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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The Greek finance minister says he’d rather ‘cut his arm off’ than sign a deal that doesn’t include debt relief
The betting markets seem to believe that Yes will win, but I suspect whatever the outcome either the Greek government or the Euro in Greece will be gone shortly after the referendum result is announced might lead to the government, money, people and businesses wanting to get out of Greece like a bat out of Hellas, it won’t be just a flesh wound for Greece.
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Oh, and first.
Shudder. Meat loaf will be choking on his Gyros....!
They have exactly the same number of Scottish MPs as the Tories. This puts them at no relative disadvantage. Their path back to power is going to be through England, not Scotland, and it's the English voters they need to win back to do that.
Throwing words around today like 'racist' and invoking Magna Carta are completely insane. Labour should be supporting this, and suggesting improvements.
They are a long long way from understanding what they have to do to get back into power.
The best hope for Syria is that US priorities change, the 'international community' stops interfering, and Assad is left to mop up what's left of the insurgency and start building something that if not wholly democratic is at least a fit place for human habitation and not a terroritst breeding ground. You know this, I know this, we all know this.
So a simple question: do you think Assad used chemical weapons?
The Syriza strategy is to shame/embarass/panic/guilt the EU into writing some of it off by continually upping the stakes and hoping they will eventually fold. They fathom that will happen before Greece becomes destitute and bombs out of the euro. Indeed, I suspect they think that will never happen.
Once a write-off is achieved, Syriza can then declare victory and do a deal on the repayment terms for the rest.
Will then win? Probably not. But then the EU does buckle to moral pressure on other matters. For example, the mediterrean migrants, so I can see why Syriza might think that.
Meanwhile, contrast with George Osborne: the man is economically drier than the Sahara.
It is extraordinary, but people seem to think that cash machines, bank transfers, and credit card payments operate by some immutable law of nature. I suppose in a way this is a tribute to the reliability of modern banking systems. (We saw the same thing here with the utterly bonkers suggestion from some people that Brown and Darling should have let RBS and Lloyds go bust). If it's a No, none of those things will be coming back anytime soon, since Syriza don't seem to have a Plan B.
Even assuming it is a Yes, it could still be quite a while before the banks are operating again. I'm sure the ECB and Eurogroup will try to restore credit as soon as possible, but will there be a government to negotiate with?
If Yes, who forms the Gov't ?
Does ND come back, or do far right/left groups like the KKE and Golden Dawn thrive in the tumult.
And on a slightly more serious note, many thanks TSE for stepping into the breach and keeping us all on PB, entertained and informed. Thank you.
Has there been a poll showing YES in front ? I know there was a move away from NO as the banks closed (though I gather they have re-opened) and even then NO still lead 46-37. I can imagine the YES vote to be understated but Tsipras has been on tv a lot and NO is, I believe, at the top of the ballot paper so you'd think NO more likely so I'm talking myself into 13/8.
I suspect the referendum won't change a lot - if it's a YES, there seems an assumption Tsipras is history - I'm not sure, even if he goes, Syriza are still the governing party until fresh elections and even then there's no guarantee they won't win again.
If it's a NO, it strengthens Greece's bargaining position and throws it back to the ECB and the rest of the Eurozone - if they want Greece to stay in the Eurozone that badly, they'll cut a deal. Tsipras thinks they are bluffing, he's probably right. Throwing Greece out sets a precedent going forward - it may not happen this month or even next year but one day another country will be in a similar position and the Greek precedent will be there.
I suspect for all the rhetoric, Juncker and the rest know a Grexit, even if economically managed, will have significant political ramifications reaching all the way (perhaps) to the UK's own referendum so they will blink and Greece will stay in the fold.
In essence, the referendum is simply about dictating the terms in which Greece stays in the Eurozone.
(Coalition of the Radical Left)
Simple answer - there is significant evidence that chemical attacks were carried out by anti-Assad forces, who had the motive, means and opportunity. But I feel we've been around this loop before too.
Can you give some support to your notion that a lawless islamist failed state awash with weapons and militias is better than an arab nationalist strongman? Would you prefer to live in Assad's Syria or post-Gadaffi Libya? Which do you think creates a bigger issue for Western security? Utterly absurd.
In all seriousnes though, I take the point they think it unreasonable to pay back all the debt they've accumulated (and more to the point impossible), but haven't they already had significant debt relieved in the form of haircuts to creditors? Or does that not count?
