Opinion of Alexis Tsipras

[ingemann]

Seems kind of useless so far.

More or less this. He's too useless to be a FF and his idea's too nice for him being a HP.

[ingemann]

they do have allies -- Tsipras has shown signs of being close with the Latin American 'pink tide' leaders, and met with Putin a week ago or so -- you know Putin could throw Greece a small, but possibly decisive bone just to piss the West off.  it's obvious that's why they're doing what they're doing with Snowden -- it is not like he is of any advantage to them, but pisses the US power system (though not the American people) off like nothing else.  

God bless their effort.

LOL! Putin has urged Tsipras to strike a deal with EU and IMF.
In case you missed it he isn't exactly flush with money right now to squander tens of billions for paying Greece's 45 and 50-year old pensioners or our brand new government mouthpiece TV station.

Yup, Putin have kept his hands far away from supporting Greece with cash. I really doubt Russia could afford it even at the best of time, at least not without giving most of their other clients up, but at this point Russia can barely afford supporting their existing clients. Also it's not my impression that Greece are a country who stay bought, the moment a better offer comes along (nothing wrong with that). The Russian clients are usual kept in line through a mix of financial support, cheap gas and the implicit threat of military violence. The last wouldn't really work on Greece.

[ingemann]

Can someone reasonably explain how austerity will help the Greek people?

Austerity have no inherent postive value, no more than a poor person living of spaghetti and ketchup the last week of the month have any inherent positive value. But the long term effect of the alternative way of lending at high interest are much worse.

[ingemann]

Im feeling that he's learning towards caving to the EU proposals since greece literally has no upper hand. If he will then he would probably put it to a vote because his party promised at the same time to not leave the euro and not implement any more austerity so he has to give them a democratic choice.

I'm beginning to think it's too late even if Greece carve now. Personal I think the rest of EU just wait for the excuse, where they can make it 100% clear that the Greek government choose this. The Greek government main problem are that no one trust them to keep their word even if they say they will push the reforms through.

[ingemann]

He should have told the greedy bankers to take a hike.

You mean greedy greeks.

Nobody forced greece to take loans they couldn't afford.

and Nobody forced the various financial institutions to give them loans they can't get back.

Why can't everyone see there are two sides to this and it is not a morality play?

The bankers are never innocent, but in this case most of the banks who borrowed Greece money did it at low interests and in good faith, and the ones who didn't ensured that they wouldn't lose money on Greece. Of course by now the debt have mostly been bought out by the rest of EU (mostly the Euro zone countries with BOP surplus), and the Greek interest payment are lower than Italy's and Spain's in percent of the GDP. So yes this are not a morality play, but Greece are in a lousy negotiation position and Tsipras government really don't give the rest of EU much interest in giving the Greeks anything.

[ingemann]

You know, this whole thing started because a batch of people who shouldn't have had loans asked for them and the banks decided to lend them money anyway.

And if they denied loans to Greece?

If they'd denied them back in the 1980s, we wouldn't be in this mess. In fact, a lot of the mess in the developing world is due to loans being given during the Cold War to military juntas so they could buy weapons... and it became so impossible for them to pay back as well as preventing governments from looking after their people properly, a lot of it (after pressure for campaign groups) was forgiven. Look up the Jubilee 2000 campaign to see what I mean.

But you can rest easily, the Greek debt was not build up under the Junta (which ran a budget surplus). In fact as the Greek had a quite low debt in the early 80ties, so why shouldn't you borrow money to a country with low debt?

[ingemann]

Troika just asked for us to achieve some fiscal targets. They left to us how we d'achieve that.

This is patently false. All the accounts I have heard of the talks (coming from mainstream media sources, not some random leftist hackblog) pointed out that the creditors had asked for very specific reforms. The IMF in particular was hellbent on imposing cuts to pensions.

Juncker has explicitly stated that he was fine with cutting the military instead.

What they did not want were the measures they did not believe would achieve the goals.

Anyway, the goals were, probably, politically unfeasible.

Maybe Juncker said so, but the IMF never dropped their demands. In fact, I heard at some point that Greece wanted the IMF out of the negotiation and sought to strike a deal with the more cooperative EC and Central Bank, but the latter refused.

It is pretty obvious that there the European negotiators have not much trust in the current Greek government. Anyway, there is no evidence that the Greeks even considered cutting the military. And, according to Juncker, they went out of their way to misinform the public about the negotiations.

I read this

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http://www.econotimes.com/Greece-going-for-referendum-more-questions-arise-54982

If it's true I get why they don't trust the Greek government. After what I have read, the negotiation have been a nightmare, they have said one thing in Brussel and another in Brussel. The Greek government hav few friends left in the rest of EU, and this may simply be the last straw.