(Update) The Fire Next Time: My Big Fat Greek Euro Crisis

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Last week Eurpoean leaders announced a deal that applied a band-aid to Greece in the ongoing saga of the Euro crisis, but they did not address the fundamental problems with any fundamental reforms. Stock markets surged on news of the deal.

This week, the government of Greece tore off the band-aid threatening to take the deal to Greek voters in a referendum. The Chicken Little investor class went into a panic on Tuesday shouting "the sky is falling!" So where do things stand today?

Paul Krugman writes Eurodämmerung – NYTimes.com:

Things are falling apart in Europe; the center is not holding. Papandreou is going to hold a referendum; the vote will be no. Italian 10-years at 6.29 at pixel time; that’s a level at which the cost of rolling over the existing debt will force a default, even though Italy has a primary surplus. And with everyone simultaneously pushing for fiscal austerity, a recession seems almost certain, aggravating all of the continent’s problems.

I’ve been charting this trainwreck for a couple of years, and am feeling too weary to trace through it again right now. Let’s just say that the euro was an inherently flawed idea that can work only given a strong European economy and a significant degree of inflation, plus open-ended credit to sovereigns facing speculative attack. Yet European elites embraced the notion of economics as morality play, imposing across-the-board austerity, tightening money despite low underlying inflation, and have been too concerned with punishing sinners to notice that everything was going to blow apart without an effective lender of last resort.

The question I’m trying to answer right now is how the final act will be played. At this point I’d guess soaring rates on Italian debt leading to a gigantic bank run, both because of solvency fears about Italian banks given a default and because of fear that Italy will end up leaving the euro. This then leads to emergency bank closing, and once that happens, a decision to drop the euro and install the new lira. Next stop, France.

It all sounds apocalyptic and unreal.

With the government of Greece teetering on the verge of collapse, the Greek cabinet offered its full support early Wednesday to Prime Minister George A. Papandreou for his surprise plan to call a referendum on the Greek financial crisis. Greek Cabinet Backs Papandreou on Referendum – NYTimes.com:

The proposal threatens Greece’s adherence to the terms of a new deal with its foreign lenders and has plunged Europe into a fresh bout of financial turmoil.

But several lawmakers in the governing Socialist Party rejected the plan, raising the possibility that Mr. Papandreou will not survive a no-confidence vote scheduled for Friday that depends on his holding together a razor-thin parliamentary majority.

An emergency cabinet meeting convened by Mr. Papandreou ended at 3 a.m. with the cabinet saying that it unanimously supported the prime minister’s call for a referendum, local news outlets reported. The opposition and some members of his own party, however, were calling for new elections immediately.

Despite the political turmoil provoked by Mr. Papandreou’s call for a referendum, the prime minister appeared to have rallied his troops behind him after the seven-hour cabinet meeting.

The Greek government spokesman, Elias Mossialos, said the government aimed to hold the referendum “as soon as possible” — “on the condition” that Greece had the “basic elements, not the full agreement” of the loan deal with the European Union in place. News reports on Wednesday said the referendum might be brought forward as soon as December.

The political atmosphere remained tense and chaotic, with politicians both in the government and in the opposition maneuvering intensely ahead of the confidence vote.

* * *

Still, the political instability in Athens seemed likely to delay — and perhaps scuttle — the debt deal that European leaders reached after marathon negotiations in Brussels last week.

Financial markets in Europe rallied on Wednesday after two days of losses that had wiped out the gains since the Brussels deal was announced last week. Some analysts said that Greece was now coming closer to a messy default on its debt, and perhaps a departure from the zone of 17 countries that use the euro as their common currency.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, apparently caught off guard by Mr. Papandreou’s call for a referendum and then by the disarray in his party, said they would hold emergency talks on Greece with euro zone leaders on Wednesday. They said they also planned to meet with representatives of the Greek government before a critical meeting of the Group of 20 advanced and emerging economies on Thursday, and they defended the terms of the bailout package as “more necessary than ever today.”

The chairman of the euro zone finance ministers, Jean-Claude Juncker, warned that the plan to hold a referendum endangered an $11 billion loan that Greece is to receive under the bailout deal, and that Greece urgently needed to avoid a default. Mr. Juncker, who is the prime minister of Luxembourg, said Greece could face bankruptcy if it votes no on the bailout.

The big fear is that a decisive turn against the bailout package in Greece could undermine European efforts to enforce deep budget cuts in other heavily indebted European countries, especially Italy, which is mired in its own political crisis and has a far larger economy and much more debt than Greece.

