There are many times that the plot as to what exactly has or hasn’t been agreed between Brussels and the ClubMeds gets clouded, but on Wednesday night it seems that Greek MPs narrowly passed a crucial austerity bill by majority vote, albeit with huge dissent from within the three-party governing coalition.
Immediately after the vote, two of the coalition parties expelled a total of seven dissenting deputies from their ranks. The third party in the coalition, the Democratic Left, mostly abstained.
Yahoo News reports: "The passage of the bill was a big step for the government to secure continued funding from the country’s international creditors. Without the loans, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has said Greece will run out of euros on November 16th"
But the IMF had told the EU FinMins that Greek austerity was miles off target, and they shouldn’t be given any more bailout tranches. So: will this vote secure the release of the November tranche … or not?
If you scan the media via Google over the last two weeks, there is no trace anywhere of Brussels saying – officially – that they’ve decided to ignore the IMF paper and bail Greece out anyway.
“It is clear that Greece is off track and there is no chance they will cut the debt to 120% of GDP in 2020 as envisaged. It will be rather 136%, and this would be under a positive scenario of a primary budget surplus, a return to economic growth, and privatisation,” a euro zone official told Reuters 12 days ago.
One thing the Greeks need to remember: the US election is over, and the Black Dude is back in the White House. So the brakes are off. The Sprouts and Berliners are just mad enough to say, "Nice vote guys, but we think you’re dead anyway and we have no desire to throw good money after bad."
It is highly doubtful that they will.
But it would be nice, would it not, if the eurocrats were at least well-mannered enough to fill up the gaps in the narrative. (TheSlog)
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