Ah, that's the confusion. And my apologies to grizy; I misread.

When I think of success stories, Iceland comes to mind so I must have grafted it in there instead of Ireland.

Iceland did austerity too, on top of currency devaluation.

People really just don't like paycuts. Even if the results are the same in real terms, inflation is just easier to swallow than paycuts. That has both psychological and practical components (debt mostly).

Greece presents no new proposal. Basically told Eurogroup to just give Greece a 30 billion euro loan with no strings attached.

Meeting after was scary short with ministers from smaller countries saying some variety of Grexit since the referendum. It sounds like they've just had enough talking to piles of rubble.

I think it's better than 50/50 a majority of the other 18 Euro countries are quite okay with Grexit.

It's really scary how detached the Greek government and people are detached from reality.

Just saw that. Not sure it means that much. The meeting was never where decisions would be made and discussions are on-going.

It's hard to see Greece giving the plan as a good move for them unless it's already pretty much agreed. There's also the chance Tsipras doesn't want a deal.

I find it hard to see how Greece stays in the euro at this point. I think it's more likely that everyone is positioning themselves to find a politically palatable way for them to leave.

The new Greek fiance guy looks like some random dad who has just been on his once a year bender and got the call at 10:30AM that he had better get up and get his **** together because he is attending an important meeting in an hour.

All 28 EU heads of state scheduled for meeting on Sunday.

That means discussion of Grexit and management of it begins in earnest.

To put this in context, instead of just the 18 in Euro, we now add another ten countries that didn't believe in the Euro enough to join the monetary union. The 18 wouldn't escalate to 28 if they weren't preparing to cut Greece off.

Sunday, no rush then.

The Greek Government has been a complete clown show in achieving its objective.

Win the referendum, then turn up at the next meeting with no proposals and utterly wrecking all the momentum and political capital you got from the referendum. Just amazing amateurism. Any card you had to play, the meeting today was the time to play it and go all in on it then stare the room down, they decided to show up with no cards.

Seems like they want to leave the euro, if so their behavior isn't unreasonable

Yeah, Merkel sounds very pessimistic about a deal in the current press conference:
http://ec.europa.eu/avservices/ebs/l...=2&sitelang=en

Will Greece still be in the EU if they leave the Euro?

The government might want to leave the Euro but I don't think they have convinced the citizens that this is the best way to proceed.

@SenorKeeed
Yes, at least for now it looks like that. All sides emphasize that this is currently only about a potential exit from the euro, not from the EU.

There's no obvious reason why not.

Well, they moved from a primary surplus to a primary deficit, which is a pretty gigantic obstacle to the FU creditors plan.

They never had a primary budget surplus. They basically broke even in 2014

The surplus people keep referring to had both obvious tricks (counting interest refunds as revenue but not interest payments for example) and not so obvious fudging of expenditures numbers.

It was enough of a basis to negotiate for more aid for more reform. Then the Greek people elected Syriza to power. First thing Syriza did was accept the deal the technocrats negotiated, took the money, then reneged on their reform commitments.

They can't be forced out of the EU and there is no reason to anyway. They just need to find a way to reintroduce the drachme. I wonder if they are already printing new bills with enough room to add zeros when it devaluates like crazy.

The drachma won't save them, the moment it is introduced on Monday (if) the value is going to fall through the floor.

That is kind of the point.

Varoufakis had said a few days ago that the drachma printing presses were destroyed when Greece joined the euro. They could outsource their printing (other countries do) but it would still take months to get started. In the meantime they can start by printing IOU notes, like California did in 2009, to serve as a temporary money.

The president of the European Commission said that there was a detailed plan to get Greece out of the euro if needed. So, they probably have all of this worked out already. It seems like they are ready to pull the trigger on Sunday if Greece doesnt make a convincing counter offer by then. And I'm not sure how Greece can offer something that would be acceptable both by their creditors and by the Greeks who voted no at their referendum.

Under EU laws and treaties, Greece has obligations not to inflict losses on others by leaving the EZ. These parties will be able to sue Greece for all those losses. Greece won't have these obligations outside the EU.
Others may pledge to cover the losses though.

Do you have a link for that because that is news to me.

Is it? Because their debts aren't in drachmas

Oh man

Their new offer: same as old offer.

Still asking for 3 year loan with no strings attached for unspecified reforms.

Now in a one page word document instead of PowerPoint presentation.

Coming up next tomorrow: unspecified reforms become unspecified pension reforms, unspecified tax reforms, and unspecified other reforms.