Showing posts with label Grexit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Grexit. Show all posts
October 09, 2015
June 17, 2015
Greek Central Bank Warns of 'Painful' Euro and EU Exit
It comes as the Greek government and its international creditors blamed each other for failing to reach a deal over economic reforms.
That failure is holding up the release of €7.2bn (£5.2bn) in bailout funds.
About €30bn was withdrawn from Greek bank deposits between October and April, the central bank added.
The central bank also warned the country's economic slowdown would accelerate without a deal.
"Failure to reach an agreement would... mark the beginning of a painful course that would lead initially to a Greek default and ultimately to the country's exit from the euro area and, most likely, from the European Union," the Bank of Greece said in a report.
"Striking an agreement with our partners is a historical imperative that we cannot afford to ignore." » | Wednesday, June 17, 2015
Greek Exit Real Prospect as Eurozone Hardens towards Belligerent Athens
Fears that the five-year Greek financial crisis will culminate in debt default and exit from the euro have intensified as Athens hardened its rhetoric against its creditors and insisted it would miss a payment to the International Monetary Fund unless it received debt relief.
With just 48 hours to go before a meeting of eurozone finance ministers, seen as the last realistic chance to reach a deal before Greece has to pay the IMF at the end of June, Alexis Tsipras, showed no sign of bowing to demands for cuts in pensions and increases in VAT. Instead, the Greek prime minister accused the Fund of “criminal responsibility” for the situation and said lenders were seeking to “humiliate” his country.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European commission, reflected the anger in Brussels at the way Tsipras has been approaching the deadlocked negotiations by saying he had “sympathy for the Greek people but not the Greek government”. Juncker was until recently rated as one of Tsipras’s only allies.
EU officials were on Tuesday night making preparations for a crisis meeting of leaders on Sunday if, as now expected, the talks between finance ministers on Thursday prove fruitless. Amid the third straight day of sharp declines on the Athens stock market, EU leaders are for the first time talking openly about Greek default and its ejection from the euro. » | Larry Elliott, Ian Traynor in Brussels, and Helena Smith in Athens | Tuesday, June 16, 2015
June 16, 2015
Grexit Beckons: Greece On Brink of Euro Exit as It Faces Economic Meltdown
Greece is on the brink of economic meltdown after Germany appeared poised to push the country out of the eurozone.
With the embattled country set to default on a €1.5billion (£1.1billion) debt repayment, senior German politicians warned that “enough is enough”.
London’s FTSE 100 slipped 1.1 per cent to a three-month low on Monday as investors reacted to Greece’s failure to reach a deal with its creditors.
Global oil prices also fell after negotiations collapsed after just 45 minutes on Sunday, amid fears that Greece is now heading towards financial catastrophe.
As the crisis intensified, it emerged that George Osborne, the Chancellor, will later this week chair an emergency meeting as ministers seek to protect Britain’s economy from a potential Greek exit from the single currency - dubbed a Grexit.
Officials want to ensure that the Government has “contingency plans” in place to ensure that UK businesses are not damaged by a Greek withdrawal. » | Peter Dominiczak, Political Editor | Tuesday, June 16, 2015
THE TELEGRAPH: Enough is enough, Greece must leave the euro: The Greek debt crisis is now five years old, and still there is no workable settlement in sight. One apparent denouement follows another, lending Europe a sense of permanent crisis and conflict, not so dissimilar to an outright war, at least in terms of the entrenched positions adopted and the vitriol of the language. » | Telegraph View | Tuesday, June 16, 2015
DIE WELT: Merkel will "alles tun", um Griechenland zu halten » | Mittwoch, 17. Juni 2015
June 12, 2015
Euro Will Survive 'Grexit' Says Barroso
There was a possibility Greece would leave the euro, Mr Barroso said but he believed that it would not happen and trusted there would be "commonsense and wisdom" on the side of the Greek government and some "spirit of accommodation" from the other countries.
The euro is "credible, strong and stable," and would survive Greece leaving the single currency he added. (+ BBC video) » | Wednesday, June 10, 2015
May 06, 2015
'Anglo-Saxons' Would Rip Europe Apart after a Grexit, Says Juncker
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| Juncker: "We should make sure that everyone understands that the economic and monetary union is irreversible" |
The president of the European Commission has risked angering Britain after comments warning that the "Anglo-Saxon world" would seek to dismantle the European project if Greece was ever allowed to leave the single currency.
Speaking to an audience at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, Jean-Claude Juncker said a "Grexit" would leave the euro prey to forces who "would do everything to try to decompose" what remained of the monetary union.
“Grexit is not an option," said Mr Juncker.
"If we were to accept, if Greece were to accept, if others were to accept that Greece could leave the area of solidarity and prosperity that is the eurozone, we would put ourselves at risk because some, notably in the Anglo Saxon world, would try everything to deconstruct the euro area piece by piece, little by little."
