Why Greece's spillover across euro area will probably be contained this time

[CityFarmer]

I see is all loan shark think alike, once they know you can pay they don't want you to have a chance to get out of the debt they want you as their debt slave boy forever.

A friend of mine his father borrowed around 3k from moneylender when a few payment was missed the debt spiral into nearly 50k of course old man couldn't pay so the harassment started late night angry callers, house door window as well as neighbors unit splashed with red paint. So my friend decided to stop all this he agreed to pay off around 50k but you know what happen? A few weeks later they came back again and claim some outstanding loans still not pay off so please pay it again, of course my friend refused. So they started harassment again, so now that outstanding has probably spiral into over 100k.

So my friend now know this a scam refuse to pay, you acknowledge or entertain them a even little bit they will harass you more.

Yes my friend father can consider a bad borrower but the lenders are also loan sharks already made killing of 1600% yet want more. So why I say all loan shark think alike.

Base on your description, it should be illegal "loan shark" with very high interest rate. Yes, the loan sharks are criminals

[greengiraffe]

June 21, 2015 1:45 pm
Affluent Greeks fret as they teeter on the edge
Henry Foy in Athens

AE51RW Fiskardo, Kefalonia (Cephalonia), Ionian Islands, Greece, Europe©Robert Harding/Alamy

On a recent evening at the Semiramis hotel in Athens’ leafy, affluent northern suburbs, raspberries floated in champagne flutes and men in linen shirts smoked cigars by the pool as the city’s elite tried to pretend that the country was not on the edge of economic collapse.

Hours earlier, €1.6bn had fled Greece’s banks, prompting Athens to appeal to the European Central Bank for more emergency funding as a stand-off between international creditors and the country’s populist government continued.
At the poolside birthday, well-heeled businessmen, politicians, academics and socialites gossiped in hushed tones about when the banks might close or limit cash withdrawals. They also unleashed angry barbs at a government they blame for worsening the current crisis and expressed desperate, faltering optimism that eurozone leaders might still come to their rescue.
“The government are incompetent and are ruining the country because they are communists and do not understand reality,” said Maria, a banker. “But there has to be a deal. The EU has to save us,” she said, fingering her golden necklace. “Right?”
At least since the country’s civil war, Greek society has been riven by deep divisions between left and right. Its financial plight is now reopening old wounds that had healed over the generations.
For the affluent, life without the euro is almost unimaginable. The single currency made it easier for them to send children to study abroad and purchase property and luxury goods elsewhere in Europe.
More than that, it distinguished Greece from its impoverished Balkan neighbours, confirming its place at the centre of a prosperous Europe. But as the crisis has dragged on, other Greeks — particularly supporters of the left-wing premier Alex Tsipras — increasingly equate membership of the currency with crippling public spending cuts and social inequality.
Until now, much of the country’s elite had assumed Mr Tsipras’s defiance to the country’s creditors was a calculated bluff to extract more aid from EU leaders fearful of the ramifications of a Greek exit from the eurozone.
Those who have something — or a lot — to lose are becoming quite irritated
- Patroklos Koudounis, founder of Adequate, a political risk consultancy
But at the north Athens party, it was dawning on some that many Syriza supporters feel they have nothing to lose, and are therefore willing to take a leap into the unknown with a potential default rather than suffer the ignominy of a climbdown and more cuts to public spending.
“The working class with no money to spend and empty bank accounts . . . has nothing to lose,” said Patroklos Koudounis, founder of Adequate, a political risk consultancy. “Hence, they support the government and, as polls clearly show, half of them are in favour of a Grexit.”
Mr Koudounis found himself joining a pro-EU protest on Thursday night in central Athens, organised in response to a demonstration the night before by Syriza supporters. It was an act, he admitted, he “never would have ever imagined myself doing”.
Podcast

