Sí, chicos: como la canción de George Harrison. Absolutamente Todo puede suceder. O, si prefieren este título del gran Elvis Costello, a partir de ahora Accidents can happen. Lo que sigue es una serie de comentarios aparecidos hace un rato en Zero Hedge en relación con el default griego, que a partir de las 0 hs del nuevo día (de ese país) ya es oficial. Se trata del mayor default al que debe enfrentarse el FMI en toda su historia. Won´t be pretty, kids.
Le deseamos fuerza, coraje y tesón al pueblo griego. No va a ser fácil aguantar lo que viene, gente. Primero los van a hacer sentirse como los leprosos de Europa. Después van a hacer todo lo posible para que la necesaria reestructuración de la deuda que se viene sea una burla. Los van a joder con palo y zanahoria durante años, chicos. Los Brodas, los Melconianes, Artanas, Cavallos y Danielitos Marx griegos van a insistir diariamente en la necesidad de "volver al mundo" de los mercados y demás. Toda la chusma neoliberal de las consultoras y fundaciones les va a salir con todo tipo de teorías. No aflojen. Que se jodan lo más posible. Aguanten.
Finalmente, nos quedamos con un resumen brillante de lo escrito: el dibujito de acá arriba. ¿Eurodominó a la vista? Seguirían Portugal, España, Italia, Gran Bretaña, Francia y, finalmente, Alemania. Pasemos a la nota:
Le deseamos fuerza, coraje y tesón al pueblo griego. No va a ser fácil aguantar lo que viene, gente. Primero los van a hacer sentirse como los leprosos de Europa. Después van a hacer todo lo posible para que la necesaria reestructuración de la deuda que se viene sea una burla. Los van a joder con palo y zanahoria durante años, chicos. Los Brodas, los Melconianes, Artanas, Cavallos y Danielitos Marx griegos van a insistir diariamente en la necesidad de "volver al mundo" de los mercados y demás. Toda la chusma neoliberal de las consultoras y fundaciones les va a salir con todo tipo de teorías. No aflojen. Que se jodan lo más posible. Aguanten.
Finalmente, nos quedamos con un resumen brillante de lo escrito: el dibujito de acá arriba. ¿Eurodominó a la vista? Seguirían Portugal, España, Italia, Gran Bretaña, Francia y, finalmente, Alemania. Pasemos a la nota:
Título: Greece
Becomes First Developed Country To Default To The IMF
Texto: And just
as promised earlier in the week, Greece has now passed the midnight deadline
for repayment of the €1.6 billion bundled loans due to the IMF and in thus in
default.
Yes we are fully
aware that using the pejorative term 'default' makes us members of the
ignorati, but what else do you call it when you fail to pay back a contracted
debt in a timely fashion? (and don't say 'arrears') Anything else is semantics.
*IMF SAYS GREECE
FAILED TO MAKE PAYMENT DUE TUESDAY
*IMF TO CONSIDER
GREEK REQUEST FOR PAYMENT DELAY IN DUE COURSE
*IMF BOARD
INFORMED THAT GREECE IS NOW IN ARREARS
“I can also
confirm that the IMF received a request today from the Greek authorities for an
extension of Greece’s repayment obligation that fell due today, which will go
to the IMF’s Executive Board in due course,” IMF spokesman Gerry Rice says in
e-mailed statement.
This is the first
time an advanced economy has defaulted to The IMF and is by far the largest
default The IMF has ever faced.
AP reports,
Greece's
international bailout formally expires, country loses access to existing
financing.
What happens
next:
And therefore
Greece is poised between remaining a member of the eurozone or leaving it.
In
fact, as WSJ's Stephen Fidler explains, there are five possible future currency
arrangements for Greece. Here they are...
1. Greece stays
in the eurozone: This is the option likely to cause the smallest short-term
disruption to the Greek economy. The
Greek central bank would retain access to liquidity from the European Central
Bank, and the Greek banks would stay on life support. This looks increasingly
likely to be accompanied by some kind of further negotiated debt relief. To get
it, Greece would almost certainly have to agree to more conditions of the sort
successive Greek governments have found it hard to accept.
2. Greece keeps
the euro, but sits outside the eurozone: Jacob Funk Kierkegaard of the Peterson
Institute for International Economics in Washington calls this the “Montenegro
option” and argues this is the most likely outcome should Greece exit the
eurozone. This would not be “a new
drachma, but Montenegro—i.e. Greece becomes just another relatively poor
unilaterally euroized non-EU Balkan economy,” he writes here. In some ways,
this would be the worst of all worlds because Greece would lose access to the
ECB. Countries using a foreign currency as legal tender have no access to a
lender-of-last-resort, which means that every bank liquidity crisis becomes a
solvency crisis. They therefore tend to have stunted domestic financial sectors
— which almost every academic study shows is bad for growth — or have a banking
system owned by foreigners, which exports the lender-of-last resort role to
other countries’ central banks. (Mexico didn’t adopt the dollar after the
1994-95 financial crisis — but in order to avoid an undue shrinkage of its
banking sector, it allowed most of its banks to be bought by foreigners.)
3. A currency
board: In this case, Greece would create a new currency but lock it to the
euro – as Estonia did with the German
mark in 1992 after it gained independence from the Soviet Union. The amount of
new drachmas in circulation would be limited by the size of Greece’s
international reserves: about $5.8 billion at the last count. Advocates argue
that this would impose discipline on the Greeks — poor economic policies lead
to an outflow of reserves and therefore of the domestic monetary base, which
pushes up drachma interest rates, while good policies have the reverse effect.
The drawback is that again the central bank is limited in its lender-of-last
resort powers because it cannot create money freely. It also imposes discipline
that, for now, may make it look unappetizing to Greece’s current rulers. It’s
not much talked about, has a few enthusiastic and long-standing cheerleaders,
but is a theoretical possibility. Here’s Steve Hanke arguing in favor.
4. A dual system:
Here the drachma and the euro would circulate side-by-side. This has many
historical precedents going back centuries. In practice, a dual system is
likely to emerge when the Greek government runs out of euros and has to pay its
domestic bills in government IOUs. The IOUs could at some future date be
redeemed in euros, or could be eventually redeemed in drachmas, but they would
initially be euro-denominated obligations of the government that would have a
lesser value in the public mind than euro notes or coins. This state of affairs
could continue for a long time, but there is an economic tendency called
Gresham’s Law: ”Bad money chases out good.” Over time, euros would disappear
from circulation because people would hoard them as a store of value – and people would spend the government IOUs.
De facto, the drachma, whether or not it would so be called, would become the
main means of exchange.
5. The new
drachma: The move to the new drachma may well not come with a bang, but
gradually — as described in 4 above. But an eventual formal switch of the
currency would give Greece control over its own monetary policy. However, a new currency — which would likely
float against the euro and other major currencies — would likely create
enormous short-term disruption, not least because a heavy devaluation would
follow and the banks would in effect be insolvent. Longer-term, it could be a
motor for future growth of the Greek economy — because it would stimulate
demand for Greek exports by lowering in real-terms the price of goods and
services produced in Greece. Longer
term, the effects of a devaluation depends on the quality of economic policies
that accompany it. It will create inflation, by increasing the costs of
imports. One important issue is how much the government raises wages and
pensions to compensate for higher inflation. The more domestic wages and
pensions are allowed to rise, the less impact the devaluation will have in
simulating Greek exports longer term and the lower the benefits to economic
growth.
Place your bets.
