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GREECE WILL ASK to extend its European loan agreement without signing up to the loathed duties of a full-blown bailout, its finance minister said yesterday, as Brussels continued to pressure Athens for a deal.
Greek public television reported Athens will today send a letter to Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the head of the Eurogroup, requesting a six-month extension.
“We should extend the credit programme by a few months to have enough stability so that we can negotiate a new agreement between Greece and Europe,” Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis told German public broadcaster ZDF.
Europe and Greece are racing to reach a deal to avoid a catastrophic Greek exit from the eurozone, after talks in Brussels ended in acrimony on Monday with both sides digging into their positions.
In an apparent bid to move the goalposts, Athens signalled it wants to extend its loan agreement — but one with no elements of the “memorandum” deal signed between the EU and Greece’s former centre-right government.
Greece has become increasingly isolated and is facing an apparently united front of its eurozone partners, with influential German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble saying earlier yesterday that Athens was trying to get something for nothing.
“They settle for saying ‘we need more money now and we won’t do anything anymore’ and insult the others,” he said, referring to countries like Ireland and Portugal that completed bailout programmes despite the severe austerity measures involved.
“And that’s not on. The Greek government must tell us how it wants to resolve Greece’s problems,” he told Germany’s ARD television.
Deadline
At the end of Monday’s fruitless meeting, Dijsselbloem — who is also the Dutch finance minister — said Greece had until Friday to request an extension to the bailout.
Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s radical left government has bitterly rejected any suggestion of prolonging a bailout programme which it says comes with fiscal obligations that have crippled the Greek economy.
But with the European portion of the 240-billion-euro ($270-billion) bailout expiring at the end of February, Greece’s creditors insist it needs extra financing to stave off the risk of a default and exit from the euro.
Tsipras told lawmakers that Greece “will not accept psychological blackmail” and fanned the debt crisis flames by announcing parliament would vote on a series of social reform bills on Friday, when the deadline falls.
His “social salvation” government has pledged to spend two billion euros over the next year to provide free food, electricity, accommodation and medical support to thousands of poor families.
“This is the debt we must repay first. We will not betray the Greek people’s confidence,” Tsipras said.
Greece’s parliament will also elect a new president today with Tsipras’s candidate, former conservative minister Prokopis Pavlopoulos, needing 180 votes to secure this round.
It was parliament’s failure to agree on a candidate at the presidential election in December which sparked early elections and ushered in the radical left Syriza party in January.
The meeting Monday was the second time in a week that talks among eurozone ministers ended in acrimony amid accusations by Greece that Dijsselbloem, backed by paymaster Germany, had torpedoed deliberations.
Despite the wall of opposition, Varoufakis predicted the different sides would reach an agreement in time to set up a new meeting for Friday.
“We know in Europe how to deliberate in such a way to create a very good solution, an honourable solution, out of initial disagreements,” Varoufakis said on Tuesday.
But the chaos surrounding the debt talks alarmed analysts, with economists at Commerzbank now predicting that a Greek exit from the euro was 50 percent likely, up from 25 percent.
Grexit?
Growing fears of a so-called “Grexit” hammered Greek stocks on Tuesday, with the benchmark Athex Composite index plunging more than four percent at one point.
IHS Economics and Country Risk warned that an inability to get concessions from Brussels would “increase government instability and the likelihood of protests and strikes”.
“The rapid decrease in popular support could result in an early election,” it said.
Tsipras is demanding that the eurozone agree to short-term funding to buy the time needed to hammer out a new deal, with lighter austerity conditions attached.
Greece has proposed to stick to 70 percent of the existing bailout programme but would demand an overhaul of the remaining 30 percent, which it sees as damaging to growth and toxic for ordinary Greeks.
Varoufakis told reporters Monday that the European Commission had made a proposal along those lines, but instead Dijsselbloem offered a different draft statement tying Greece to its current agreement.
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1st world problems …
She should have given it to charity, Rehab maybe?
Billionaires worrying about pennies.
The times they are a changing.
Look after cents- euros will look after themselves .
…or something like that! :)
A rock gets that value, metal gets another value, sad world we live in!
Hope he gets it back… Poor man could only afford to buy his daughter an island for her birthday
Poor woman has been through the wringer, I hope she gets that €2.5 billion. She deserves every cent.
Imagine that’s all you had to worry about !!!!!!!
Michael I don’t know about you but if someone stole a ring on me worth 50 million I’d be fairly worried
I agree 100% but the magic word is IF sounds like a squabble over who gets the cat to these guys lol mad !!!!! Different world!!!
I’d say that week were the banks shut down was enough time for him to remove his money.
