Courtesy of Mish.
Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras keeps hinting that a “deal is close” while publicly trashing every deal offer.
One seriously has to wonder if this is purposeful gamesmanship to string the Troika along and encourage the ECB to keep liquidity in place so that Greek citizens can pull their money out of the banks.
The more simple possibility is everyone truly believes the other side is likely to cave in at any moment.
Tsipras Won’t Agree to Irrational Proposals
Repeating similar rants of the past, Tsipras said today: Greece will Not Consent to Irrational Proposals.
Greece cannot accept the “irrational” proposal made this week by the institutions overseeing its bailout, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said during an emergency Parliament session Friday, adding that any deal must also include some form of debt relief.
His speech came the morning after a surprise announcement that Greece would defer an IMF payment due Friday, and would instead bundle all four installments due in June — a total of 1.6 billion euros — into one payment at the end of the month.
Addressing lawmakers for the first time on the course of his government’s troubled four-month negotiations with Greece’s international lenders, Tsipras said he was “unpleasantly surprised” by the proposal put forward by the International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank and European Commission during his visit to Brussels for talks with commission head Jean-Claude Juncker.
“I would like to believe that this proposal was an unfortunate moment for Europe, or at least a bad negotiating trick, and will very soon be withdrawn by the same people who thought it up,” he said.
Still, he said, he believes a deal is now closer than ever.
Wordsmithing Extraordinaire
Is it remotely possible Tsipras actually believed a better deal was going to be handed to him?
I strongly doubt it.
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