By Darrell Delamaide
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Nothing is what it seems in the agreement reached Monday to bail out Greece.
To start with, the bailout is not for Greece, but for German, French and other foreign banks who willfully abandoned due diligence to buy more Greek debt than any financial analyst would have thought the country could sustain.
The 130 billion euros ($171.9 billion) in aid agreed to by Europe’s finance ministers in their marathon session will go into a managed account to make sure it goes directly to Greece’s creditors when their bonds fall due.
The agreement was made possible when the Greek Parliament a week earlier approved a package of draconian austerity measures, which they, as well as the European finance ministers who insisted on it, know they will never be able to deliver.
Antonis Samaras, the leader of the center-right New Democracy party, said as much during the debate when he urged members of his party to go along with the austerity measures in order to get the bailout done — and then they could be renegotiated after Greek elections in April.
In the shambles that is Greek politics, Samaras’s party is leading in the polls, though it is not expected to win an outright majority.
Even as German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble was leading the charge on Monday to wring more austerity out of the Greeks, one of Germany’s top economists branded the bailout “illusory” and said the type of deflation being exacted of Greece is unrealistic.
Asked in an interview on Monday with Spiegel Online whether this new bailout could save Greece, economist Hans-Werner Sinn answered, “No, and the politicians know it can’t.”
Sinn, who heads the prestigious Ifo Institute for Economic Research and is a professor at the University of Munich, said the bailout is merely a way of buying time. Read the English version of the interview.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/...816410,00.html
He thinks the time and money would be better spent helping Greece manage an exit from the euro , because the only way the country will restore the competitiveness of its economy is through a massive devaluation –—and for that it needs to have its own currency.
The devaluation would be wrenching and cause a good deal of economic pain for a year or two, but that is preferable to the decade of austerity required in the bailout plan, he said. “After a short thunderstorm, the sun will shine again,” Sinn said.
This would enable Greece to lower wages and prices to competitive levels, and allow bank debt to depreciate accordingly. This is not possible as long as Greece retains the euro. “The plan to radically restructure Greece within the euro is illusory,” Sinn said.
The German economist has no sympathy for the banks who bought Greek bonds. “Greece’s creditors aren’t entitled to have the debt repaid by the international community,” he said. “Everyone has to earn their standard of living themselves, and those who choose to earn money from risk must bear that risk.”
The euro patchwork put together this week may unravel even more quickly than many expect. Greek elections in April may lead the country to “renegotiate” (that is, repudiate) the austerity measures, as Samaras intimated.