Greece At 5 To Midnight: Juncker Aide Calls New Syriza Proposals “good Basis For Discussion”

Is Syriza crossing red lines?

Athens gets more like a kind of viral Casablanca every day. It is a mish-mash of rumour, opinion directionalising, plot, counter-plot, cloak, dagger and 95% of the population going about their business with little more than exasperatedly rolled eyes about what’s going on.

As with everything in the tangled online web of distraction, deceit, disinformation and distraction, nothing is certain any more….beyond the eventual failure of the euro. But certain thing do need to be reiterated in the context of media collusion with the Troika – especially the business media.

i. The ruling – catch it here – on Greek debt as being highly odious is both compelling and legally near-watertight. To the best of my knowledge, apart from market ticker not a single site or title or channel outside Greece has even run it, let alone analysed the content

ii. Every US business site and two UK press titles ran stories over the weekend confidently declaring that Syriza worked throughout the weekend and now seems ready to cross every red line they set at the start. I’ve had two Greek confirmations of this, rather more denials, and a lot of “no idea and don’t care”.

iii. Phrases like ‘forced out of the euro’, ‘heading for Grexit’, ‘last-ditch attempt to stay in the EU’ are casually made in relation to the Greek position. They fly in the face of facts, treaties, legal realities and common sense: but they are far more prevalent in the press than, for example, features about the derivative disaster potential if Greece defaults.

iv. The subject of yesterday’s Slogpost (about Hollande coming under pressure to broker a deal) seemed absent (beyond Bloomberg) from all but one or two French print and online media.

There seems to me no logic or reality to the idea that a calm eurogroupe is quietly applying pressure through expected channels while the Greek government runs around like so many headless chickens, increasingly desperate and hysterical and close to the point of begging for mercy. Rather, it is the creditors who are hurling fantasy threats and deadlines around – in the case of the IMF, from 9000 miles away.

It is, we should be clear once and for all, the ECB-Berlin-Brussels-banking axis that stands to lose here. Greece itself has very little left to lose – and those downsides are in my view exaggerated. Writing to friends in Athens yesterday on the subject of Greece as gallant losers, I argued thus:

‘Whatever kind of victory this turns out to be or not be for the Bastards, don’t  delude yourselves: you will still have been defeated. In the 21st century, defeat is no longer glorious.

Filed under: GREECE AT 5 TO MIDNIGHT: JUNCKER AIDE CALLS NEW SYRIZA PROPOSALS “GOOD BASIS FOR DISCUSSION” Tagged: EU far more to lose from Greek default, Is Syriza crossing red lines?, Jean-Claude Juncker, Odious debt ruling