported today (Saturday).
By John Ward
It’s emerged that the ECB’s Governing Council agreed at its meeting on Thursday to increase the upper limit for the amount of Greek short-term loans the Bank of Greece can accept in exchange for emergency loans, Die Welt asserted.
Well zipperteedoo-dah what a wonderful day, but how will this meld with the euronotes that Greece is still printing (while the ECB quietly burns them on receipt) and the hard-to-ignore reality that technically, without a constant supply of Frankfurtergeld, the BoG would be insolvent itself? Nobody cares any more, for this is now the Bunker-whacky world of eurozone finance: short terms are safer than emergencies, toilet paper can bail out whole nations, and Berlin is the guarantor of last resort….except when the Bundesbank in Frankfurt suggests otherwise.
Thus, a decision made in private will have approximately a hundred times the effect of Mario Draghi publicly vowing to do Whatever it Takes – up to but not defining ‘whatever’.
However, I am here to inform you that this decision hasn’t gone down well with Christine Lagarde, Queen of the IMF. She has been stunned, I’m told, to learn that the recent transaction whereby private Bank Piraeus acquired the healthy assets of the otherwise bankrupt State Agricultural Bank of Greece (ATEBank) also involved (a) the debts of the Greek political parties being transferred to Piraeus bank at advantageous rates, and (b) the transfer of large amounts of cash (around €9m) abroad by a senior ATEBank executive during the immediate past.
Read the rest of the article here: The Slog