What happens if Greece defaults?
FT podcast
Is Greece about to default on its debts and if so, what happens next? Gideon Rachman and his guests Tony Barber and Martin Sandbu discuss what has gone wrong between Greece and its eurozone creditors and whether the political rifts can be repaired.
“Those who have something — or a lot — to lose are becoming quite irritated,” he remarked. “They feel that they are under extreme danger and are now ready to get off the comfort of their couches and protest in the streets.”
Fear of what might come this week, including warnings of capital controls for Greek banks if no deal is reached on Monday, has prompted rich Greeks to move the bulk of their personal wealth and business accounts abroad, or hoard piles of cash in their homes.
According to data from the end of April, some €70bn had moved from Greece to other Eurozone countries since the end of November, just before the outbreak of the political crisis that ultimately brought Syriza to power.
In addition, private deposits at Greek lenders have shrunk by more than €30bn between November and May, as those with savings choose to stuff cash under the mattress instead of trusting the liquidity of bank accounts.
“Everyone has their own plan,” says Dimitris Paraskevas, who runs a family-owned law firm in Athens. “People haven taken their money out of banks, and done something with it . . . I have a friend who is successful, he has bought stock. Other people buy food.”
Mr Paraskevas has already made plans to send his 79-year-old mother to his house in London if things get worse. He has also opened British bank accounts for his business
“If capital controls come in, it really will be a nightmare,” he said. “There will be a lot of misery.”
Back at the party, the dancing had begun and cocktails were flowing. “It is like the last days of Rome, no?” remarked one guest, as plates of ice-cream truffles were whisked through the laughing crowd on the edge of the dance floor.
“But there will be a deal,” he said, assuredly. “I am sure there will be a deal.”

[greengiraffe]

No wonder other Euro interests are fed up...
Grexit is definitely not an issue... just kick them out and stamp the corruption that feeds on their rich neighbours...
Bunch of consters...

Organised mayhem . . . as always
1399 words
27 Jun 2015
The Australian Financial Review
AFNR
English

Greece Poverty and hunger is rife, investment has dried up. Yet it seems it's still business, work and play as usual in Athens, writes James Chessell.

When Angelos Frangopoulos touched down in Athens this week for a family holiday he was not overcome by an overwhelming atmosphere of doom. The Sky News chief executive did notice that a handful of shops and restaurants had closed in the neighbourhood he last visited two years ago, as well as sensing that "people are down".

But mostly, he says, the capital was "organised mayhem, as it's always been".

"The beaches are full of people. The restaurants are full of people. And this is locals as well as tourists," says Frangopoulos, who was born in Sydney's Balmain Hospital to a Greek father and Spanish mother.

"Among the people I've talked to here, the overwhelming feeling is that they want to stay in Europe. There's a lot of disquiet about the way the taxes have risen in recent years but I think there's an understanding that it's part of the price of reform."

Frangopoulos' impressions reflect the paradox at the heart of the seemingly interminable Greek debt crisis. Away from the televised nightly protests in the central Syntagma Square of Athens, the majority of Greeks want their country to strike a deal with its creditors and remain part of the single-currency eurozone.

Yet opinion polls also show there is widespread opposition to a list of tough economic reforms, including pension cuts and sales tax increases that creditors say Greece's Left-wing Syriza government must accept before they unlock a critical €7.2 billion ($10.4 billion) tranche of desperately needed rescue funds. Without these funds Greece is almost certain to default on a €1.5 billion payment due to the International Monetary Fund on Tuesday and could drop out of the eurozone, or even the European Union.

Meanwhile, time is running very late.

It is easy to be cynical about the countless "make-or-break" summits or multiple "last-ditch" proposals, but eurozone leaders are adamant that a meeting of finance ministers in Brussels on Saturday afternoon really does represent the last-chance saloon.

"All the finance ministers have made it clear to [Greek Finance Minister] Yanis Varoufakis that the buck stops here with the Eurogroup," Maltese Finance MinisterEdward Scicluna says.

Preparations are already being made for a "Grexit", including capital controls such as limits on withdrawals to prevent a run on Greek banks.

"We either have an agreed document [on Saturday] or we haven't, in which case we will start looking at what's next. In other words, plan B," he told Bloomberg on Thursday.

