Is this fatal Friday for Greece? You be the judge

By John Ward (The Slog) - Thanks to Greek journalist Eva Antonopoulou for pointing me at a Reuters piece containing this wonderful example of casting bad guys as good guys, while making a criminal scam look like serious financial discussions:

     “….no more bailout cash until it implements reforms agreed by its previous conservative-led government, and receives a positive report from the “troika” of European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund experts….”

Just to deconstruct this melange of spin and ignorance:

1. The Greeks weren’t the ones who asked for more bailout cash
2. One man’s reforms are another man’s greedy neoliberal demands
3. New governments often get voted in to change the laws of previous governments: it’s called democracy
4. One man’s ‘positive’ is another man’s ‘negative’
5. Defining Troika1 will never allow readers to understand Troika2 – viz, Schauble, Draghi and Lagarde
6. It is hard to apply the word ‘expert’ to a central bank and IMF that have so far been wrong about every economic and fiscal element in the eurozone since 2010.
7. The Commission is no longer influential in the process.

But the pavane-cum-farrago of propaganda trotted out by the Establishment has – sadly – far more power to influence than objective, empirical observation and facts.

On the Syriza side of the negotiating table, it would be good if they stuck to those principles… and grew some balls. Instead, there’s been too much pettiness in the exchanges with Schäuble. Never let your opponent know you’re rattled. But on the other hand, this doesn’t (for me) apply to the War reparations issue.

Few suffered more than the Greeks when the Nazis rolled in during 1941 and raped the country red raw for four long years. Now that the Berlin Bundestag has very honourably ruled that yes, they do have a case to answer, it will be interesting to see how the former DDR Jugendsfuhrer and fridge magnet responds.

It will also be fascinating (but largely futile) to see whether any European Court picks up on my point about the exemption of Greece from QE being illegal. Perhaps it would be better to wait until the Kangaroo Courts start appearing, and then get Draghi up on all six charges of blatant fraud… with 237 previous Italian cases to be taken into account.

More generally, Friday is a favourite day for things to get nasty when all the signals look wobbly and bearish. I have a feeling in my water we might get at least one today.