“Germany will do everything it can to help Greece for a successful EU presidency,” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel during a joint press conference with Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras. “We are beginning to see light in the tunnel ,” she concluded stressing that Germany supports the tough decisions in Greece and that she sees the first fruits .
Angela Merkel noted that ” Greece has made impressive progress,” noting that “such an example is the achievement of the primary surplus “. She referred to the “substantial progress” achieved compared to what it was discussed 10 months ago and she recognized “the sacrifices made by the Greek people”.
But Merkel would not be …Merkel if she would not add a “but” to all the praises.
But “there are issues that have not been fully resolved and the budget of 2014 is a problem, however the prime minister told me that Greece will do whatever it can to meet its commitments,” she added with a big greedy grind.
Angela Merkel advised Greeks that “in order to see better days, a budget balance and structural changes have to be achieved.”
As for investment, Merkel said an investment bank would be created according to the model of the German investment bank .
“With regards to the fiscal adjustment we met our targets and in some areas we went even further,” Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said adding “we should not stop the effort.” However , apart from the financial improvements, the Prime Minister noted that “we correct the structural imbalances that existed in Greece. There is no doubt that more needs to be done.
“Achieving primary surplus is the first sign of success ,” Samaras said and pointed out that the targeted primary surplus was related to the 2014 and not to 2013 , “but Greece made it.”
“Remember how was Greece 15 months ago ,” he said to make a comparison with the present.
Samaras underlined that he did not come to Germany in order to negotiate and that “the Greek government negotiates with the troika , not with Germany” he said.
Earlier , the two leaders had a working lunch. The Greek prime minister visited Berlin following an invitation by the German Chancellor.
I remember that Greek media had written that Samaras was visiting Merkel in order to negotiate a further “debt haircut”. I may be wrong and I just had a dream or a hallucination due to hunger caused by the austerity measures that sum up in a Greek success story and primary surplus of a couple of million euro.
PS the menu of the working lunch has been kept secret. Rumors claim that Merkel-Samaras enjoyed “foam of primary surplus over an empty puff pastry pocket” as appetizer, “finely chopped taxpayers roll-ups on a sauce mirror of spicy austerity measures & structural reforms and mashed desperation dumplings” as main course and “dark chocolate train stuffed with jobless wishes in a crocant tunnel” as dessert. The salad was simple: mixed eurozone with south sprinkles.
Translated into language you and I understand, this means a subsidiary for KfW (Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau), the German government owned investment bank, will be set up to facilitate a deal similar to the one Ireland has done it’s very best to keep quiet. Similar to the one Spain is currently working on, and similar to the one being set up in Portugal.
The bottom line is this, once set up, the Greek government will do exactly what the Irish have done, and the Spanish and Protuguese are in the process of doing. They will sell the country, lock stock and barrel, to the German bank in return for “investment”. No more stop-overs in Brussels or Luxembourg. No, direct, one way traffic to Frankfurt. As the Irish prime miniser put it: the deal with the German government will see KfW looking after the financing needs of Ireland for the foreseeable future… Bundesland Irland was created a few days ago, Bundesland Griechenland, Spanien and Portugal are in the making. Put in perspective, after taking out Cyprus for being a little too friendly to Putin and friends, the German banks now own the only tax haven left in the EU, are are already using it to great effect. DB is moving to Dublin… The same German bank is very close to owning one of the largest economies in Europe, Spain.
Portugal and Greece are also nearly in the bag, giving a great supply of by now very willing, and very cheap labour. The plan is nearing completion, as predicted. “Special economic zones” as flagged about a year ago, and hailed as the solution to all our problems. The full version of the “Greek success story”. Oh, and the really good news? The supervisory board of the bank is chaired by none other than our friend Herr Schauble. We now answer directly to Wolfie himself…
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Interesting stuff, Ephilant.
Any additional information, links, upgdates etc. (as and when) would be valuable.
Here’s one article by one of Ireland’s leading economists who is a little more than just sceptic.
http://www.irishexaminer.com/archives/2013/1115/ireland/bailout-exit-declaration-exaggerated-half-truth-249716.html
Meanwhile, the 6 leading economists in Ireland have all expressed serious reservations against this. Reported in the same newspaper on Nov 15th. Same source has also many reports on the DB move to Dublin, all in the name of “jobs” of course… (Can’t help but wonder how many German jobs will be axed to accommodate the “new” Irish ones)
If you want it spelled out no uncertain terms, read this shocking report from JPMorgan encourages southern periphery EU members to ditch their far too anti fascist constitutions and help accommodate the German inspired recovery
https://groups.google.com/group/random-thoughts-on-investments/attach/243626285e18f68b/JPM-the-euro-area-adjustment–about-halfway-there.pdf?part=7&authuser=0
There are many more, but I know KTG is not too keen on too many links, with reason..
For those of you who understandably don’t fancy wading through pages of banker-waffle, the following might just change your mind for you. Amongst the pages of very fancy graphs and dodgy percentages, this JPMorgan report produces pearls of wisdom like these:
And then, more precisely, the kind of political problems that need to removed:
and
This last one has a very interesting 2 words in it. “Weak executives.”
The executive are those who carry out the will of the legislature, which, on paper at least, answers to the people. That is the nature of politics. Not good enough for JPMorgan. This is an unashamed call for much stronger executives (aka as technocrates e.g. TROIKA style) who answer to knowbody and take their orders for persons or organisations, not from “the people”. It is really nice to see an American bank spell out to us in such explicit terms what it is that
Bottomline: We are far too left and far too anti fascist for their liking, and they want this changed!