Of the 19 nations that make up the eurozone, five received financial lifelines after the global financial crisis brought an abrupt end to their cheap credit binge. Yet while Spain, Portugal, Cyprus and Ireland are no longer on economic life support, having taken their austerity medicine, Greece shows no sign of posting a meaningful recovery.

Economic output has shrunk by more than 27 per cent since the first bailout package in 2012, while unemployment has fallen by about a quarter, even though the previous government did take steps to conform with creditor demands by cutting spending by more than €65 billion and sacking tens of thousands of public servants.

"Austerity, it turns out, has devastated Greece just about as much as defeat in total war devastated imperial Germany," the economist Paul Krugman wrote in The New York Times in February

Although the Greek middle class described by Frangopoulos continues to get on with its life, charities providing healthcare and shelter say they have never been busier. About 800,000 Greeks could not afford basic medical access last year, according to UK medical journal The Lancet.

"We are losing our best young people as they leave Greece and offer their skills to other nations," Varoufakis said recently. "Poverty, hunger is rife, investment has dried up."

The Greek debt crisis has always been different from Europe's other meltdowns.

Where else could a Twitter feed belonging to the Finance Minister's press officer include: "The inner and outer deformity of those who wield absolute power disguised as bound democracy is best dramatised in Shakespeare's Richard III"?

Because Syriza blames the 2012 and 2014 bailout packages for causing the country's economic malaise - and there is evidence to suggest the austerity measures have not worked - negotiations with creditors has been infected with ideology from both sides.

The creditors believe Greece has dodged genuine attempts to modernise its economy, preferring to hide behind changes to pensions and sales tax that effectively represent a redistribution of income rather than meaningful reform.

Athens argues it is not accurate to equate its predicament with Ireland, the poster child for austerity-led recoveries. Ireland was a nation hit by a banking crisis that was able to rely on strong agricultural exports, a reasonably diversified economy and its close links to the UK to recover.

It was a modern economy operating in an increasingly globalised world.

Greece, on the other hand, is a nation of small business owners where corruption and statism is still common. Despite an over-reliance on tourism, which accounts for about a quarter of economic output, there has been little investment in alternative industries.

As a result, many Greeks believe the austerity that worked for Ireland will not solve Greece's problems.

Of course, Syriza finds itself in a political bind. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras does not want to be the prime minister that presided over a "Grexit". Yet he faces huge domestic pressure from the hard left of his party not to embrace creditor-imposed reforms to pensions and sales tax given these are the very German-led austerity measures Syriza promised to oppose when it swept to power in January.

Nowhere is the ideological gap between the two sides more evident than on the issue of pharmacies.

"When we talk about reforms, we should talk about cartels, about rich Greeks who hardly pay any taxes," Varoufakis told German newspaper Die Zeit in February.

"Why does a kilometre of freeway cost three times as much where we are as it does in Germany?

"Because we're dealing with a system of cronyism and corruption. That's what we have to tackle. But instead we're debating pharmacy opening times."

There is no doubt the Greek pharmacy system is outmoded. Prices for over-the-counter drugs, including aspirin, are set by the government and can only be sold in pharmacies.

Only a pharmacist can own a pharmacy and, even then, he or she is limited to one.

There are strict rules about where a new pharmacy can be built. And if you need aspirin, make sure you pop in during official opening hours because if a pharmacy wants to keep its doors open late it must apply to the local guild.

Pharmacies may not seem like the most pressing issue for a country whose debt is worth 180 per cent of its gross domestic product but creditors are sufficiently interested that the industry received more than 30 mentions in a recent technical review of the progress of Greek economic reform since the bailout.

They argue liberalising myriad rules governing pharmacies will increase competition and make drugs cheaper.

But Varoufakis, who feels strongly enough about his Die Zeit comments that he retweeted them this month, sees the debate about pharmacy opening times as a symbol that the creditors have lost their sense of perspective.