‘A ring worth as much as €50 million’….. Interesting concept really. It is a piece of jewellery, therefore it serves no practical purpose. Is it’s intrinsic value therefore nothing? It’s only worth €50M because people who can afford to spend that much money frivolously have a desire to possess such an item. Always fascinates me how particular metals and minerals dug from the earth are valued so highly for their appearance rather than their practical use.
Sounds similar to house prices in Ireland?
I wonder what pussy riots position on this is
Diamonds are worthless, don’t believe me. Maybe you’ll believe this man,,,,,De Beers chairman Nicky Oppenheimer confessed, “Diamonds are intrinsically worthless, except for the deep psychological need they fill.”
You can say the same for Gold, truffles & many more luxury items
Marriage, what’s mine is yours, he took her youth. She gave him kids/family then he thinks, next next so courts should know half. Pity real men are rare.
Same could be said of women
He took much more than that Colleen, I’d say!
Probably billions of roubles belonging to the Russian people, following the madness in that country after the fall of communism, where the politicians and the oligarchs divided up and kept the country’s “family silver” for themselves, essentially paving the way for one-party rule there.
The “real men” will be those Russians who try and recover the booty for their state and it’s citizens, when the nation realises how much it has been swindled by these oligarchs.
How did he take her youth? It’s not like he abused her. Surely she enjoyed her youth in lavish surroundings. Real men aren’t all that rare, they just save themselves for the women that deserve them.
Nice one!
The poor kids, oh no there not poor ! God help them grow up sane.
Is the €100,000 figure correct near the end there. It dos’ent really make sense.
It was the savings threshold on which people got taxed…if you had more the €100k in savings you got that tax
Ah ok!
Makes sense now.
Cheers.
Vulgar.
€50 million is an enormous sum of money – for instance, it is probably like £2 million or so from the 1960s adjusted for inflation, which was a mind-boggling amount at the time.
The existence of these stupid-rich billionaires, increased numbers of rich people around the world, higher expectations of living standards, higher wages etc. all devalue in our minds enormous sums of money. For somebody taking home €50,000 a year after tax, a decent sum, and who takes home the equivalent of €2.25 million in 45 years (ignoring social welfare benefits like pension etc.), €50 million is over 22 lifetimes of earnings.
According to the wealth x report for 2013/2014, there are only 113,135 adults in the world worth over $50 million, or €36.35 million (ie. €13.65 million less than €50 million … a huge lotto win less than €50 million).
If 75% of the world population of 7,215 million are adults, there are about 5,411 million adults. So only 1 in every 47,827 adults around the world (approximately) is worth over €36.35 million.
So approximately 47,826 out 47,827 adults around the world are worth under €36.35 million. And the number worth over €50 million is much fewer again. So, one ring worth €50 million is just crazy. I love having accurate perspective on large abstract numbers.
A bit more of a detailed breakdown would be nice please.
Meh, I have a hatred for inflation and in particular it irks me to notice the term “millionaire” becoming less meaningful over time – 20 years ago there were hardly any millionaires and those that existed were rich and it was something to dream of, never mind in every decade prior to that . .. nowadays €1 million isn’t that much, and even €10 million doesn’t hold the same allure that £1 million used to hold. Every footballer in the premier league being millionaires a few times over really grinds my gears. Celebrities being worth hundreds of millions … argghh. I can’t get it out my head that a *million* is meant to mean something, even if it is just an arbitrary figure! I am basically insane.
Diamond prices are artificially maintained by a cartel which hoards the world diamond stocks to avoid over supply ruining their massively inflated prices for crystals worth a fraction of their price if there was a proper market.
First concocted in the last century my marketeers as a ‘must have’ for your wedding, if you try to sell your ring in the secondhand market you’ll get a shock how much you were swindled in that glittering window down the laneway from Bewleys.
Secondhand stones in antique jewellers can be a bargain, but they are also inflated if joe public walks in the door with his eyes like saucers at all the sparkles.
They took a haircut on their €100,000 savings.
That’s the house deposit gone so.
Colleen take that flip flop out of your mouth.
I was only keeping it simple, they met as students, and I betcha if she would have known there was going to be infidelity on his part. She wouldn’t have married him, she was busy with their girls, when she realised he was.
And @ Amy, it is a form of abuse, where She married for love and then while building up his business, he is off having affairs, and still with her, “health wise too. Not to mention he killed off his business partner in 96. She must have been living in fear too. He really is the devil.
@shane, I could care less what Russia is up to, but you just know when a when a woman is pissed and revenge is only going to get bigger. If it was here practically nothing. Flip flip. I don’t own any. Wet shoes for our beaches lol
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