Courtesy of Mish.
"Last Try" in Greece
For years we have heard phrases like down to the last hour, one minute before midnight, now or never, etc. But on every previous occasion, the Troika negotiators pulled an agreement rabbit out of the hat.
So, when we read Greece Locked in ‘Last Try’ Talks with Bailout Negotiators it's easy to be more than a bit skeptical of the serious "final" mature of it all.
Talks between Athens and its international bailout creditors were expected to resume late on Sunday after Greek government officials were told to submit a final list of economic reforms in order to secure €7.2bn in desperately needed rescue aid.
A spokesman for Mr Juncker would only say that talks would continue on Sunday. But others briefed on the talks said the meeting had been “difficult” and that senior eurozone officials were concerned whether a deal could be reached in time for Greece to access the aid before its bailout expires at the end of the month.
“Positions are still far apart,” said one EU diplomat. “It’s not certain there will be an outcome.” Another senior eurozone official said the Greek team returned to Brussels on Saturday without new proposals and that Sunday’s evening session would be a “last try.”
“Greek movement [is] not discernible,” said the official. “I think they do not want a solution.”
Mr Pappas, the Greek minister of state and a longtime political ally of Mr Tsipras’, took to Twitter to push for politicians to become engaged in the negotiations rather than technocrats who normally hammer out such agreements. “A political solution is needed to permanently exit from the crisis,” Mr Pappas wrote.
“A credible proposal needs to be tabled by the Greeks in the next 24 or so hours,” said Mujtaba Rahman, head of European analysis at the Eurasia Group risk consultancy. “Otherwise it’s looking like game over for Athens.”
Under the creditors’ plan, Athens would need to find measures to hit a primary budget surplus — revenues less expenses when interest on sovereign debt is not counted — of 1 per cent of gross domestic product this year, rising to 2 per cent next year and 3 per cent in 2017. By 2018, the primary surplus would need to hit 3.5 per cent.
“1.2 per cent was utterly feasible in late March,” Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek finance minister, wrote on Twitter over the weekend of this year’s target. “1 per cent infeasible after three more months of induced asphyxiation.”
Primary Surplus Infeasible?
The creditors' targets for a primary surplus are not infeasible, but they would amount to "induced asphyxiation”. …
