Greek crisis: surrender fiscal sovereignty in return for bailout, Merkel tells Tsipras

[briquest]

European leaders have confronted the Greek government with a draconian package of austerity measures entailing a surrender of fiscal sovereignty as the price of avoiding financial collapse and being ejected from the single currency bloc.

A weekend of high tension that threatened to break Europe in two climaxed on Sunday night at a summit of eurozone leaders in Brussels where the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and President François Hollande of France presented Greece’s radical prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, with an ultimatum.

In what a senior EU official described as an “exercise in extensive mental waterboarding” to secure Greek acquiescence to talks on a third bailout in five years worth up to €86bn (£62bn), the two leaders pressed for absolute certainty from Tsipras that he would honour what was on offer.
http://www.theguardian.com/business...ty-in-return-for-bailout-merkel-tells-tsipras

 

[Albion]

You take out loans and then don't pay them back because you didn't bother to raise the money with which to do so...and we're supposed somehow to feel sorry for you, Greece?

 

[NightHawkeye]

You take out loans and then don't pay them back because you didn't bother to raise the money with which to do so...and we're supposed somehow to feel sorry for you, Greece?

Personally, I think we should join in the dancing with the Greeks who managed to obtain large amounts of unsecured debt from bankers who clearly knew better.

Or ... perhaps we should we feel sorry for the creditors who clearly knew the risks they were taking?

 

[Billnew]

When you hand feed the people, they tend to bite the hand that use to feed them, when there is no more food to hand out.
Greece can't support the people in the manner in which they are a costumed, there is no more money to give away, no more rich people to take from, they will fail. Not today, since the EU saved them again. But it will happen when the money runs out.
The Greek government can't pacify the people, they can't make money from nothing. They don't have the military to pillage from neighboring countries as in olden times.(even if the world would stand by and accept it)
So Greece will fail. The final cost is still to be determined.
Socialism doesn't build people up, it under cuts the people on top, eventually it all collapses around them and everyone is at the same level, broke.
It is self defeating. The weight of the people pulling down the top, destroys it all.

 

[NightHawkeye]

European leaders have confronted the Greek government with a draconian package of austerity measures entailing a surrender of fiscal sovereignty as the price of avoiding financial collapse and being ejected from the single currency bloc.

A weekend of high tension that threatened to break Europe in two climaxed on Sunday night at a summit of eurozone leaders in Brussels where the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and President François Hollande of France presented Greece’s radical prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, with an ultimatum.

In what a senior EU official described as an “exercise in extensive mental waterboarding” to secure Greek acquiescence to talks on a third bailout in five years worth up to €86bn (£62bn), the two leaders pressed for absolute certainty from Tsipras that he would honour what was on offer.
http://www.theguardian.com/business...ty-in-return-for-bailout-merkel-tells-tsipras

One wonders why the Greeks keep going for bailouts rather than bankruptcy.

I have to wonder whether more of the blame might just lie with Tsipras. Perhaps, being the leftist he is, he was simply too afraid of bankruptcy to go down that path. I have to think Angela Merkel knows better than to believe the Greeks will ever repay their debt, especially given that the IMF has formally declared Greece to be bankrupt. The only person likely to want a lifeline on this, it seems to me, is Tsipras. Just my $0.02 though ...

 

[LionL]

Greece can't support the people in the manner in which they are a costumed.

Very funny play on words, but it's not really a laughing matter.

 

[NightHawkeye]

Very funny play on words, but it's not really a laughing matter.

... but it makes the moral point clear.