European Union Caves To Greece

by JASmius



Oh, that's not how the Euros are selling it, and it's certainly not a total capitulation, as the Greeks will still have to accept "austerity" measures that will probably get Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras strung up and dangling from the nearest Athens lamppost after the demagogic way he whipped up his people into a welfare-statist frenzy for the past six months.  But you have to know how to read between the lines:

Euro zone leaders clinched a deal with Greece on Monday to negotiate a third bailout to keep the near-bankrupt country in the euro zone after all-night talks at an emergency summit. However, the terms imposed by international lenders led by Germany may put more pressure on leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, fracture the government and cause an outcry in Greece.

If the summit had failed, Greece would have been staring into an economic abyss with its shuttered banks on the brink of collapse and the prospect of having to print a parallel currency and in time, exit the European monetary union.

Nothing like an "economic abyss" to focus one's attention, like Kermit when you're holding two tiny, round, green objects in your fist.

"The agreement was laborious, but it has been concluded. There is no Grexit," European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told a news conference after seventeen hours of bargaining.

He dismissed suggestions that Tsipras had been humiliated by accepting far-reaching, German-inspired terms he long promised to resist.

"In this compromise, there are no winners and no losers," Juncker said. "I don't think the Greek people have been humiliated, nor that the other Europeans have lost face. It is a typical European arrangement." [emphasis added]

Which means....the Greeks got their ("painful") bailout and the other Europeans have lost face.

But they may have also kept Greece from defecting from the European Union and joining Vladimir Putin's neo-Warsaw Pact.  Which would have been a better way to spin this at-least-partial capitulation.  But then, if Jean-Claude Juncker had had the presence of mind to think of that angle, he wouldn't be president of the European Commission, now would he?