Skip to main content

Greece: Episode 9 -- I've not lost my bet yet!

The head of the European Union has rejected Greece’s request for an emergency meeting aimed at ending an impasse over the country’s bailout.
Greece agreed to a third rescue package worth €86bn (£60bn; $94bn) last year and faces a looming debt payment. However, it has been unable to unlock the next loan instalment after clashing with its creditors over more reforms.
The International Monetary Fund and other European partners are demanding that Greece implement further austerity measures. They are looking to generate nearly €4bn in additional savings or contingency money in case Greece misses future budget targets.
But the left-wing government led by Alexis Tsipras has said it will not agree to any “additional actions” to what it had already signed up to last summer.
A special ministerial meeting was supposed to be held on Thursday, but Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who is in charge of the Greece negotiations, called it off.
Source: BBC

For all those who though that the Greece thing was over and done with, let me disabuse you.  What the ECB/EU/Germany have done is "shovel the shit forward".  Despite the fact that Greece as agreed to massive cuts in government expenditure the reality is that revenues are also way bellow expectation:  Would you build a plant in Greece.

Little has really changed in Greece, it remains difficult to start a business, unions are all powerful and red tap is still rather extensive.

However, the one thing that has not happened is debt forgiveness; granted countries are not companies and so bankruptcy is not really an option.  Still, the one thing that could possibly give Greece a chance is not being considered.  And now, with almost Euro 4 billion due in July, we are back at the game table, where Europe refuses to meet with the Greeks until some further cuts are put in place.

i can still win my bet -- that Greece will be out of the Euro...


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ok so I lied...a little (revised)

When we began looking at farming in 2013/14 as something we both wanted to do as a "second career" we invested time and money to understand what sector of farming was profitable.  A few things emerged, First, high-quality, source-proven, organic farm products consistently have much higher profit margins.  Secondly, transformation accounted for nearly 80% of total profits, and production and distribution accounted for 20% of profits: Farmers and retailers have low profit margins and the middle bits make all the money. A profitable farm operation needs to be involved in the transformation of its produce.  The low-hanging fruits: cheese and butter.  Milk, generates a profit margin of 5% to 8%, depending on milk quality.  Transformed into cheese and butter, and the profit margin rises to 40% (Taking into account all costs).  Second:  20% of a steer carcass is ground beef quality.  The price is low, because (a) a high percentage of the carcass, and (b) ground beef requires process
Post a Comment
Read more

21st century milk parlour

When we first looked at building our farm in 2018, we made a few money-saving decisions, the most important is that we purchased our milk herd from a retiring farmer and we also purchased his milking parlour equipment.  It was the right decision at the time.  The equipment dates from around 2004/05 and was perfectly serviceable, our installers replaced some tubing but otherwise, the milking parlour was in good shape.  It is a mature technology. Now, we are building a brand new milk parlour because our milking cows are moving from the old farm to the new farm.  So we are looking at brand new equipment this time because, after 20 years of daily service, the old cattle parlour's systems need to be replaced.  Fear not it will not be destroyed instead good chunks will end up on Facebook's marketplace and be sold to other farmers for spare parts or expansion of their current systems. All our cattle are chipped, nothing unusual there, we have sensors throughout the farm, and our milki
Post a Comment
Read more

So we sold surplus electricity one time last summer...(Update)

I guess that we will be buying an additional tank for our methane after all.   Over the past few months, we've had several electricity utilities/distributors which operate in our region come to the farm to "inspect our power plant facilities, to ensure they conform to their requirements".  This is entirely my fault.  Last summer we were accumulating too much methane for our tankage capacity, and so instead of selling the excess gas, that would have cost us some money, we (and I mean me) decided to produce excess electricity and sell it to the grid.  Because of all the rules and regulations, we had to specify our overall capacity and timing for the sale of electricity (our capacity is almost 200 Kw) which is a lot but more importantly, it's available 24/7, because it's gas powered.  It should be noted that the two generators are large because we burn methane and smaller generators are difficult to adapt to burn unconventional gas, plus they are advanced and can &qu
Post a Comment
Read more