Yet Another Greek Bailout Is Imminent

by JASmius



When last we visited this story, the Germans were balking at throwing more good money down the Athens black hole, and the Greeks were in a raging temper tantrum at the outrageous expectation being "forced" upon them that they start living in fiscal reality and abandon the socialist "free lunch" fantasy once and for all.  I, your hard-headed Germanic correspondent, expressed great skepticism about the Euros' philosophical resolve but also held out hope that they might finally force the Greeks to accept their day of reckoning.

Oh, dopey me:

Greece said Thursday it aims to clinch a deal with its creditors by Sunday that will allow it to receive the desperately needed final installment of its international bailout plan and keep it from defaulting on its debts.

"This optimism that the Greek government is expressing is not idle talk. It is based on very specific facts," government spokesman Gabriel Sakellaridis told reporters at a briefing. "We are going into these negotiations with the aim to have an agreement with our partners by Sunday."

Sakellaridis' comments come a day after Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras expressed similar optimism that a deal was near, and Greek officials said the text of an agreement was being written up. The optimism, which caused a market rally late Wednesday, proved short-lived, however, after key creditor states like Germany warned a final agreement remained elusive.

Because, of course, the Greeks, who elected a communist government (the "Coalition of the Radical Left," or "Syriza" party) in January, have no intention of making any capitalist free market reforms or otherwise making any concessions to economic reality.  They want their free lunch, they want it forever, and the E.U. is by-God going to provide it for them - period.

This has the look and feel of a game of public relations chicken designed to erode the Euros' resolve and force them to cave on yet another debt infusion to kick the default can down the road one more time.  And then the whole sordid cycle would start all over again, with "negotiations" and fiscal and propaganda brinksmanship leading to another showdown, and then another debt infusion, and so on in depressing perpetuity.

What this amounts to is that Greece is holding its entire continent hostage to its gimmie-gimmie whims, and a scarcely any less philosophically sympathetic E.U. is incapable of imposing the fiscal discipline needed to break the Greeks of their infantile bad habits.  So Prime Minister Tsipras is probably right about the latest "deal" being imminent.

But sooner or later the whole unstable, rotten, unsustainable scam will fly apart and collapse.  It is inevitable.  The only question for the Euros is whether they retain some degree of control over the process so as to limit collateral economic damage, or whether they reap the insolvency whirlwind right alongside the extremist denizens of the one-time "birthplace of democracy".  And fallen human nature makes that question depressingly rhetorical.