Friday 10 July 2015

Hubris defined: Tsipras the Quisling

Hubris Defined:

"excessive pride towards or defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis"

So Greece's new proposals to its creditors look the same as the ones it rejected last week and had a referendum to say 'Oxi' to.

Somewhere this week Mr Tsipara has been sat in a dark room and had the facts of life explained to him on EU and the true gods of finance. He has become a Quisling and the fate of Nick Clegg now awaits at the ballot box - something he will no doubt avoid after his recent fondness for it.

The EU Monster, as Budgie commented yesterday, has a Terminator like ability to reform and re-focus just enough to kick the can a bit further down the road.

Tsiparas however is doomed to follow the path so well defined by his ancestors.

One day, the EU will run out of road, but not yet at least......

15 comments:

Bill Quango MP said...

The surgery was a great success. But the Doctor died.

ken from glos said...

spelling error 2 out of 10 !

Budgie said...

BQ, nice. Good job I was eating a sandwich and not cornflakes.

andrew said...


The prospect of food aid coming from Romania whilst people died in hospitals may have concentrated his mind.

Who told the greeks money was democratic?

I would love to live in a classical communist society, where there is no such thing as money and we all work for the betterment of each other.
The trouble is communal living is only as communal as the least communal person in the group.

That tax collection is rather uneven at best and I just found out that shipping is not taxed at all in greece (even now!) shows how communist greece really is as a country.

CityUnslicker said...

that was poor even for me Ken!

Phil said...

Just looking at our outlook for the second half of the year and it looks like the Chinese economy is about to drop into a big black hole. ooops. That explains the Chinese stock market tanking. Ah well it's been over 7 years since the last global recession so the next one is running late. This time we're all so well prepared to weather the storm aren't we? Maybe not. Especially the EU and Greece - they are really fucked when this next recession kicks in.

Nick Drew said...

if we take the euro-goal to be, in priority:

(a) keep the Project on the road at (almost) any cost and
(b) give the greek can, and the greeks themselves, a real kicking

then the Franco-German bilateral summit a few evening ago was a helluva productive one: the good-cop / bad-cop act worked a treat, and Merkel will be happy to play bad cop as long as anyone wants

getting the frogs to do the greek's homework for them was inspired, you can always get the correct answer on the piece of paper that way (it's OK, I can tell you how to spell 'abnegation')

then again, I guess this phase is not over just yet, there's that pesky greek demos ...

dearieme said...

We'll be all right. Our great Chancellor, Otto von Osborne, will see to that.

(Joke borrowed, but I do like it.)

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suff said...

To follow on from Bills line
.... The doctor died and the anesthetist bailed halfway through the operation. Leaving the patient with many years of agony to look forward to.
The writing was on the wall once the IMF bailed. They only go in to hold the barricade, while their sponsors get their cash out. How much Greek debt are the French and German banks holding now?

andrew said...

Greek debt...

quite a lot

Budgie said...

Well, it is looking decidedly dodgy for Greece's attempts to stay in the euro. The options look like Grexit, or become a province of Greater Germany.

Of course the euro itself will not collapse, imminently or otherwise, but it is looking increasingly likely that I was wrong to predict that Greece would remain in the euro. We will see. This is playing out like Machiavelli's Italy, or some of the popes politickings. What fun, if you like interesting times.

If Grexit is forced, the EZ may even be considered to be that bit stronger, more resolute and more self assured. And surely Grexit will be seen as a warning to others like the PIIS.

Budgie said...

Deal done (that is, said to be done), Greece humiliated, Germans have their pound of flesh, Greece stays in the euro in the face of logic. We await final approval and then the fall-out starts.

Phil said...

"Deal done". Well at least from Tsipras point of view.

He now has to sell a "bail-out" which isn't a bail-out - it's a roll-over of the existing debt plus 5% more interest. Our pro-EU media like to give the impression the EU is giving the money away to those greedy Greeks when in fact all they are doing is giving a mortgage repayment holiday and adding the missed payments to the capital to be rapid.

This so-called bail-out which is really a roll-over will come with huge strings attached - handing over $50bn in assets for a start. Except that the debt is $330bn so there's a long way to go...

...and then in a year or two's time we will be right back here again, with the same discussions (but likely a different government).

Surely the Greek parliament will say "no" to this deal because it clearly solves nothing and the Greeks might as well just get on with the pain of default and a new currency now, rather than wait for the next global recession.

Phil said...

One other thing, I notice that Greece has a massive trade deficit as well as anything else.

Very difficult to pay of an external debt when you have a big trade deficit...

Does anybody in the EU know anything about basic arithmetic do you think?