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Schauble: “Yes” vote “important step” but “Grexit is the best option”

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble goes to bed and wakes up with only one fixed idea in his mind: Grexit. He will never stop undermining the Greek deal, claiming that a debt relief within the Eurozone was not possible, but only possible with a temporary Grexit.

Speaking to German radio Deutschlandfunk on Thursday morning, Schaeuble commented on the YES to Brussels agreement and “prior actions” vote in the Greek Parliament

“We are one step further. […] Greece is still in a difficult situation. […] That was an important step.”

However, he insisted that his plan of so-called “temporary Greek exit from the eurozone” was the better option.

“Perhaps that would have been the better option for Greece.“

Many economists have their doubts that Greece can solve its problems without a cancellation of debt, he explained, adding that such an agreement is not compatible with eurozone rules and that therefore the only option would be for Greece to temporarily leave the euro.

Below some excerpts from Schaeuble’s interview:

Heuer: Do you really trust Tsipra’s government, do you believe that the reforms will come now?

Schäuble: Greece has committed itself. And that will be precisely controlled as in the recent years. That was in the past years so, of course, Greece did not like it and this triggered a lot of resentment. Syriza had indeed also exploited this unwillingness in order to come to power. But it does not help.

“Greece has committed five years ago to reform”

For this purpose it has to make reforms, it needs to be competitive. That has failed not… in recent years. Incidentally, one must always say: That which was so controversial in the Greek parliament, to this has Greece committed itself mainly five years ago, onlt that it has not been implemented.

Heuer: Mr. Schäuble, this proposal – temporary Grexit with haircut – is a very generous offer to Greece.

Schäuble: … Now you have also said that,that would been probably by far the best for Greece.

He said that he will bring the 3. bailout negotiations issue to the German Parliament – despite the fact that he thinks “temporary Grexit is the best option.”

He praised the European institutions saying: “Europe is based on the principles of democracy and rule of law.”

Full interview in German here.

schaeuble

grrrrroarrrrrr

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30 comments

  1. It has emerged today that the ECB will not finance the Greek banks in order for them to open. This was the whole point of the negotiated disastrous settlement — since the Greek economy is collapsing without banking support.

    In my view, this is the interference of the pig in the wheelchair — trying to destroy the Greek economy even after Tsipras conceded everything demanded! It has gone beyond a joke and is now open warfare with the European institutions and Germany.

    The obvious solution is to renationalise the Bank of Greece, seize the euro printing press in Athens and put the euros there into the banking syste. Of course, Greece will have to leave the eurozone if it does this, but I see no option if the Euro-fascists are not going to keep to explicit and implicit agreements to restart the Greek economy. This is open warfare now.

    • They should have done that on the evening of the referendum. Now it’s too late.

      • Giaourti Giaourtaki

        No, I don’t think so. It’s never too late to print as many euros as possible and it will hurt’em really hard and they can’t do anything against it as the Euro is illegal, it’s counterfeit-money anyway.
        Varoufakis’ idea of a parallel currencies is not without reason the same shit like Schäuble’s, it’s much too friendly!

    • Not sure if you could call this open warfare as Greece has just surrendered to the Eurozone. This is what your politicians voted for.

      • Giaourti Giaourtaki

        Forced by the extortion ring EU. The embargo on Greece in just 3 weeks is more effective than the embargo on Iraq was in months. Ok, in reality the embargo is longer going on as Greece’s “friends” in Serbia, Bulgaria, Fyrom, Romania and Albania started their “contagion” much earlier than the illegal ECB stopping its job as a centralbank.

    • The above should read: ELA limit _is being increased_ by 900 M euros over one week.

  2. Any decent human being should of course object to Schauble’s rhetoric and his ‘vision’ for Europe. But sadly what matters here is not what the majority think but what those at the centre of power in Brussels and a few select European capitals think – and that is that nothing can be allowed to derail the neoliberal takeover of Europe. Sadly the European left has been (once again) unable to grasp the narrative and and set the terms of mainstream debate in this issue and Greece has become the victim of a ‘single story’ – http://thesearchforsocialism.com/2015/07/14/greece-a-single-story/ – where aggressive rightwing propaganda has masked the real issues.

  3. He seems to be saying that they can’t cancel any debt if you are in the euro, but they can if you are out. Why,is it different money?

    • Giaourti Giaourtaki

      I guess he’s trying to convince people that sovereign states can write off debts but that he will try to force Greece to pay afterwards he isn’t saying, he’s also not saying that the Troika forced Greece to sign in to British law and regarding British law this debts can’t be written off.

    • The eurozone has a law that prohibits the funding / bailout between countries, effectively guaranteeing that for example: german taxpayer money is not used to fund the greek government.
      I guess most people would react badly if the taxes the pay went to another country.
      When greece ran into troubles in 2010 and needed money the germans where told ”don’t worry we get our money back” when in fact it was a bailout. Even now they don’t call it bailout, since that is legally not possible within the eurozone.
      If germany would agree to a haircut, they would have to admit that they lied to their voters, that they knew from the beginning that the money is gone and that is was not a loan but a
      ”solidarity payment”.

      P.S. german politicians never talk about a bailout, its reform programm, emergency loan or something else

      • keeptalkinggreece

        good explanation. and Germans call creditors “Geldgeber” like ‘donors” lol

        • And I suppose borrowers are “GoldGrabbers” if the lenders are “GoldGivers”. This is all medieval shit, like so much German thinking. BTW: when the debt is not repaid, do they demand a pound of flesh in exchange for the gold? This is certainly how they are behaving now.

      • And when exactly did the German taxpayers not see their money back? So far all loans have been repayed with interest. So there aren’t bailout.

