Der Spiegel bombshell: The IMF plans to dump Greece

international | eu | other press Monday July 23, 2012 00:04 by T

Whats in store for Ireland

As reported by the financial blog The Automatic Earth written by Nicole Foss, she has reported that the German magazine Der Spiegel dropped a bombshell this morning in an article that the IMF plans to dump Greece in September. So far the Der Spiegel article is in German. Normally they will eventually publish articles in English.

"Griechenland könnte schon im September pleitegehen. Der Internationale Währungsfonds hat nach Informationen des SPIEGEL der Brüsseler EU-Spitze signalisiert, dass er sich nicht an weiteren Hilfen für das Land beteiligen werde."

Greece could go bankrupt as early as September. Spiegel has obtained information that the IMF told the Brussels leadership it would not make more money available for help to Greece.

The rest of the article goes on to point out that the IMF doesn't think that the Athens government will be able to bring down Greece's debt to 120% of GDP by 2020 and the troika estimates that giving Greece more time to achieve its goals would cost an additional €10 billion-€50 billion. Many eurozone governments, however, are no longer prepared to shoulder new Greek burdens. Moreover, countries like Holland and Finland have made their help contingent on IMF participation.

Another part she has translated is as follows:
Meanwhile, a Greek departure from the eurozone is seen as manageable in eurozone countries. In order to limit the risk of contagion, governments want to wait for the new ESM emergency fund to start. Which can't happen before the German constitutional court delivers its verdict on September 12.

The Der Spielel article is at: http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/euro-krise....html

The reason for holding out till September is that they want to wait until the ESM is in place which is supposed to have a fund of €700 billion. Strangely this fund is supposed to be for bailing out Span and Italy should the need arise. One wonders why for Greece it isn't enough.

According to (blog author) Nicole Foss, this clearly has big implications. For one other smaller countries like Ireland and Portugal should be now much more nervous about what might happen next for them.

To quote she says:

The message might become that any and all reform and austerity measures demanded must be adhered to very strictly or else. Politicians in these other "borderline" countries might go along with it all, but will the people? Do the Irish really enjoy the idea of being strangled into submission? And will Spain really be "saved" once real debt numbers are known?

It seems far more likely that getting rid of Greece will be merely the first step in dissolving the entire eurozone. The rest of the dominos can then fall in rapid succession.


For those you are not familiar with The Automatic Earth blog and Nicole Foss, she has a good track record and is one of the few people who has managed to integrate their understandings of how Peak Oil and the Financial Crisis are interacting. She has consistently warned over the past few years that we are entering a major Depression because the current crisis is essentially the bursting of a 30 year bubble which is far bigger than the one during the 1930s and consequently the effects will be bigger. She has also consistently been of the opinion that we are in a deflationary environment and not likely to enter a hyperinflation as many other economists are predicting the eventual outcome to be. On how this relates to Peak Oil, she says that for the moment, the financial issues are the main drivers of action in the economy at the moment, and the depression, deflation and reduction in demand over the next few years will mask the effects of Peak Oil for a while.

You can find the full article at the link below.