Rather than cracking down on a group of powerful oligarchs or attacking widespread tax evasion among the wealthy - potential revenue-raising reforms creditors will not allow Syriza to use in its budget forecasts - the target is trusted small businesses that often provide drugs on informal credit and low-level healthcare advice.

As negotiations enter their final days, the haggling is not over what budget surplus targets Greek must adopt to pay down its debt mountain - there is consensus on the headline numbers - but on how to achieve these targets.

If both sides are yet to agree on how to regulate a pharmacy then it's hard to be confident the rest of Greece's problems will be solved in time.

180

per cent

Greece's debt is nearly twice its gross domestic product.


Fairfax Media Management Pty Limited

Document AFNR000020150626eb6r0001d

[greengiraffe]

OPINION Jun 28 2015 at 5:17 PM Updated Jun 28 2015 at 7:14 PM

Will Greece keep the euro? The unfolding drama holds everyone hostage

It's increasingly unlikely that Greece will be able to keep the euro as its currency.

by Jennifer Hewett
Some of the Eurozone finance ministers describe the Greek crisis as Plan B becoming Plan A. It's more like Plan Z becoming no plan at all.

The decision by the Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to call a national referendum for next Sunday on the European bailout proposals was not only an unwelcome shock to his fellow European leaders. It seemed to shatter any remaining political hopes it was still possible to yet again stitch up some sort of crisis compromise over Greece.

While various ministers and the IMF's Christine Lagarde united to criticise the Greek Government's handling of such a tense situation, there seemed little agreement on how to respond to it beyond declaring the Greek terms totally unacceptable.

The generally expressed view outside of Greece is that there is no longer any basis for negotiations.

Of course, the series of Greek political and fiscal dramas over the last six years have created the belief that yet another temporary rescue is always produced when all other alternatives – and everyone's patience – have been exhausted.

But the minute-to-midnight clock just keeps on ticking down rapidly to tomorrow's deadline for Greece to repay $1.5 billion to the International Monetary Fund. Without agreement on a funding deal with its creditors, Greece won't be able to do come up with that money, officially putting the country in default.

Yet the weekend's confrontation demonstrates that the Greek government is willing to step over that safety rail without any idea of what lies beyond it. And that the rest of a frustrated Europe is now prepared to let Greece do so.

Depositors' increasing concerns about being able to get their money safely out of Greek banks have turned into panicked lines at the ATMs as most people decide that, this time, it really is serious.

ATM MAYHEM LIKELY

It's likely these ATMs will run out of cash quickly and the banks won't open their doors Monday. Capital controls limiting withdrawals and transfers of funds abroad look inevitable.

A national bank run always has predictably alarming consequences but this will be far more serious and unpredictable than, for example, the capital controls imposed on banks in Cyprus in 2013. This was as part of a negotiated bail-out package with the rest of Europe rather than in defiance of it.

What is not yet clear is whether the European Central Bank will continue providing injections of cash to Greek banks via a program known as Emergency Liquidity Assistance.

With around 90 billion euros already provided, the bets are getting ever more expensive. Other central banks putting in the money will be very reluctant if it just looks like they are all throwing more good money after bad. Closing down liquidity would almost certainly lead to Greece leaving the euro sooner rather than later – despite almost everyone's protestations that this is not a desirable outcome.

Not that the possibility of a Greek default and a "Grexit" from the eurozone is a new concept after the last few years. That is still very different from how this will work in practice. That applies to all the confident predictions that any general market fall-out can be much more easily contained than it might have been a few years ago.

While the European Central Bank has created much more of a cushion via its quantitative easing program, confidence is still a crucial commodity. That's now being stretched very thin, prone to an abrupt tearing of the protective covering for other countries considered potentially vulnerable.

So the rejection of the eurozone ministers of Greece's request for a one month extension of the bailout program means this week looks destined to be chaotic at best for European markets and possibly catastrophic for the staggering Greek economy. So the national referendum now scheduled for July 5 – where the Greek government plans to campaign strongly against the European package of demands – is likely to occur in a country already suffering from financial delirium tremens.