A spokeswoman for Mr Juncker said the reference to the Anglo-Saxon world could be "understood in the sense of the markets and speculators," rather than a reference to Britain specifically. » | Mehreen Khan | Tuesday, May 05, 2015
March 13, 2015
Grexit Would Be 'Beginning of the End' for Europe, Warns EU Chief
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| Alexis Tsipras called on Germany to repay Nazi war debts to Greece earlier this week |
A disorderly Greek exit from the eurozone would mark "beginning of the end" for the currency union and spark a dangerous domino effect of market contagion across the continent, according to the EU's top finance commissioner.
Seeking to soothe talk of an "accidental" Grexit, Pierre Moscovici said any move to eject Greece from the bloc "would be a catastrophe - for the Greek economy, but also for the eurozone as a whole."
"If one country leaves this (monetary) union, the markets will immediately ask which country is next, and that could be the beginning of the end," the former French finance minister told Der Spiegel magazine. » | Mehreen Khan | Friday, March 13, 2015
February 09, 2015
Greece's Leaders Stun Europe with Escalating Defiance
Greece’s finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has spelled out the negotiating strategy of the Syriza government with crystal clarity.
“Exit from the euro does not even enter into our plans, quite simply because the euro is fragile. It is like a house of cards. If you pull away the Greek card, they all come down,” he said.
“Do we really want Europe to break apart? Anybody who is tempted to think it possible to amputate Greece strategically from Europe should be careful. It is very dangerous. Who would be hit after us? Portugal? What would happen to Italy when it discovers that it is impossible to stay within the austerity straight-jacket?”
“There are Italian officials – I won’t say from which institution - who have approached me to say they support us, but they can’t say the truth because Italy is at risk of bankruptcy and they fear the consequence from Germany. A cloud of fear has been hanging over Europe over recent years. We are becoming worse than the Soviet Union,” he told the Italian TV station RAI. Read on and comment » | Ambrose Evans-Pritchard | Monday, February 09, 2015
October 17, 2012
SPIEGEL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL: A new study by a German think tank warns that a euro exit by Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy would cut global GDP by 17 trillion euros and plunge the world into recession, with France suffering the biggest loss. A Greek exit alone would be manageable, but must be avoided to forestall a domino effect, it says.
A Greek euro exit on its own would have a relatively minor impact on the world economy, but if it causes a chain reaction leading to the departure of other southern European nations from the single currency, the economic impact on the world would be devastating, a German study warned on Wednesday.
Economic research group Prognos, in a study commissioned by the Bertelsmann Stiftung, estimated that euro exits by Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy would wipe a total of €17.2 trillion ($22.3 trillion) off worldwide growth by 2020.
The researchers arrived at a particularly bleak assessment because they didn't just calculate the losses of creditors who had lent money to the crisis-hit nations. They also analyzed the possible impact of a euro collapse on economic growth in the 42 most important industrial and emerging economies that make up more than 90 percent of the world economy.
Using an econometric model, Prognos first calculated the effect of a Greek euro exit, and then simulated the step-by-step fallout from Portugal, Spain and Italy abandoning the currency as well. » | cro | Wednesday, October 17, 2012
June 16, 2012
THE AUSTRALIAN: BANKS closed, supermarkets looted, riots, people frisked for hidden wads of euros as they flee the country, government wages and pensions paid in IOUs, aircraft evacuating stranded holidaymakers. That is the nightmare scenario of a disorderly Greek exit from the eurozone that has been dubbed "drachmageddon".
A nervous calm prevailed in Athens yesterday as the country heads into an election on Sunday that could provoke panic. A win by leftist Syriza would raise the prospect of a Greek exit from the euro, even though Syriza insists it wants to remain in the zone.
Experts see a "Grexit" as fraught with danger. "I would wish for a good scenario to take place, or the least bad. But one can't exclude a bad scenario, where people react, I won't say violently, but nervously, and we will have all kinds of trouble," said Thanos Dokos, director of the respected ELIAMEP think tank in Athens.
"People looting shops and banks - although what kind of money would they get out of a bank? Clashes between the police and extremist elements who would take advantage of the opportunity to cause trouble. Shortages of goods can also happen."
Secret talks between European finance officials this week are understood to have examined possible limits on withdrawals from cash machines, reimposing border checks despite Greece's membership in the Schengen zone and reinstituting capital controls. One fear is that a Syriza victory would provoke a run on the banks that would force the country out of the euro before the new government could take office.
Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras dismisses such talk as fear-mongering by his political opponents. At a press conference, he warned: "The biggest threat is not our creditors. It's our own panic."
Syriza officials, however, admit there is a realistic prospect that the incoming government will have to limit bank withdrawals. » | James Bone, Athens | The Times | Friday, June 15, 2012
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