Walker – 18% (21)
Carson – 10% (7)
Trump – 10% (-)
Cruz – 9% (12)
Paul – 9% (13)
Bush – 8% (5)
Rubio – 7% (13)
Huckabee – 5% (11)
Perry – 4% (3)
Santorum – 4% (2)
Fiorina – 3% (2)
Jindal – 3% (1)
Kasich – 2% (2)
Christie – 1% (3)
Graham – 1% (0)
Pataki – 0% (-)
Undecided – 5% (6)
Which candidates would you definitely NOT support?
Trump – 28%
Bush – 24%
Christie – 18%
Graham – 12%
Huckabee – 11%
All others – SINGLE digits
Simple answer - there is significant evidence that chemical attacks were carried out by anti-Assad forces, who had the motive, means and opportunity. But I feel we've been around this loop before too.
Can you give some support to your notion that a lawless islamist failed state awash with weapons and militias is better than an arab nationalist strongman? Would you prefer to live in Assad's Syria or post-Gadaffi Libya? Which do you think creates a bigger issue for Western security? Utterly absurd.
That all depends on whether these Arab nationalists strongmen are sustainable anyway. Assad's rule was already falling apart.
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/07/01/politics/donald-trump-poll-hillary-clinton-jeb-bush/
Bush – 19% (13)
Trump – 12% (3)
Huckabee – 8% (10)
Carson – 7% (7)
Paul – 7% (8)
Rubio – 6% (14)
Walker – 6% (10)
Perry – 4% (5)
Christie – 3% (4)
Cruz – 3% (8)
Santorum – 3% (2)
Jindal – 2% (1)
Kasich – 2% (1)
Fiorina – 1% (1)
Graham – 1% (1)
Pataki – * (3)
Undecided – 3% (1)
General Election Matchups
Clinton – 54% (51)
Bush – 41% (43)
Clinton – 56% (49)
Rubio – 40% (46)
Clinton – 55% (58)
Christie – 39% (39)
Clinton – 57% (49)
Walker – 40% (46)
Clinton – 59% (-)
Trump – 35% (-)
See Greece for a live blog of what it looks like.
But Dan Hodges (pbuh) says
Yvette Cooper should be the next Labour leader - The Blairites and Brownites need to finally end the war that is killing the party
http://tinyurl.com/ForGodsSakeElectCorbyn
We aren't three wage packets away from anarchy - we are one major bank collapse away from disaster or alternatively an IS takeover of Saudi Arabia.
The extraordinary guarantee to depositors was created to prevent panic such as ensued when banks collapsed in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Now, we have national or supra-national banks rather than regional banks.
Eh? Falling apart so much that it still functions and fights a civil war after 4 years of being overrun by every foreign islamist on the planet? Pull the other one. This would have been over by lunchtime without Western powers and their regional proxies intervening.
If it's a No, then whoever is in power will have to end the pretence that Greece can continue as a squatter in the Eurozone and switch to a new currency.
The tragedy is that neither option is being offered to the Greek people by anyone unfortunate enough to have the responsibility.
Still functions? It has no presence whatsoever in the majority of the country. That's a funny definition of a functional state. The Syrian crisis moved from nowhere to full blown civil war before the Western powers even got involved. And how much difference have we actually made? Bombing a handful of vehicles and supplying guns that were freely available anyway?
Look at me, I'm TSE
Lousy with antiquity
Won't post a thread till the puns are all dead
I can't; I'm TSE
It's got all the bad branding of a cult and none of the upsides.
Simple answer - there is significant evidence that chemical attacks were carried out by anti-Assad forces, who had the motive, means and opportunity. But I feel we've been around this loop before too.
Can you give some support to your notion that a lawless islamist failed state awash with weapons and militias is better than an arab nationalist strongman? Would you prefer to live in Assad's Syria or post-Gadaffi Libya? Which do you think creates a bigger issue for Western security? Utterly absurd.
The absurd thing is you equating the situation as it is today with how it was a couple of years ago.
Assad used chemical weapons against his own people. This is abhorrent, and is massively against our own interests. We in the west were utterly wrong when we ignored Halabja. Ignoring Assad's use as well has done us absolutely no good.
You have no logical position in this, only opposition.
And your final question is preposterous.
Even if a government says they will implement the conditions of any bail-out, who really will believe them? All it does is postpone the problem. At some point either Greece leaves the euro and does it in a sensible way or it stays in and Germany and other creditor nations accept that in a single currency there will have to be transfers to the poorer parts of the union and that some form of debt relief is needed
Niether the Germans nor the Greeks are being honest with themselves or with each other.