A REFERENDUM WON'T FIX IT

It's also hard to see how the holding of a referendum can fix the fundamental divide and now the Europeans' total mistrust of the Syriza government.

Tsipras declares the European proposals for reform are humiliating and unworkable. Rather than cutting spending in areas like pensions, the Greek government counter proposal has a much greater focus on raising taxes, particularly on business.

A clear majority of the Greek population want to remain part of the eurozone – although that community support reduces to more equal figures if that membership is conditional on accepting further austerity. But so far, that choice hasn't been made mutually exclusive.

Instead, the government has spent this year suggesting it's possible to reject more austerity while also remaining in the eurozone. The referendum will be on whether Greek people accept the draft agreement submitted by the ECB, the IMF and the European commission. The government has made plain it does not accept this and that the voters should not support it either.

Greek's finance minister Yanis Varoufakis tweeted that democracy deserved a boost in euro-related matters and the people should decide. "Funny how radical this concept sounds," he declared.

In the unlikely event Greeks do vote to accept European terms as the effective price for membership, it's hardly likely the Syriza government would have the ability or willingness to implement the package as demanded. If a majority of voters instead follow the government's advice to reject the proposals, it's hard to imagine how Greece can keep the euro as its currency. Government IOUs or using a new currency to pay its own public servants won't have much credibility. Travel agents have been telling tourists proceeding with planned Greek holidays to take cash only. That is likely to be the least of everyone's problems.

[greengiraffe]

OPINION Jun 28 2015 at 4:09 PM Updated Jun 28 2015 at 7:48 PM
European leaders brace for fallout as Grexit looms large

Greeks queue in front of the National Bank to withdraw cash as the country edges closer to expulsion from the eurozone. Milos Bicanski


by Karen Maley
Investors are bracing themselves for potential financial and political turbulence in the days and weeks ahead, as Greece lurches ever closer to a disastrous default that could push it out of the eurozone.

European leaders seem to be resigning themselves already to the inevitability of a Grexit, as though the surprise announcement by Greece's radical leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to hold a referendum already marked the first stage in Greece's eventual departure.

On Saturday evening, eurozone finance ministers – meeting without their Greek colleague Yanis Varoufakis – decided against extending the country's bailout and instead started work on a "plan B", aimed at protecting the region from contagion.

The decision to let Greece's €245 billion ($357 billion) bailout expire on Tuesday came after Athens announced it would hold a referendum next Sunday to allow the Greek people to decide how to respond to what it argues is an ultimatum from the country's creditors – the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the rest of the eurozone.

Without an agreement, Greece will lack the funds to make a €1.6 billion repayment it is due to make to the IMF on Tuesday, and will struggle to pay public sector salaries.

In a fiery address to the Greek Parliament on Saturday, Tsipras called on Greek people to give an "emphatic no" in Sunday's referendum and rebuked eurozone finance ministers for excluding Varoufakis from their Saturday night meeting.

"Neither threats nor blackmail nor attempts to incite panic will change the will of the Greek people to live with dignity," he thundered.

STOP THE TURMOIL

Meanwhile, European leaders spent the weekend debating how best to stop the turmoil from a Greek default from spreading throughout the eurozone, putting at risk other fragile economies in the region.

A big problem is to prevent the Greek banks from collapsing as depositors, worried about the breakdown of talks between the country and its creditors, have been scrambling to withdraw their savings.

The obvious solution is to impose immediate capital controls, or at least to declare a bank holiday, but this requires the co-operation of Athens, and this is uncertain. Varoufakis has signalled that he believes the banks should stay open during the referendum period, but others in the radical leftist Syriza party believe that capital controls will boost popular support for Tsipras and validate his claims that he is the victim of blackmail by Greece's creditors.

Even if Athens agrees to introduce measures that limit capital from flowing out of the country, Brussels is worried that they won't be as effective as they were in Cyprus, which limited cash withdrawals and the transfer of funds abroad during its 2013 banking crisis. Capital controls worked in Cyprus because it was a small island, whereas it will be much more difficult to stop funds from being shifted across Greece's borders.

