Liquidity problems? Greece’s official creditors had a genius idea. They apparently proposed to Athens to halt the payment of salaries and pensions for one to two months. This would allegedly tackle the problem of liquidity and find a solution to Greek problem of how to pay back bailout loan tranches to creditors when suffering from liquidity problems.
“When we say that we have liquidity problems, they tells us to make no payment of salaries and pensions for one or two months,” Panariti said as quoted by Greek media.
The creditors’ proposal was revealed by Varoufakis’ aide Elena Panarity at an event of the Deree College on Thursday and was confirmed by Finance Ministry officials on Friday.
The creditors made this proposal at the side talks the Brussels Group meeting in Brussels on Tuesday.
Panariti did not revealed which one of Greece’s creditors ECB, IMF and EU made this proposal. She is part of the Greek team negotiating with creditors the reforms that Athens has to fulfill in the next months.
In seems that the proposal was made to Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis who rejected it right away, describing it as “shameful”.
UPDATE:
four hours after the media published Panaritis’s statements, she issued a press release via the Finance Ministry where she claimed that “these proposals were made before 2015.” that is that the Torika had made these proposals to previous governments.
Instead of clarifying the things, Panariti made things more complicate because Greek team officials who participated at the Brussels Group meeting had confirmed her previous claim and they had even quoted Varoufakis’ reaction to the proposal.
Huston, we got a problem! With the communication of the new Greek government!
On Friday Greece did indeed paid a tranche of 340 million euro to the International Monetary Fund.
PS what’s next on the list of genius proposals?
Sure. Elena Panarity.
An absolutely unbiased and trustworthy source without any agenda.
Tomorrow’s revelation:
“The institutions formerlly known as T. force us Greeks to sell our blood, organs and children. But we will withstand”.
This is wahat Mr. Schäuble would call a ‘responsible’ proposal. Irresponsible would be letting banks fail (especially German banks) or, say, jailing bankers.
The question remains: are the people in the troika who made this proposal sociopaths or psychopaths?
Here’s a good idea – Don’t pay the creditors. Ever!
And thus lose what little credibility the Greek country has left.
which in turn will kepp most people from grocery shopping and paying their bills and therefore no tax will be collected and paid to the government coffers wow thats really smart.
Seems that this story is not quite true as it has been rebuffed by FinMin who say it didn’t happen tis year or with this government.
When you loan me 100 euros I have the responsibility to repay it.
When you loan me 350 Billions euros, with absolute certainty, you got a problem.
Funny thing is, Dean, the investment broker offices of those banks, who earn money from brokering bond sales, would tell you and me that we are making an “investment” in the bonds they brokered. And they tell you that, of course, all “investments” are subject to risk. But when it’s the banks’ money buying those same bonds, it’s called a “loan”. And they tell us that “loans” should have no risk, and Greece is “morally obligated” to pay back that “loan”.
Interesting exercise in semantics
An idea: let Yanis Varoufakis invited poor Greek people for dinner.
http://www.gettyimages.it/galleries/events/542486581
He seems to have enough food and he lives in a nice area of Athens with poor homeless people. So give them a treat.
Another idea of the Greek government, themselves: they want to “borrow” money from the social funds. It seems Greece has enough money after all? But will the pensions and social security be save?
Don’t want to insult the Greeks and our Schäuble and other officals can be baffoons themselves, but this is just unprofessional and sounds rather questionable.