Thanks for that Med Man. I find it hard to believe that people still think that leaving the euro would be a magic solution, probably looking at the situation from a UK perspective of general hostility to the EU. In fact all the options for Greece have very severe short term consequences. The article is still totally relevant, even though the situation is even worse than in 2012.
Tsipras talks about the "vicious circle of austerity" meaning that the cuts in government spending, wages, de-nationalisation etc. have not produced opportunities for growth, rather the opposite with deflation and decreased productivity. I think this is why the Greeks have decided that not only has austerity not worked but that they would still rather remain in the EU despite everything as a way towards finding a more solid way to support both government and private sector expenditure, even including the banking sector.
The EU has come very late to quantitative easing (in effect a controlled printing of money) which has has been fairly effective in both the UK and the USA. This has already produced a devaluation in the Euro, which a number of contributors here have very reasonably argued for. Even this as the Bloomberg article underlines is a mixed blessing for Greece which has a limited export capacity (apart from tourism - lucky us!) Very fortunately for Greece this coincides with a significant drop in the price of oil, on which Greece is totally dependant, the downside being the huge rise in the USD/€ rate.
Finance Minister Yianis Veroufakis has spent the week shuttling round the European capitals in an initial round of trying to find what scope for reducing Greek debt repayment, with so far not a lot of positive response and particularly not from Berlin according to yesterday's reports. Obviously a long way still to go and on past showing final decisions will not be made until 4.00 in the morning when the next payments from the European Stabilisation Fund are due.
Tony