This is what happens when you elevate a currency into some sort of totemic Golden Calf to which all must be sacrificed, including - it seems - basic common sense. A currency is no more than a means of exchange and/or a store of value. It is not something to be worshipped and using it as a definition of European (A Merkel: if the Euro fails, Europe fails - oh COME OFF IT, Angela! Greeks: we must have the euro be grown up and European) is batshit insane.
There was a moment when we could have made a real difference. Sadly that time has well and truly passed, and only worshippers of mass-murderers like Assad still believe he has much power in most of the country.
* wonders what the upside to a cult is *
It isn't spelled Lousy.
1 in 4 people have fantasised about group sex, whereas 4 in 1 is group sex.
Assad used chemical weapons against his own people. This is abhorrent, and is massively against our own interests. We in the west were utterly wrong when we ignored Halabja. Ignoring Assad's use as well has done us absolutely no good.
You have no logical position in this, only opposition.
And your final question is preposterous.
No evidence, No answers, No coherence, No surprises.
But their reasons for doing so are even more pathetic than Boris and Daves reason for asking them to stop
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3146855/We-fair-ISIS-BBC-refuses-MPs-demand-stop-using-Islamic-State-refer-terrorist-group.html?ito=social-twitter_dailymailUK
Game of 'Pathetic virtue signaller' top trumps anyone?
Many bank counter staff can tell of customers who, having been refused a withdrawal through lack of funds, offer to write a cheque on the same account to cover the transaction.
Or?
If the vote is a "Yes" (and I think it'll be a narrow "No", something like 52:48), then my money would be on new elections with two different SYRIZA parties, which would probably garner 40% of the vote between them.
Whether the leading Son-of-SYRIZA would be the radical left Tsipiras one, and whether than one beat out ND is another question altogether.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-33363225
But Assad is Putain's friend, so it doesn't matter how evil he is towards his own people.
I'll get my coat.
Of course Cooper is a card carrying Brownite, Kendall a card carrying Blairite, Corbyn a card carrying Footite, only Burnham was loyal to Blair and Brown
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/politics-blog/11713020/Yvette-Cooper-should-be-the-next-Labour-leader.html
The mistake you, and perhaps others, make is to assume that there was a 'right' answer. There were only least-wrong answers.
It is hard to see how the current situation would have been worse if we had bombed Assad. Firstly, it was morally right: he had used chemical weapons against civilian populations. Secondly, many of the then-leaders of the FSA were military leaders with connections, many of whom were known to us. That is not much the case any more, sadly.
As you said, the forerunners of ISIS exploited the vacuum created by our cowardice.
We are in a morass, and there was a small chance we could have avoided it. We flunked it. But worse, we now have a situation where we have essentially condoned the use of chemical weapons, and are even discussing helping the barbarous man who used them.
Is that the best you can do? lol.
I've given plenty of evidence passim. You chose to disbelieve it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8lhtknnuSU
(also interesting that he used the words "stop the excesses of the free market".....not sure I could see Kendall saying something like that.)
Where the Euro fails is that the Southern rim of Europe had historically followed a growth pattern that allowed inflexible labour markets to be offset by constant devaluation and inflation. When the Euro came along, prices for labour and the like kept rising in Spain, Portugal, Greece and Italy (which made people feel temporarily wealthy), but which led to enormous imbalances.
The Eurozone crisis is and was the response to that dislocation. If you want to remain inside a single currency block, you need to have flexible labour markets and relatively small government, otherwise - when the next recession hits - you will be unable to meaningfully respond.
Some of the Southern Rim have appreciated this (Spain being the best example), but those in Greece (and, one might argue Italy and France) still think that an inflexible labour market and and an inflexible currency work together.
The caliphate's forerunners have been festering in that region for the last decade. The notion that dramatically weakening the government of Syria would not have created a "vacuum" which they would have exploited is absurd. Likewise, it is likely that the vacuum created by coalition air strikes would have been filled, certainly in part, and probably in the main, by a well-funded, well-motivated group which nine months later was in a position to invade and annex large parts of a sovereign state. As for your confidence in the Free Syrian Army, the fact another group has succeeded against Assad, without Western support, and indeed with active Western opposition, suggests it was never a credible alternative, much like the Libyan National Transitional Council (remember that?).
