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Comment by lifeisstillgood | Hacker News Reader

tl;dr ECB has leaked to BBC they will cut off emergency lending that covers the panic withdrawals. This will kill the deal and force a grexit, even before 5 July referendum. However French PM does not think they have enough independence to do that.

So we have a democratic nation potentially forced to leave Euro, after democratically deciding it no longer wants the austerity imposed, being forced to leave by non democratic ECB while the democracies that appoint the ECB think it is going too far.

What's that quote from Hunt For Red October - "with all these planes in the sky, it's only a matter of time [before we start a war]"

The lesson for democracy - force governments who are going to adjust fiscal measures past a certain point to get referendum approval

- and look how well that works in California...

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What's the alternative for the ECB? Give €129 bn to Greek banks to replace the deposits that are bound to flee this week only to see it lost when they default after saying no in the referendum? The Greek banks would have been bust long ago if it wasn't for the ECB's emergency lending; they've been provided with €60 bn in liquidity over the last 6 months to replace the deposit flight. Not sure how you can characterise that as Greece being forced to leave by a decision from the ECB. Looks more to me like they have to leave because there are no other options left.

The alternative is to start investing in Greece. To build up it's economy so we can end the Greek Depression. As it stands now the austerity packages have cut 30% off of the economy and increased the unemployment rates to nearly 30%, 50% of the youth. Those are Great Depression size numbers. Hard to collect taxes when people are not working. All these bailouts are basically just the Troika hand wringing about giving money to themselves while the country they are helping is bled dry. To date the IMF have made about 2.5 Billion, Germany profited to the tune of 100 Billion.

I asked what the alternative for the ECB was and you suggested the alternative was to invest in Greece. Are you suggesting that the ECB should invest in Greece to build up its economy or are you conflating my question regarding what the alternative for the ECB was with a question which I did not ask regarding what European institutions in general should do?

To roughly answer the above questions - the ECB and IMF need to stop. This is above their pay grade.

This is a problem caused by a fixed exchange rate (single currency) at the wrong rate for Greece and co. Without a mechanism to adjust prices for differences in cost and productivity Euros looked really cheap to borrow from germane but olive oil looked really expensive to buy in. (Germany presses and bottles and exports more olive oil from Greek olives than Greece does)

The only way to solve the problem long term is to move the money from richer (urban) parts of Europe to poorer rural parts. Stupid ideas like the CAP don't really help. Redistributive taxation across Europe (ie Federal taxes and Federal government) are the next step. But that is waaaaay out of the ECBs remit.

Syriza is basically saying - fine break my legs, but only if you can promise a European wide discussion on how we got into this mess and what a federal Europe will look like

I'm not sure that the ECBs action is the cause so much as the effect.

My understanding of this was that the greek banks are (without ECB help) insolvent and have been for some time. They are unable to raise capital on the open market, as the open market has decided that they are not confident enough in those banks to lend them money.

As a result the Emergency Liquidity Assitance from the ECB has been used, but that was only provided on the basis that the greek banks were solvent but had temporary liquidity problems.

As far as I understand it, as soon as Greece is no longer in a bailout Program (Tuesday by current reckoning) those banks will not be solvent any more (they hold large amounts of Greek government debt), and ELA can't (without some form of change of rules for the ECB) continue.

The ECB is just following it's rules and it's been known that this approach is where they would likely need to go for some time, absent a political intervention from the Europgroup or the IMF.

  while the democracies that appoint the ECB
  think it is going too far.

Often in politics you want someone to feel threatened, but you don't want to look like an asshole by threatening them yourself.

I'm sure France and Germany can put up the money to cover profligate Greek public spending if they want to. But if they've decided Greece needs to be cut off, I'm sure they'd much rather have an anonymous non-german non-french bureaucrat deliver the bad news than do it themselves.

It works at all scales:

"I'd love to give you a raise, but corporate is making big cuts everywhere... I'll do what I can for you, but I can't make promises."

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