Agora
Posts in Europe
![Photo by Can Esenbel [www.mundanepleasure.com]](resources/toolip/img-thumb/2013/10/21/airplaneedit_800_esenbel_2110-large.jpg "Photo by Can Esenbel [www.mundanepleasure.com]")
Ladies and gentlemen, please fasten your seat belts
Earlier this year, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras held an informal dinner with some of his party’s MPs. He reportedly told them that if Greece would be able to get through a tough summer, it would “take off” in September. We are now nearing the end of October and there has been no departure for the skies. Instead, Samaras is bracing for impact.
Contributor: Nick Malkoutzis
Categories: Europe (281), Politics (385), Economy (329), Greece (496)
![Photo by Can Esenbel [www.mundanepleasure.com]](resources/toolip/img-thumb/2013/10/10/blue_esenbel_800_1010-large.jpg "Photo by Can Esenbel [www.mundanepleasure.com]")
It remains a mystery
The Wall Street Journal leaked this week the minutes of an International Monetary Fund board meeting in May, 2010, just a few days before Greece signed its first bailout. The extracts reveal that there was serious concern among about a third of the country representatives, who raised serious objections about the Greek programme.
Contributor: Yiannis Mouzakis
Categories: Europe (281), Economy (329), Greece (496)
Who’s afraid of Angela Merkel?
Angela Merkel triumphed in the German elections. The 41.5 percent gained by the CDU/CSU put her in the same league as her conservative predecessors, Konrad Adenauer and Helmut Kohl. While most of Europe hoped for a different outcome, Germans opted for Mutti (mummy) Angela. Her simple message was: “You know me.” This was the closest a campaign has come to Adenauer’s “No experiments” in the late 50s, and it succeeded.
Contributor: Christos Katsioulis
Categories: Europe (281), Politics (385)
In hindsight it would have been nicer
The Greek bailout was primarily designed to protect the rest of the eurozone from contagion in its banking sector. It's basically as simple as that. International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde admitted as much in an interview on Monday. “The choice was made to make sure the Europeans built their firewall first before anything very serious was done about the Greek debt,” Lagarde told CNN's Christiane Amanpour.
Contributor: Yiannis Mouzakis
Categories: Europe (281), Economy (329), Greece (496)
Honey, I shrunk the Greeks
The IMF without any hesitation admits that the main beneficiary of that May 2010 so called Greek bailout was not Greece itself but the eurozone as it gave the opportunity to French and German banks to get paid in full and unload their large exposure to Greek debt from their books on the official sector and European taxpayers.
Contributor: Yiannis Mouzakis
Categories: Europe (281), Economy (329), Greece (496)