Well, it hardly comes as a surprise that the infamous PSI under the best of circumstances has been postponed. Under the likeliest scrapped. For all our Minister of Finances’ enthusiastic statements, even expressed certainty, that agreement would have been reached by today.
Of course for those familiar with Greece, the mere fact that our Minister of Finances Evangelos Venizelos had appeared so optimistic was quite sufficient to alert us to the fact that things were going badly wrong. Not for nothing has this gentlemen been voted worst Minister of Finances of the whole of the EU. And for all our knee jerk chauvinism here in Greece, no one , but no one disagreed with that assessment.
But what happened with this famous Public Sector Involvement? Another of The Frau’s wizard brain children. Well now, as you may recall, back in June the first private involvement fix was announced by The Frau, to the tune of a 20% haircut of half outstanding loans.
Among others, a former Minister of Finances, Nikos Christodoulakis, had said at the time that this would achieve nothing, given that we were already in a recession of an aggregate of about 15% already. Nevertheless, The Frau in her omniscience (a bit like a North Korean leader) decided that was it.
But before not so long, in October 2011, just a few months later, it was realized that this was not nearly enough to make even a dent, let alone solve the problem. So The Frau in her continued infinite wisdom decreed a 50% haircut, and badgered poor Mr Charles Dallara all night till she exhausted him into agreeing with her.
So now what’s the matter? Well, for starters, quite apart from all the sinister factors such as hedge funds delighting in new games (things that apparently The Frau can’t even imagine), it appears that for all her badgering, The Frau forgot the little detail of the interest rate on the new shorn bonds that would replace the old ones. Just a detail you may say…
But it wasn’t just that. It also appears that projections of the Greek economy were completely off the mark. Now, for all the incompetence and dithering and mediocre quality of the Greek government, no one can seriously claim that in October there could have been a picture of where the Greek economy was going, any different to the continued mess we are in today, unless they were blind.
So I think I do detect a slight problem here. If the whole mighty apparatus of the EU and in particular German leadership is incapable of making a decent projection for what the situation will be like in a couple of months, then what’s with all this pontificating of how things will be in 2020?
In other words, if the whole of the Troika and institutions behind them are incapable of drawing up any reasonable and effective plans because they can’t even forecast something as simple as what the Greek economy will be like in a couple of months, then I do think it’s unfair to be blaming the Greek government alone for the mess.
So? Back to the drawing board? That is what it looks like.
Would it be too much to hope that all these illuminaries of the Troika headed by her eminence The Frau might just for a moment consider that when you’ve pushed a country and now are pushing a whole continent into deep depression through your own obsessive Calvinist austerity ideas you might perhaps have got something wrong?
I know that there’s a saying that he (or she, as is more politically correct in this case at least) who made the shitty mess should be the one to clean it up. But if we hold our breath and wait for that to happen, then we’ll all be dead, and not in the long run either!