(BN) Greek PM Papademos Requests Default Report, Pasok Spokesman Says
So bonds having been trading below 50 percent of par and they have been negotiating for huge amounts of bailout money even longer and not once have they done a study of what default would mean? No actual work on what leaving the euro would do?
The scary and sad thing is that I believe him and that this is the first time they have lifted a pen or turned on a computer to figure out what they are fighting so strongly against would actually be 🙁
The more time I have spent with senior ministers in Europe the more convinced I am they are politicians first and are so short staffed and overwhelmed that all they can do is respond to sound bites and no attempt at a detailed or comprehensive plan has been made – or is likely to be made.
This request for the documentation of what a default would look like – but it is scary that it is the first time they have thought it would be useful (even as a contingency or to know what you are changing your way of life for) . It cannot bode well for the long term solutions and the market is giving way too much faith to these politicians that they have the ability or resources to fix anything, especially when moves up in the stock market don’t make people question valuation, the moves just make people convinced Europe gets it and it’s all priced it. This feels more like October 2007 than at any time in the past 2 years.
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Greek PM Papademos Requests Default Report, Pasok Spokesman Says
2012-02-06 16:57:12.384 GMT
(See EXT4 <GO> for more on the euro-area debt crisis.)
By Paul Tugwell
Feb. 6 (Bloomberg) — Greece’s Prime Minister Lucas
Papademos requested the country’s Finance Ministry to prepare a
document on the implications of a Greek default, Panos Beglitis,
spokesman for the socialist Pasok Party said.
The Prime Minister yesterday told the leaders of the three
political parties supporting his interim government that he
asked the Ministry “to record accurately and realistically all
the consequences of the country’s exit from the euro zone,”
Beglitis said today in an interview with Radio 9, according to a
transcript of his comments e-mailed from the Athens-based
offices of Pasok.
“It’s an important initiative because the Greek people
should know exactly what consequences a bankruptcy and euro zone
exit would have and thereby take their responsibility,”
Beglitis said.
Papademos will tomorrow confer with George Papandreou,
leader of Pasok, the biggest party in parliament, Antonis
Samaras, head of the second-biggest, New Democracy, and George
Karatzaferis, leader of the Laos party, to hammer out details
for an accord framework to meet conditions of a 130 billion-euro
(170 million) bailout. A tentative consensus was reached among
the leaders at a meeting yesterday.
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–Editor: Zoe Schneeweiss
To contact the reporter on this story:
Paul Tugwell in Athens at +30-210-74-19-073 or
ptugwell1@bloomberg.net