The European Central Bank also faces a dilemma on whether to continue allowing Greece's central bank to provide Greek banks with emergency loans to compensate for their large deposit outflows.

In the past week and a half the ECB has raised the ceiling three times for these emergency loans, despite the spirited objections of the central bank's German and Finnish board members. But in the absence of a deal with Greece, and with the country's bailout agreement expiring on Tuesday, the ECB might decide to cut off the financial lifeline for Greek banks.

SHELTER THE EUROZONE

Of equal concern to European leaders is how to shelter the rest of the eurozone from contagion in the event of a Greek default.

European banks have very little exposure to Greek debt now, unlike during the 2009-12 eurozone debt crisis. But banks in Bulgaria, Romania and Cyprus have more exposure, and might need to be protected.

Since the dark days of the debt crisis the eurozone has taken steps to protect itself, such as by setting up the European Stability Mechanism, which can issue bonds and use the proceeds to lend to problem countries and even to refinance troubled financial institutions.

But although European leaders are expected to emphasise in coming that even without Greece the eurozone will survive, there are no guarantees that the fallout from a Grexit can be controlled.

[greengiraffe]

Greek banks close as cash machines run dry
AFP JUNE 29, 2015 7:27AM

Crisis-hit Greece imposes capital controls
Greek people queue in front of an ATM mache to withdraw cash from a National Bank of GreeGreek people queue in front of an ATM machine to withdraw cash from a National Bank of Greece in central Athens. Source: AFP

Greek banks and the Athens stock market will be closed on Monday and capital controls will be imposed, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras announced, pleading for calm after anxious citizens emptied ATMs in a dramatic escalation of the country’s debt crisis.

In a statement, Mr Tsipras early today (AEST) said the Bank of Greece had recommended a “bank holiday and restriction of bank withdrawals” after international creditors refused to extend the nation’s bailout beyond its June 30 expiry date, sparking default fears over an IMF loan repayment due the same day.

Amid growing concern the country was headed for financial collapse and a possible eurozone exit, the European Central Bank said earlier it would not increase its financial support to Greek banks.

In a bid to stave off panic, Mr Tsipras said the Greek stock market would also remain closed on Monday and he added that Athens had again asked requested a “prolongation of the (bailout) program”.

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MOREDollar down amid Greek debt crisis
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Urging calm, he assured Greeks their deposits, were “totally safe”. “Equally safe is the reimbursement of salaries and pensions,” he said. “Any difficulties that may arise must be dealt with with calmness. The more calm we are, the sooner we will get over this situation.” Uncertainty over how events will unfold in coming days prompted long queues of up to a hundred people to form outside some ATMs in Athens.

“I tried many machines -- five, six, eight, ten -- I am not sure,” said Voula, who was on the lookout for a working ATM in central Athens.

“I feel anxious, sad, angry about the government,” she said. “They put Greece on a very dangerous adventure.” Since Friday night alone, 1.3 billion euros ($US1.45 billion) have been withdrawn from the Greek banking system, according to the head of the bank workers’ union Stavros Koukos.

A banking source in Greece said only 40 per cent of cash machines now had money in them and a host of European governments including London and Paris advised citizens travelling to Greece to carry money with them.

The Frankfurt-based ECB’s governing council earlier held a crisis telephone conference and pledged to maintain emergency liquidity assistance -- keeping open its life-support for Greek banks and, by extension, the Greek state.

But it pledged no extra cash for banks, amid signs a bank run was gathering pace.

The long festering crisis took a sharp turn for the worse on Friday night after months of deadlocked negotiations between the new hard-left government of Tsipras and the country’s creditors.

The two sides have been at odds over the economic reforms demanded by the creditors in exchange for fresh cash needed to keep the Greek state afloat.

Mr Tsipras stunned Europe on Friday night with a surprise call for a July 5 referendum on the latest cash-for-reforms package and advised voters against backing a deal that he said spelled further “humiliation”.

