Ages in the Aegean.

So what happened to all the euphoria on the Irish left about Greece?  Famously Harold Wilson said that a week was a long time in politics.  Epoch on the other hand is a Greek word, it means fixed point of time.  In that case a fortnight must be an epoch.

In that time it seems the Greek Finance minister has visited almost every EU country including those outside the Euro like Britain who made no contribution to the Greek bailout. He visited every significant player in the EU crisis except of course Ireland or Portugal, two countries that also experienced bail outs in 2010 which subsequently exited.  He seems to getting a persistent message from all of the EU Finance Ministers and it is one that Ireland was given 4 years ago.

The only fig leaf to the Ireland was the name checking of Sinn Fein by Alex Tsipris on election night in Athens, much to Paul Murphy’s disgust.  Paul had made his way out in the hope of getting additional media coverage in Ireland.  Paul clearly believes that less is more, ie the less he is in Ireland, the more media coverage he gathers.

80% of Greece’s debt is to other EU states.  The private sector took their hair cut years ago.  It’s national governments like Ireland that stand to lose if Greek debt is reduced further.  Ireland is in the mix for €350M which it presumably borrowed at a higher interest rate than available now on the market.  It’s a no brainer if you ask Irish citizens which they would prefer, Tax cuts as loans are paid back from Athens or ignore the Greek debt and take a hit.

Syriza was never going to get a debt write off, so it looked for a debt conference.  What it might get is an extended time to pay off the debt it has already built up.  So that’s the past dealt with. But Syriza seems to have taken the direction that Gerry Adams once advised our government when he told the troika to go and take their money with them.  They don’t want the troika back and reject further funding and being tied down to conditions. Greek loans will run out shortly, they need to get funding beyond that to deliver on their many election promises. Already they’ve started to rehire public servants that were sacked a few years ago.  While Gerry Adams never had a Plan A in mind, let alone a Plan B, Greece needs to have a subtle Plan B.

It seems that there is a proposal to sell short term bonds to bridge the gap until the summer when new loans with a lower rate might make it easier to shoulder an enormous burden.  Let’s be blunt about it, who’d risk it, given what Syriza has said already? What would that do the interest rate of the bonds? 8% on 10 year bonds froze us out of the bond markets  in 2010.  At the minute Greek 10 year bonds are non existent, it can issue just 1 year bonds or stands over 30 year Treasury notes. That’s the long and the short of funding Greece.

Greek overtures to Russia over Ukraine may on the face of it sound cute hoor politics as Germany is not as opposed to Russia as other EU countries but in the labyrinthine world of Balkan politics it may unhinge some nations.  Turkey its traditional enemy is treading on egg shells with the Syrian civil war.  Syria survives because of tacit support from Russia.  Wrong footing Turkey by a strongly nationalist Greece may be a useful diversion internally as the Greek government choreographs its U turn over debt.

So politically, internationally and from a funding point of view Greece is running from one dead end street to another. And there we were in Ireland, innocently thinking that it was all about the money.

Was it something Paul Murphy said?