'Griekenland wil weer geld van de eurozone' #13

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Nato-Generalsekretär Jens Stoltenberg hat im ZDF von den Griechen gefordert, trotz der drohenden Staatspleite von Kürzungen im Verteidigungsetat abzusehen. Athen gibt 2,3 Prozent des Bruttoinlandsprodukts für Verteidigung aus.

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Greek Debt Crisis Risks NATO Withdrawal, New Refugee Surge

A failure to resolve the Greek debt crisis could do more than weaken the euro and cause stocks to retreat.

It has the potential to prompt a Greek withdrawal from NATO, increase the influx of refugees into Europe and threaten Greek support for international sanctions against Russia over Ukraine.

“Greece spiraling into chaos would be a significant strategic disruption for Europe and therefore for the U.S.,” retired U.S. Admiral James Stavridis, a former NATO supreme allied commander, said in an interview. “There’s more to this crisis than money and the financial markets.”

Such outcomes are possible, though unlikely, should European leaders prove unable to resolve the debt dispute that has shut Greek banks and frightened investors. Greece asked for a new bailout program from the euro region on Tuesday after saying it will miss a midnight deadline for a debt payment to the International Monetary Fund.

If Greece ultimately is pushed off the euro currency for defaulting on its debt, it could seek revenge by pulling out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, blocking European Union sanctions on Russia or forcing the U.S. from its naval base in Crete, said Stavridis, a Greek-American who is dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Massachusetts.

“A Greece that feels unloved and pushed out is less likely to be helpful” to the U.S. and Europe, he said.

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NATO chief addresses fear of Greek withdrawal

30 June 2015 17:44
Secretary General highlights Greece’s role in NATO amid concern it could pullout

BERLIN

The head of NATO on Tuesday underlined Greece’s role in the military alliance amid concerns the economic crisis facing Athens could prompt its withdrawal.

“[A] strong and united Europe is of course good for Greece, it is good for the EU, but it is also good for all of us and for the NATO alliance,” Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said at a press conference with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier. “So I hope that it’s still possible to find a solution. Because I think that this is the best for all of us.”

He added: “ Greece is a staunch ally within theNATO alliance. I very much appreciate the contributions of Greece for many years, for many decades to our collective defense, to our alliance.”

Greece joined NATO alongside Turkey in 1952 but there are fears the government could pull out of the alliance if it is forced out of the euro. The U.S. maintains a significant naval base on the island of Crete that could be threatened by such a withdrawal.

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Op dinsdag 30 juni 2015 20:08 schreef BarryOSeven het volgende:

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Nou helemaal begrijpen doe ik het op dit uur niet meer, maar volgens mij lees ik dat die dikke Juncker de conferentie heeft verlaten omdat ie belangrijke dingen te doen heeft.

Die heeft vanmiddag zijn mond voorbij gepraat om Tsapiras naar Brussel te lokken en peert hem nu snel.

Waarom Tsapiras naar Brussel gelokt moest worden is me niet helder? Misschien die EU georganiseerde demonstratie voor het parlement van nu?

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alexstubb twitterde op dinsdag 30-06-2015 om 20:02:14 #Eurogroups ends. Letter of @tsipras_eu includes three requests. Extension of programme or haircut not possible...cont... reageer retweet

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alexstubb twitterde op dinsdag 30-06-2015 om 20:03:30 ...request for ESM-programme is always dealt with through normal procedures. reageer retweet

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SpiegelPeter twitterde op dinsdag 30-06-2015 om 20:12:24 Also, another #eurogroup call tomorrow, I'm told. Ugh. reageer retweet

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In July 2012, Timothy F. Geithner, the United States Treasury secretary at the time, traveled to Sylt, an island off Germany in the North Sea.

Mr. Geithner was there for a meeting with Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister, who would spend his summers at his vacation home on the tiny island.

The topic was Greece.

In the home’s library, the two men spoke about Greece’s prospects and begun discussing ways for the European Union to keep the country in the eurozone.

To Mr. Geithner’s dismay, however, Mr. Schäuble took the conversation in a different direction.

“He told me there were many in Europe who still thought kicking the Greeks out of the eurozone was a plausible — even desirable — strategy,” Mr. Geithner later recounted in his memoir, “Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises.” “The idea was that with Greece out, Germany would be more likely to provide the financial support the eurozone needed because the German people would no longer perceive aid to Europe as a bailout for the Greeks,” he says in the memoir.

“At the same time, a Grexit would be traumatic enough that it would help scare the rest of Europe into giving up more sovereignty to a stronger banking and fiscal union,” Mr. Geithner wrote. “The argument was that letting Greece burn would make it easier to build a stronger Europe with a more credible firewall.”

Fast-forward three years. What Mr. Schäuble articulated that summer afternoon to Mr. Geithner is finally taking shape.

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The Euro Is a Straitjacket for Greece

Desmond Lachman is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He was formerly a deputy director in the International Monetary Fund’s policy and review department and the chief emerging market economic strategist at Salomon Smith Barney.

A principal cause of the Greek economic depression of the past six years, which is now on a scale of that of the United States in the 1930s, has been the pursuit of excessive budget austerity within a euro straitjacket. That straitjacket has denied Greece the ability to adjust its currency exchange rate to offset the harm of massive budget belt-tightening. The net result has been a 25 percent decline in the Greek economy and a rise in Greek unemployment to over 25 percent. It has also brought in its wake the fragmentation of Greek politics and the destruction of its middle class.

Undeterred by the disastrous results wrought by its past policy prescriptions, the I.M.F. and the European Union have persisted in asking of Greece further large scale budget cuts and painful structural reform. They do so without explaining why such policies, which have failed so miserably in the past, would now somehow lead to Greek economic growth.

Greece now has a clear choice. It can stick with the failed policies of the past that would almost certainly keep the Greek economy in a state of depression for many years to come and that would risk creating a failed Greek state. Alternately, it could abandon the euro and give itself the chance to promote economic growth that is so necessary to address its economy’s imbalances and to arrest its political rot.

This is not to suggest that opting for its own currency is without its risks and will not require careful economic management and far-reaching structural economic reform to modernize its economy. Rather, it is to say that if managed well and if supported by the I.M.F. and the international community, the introduction of its own currency would offer Greece the chance of resuming economic growth that has been denied it to date by being forced to address its economic imbalances with the euro.

If the I.M.F. and the European Union truly want Greece to succeed and not to become a failed state, they would do well to support an orderly Greek exit out of the euro.

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DIJSSELBLOEM: NIEUW PROGRAMMA LEIDT TOT STRENGERE HERVORMINGSEISEN

Dijsselbloem heeft ook een minder leuk bericht voor de Griekse regering. Een nieuw steunpakket gaat mogelijk gepaard met nog hardere hervormingseisen, zo stelt de voorzitter van de eurogroep vanavond. En dat terwijl de huidige hervormingen voor de Griekse premier Tsipras al onbespreekbaar waren.

In het vandaag verstuurde voorstel repte hij overigens met geen woord over hervormingen gerept. Tsipras sprak vooral over nieuwe financiële steun en het herstructureren van schuld.
Juist die hervormingen waren voor president Alexis Tsipras

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Op dinsdag 30 juni 2015 19:33 schreef Japie77 het volgende:

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Dan kom je uit in Azie. In ieder geval niet in Nederland. Die zullen ergens onderaan staan.