For Mr Tsipras, austerity has been a “humanitarian catastrophe” for his country of about 11 million people, which has endured five years of recession, turmoil and skyrocketing unemployment.

Exasperated eurozone members, suspecting a further play for time, responded by refusing to extend the EU’s funding programme beyond a Tuesday deadline.

This will almost certainly mean Greece will be default on more than 1.5 billion euros ($US1.7 billion) due to the International Monetary Fund on Tuesday.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned of a “real risk” of Greece leaving the eurozone if it citizens vote against the EU’s bailout proposals in the referendum planned for next weekend.

US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel also weighed in on, saying Greece needed to find its way back to a path of reform without exiting the eurozone.

In a telephone call about the unfolding crisis, Mr Obama and Ms Merkel “agreed that it was critically important to make every effort to return to a path that will allow Greece to resume reforms and growth within the eurozone,” the White House said.

The International Monetary Fund, a key creditor in the negotiations accused by Athens of pushing a hardline on reforms, said it was monitoring the unfolding crisis and was ready to provide assistance.

IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde expressed disappointment that talks had broken down between Athens and its creditors, but said she believed the eurozone was in a “strong position” to respond to the crisis.

“The coming days will clearly be important,” she said in a statement. The focus now will be on quarantining Greece and containing the fallout for the other 18 members from “contagion” on financial markets which are set for a turbulent day on Monday when they reopen.

The ECB -- which has maintained ultra-low interest rates and launched large-scale quantitative easing measures -- said it “is determined to use all the instruments available within its mandate” to maintain price stability.

Missing the IMF payment on Tuesday does “not spell immediate formal default or even Grexit. But it would put Greece on the slippery slope towards Grexit,” wrote Holger Schmieding, chief economist of Berenberg Bank.

A Grexit, Schmieding wrote, “could be a social catastrophe well beyond anything” the country has endured so far through the debt crisis.

Morgan Stanley investment bank now puts the chances of a Greek euro exit, or Grexit, at 60 per cent.

AFP

[sgd]

Base on your description, it should be illegal "loan shark" with very high interest rate. Yes, the loan sharks are criminals

Very easy for illegal to become legal these days, got o level can apply for money lending license, can start company become debt collector all very legitimate. Before there was no cap on Interest rate so you miss payment it skyrocket. Lender can always say they "outsource" debt collecting to some company how the methods used to recover the loan they "have no knowledge".

One old neighbor once told me many years ago how loansharks operate, they know when you approach them means you are desperate already that's why they 'even more' want to loan to you.

[CityFarmer]

Base on your description, it should be illegal "loan shark" with very high interest rate. Yes, the loan sharks are criminals

Very easy for illegal to become legal these days, got o level can apply for money lending license, can start company become debt collector all very legitimate. Before there was no cap on Interest rate so you miss payment it skyrocket. Lender can always say they "outsource" debt collecting to some company how the methods used to recover the loan they "have no knowledge".

One old neighbor once told me many years ago how loansharks operate, they know when you approach them means you are desperate already that's why they 'even more' want to loan to you.

I am always skeptical on those borrowed from legal money lenders, are claiming innocent upon default. I did talk to few of them casually. I have to admit that I know much less than them, on the borrowing tips, and what to be expected upon default.

[CityFarmer]

The referendum will greatly reduce the "noises" on the execution, of whatever agreed upon, IMO

U.S. Treasury's Lew calls Greek PM Tsipras to urge steps to resolve debt crisis

WASHINGTON - U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Sunday that Athens and its creditors needed to continue working toward a resolution ahead of a Greek referendum on the creditors' demands for austerity.

A U.S. Treasury spokesperson said Lew told Tsipras in a phone call that it was important for Athens to show a commitment to reforms and for all parties to discuss possible debt relief for Greece.
...
http://www.todayonline.com/business/us-t...ebt-crisis

[greengiraffe]

4 years ago when Greek concerns surface, DAX hit a low of 5000. Today, when the real crisis is in progress, DAX just rebounded off a bottom around 11000.

Crisis or correction... you form your own judgement...