Talks broke down this morning and the Euro fell all the way to $1.088, a new low for the decade. The Dollar jumped to 97.235, up 4.5% in two weeks and back in the middle of its 6-month range. That, of course, is putting a bit of pressure on equities and commodities which are priced in Dollars and losing value relative to the currency they are priced in. In a low-volume, post-holiday week (London is still closed), we're not going to have much to go on, so this is more of a watch and wait kind of day.
Getting back to Greece, which is a very big deal that people have simply gotten tired of talking about. According to Greek Finance Minister, Varoufakis, there is A common fallacy pervades coverage by the world’s media of the negotiations between the Greek government and its creditors. The fallacy, exemplified in a recent commentary by Philip Stephens of the Financial Times, is that, “Athens is unable or unwilling – or both – to implement an economic reform program.” Once this fallacy is presented as fact, it is only natural that coverage highlights how our government is, in Stephens’s words, “squandering the trust and goodwill of its eurozone partners.”
The view that Greece has not achieved sufficient fiscal consolidation is not just false; it is patently absurd. The accompanying graph not only illustrates this; it also succinctly addresses the question of why Greece has not done as well as, say, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, or Cyprus in the years since the 2008 financial crisis. Relative to the rest of the countries on the eurozone periphery, Greece was subjected to at least twice the austerity. There is nothing more to it than that.
The problem, according to Varaufakis, is simple: Greece’s creditors insist on even greater austerity for this year and beyond – an approach that would impede recovery, obstruct growth, worsen the debt-deflationary cycle, and, in the end, erode Greeks’ willingness and ability to see through the reform agenda that the country so desperately needs. Our government cannot – and will not – accept a cure that has proven itself over five long years to be worse than the disease.
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