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Our full calendar is available through the link in the right hand column. There is also a bit more extensive than usual fundamental factor review this week. That is due to the ostensible finalization of a Greek debt deal now being approved by the German Parliament not seeming to affect trends to any great degree. If this is such a major success, why were the equities only marginally higher from Friday and stalling into resistance in the strong sister US once again?
And the OGB (Occupy Greek Budget) movement in Germany is on the move again. According to an excellent Financial Times article on that today, “German tax collection experts have volunteered to go to Greece…” Oh, Goody!! The discussion of has played down all of the acrimony since an earlier article reported on initial responses to similar suggestions in late January from Davos; especially note the comments elicited by the latter. Here’s the bottom line: Rigid implementation of agreed Greek reforms that include strict enforcement of tax regulations are the good intentions which are paving the path to Hell.
The 'hawks' seem oblivious to the degree to which Greece has already been the learning lab, and the lesson is that pro-cyclical austerity will not result in the narrowly calculated fiscal improvement. Even allowing it may be a necessary evil, as we’ve noted previous you'd think the folks who suffered the occupation of the Ruhr after WWI would be a bit more sensitive about how they went about proposing tax collection 'assistance'. We all know how well that episode worked out.
Why doesn't Greece just declare war on Germany? They could throw the contest after the first shot, and put in for ‘reconstruction’ support rather than try to cure such a hopelessly over-burdened balance sheet. (Please reference "The Mouse That Roared.")
And now (just now this afternoon in the US) we have Standard & Poors downgrading Greece to “Selective Default” and that seems to mean some of the actual debt has dropped to “D” ...for ‘Default’ due to the insertion of ‘collective action clauses’ on some outstanding Greek bonds.
