Greece’s recently re-elected SYRIZA-ANEL coalition government won the vote of confidence on Wednesday night. With merely 155 votes in a parliament of 300 seats, the government did not manage to win a single vote from the opposition parties. These parties that were supporting the previous SYR-ANEL coalition and were voting in favor of all agreements with the lenders in summer. The ‘mercy and support’ period is now over.
With the confirmation of government in Parliament, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and his team faces tough challenges as he will need to comply with lenders’ demands already within next week.
The government parliamentary group will have to pass legislation bills with regards to the famous 48 Prior Actions, the long catalog of “structural reforms”, tax hikes, pensions system overhaul and other tough austerity measures that foresees austerity worth 6.4 billion euro for the rest of 2015 and the whole of 2016.
The first set of Prior Actions needs to pass through the Parliament by October 15th.
This is a precondition for Greece to pass the so-called “first program review” scheduled for November and unlock 2 billion euro in form of bailout loan as well as estimated 25 billion euro for recapitalization of the banks.
Banks recapitalization need to be concluded by end of the year, before the new European Union rules go into effect so that depositors avoid bail-in.
Tsipras is confident that his plan will success. Addressing the Parliament before the vote, he said:
“We will quickly pass the hurdle of the first review, we will conclude the big issues of the bank recapitalisation and the debt and we will proceed at a measured pace to change Greece.”
Announcing the government policy goals beginning of the week, Tsipras promised to find ways to ease the social injustice “that the bailout will entail for the poorest Greeks and has vowed to find alternative measures for some of the unpopular policies sought by creditors.”
Having completed a successful review, Tsipras is keen to start the hard bargain for debt relief. His plan is to have Greece return to the bond markets in the first half of 2017.
PS Before all these nice things go through the Parliament, we will have to check the duration of the government parliamentary majority. Because 155 seats are just 4 seats more from the majority of 151.
The term “recapitalization” is also crazy nonsense as the savers have more than 125 billion in their banks, if it’s gone it’s simply stolen by the banks for casino-orgy and now again stolen from taxpayers to hide the theft but as Cyprus now has sued Greece for Laiki it’s getting funny.
The main question is: what would be the banks without depositors’ money?????????
Sure and this is also the reason why more and more patrons don’t pay cash anymore and the system forces working people into the duty to open up bank-accounts but call it instead a “right” for an account.
Crowd funds and all banks that are not speculating with their savers money and instead do real investments into sustainable projects are obviously getting no “recapitalization” or any other support.
At least capitalism (and “communism” with a money-based economy) will not work fine for authorities and hierarchy without having “their” banks, but people without any money might realize it’s all stupid as they will realize that without plundering the Tricont there wouldn’t have been banks invented or think about the sense of numbers in general. In a few years we will face that numbers are only necessary to write software, that all kids have computer-chips inside their “brains” and they don’t need to learn to read any more but it’s getting senseless to learn to read already today as way too many only use these “skills” to read religious manipulation.
problem is: it is difficult to open a new bank account due to capital controls = of course there are exceptions for specific circumstances
Actually before the crisis Greek & Cypriot banks were mostly solid old fashioned banks with 70% deposits and 30% investment, usually in real, high value investments, i.e. industry, shipping etc. Not derivatives. This is exactly why they were so attractive to Troika to haircut and bail-in. The northern banks have c 20% deposits to 80% “investment” usually in derivatives & other casino finance.
Now the Greek banks are zombie hollow shells that Greek taxpayers are already bailing out to the tune of 48 billion so far, and more coming – if we are so “lucky” as to “earn” new recapitalization soon, after the 2015 capital flight. In a unique lose-lose scenario (for Greeks), Greek banks are effectively nationalised, but not officially nationalised, which until the interesting new “rules” of Troika / Scheuble was hitherto strictly illegal.
Now we shall be shouldering twice to three times the debt burden for private banks we do not own- if we are “lucky”, “deserving” – BUT please note that bail-in is not averted by this. It is not a situation of recap vs bail-in. Unless some deus ex machina intervenes, take for granted it will be BOTH. Bail-in further down the line.
Hi KTG,
Do you have an email account I can contact you on?
It’s about a possible subject you may wish to cover (or not of course).
Please reply to the email account given if you are willing.
Thanks. Jon
keeptalkinggreece at gmail.com