Greece Requests EU Support Package

Discussion in 'Wall St. News' started by ASusilovic, Mar 18, 2010.

  1. BRUSSELS—Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou on Thursday requested that European Union leaders at their summit next week agree to a package of standby loans to restore confidence in the country's debt.

    He also confirmed that Greece is keeping its aid options open, but would prefer help from the European Union to a bailout by the International Monetary Fund.

    The prime minister has spoken with the IMF and said that the tough fiscal austerity measures Greece has put in place already conform with IMF requirements. "They would ask nothing more," he said.

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...9022672073334.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories

    Germany : No. France : yes.
     
  2. Possibly not true. They will probably ask a 30% cut in the number of public sector employees. It sounds like a trap he is falling into. The Germans do not like him anyway because he is influenced by US policy makers (He is American by birth). They are pushing him to IMF so that he will have to resign after he is forced to go against his Socialist principles of a large welfare nation.

    You know, the situation in Greece is more of a geopolitical game than financial. A lot of the debt was artificially created by ECB to push Greece into selling cheap its assets to Germans, In just 5 years since Greece joined the Euro the debt rose from 170 billion or 65% of GDP to 250 billion or 120% of GDP. This is hard to do and it takes a well executed plan to accomplish such runaway debt. In the meantime, the Germans have gotten control of the national airport, OTE (NYSE) the Greek telecom and other key industries.

    There are issues with Greece related to the passage of gas and oil pipes from Russia, entrance of Turkey to EU, which Greece supports but Germans and Austrians do not, control of oil fields in the Aegean Sea and several others.

    These matters are too complicated and hard to analyze.
     
  3. A cognac for ouzo swap. :cool:
     
  4. Slash the budget! Slash the Social Payments! They can't afford to pay layabouts for their vote any longer... DUH!

    Greece and the world need a wake-up call.
     
  5. We are witnessing an historic sovereign financial meltdown. Greece will be the first, but not the last, and there will be many more.

    It will spread thru-out Europe, then Japan, on to the US and will ultimately take down the US Dollar fiat reserve standard.

    Get gold. If you haven't noticed, fiat paper is vaporizing right in front of our eyes.
     
  6. US is even worse. At least Greece is paying lip service to, uh, cutting costs. The US, California particularly, is hilarious in that even mentioning cutting costs is tacky at best... Keep printin em...
     
  7. rbartell

    rbartell

    So is the IMF going to bail out California when they go down?
     
  8. European citizens pay taxes to fund the IMF.

    I don't see the problem with taking some of that money back.