EU agrees to Greek bailout

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The game of chicken is over. The EU blinked.

Trying again to halt a debt crisis that has hammered the euro, fellow eurozone governments tossed struggling Greece a financial lifeline Sunday, saying they would make euro30 billion in loans available this year alone — if Athens asks for the money.
The International Monetary Fund stands ready to chip in another euro10 billion, said Olli Rehn, the EU monetary affairs chief.

The loan will be at a 5% interest rate, well below the market rates of nearly 7%.

European Central Bank president Jean-Claude Trichet and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have insisted that Greece not get below-market interest rates amounting to an EU subsidy for its past bad behavior.
"This is certainly no subsidy" to Greece, Rehn told a news conference.

Actually that is exactly what it is.

This bailout comes just a day after Moody's downgraded Greek debt to one step above junk.

Greece hasn't formally asked for this aid, but at the same time it is already hinting that the aid isn't enough.

(Reuters) - It would be logical that the EU/IMF aid for Greece amounts to some 80 billion euros ($107 billion) over the next three years if the mechanism is triggered, a senior finance ministry official said on Sunday.
"40 billions for 2010 is part of a bigger amount for the three-year period. A logical amount for the three-year period would be double than 40 billion," the official told reporters.

This sounds like to me that Greece knows full well that they are Too-Big-To-Fail, and that they already plan on getting more bailouts in the future.
Greece is to the EU what Wall Street banks are to the Federal Reserve.

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I was just writing this up, but I like yours better

Submitted by on

so, I changed the publication date on yours so it pops up first in the RSS feed.

My question, which I didn't really answer is why the IMF alone didn't come to the rescue. I suspect it is because of the IMF terms, which would have decimated the real greece economy through their Draconian conditions.

I.O.U. Solutions

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I just watched a "program" on the now mealy mouthed, kind of clueless "political neutral neutered" CNN of another I.O.U.S.A. "solutions" special.

What is astounding is we all know, we have so many other national examples of how to contain health care costs plus we just had a bill which ignored all of it and of course this "special" does not mention a single one to reduce health care costs, already implemented in Canada, France, the U.K, Japan and so on. Nothing about the for profit system, big pharma, health insurance companies, greedy doctors and so on. Unreal.

So, they present this limited "set of solutions" which of course involve screwing the U.S. workforce, middle class and then claim the U.S. must "muster the political will" to "do this".

they need to be taken to town. Yes the debt is real but their pushing this privatization/screw the workforce agenda has to be confronted.