Veni vidi but not entirely vici….
The cancellation, announced in the last hour, looks ominous in the light of The Slog’s earlier post today
In what many observers are now seeing as the beginning of the end of Greek eurozone membership, the meeting of EU Finance Ministers has been cancelled. It will be replaced by a conference call tomorrow (Wednesday) and is then likely to convene properly next Monday, sources suggested early this evening GMT.
The delay raises more suspicions about a covert perparation to cut the rope by Berlin. Eurocrat officials admitted this afternoon that the postponement reflects disagreements among ezone members about whether Athens should or should not be given the 130bn euro bailout monies.
“There is all kinds of stuff that the Greeks still need to agree to,” said a favoured Slog source in Brussels, “but mainly this is Berlin still looking to persuade the doubters that enough is enough. Everything is dominated at the moment by ‘take the money and run’ fears about Greek political intentions.”
Berlin is using the economic contraction seen in the Greek economy to drive its argument. But this is a clear case of austerity fulfilling everyone’s concerns. Said an Athenian source earlier today, “They say we have not complied, but that the economy is beyond hope. Imagine how bad it would’ve been had we complied fully”. There is, in my view, an iron logic overlaying that Greek irony: it spells out both the tragedy faced by Greece, and the lunacy of the Troika’s demands.
A source outside the EU today suggested to The Slog that Greece ‘will officially be declared in default by all the ratings agencies’ in the very near future. The unnamed source was said to be ‘from one of the biggest wall street banks’. Myself, I doubt if any situation like this can be controlled to that extent. Meanwhile – according to the FT – kind-hearted Franz Fehrenbach, CEO of Bosch, today described Greece as an “unacceptable burden” on the eurozone. He told Manager Magazin that if the country did not leave voluntarily, the EU should change its laws so Greece could be made to do so.
What a fine partnership could be engineered if Herr Fehrenbach were to meet fellow NSDAP member Harriet Harman. The world could be turned into a series of feminist Bayreuth Wagnerian operas starring women called Hildegard, Angela and so forth.
The Slog 