Greece, the EU and the markets
You can't always get what you want
Jan 26th 2015, 10:11 by Buttonwood
THE Greek voters have opted for a break from "politics as usual"; investors are assuming
that "politics as usual" will occur after all (European stockmarkets are slightly higher today).
One group is bound to be extremely disappointed.
Alexis Tsipras immediately declare (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worldeurope30978052) d
that
Greece is leaving behind catastrophic austerity, it is leaving behind the fear and
the autocracy, it is leaving behind five years of humiliation and pain. Your
mandate is undoubtedly cancelling the bailouts of austerity and destruction. The
troika for Greece is the thing of the past.
But of course, the troika (the EU, ECB and IMF) is still around. At the end of February, the
bailout programme is due to expire, and new funding will be needed; would the Greeks really
want to borrow at the current market rate (for threeyear bonds) of 10.8%? Greek banks are
dependent on funding from the ECB (and it will be interesting to see what wealthy
depositors do with their money over the coming weeks). So the troika has some strong cards
to play.
The Greek government, of course, has cards of its own. It knows that the EU will not want to
revert to the chaos of 20112012 when it looked as if the euro would break up. It also knows
that many EU nations (and electorates) are fed up with austerity in their own nations and
recognise that the Greek debttoGDP ratio is so high that the debt can never be practically
repaid. There are some prominent American economists
(http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/26/thoseradicalvsps/?smid=twNytimesKrugman&seid=auto&_r=0)
arguing the same thing.