Greece...

Thrugelmir

Graham_Devon wrote: »

...Anyone else thought that people could be making money on the back of all this?

Requires 2 parties to conduct a trade.

So somebody is losing money as well.

mystic_trev

So it continues. It looks like Thursdays their last chance to reach an agreement?

The talks come as Germany ramps up pressure on Greece. Vice-chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said on Sunday that European nations were losing patience with Greece.

Germany wanted to keep Greece in the eurozone, but writing in Bild he warned that "not only is time running out, but so too is patience across Europe".

Mr Sigmar is also economy minister and head of junior coalition partners the Social Democrats.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33125801

Graham_Devon

mystic_trev wrote: »

So it continues. It looks like Thursdays their last chance to reach an agreement?

Last chance before wednesday, you mean!?

mystic_trev

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Last chance before wednesday, you mean!?

Senior moment…………!

Generali

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Maybe a little bit conspiracy theorist but..

...Anyone else thought that people could be making money on the back of all this?

On Thursday it was announced that a deal from the EU was very very close. That the EU had accepted that Greece needs room to grow aswell as pay debts.

Stock markets jumped. Some up 13% I read.

The very next day after a few hours of trading, the whole thing was back to usual. The IMF were now refusing to even speak to the Greeks and it all looked bad again. Stock markets plunged.

This has happened on more than a handful of occasions. You can almost predict that the day following the news that things are looking up, there will be a fallout the next and were back to square one.

Interestingly, Goldman Sachs are one of a very small number of institutions allowed to sell short in Greece. Generally it's banned.

Graham_Devon

Generali wrote: »

Interestingly, Goldman Sachs are one of a very small number of institutions allowed to sell short in Greece. Generally it's banned.

Just seems to happen a bit too frequently in my mind. These people are supposed to be the best of the best. But they seem to make contradictory announcements from one day to the next. It clearly influences the markets.

Seems a bit like the FIFA stuff when everyone knew there was something clearly going on with Qatar but it shouldn't really be mentioned. I can't imagaine that that no one had some money staked on that outcome.

Similarly I can't really beleive that such influencial, seemingly intelligent people running the EU could release such differing statements from one day to the next without someone somewhere benefitting. It's making them lok ridiculous....as per FIFA and Qatar. It simply doesn't make sense for footballers to be playing in such heat. Similarly it simply doesn't make sense to air these highly public statements contradicting one another in public for such high flying, supposedly trusted figures.

Generali

If you can sell short in a market that's down almost 40% in a year with very manageable currency risk you can make money:

http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/ASE:IND

Generali

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/5e38f1be-1116-11e5-9bf8-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3d51hSVnW

So here we are. Alexis Tsipras has been told to take it or leave it. What should he do?

The Greek prime minister does not face elections until January 2019. Any course of action he decides on now would have to bear fruit in three years or less.

First, contrast the two extreme scenarios: accept the creditors’ final offer or leave the eurozone. By accepting the offer, he would have to agree to a fiscal adjustment of 1.7 per cent of gross domestic product within six months.

My colleague Martin Sandbu calculated how an adjustment of such scale would affect the Greek growth rate. I have now extended that calculation to incorporate the entire four-year fiscal adjustment programme, as demanded by the creditors. Based on the same assumptions he makes about how fiscal policy and GDP interact, a two-way process, I come to a figure of a cumulative hit on the level of GDP of 12.6 per cent over four years. The Greek debt-to-GDP ratio would start approaching 200 per cent. My conclusion is that the acceptance of the troika’s programme would constitute a dual suicide — for the Greek economy, and for the political career of the Greek prime minister.

Would the opposite extreme, Grexit, achieve a better outcome? You bet it would, for three reasons. The most important effect is for Greece to be able to get rid of lunatic fiscal adjustments. Greece would still need to run a small primary surplus, which may require a one-off adjustment, but this is it.

wymondham

There was I thinking maybe, just maybe we'd see something happen on this story... I don't think anyone will actually bring this to a head?? Is someone making money out of this situation I don't know about - sounds fishy!

worldtraveller

wymondham wrote: »

There was I thinking maybe, just maybe we'd see something happen on this story... I don't think anyone will actually bring this to a head??

Athens will patiently wait until its creditors become realistic, Greece's premier said on Monday.

"We will wait patiently until the institutions become more realistic," Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras wrote in the "Ephimarida ton Syndakton" daily.

AFP