If you don’t believe financial markets are well and truly broken Monday’s tepid response to the Greferendum should be dispositive. The house of cards known as the Eurozone is about to hit the wall, unleashing financial contagion and turmoil far and wide. So any investor or trader in their right mind should have been slamming Jim Cramer’s triple sell button early and often.
For lack of doubt, consider what Merkel’s Vice-Chancellor and leader of the German socialists had to say on Monday. Recall Herr Gabriel is purportedly the voice of the enlightened left and the politician hoping to soon relieve Angela Merkel of her job:
Sigmar Gabriel, the German vice-chancellor and economy minister, said there could be no question of writing off Greek debt because other countries that have had loans such as Ireland, Portugal and Spain would demand equal treatment.
‘I really hope that the Greek government – if it wants to enter negotiations again – will accept that the other 18 member states of the euro can’t just go along with an unconditional haircut,’ he said.
‘How could we then refuse it to other member states? And what would it mean for the eurozone if we’d do it? It would blow the eurozone apart, for sure.’
Oh, yes, he used the “conditional” word, meaning that if Greece signs up for a permanent regime of reform, austerity and depression its paymasters in Brussels and Berlin might be open to an accounting double shuffle. That is, to having Greece’s crushing loans extended to 40 years from 25 years, its grace period on interest and principle repayments stretched beyond the current 2023 time frame and its interest rates pared to something less than 1.5%. On an NPV basis, this is supposed to be some big deal concession.
