EU Referendum


Eurocrash: how much longer before the Greeks exit?


09/08/2012



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A few days ago the markets were tanking and then they were surging, and then Ambrose was telling us everything in the garden was rosy - all because Draghi had a plan.

And now, on just as much evidence as there has always been – i.e., very little indeed - the markets are dropping again as "doubts grew on the prospects for early central bank action to bolster the global economy and tackle the euro zone debt crisis".

Most likely though, what is actually happening is the normal cycle of speculation and profit-taking, all on very thin trading, and much of it initiated by computer algorithm, the "trades" untouched by human hand. The teenage scribblers and hacks then over-interpret the data and come up with conclusions that are as slender as the data on which they base them. 

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What can't be gainsaid, though, is that the euro crisis is having a significant and adverse effect on the German economy. And, equally significantly, the Germans are open about blaming the "mess in the eurozone". The salad days for German exports are over – jobs, production and turnover are all falling.

Then, after Helmut Schmidt has admitted that letting Greece into the Euro, and Juncker has said that Greece leaving the euro would be "manageable", we have Otmar Issing, styled as the "euro architect", conceding that "some members" could leave the single currency.

Meanwhile, Die Welt is reporting that Greeks are "devious", with one in ten pensions possibly being wrongly claimed, in what might be wholesale fraud.

Tedious the ups and downs of the market might be, but the mood music is getting interesting. Softly, insistently, the German public are being prepared for a Greek exit. It is no longer whether, or even when, but how much longer.