* * *

If Mr. Papandreou’s government falls, it would not be the first one in Europe to be toppled by the austerity demanded by European debt relief. In Ireland and Portugal, governments fell after accepting bailouts from the European Union and the I.M.F., and last month the Slovakian government fell over a vote on whether to participate in the European Union’s rescue package.

But Greece’s problems are more acute, and its economic slump is much deeper, making the prospect of a government collapse even more worrying. While a new government might try to reopen negotiations with lenders and seek new terms, European leaders have repeatedly dismissed that idea, saying that trying to do so would be damaging and would throw away months of work on a plan to keep Greece from defaulting.

World leaders convening at this resort for a long-planned summit find themselves confronting a suddenly acute crisis over Greece and signs of an economic slowdown throughout Europe that may narrow their room for action. World leaders to confer with Greece over referendum call – The Washington Post:

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou left a cabinet meeting in Athens early Wednesday with his government intact — for now — and backing his plan to hold a national referendum on the country’s latest international rescue program.

But his call for a popular vote on Tuesday has jeopardized the rescue plan and upended the agenda for Group of 20 leaders. Papandreou has been called to a meeting here Wednesday night to explain himself.

This was to have been a summit where the G-20 — the forum where industrialized nations and the leading developing economies compare notes on the world economy — puts its stamp on a plan that convincingly appeared to settle Europe’s lingering financial crisis.

Instead, with Cannes under a security lockdown that has made its streets into a virtual ghost town, the group will be looking for ways to avoid even greater problems.

* * *

“We want to implement this program,” Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters in Berlin on Wednesday before she headed to France. “For that we need clarity. That’s exactly what the conversation will be about this evening.”

Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, expressed more annoyance in extensive comments at a Wednesday news conference, calling Panandreou’s move a “serious situation that Europe has not been through before.”

* * *

In Athens, the Greek parliament began a three-day debate on a confidence vote scheduled for late Friday that could topple Papandreou’s government long before the referendum takes place.

* * *

World markets tumbled after Papandreou’s announcement Tuesday, with some European indicators dropping 5 percent. But they recovered some on Wednesday. The German DAX closed up 2.25 percent, the FTSE 100 up 1.15 percent and the Euro Stoxx index up 1.4 percent. In the United States, the Dow Jones index and the Standard & Poor’s 500 were both up about 1 percent in the afternoon, after the Federal Reserve released a modestly positive report on U.S. economic growth. The Nasdaq tech index had fallen from its earlier high and was down.

So we have Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou summoned to the G-20 summit at Cannes to answer for himself, but it may be all for naught because Papandreou, who has lost popular support in Greece and his own political party, faces a no confidence vote on Friday that most observers predict he will lose, leading to new elections. The supposed deal reached by European leaders last week will unravel. The risk is that this will have a domino effect, with Italy and then France next in line to fall.

Sarah Kliff writes at Exra Klein's Wonkblog Three ways Greece could bring down Europe #EuroMess:

Here are three potential doomsday scenarios to worry about in the coming months:

1. Greece leaves the European Union and the euro. The possibility of Greece’s departure from the euro has been a concern ever since prime minister George Papandreou called for a referendum on the European Union’s bailout package. If the referendum fails — as many observers think it could — that would almost inevitably push Greece out of the continent’s common currency.

Greece’s exit from the euro would mean it defaults on about $500 billion in public loans. That’s bad news for European countries heavily invested in Greece, such as Germany, and it will put additional pressure on Italy and Portugal, which also have struggled financially

* * *

2. The Greek government dissolves and defaults. Right now, Papandreou’s socialist party has a razor-thin, two-person majority in the 300-person Greek parliament. Economists worry that even before a referendum takes place, Papandreou could lose his majority, and the Greek government would collapse. That, explains the American Enterprise Institute’s Desmond Lachman, would likely lead to a very messy and disorderly default, even before a referendum takes place. . . If the government falls, then the International Monetary Fund is going to have trouble still writing the country a check.”

3. Greece’s instability dissolves the confidence of other European nations. Even without an election, and before a possible referendum, Greece’s fragile, political situation could undermine eurozone confidence. Signs of this are already cropping up: German papers, for example, are reporting that the country’s banking association will not move forward on a bailout deal until a Greek referendum is held, and the votes are in. But perhaps the biggest sign of sagging confidence comes from the markets: across the world, exchanges have tumbled as they lose confidence in the European Union’s ability to respond to a daunting crisis.

Sarah Kliff has more … Five questions to watch on Greece #EuroMess.