Breaking: Greeks still hate Germany
This 48ft tall statue stands atop the Coolest Building in Manhattan. It’s the clock tower sculpture on the 42nd Street entrance of Grand Central Terminal. 750,000 commuters use Grand Central every day. Almost none of them can tell you who these three characters are and what they represent.
The figures are Roman gods. For our purposes the first thing to know about the Romans is that they stole their Gods from the Greeks. Perhaps that’s why the Greeks have no compunction about stealing from everyone else to this day. Who are we to question?
From left to right that’s Hercules (Heracles in Greece), Mercury (Hermes) and Minerva (Athena). Hercules is strength, obviously. His name means power everywhere. Every train terminus should have a Hercules.
Mercury is a little Abercrombie in any millennium but everyone knows he’s fast. (Look: Wings!) He’s also a God of commerce which is germane (ahem) this morning. Athena is goddess of wisdom, craft, weaving, medicine, poetry and magic. I’m guessing she never got used to being called Minerva so I won’t do so here.
If you roll polytheist or are just looking for a hedge cc: Athena on your prayers this morning. Greece is going to need all the wisdom, poetry, drugs and magic it can get if it is to remain in the eurozone. The Greeks voted No because they were given a choice between suffering more pain now at the hands of the Germans (”Booooo!”) or continue paying about half of their taxes and stick it to those bastards who were dumb enough to keep them solvent for the last decade (and didn’t throw Greece out of the eurozone when they lied on the application).
Yesterday the Greeks voted down a new austerity program by a stunning 61%-39% margin. Most polls had it much closer. I was one of the people who was way off. What I forgot is just how easy it is to get Europeans to vote for anything if you can convince them it will tick off the Germans.
The ballot may have been baffling to outsiders but in US Greek System terms the “No” parties were where all the good drugs and hot people were. The “Yes” voters didn’t have parties. They’re the 70% of Greece lucky enough to have jobs and hoping to keep them. This was Kennedy vs Nixon with a Greek twist.**
In retrospect we should have expected this. If anything we didn’t stereotype Greece enough. They don’t pay their debts and they freaking hate Germany. They feel very strongly about both these points.
The European Central Bank (read: Germany) can’t ignore 61-39. If this vote did anything (history will prove this an arguable assertion) it was remind the world just how much Europe hates Germany. This choice was “chaos” versus “what Merkel wants”. The Greeks chose anarchy, bread lines and chaos because Screw Germany. We were fools to bet on anything different.
If the ECB throws money at the Greeks and rewards this lunacy the Greek government will go back to the table and seek to DK its entire debt load. As in “Don’t Know” the trade… “What debt? Let us start fresh.”
PM Alexis Tsipras is playing this hand already. Last night Tsipras suggested the Greeks had voted not for leaving the eurozone but for “a Europe of solidarity and democracy”.
In other words, a Europe where everyone agrees to acknowledge and accept that Greece has voted to stiff its creditors while demanding more money.
Perhaps recognizing the need for a token gesture of consiliation Tsipras sacrificed one of his team. Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has resigned, noting it would be difficult for the ECB to be constructive in further talks if he remained in his post.
If Varoufakis does anything less suspicious than build an underground lair someplace immediately I’ll be stunned and disappointed.
The ECB doesn’t want to negotiate with Greece. What they really should do is write their Greek debt down to zero and cast Greece into the economic wilderness to forage for Hilton sisters.
What the ECB probably will do is spend a period of time saving face then cut a deal. 61% is a rout. All unions are a matter of faith as much as anything and no where does that truth apply more than to the euro. It is a currency without a nation. It’s an idea and probably a bad idea at that. Still, it exists and might be worth at least pretending to try to save. (My friend Peter Kenny makes a nice argument for the ideology behind the euro here.”
But it exists. Unplugging Greece now would make the ECB look unspeakably evil. Greece has no currency and no more is coming in country. No one is lending them money. The nation is on the brink of freezing.
Whether or not its Greece’s own fault is irrelevant. This is optics. The Germans are too sensitive to pull the plug on Greece. That’s still the smart bet though it’s getting interesting.
Reactions: Euro up, stocks down early
Maybe we all should have seen this coming but we didn’t. Predictably the markets are rather twitchy this morning. The Dax is getting hammered, the euro is strong (?!) and the S&P 500 hit its lows on the futures while sane people were sleeping. As of this morning we’re down half a percent.
Your morning pictures, supports and a rare quote from Fibonacci himself are below. Have a nice day. May the witty and wise Athena be ever at helm of your emotional command center.*
“I know… poverty, riots blah blah… what about my stocks?” - America
DAX How the cookie crumbles…
The euro rallies early (and why you might care)
** Note that Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis was rumored to be pitching woo with Mrs. JFK even before Dallas. Eventually Onassis would marry the widowed FLOTUS. She got security, he got the ultimate trophy wife. Jackie O would later become a NY fixture. Without her it’s likely Grand Central would have gone the way of Penn Station and been demolished.
So, indirectly the Greeks saved the building atop which we fix their stolen gods. Time is a flat circle my friends.
* I learned history from really obscure books and Pixar movies.