FPT: Mr. M, ah, Phoenicia, whose colonists founded Carthage.
Trouble is both the Germans and the Greeks have form in terms of regarding a currency with more than a purely economic status.
The Deutschmark was (is!) seen as a symbol by many Germans as symbol for all that was good about the Wirtshaftswunder and the return to respectability that Federal Republic worked for from its introduction in 1948. Its very stability was also a catharsis (is that a Greek word by the way?!) for the monopoly money Weimar period, and the contribution that all made to Hitler's rise. Giving it up was a huge wrench (hence they'd never have voted for it one suspects, and so weren't given the choice of course) and was only begrudgingly acquiesced to on the grounds it would be D Mark "hard".
From the dissonance (ie bat shit crazy wanting cake and eating it) of much of Greek discourse in recent times, from what I can see, the Greeks too see the Euro as more than mere economics. It was symbol that Greece wasn't a basket case tin pot Balkan outpost but part of the European premier league, up there with the French and the Dutch et al. The central problem is that their apparent collective (not everyone of course but you get my drift) lack of desire to act like a financial premier league country and their parading of themselves on the TV screens of the world wall to wall, in prime time, doing a really convincing impression of said basket case tin pot Balkan outpost, is a) showing why they can't use the same currency as Germany, b) doing them huge harm anyway - (e.g. holiday bookings down according to reports today).
I really fear a 48/52 or similar outcome either way as it will rend Greek society asunder unless they are very lucky one fears. as a lot of very desperate people will have lost a lot either way and will in all likelihood be very bitter (you'd have to be a saint not to be!).
All for a utopian ideal as Mitterrand's price to Kohl for reunification?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11625098/HSBC-fears-world-recession-with-no-lifeboats-left.html
A woman has been charged with encouraging terrorism and being a member of Islamic State.
The 26-year-old woman, from Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire, was arrested at Heathrow Airport in February as she returned from Turkey.
She has been charged with inciting terrorism and belonging to a banned organisation."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-33362986
Before the vote, I said that a refusal on action could well cause the conflict to spread to neighbouring countries. I was sadly right. Can you show me where you were similarly right about the consequences of no action?
As you might expect, I think hindsight shows exactly the opposite of what you claim.
"The notion that dramatically weakening the government of Syria would not have created a "vacuum" which they would have exploited is absurd."
The Syrian government was dramatically weakened. It was tottering, which was exactly why it took the dramatic steps it did of using chemical weapons on the outskirts of Damascus. The vacuum was already there. Further stress in the form of bombing could have had several possible effects:
*) It could have made the situation worse. When you look at the current situation, it is very hard to see how.
*) It might have caused the remaining pro-Assad military to overthrow him. The questions are then whether they would have unified with the FSA to fight the other groups.
*) It may have caused Assad to step down, essentially ending the worst of the civil war. Free passage to Russia for him and his family might have been a good hand to play.
So you have one good possibility, one bad (but no worse than we have now), and one that could have gone either way, but again no worse than we have now.
You are also factually inaccurate. Firstly, the forerunners of ISIS/L were already in Syria, albeit in relatively small numbers. The warning signs were there. You also do not mention the presence of other groups such as Al Nusra and other AQ groups.
Secondly, the FSA was fighting Assad. Our weakness allowed both Assad's forces and the emergent ISIS/L to essentially defeat them. You are making the mistake of so many on this thread of equating what happened without action with what would have happened with.
I've given plenty of evidence passim. You chose to disbelieve it.
No, I save the best I can do to respond to genuine arguments. Emotionally incontinent armchair warmongering I will simply point out as such. 'lol'.
Nevertheless, the merits of your hypothetical question should be addressed. As @HYUFD has argued, you need to be reasonably confident that your intervention would make the situation objectively better, rather than worse. The mere fact you may remove or damage the foreign government cannot be enough. There is a further factor that needs to be considered. That is the basic principle of Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, which is, absent a resolution of the Security Council, one state cannot take military action against another save as a necessary measure of individual or collective self-defence. It is no part of my argument that abiding by this principle will necessarily be moral. On occasion, it may not be. Nevertheless, for states in general to abide by this principle is the best way of preserving peace in the long-run. It must therefore be at least a most material consideration, when a state proposes to intervene unilaterally against another to save the latter's population from its government, what the effect of the intervention will be on respect for Chapter VII by other states. If, for instance, it were to destroy all respect for it, it would be very difficult to argue that the intervention would be moral.