        • Giaourti Giaourtaki

          Exactly, the ECB made 6 bln profit from interest so far and 2.4 bln of this is Germany’s share, the IMF published just a few days ago that Greece paid them back already 40 billion and the official numbers of pdma.gr indicate that Greece pays back until 2030 50 billion plus 150 billion interest, but these numbers will be forgotten fast as the best poor joke in history: “Bailout? Sure, but 75% is interest!”

        • Yet everybody (the current Greek government, the IMF, the ECB, the EC) is stating that Greece does need a “debt relief”. Mathematically, by extending the maturity and reducing the interest rate enough, the payments could be reduced just as much as can be achieved by a nominal debt value reduction. I do not fully understand why, but many people insist the latter has greater value (even if it is just psychological value for the Greek people). Initially, Mr. Varoufakis insisted on that as well.

          • If you want to offer your expert mathematical skills to the IMF, I am sure they will be impressed enough to offer you a job. Until then, even I am prepared to accept their calculations. It’s the one thing that the IMF can do properly, basic calculations. Their models are often wrong, their grasp of economics just totally out, but they can add up and multiply quite well.

          • Giaourti Giaourtaki

            It’s very simple: cut the interest to zero, all these “friends” call it “our money” and “payback” but it’s 75% interest, only 25% is debt, interest is no debt, just cut it off and Greece has to pay until 2030 instead of 200 billion only 50 billion.
            The reason they all never think about it is that they take interest for granted profit but that was never the idea of interest as the idea is interest is for the risk.

          • keeptalkinggreece

            well said.

          • I was wondering: did you ever look into taking a mortgage to buy a house? How much money did you need to borrow? What was the interest rate? How many years it takes to pay it off? At the end of that period, how much interest would you end up paying on top of the principal?

            Also, do you think there is zero risk for taxpayers of other countries that Greece will not repay the bailout loans? At what interest rate would you lend the Greek state your own money?

          • I can tell you that all employees of merchant banks in Europe used to get interest-free loans, on top of their massive salaries. So the idea that all loans have to have high interest is just right wing propaganda. People and institutions do what they want to do, and justify their behaviour with all manner of propaganda and lies.

            At a time of the lowest interest rates in modern history, the interest that a bankrupt country is being forced to pay is a very very nasty piece of behaviour indeed. It shows clearly that there is no friendship, no charity, just pure exploitation and manipulation. As you would expect from organised crime.

      • Giaourti Giaourtaki

        The Euro-zone can’t have any laws, it’s not a constitutional state, same reason why the Euros are fake-money if printed by ECB, only states are allowed to print money.

    • A good explanation of the rationale behind the eurozone rule that government default is not an option was provided in a Bloomberg interview by Kit Juckes — a Soc Gen global strategist based in London. When the European Monetary Mechanism was formed, he said, the national governments decided to retain significant fiscal autonomy. Simply, European states (e.g., Greece, France) have been spending a larger portion of their GDP than, for example, any U.S. state. On the other hand, Brussels spends much lesser portion of the European GDP compared to Washington. According to Mr. Juckes, this structural flaw of the EMU was and is well understood. To compensate for that, individual Eurozone governments had to pledge never to default on their public debt. That EMU architecture allowed, for example, much weaker governments like Greece’s to borrow at near-German terms after the euro was introduced in 2000.

      Removing this rule would “eat away of the EMU architecture”, per Mr. Juckes. He believes, eventually it will be replaced by something else (e.g., smaller fiscal autonomy of the national governments). However, an agreement on such change will take a long time.

  4. Grexit has already happened. But instead of available drachmas, Greek people have unavailable euros. Same result: monetary union with indefinite capital control and no access to your own cash is not a monetary union.

  5. Based on whose democracy & whose rule of law????

  6. Giaourti Giaourtaki

    Does this all happens because they are pissed that Greece didn’t comply with their other great ideas like “Lazy Greeks, sell your islands!” and instead decided that TUI, Thomas Cook and Lufthansa find a another much cheaper way to buy Greece?
    Not only that Samaras wanted to end the program and return to markets in 2014 he was also strictly against the higher VATs on islands and tourism because it will destroy the whole sector. These fantastic “35 billions” already were known before 2014, a third “bailout” to come was also clear.
    And then put into account how “easy” – regarding to prior times – Samaras let the hungerstrike of Nikos Romanos win.
    Presenting a candidate that will bring snap elections?
    I guess it makes much more sense to create a script of 6 months senseless “negotiations” that leads into most people get bored of trying to understand what the pigs are talking about than to have riots and strikes instead.
    The question would be if SYRIZA who saved this way the so called left as a channel for voters was involved in it as a puppet with a nose or without and if with, then it would make even more sense why Kammenos gots the war-ministry.

    • This happens because a Left government in Europe threatens the continuation of the neoliberal gravy train of privatisations and private banks propped up with taxpayers’ money. Merkel and the wheelchair pig are just sadistic and ruthless: their fate should be similarly determined. This is a war about the future of Europe, and the political commentators in the UK are very clear about this.

      If you read Mazower’s excellent book “Europe: The Dark Continent” you will find on page one, a prediction of this (of sorts). He states that the ideologies of fascism and commmunism are not defeated, and will return to power in Europe. Certainly, the fascist elements are now very clear — with Germany leading the way. As before.

  7. Please forget my previous comment.
    I made an error.
    Here is the corrected message :
    So in the end Varoufakis and Schlaube agree.
    It would be better if Greece leave euro.
    They agree on that.
    How ironic.
    The 2 big foes , at the end of the day , agree.
    Thats economics / Politics.
    Yesterdays foes are todays friends.
    Meanwhile Tsipras de anti austerity champion.., thinks heavy austerity is the lesser evil.

    • keeptalkinggreece

      no they don’t agree because Varoufakis ‘erase debt’ but Schaueble “Grexit +loan to support the new currency”