Eichengreen and Panizza : Can large primary surpluses solve Europe’s debt problem?" | vox

Can large primary surpluses solve Europe’s debt problem? | vox

: Costas Lapavitsas & Daniel Munevar / EconoMonitor » Greece Needs a Deep Debt Write Off

EconoMonitor : EconoMonitor » Greece Needs a Deep Debt Write Off

Greece: IMF Fifth Review

Greece: Fifth Review Under the Extended Arrangement Under the Extended Fund Facility, and Request for Waiver of Nonobservance of Performance Criterion and Rephasing of Access; Staff Report; Press Release; and Statement by the Executive Director for Greece

Significant progress has been made toward rebalancing the economy. The fiscal primary and external current account balances are in surplus. 

But a number of challenges remain to be overcome before stabilization is deemed complete and Greece is on a sustained and balanced growth path.

Fiscal gaps are projected for 2015–16, and public debt remains very high.

P. Thomsen's answers to the IMF Survey

Back in mid-2012, when the current government coalition took office, there were widespread doubts about Greece’s future in the euro zone. The government’s determined policy actions since then have taken “Grexit” off the table, and we are now seeing signs of economic stabilization

Overall, ...developments suggest grounds for cautious optimism, and we expect growth to turn positive in 2014, for the first time since 2007. 

It is too early to declare victory though, as policies need to build on what has been achieved, to improve confidence further and lay the ground for the recovery to turn into sustained and robust growth. In this context, it is imperative to address Greece’s competitiveness problem by accelerating structural reforms, 

However, product prices have not declined commensurately with wages, and therefore Greece remains relatively uncompetitive.... The lack of adequate price adjustment reflects primarily structural rigidities in product and labor markets.

Programme for Greece Fourth Review – April 2014

Programme for Greece Fourth Review – April 2014  

Edward Hugh "Greek Re-entry (or Grentry) Not The Game Changer Many Think It Is"

Certainly there can be little doubt that, as Nixon puts it, the turn round in market fortunes was a remarkable achievement, illustrative of just “how far market sentiment toward Southern Europe has changed”  
A few "buts"follow.

Transmission of Financial Stress in Europe: The Pivotal Role of Italy and Spain, but not Greece

IMF working paper , Apr.2014 (pdf)

...

Changes in the credit ratings of Greek sovereign debt, including news announced in the first quarter 2010 related to Greece’s bailout package, had no statistical effect on Germany’s SCDS.... One possible explanation for this is that Greece is seen as a country too small to affect Germany’s risk profile. In contrast, Italy and Spain–being much larger economies–could potentially destabilize Germany or the euro area, even though their likelihood of running into financial difficulties was perceived by the markets as comparatively smaller, based on their SCDS spreads

Papadimitriou + Zartaloudis "European Discourses on managing the Greek crisis: denial, distancing and blaming"

This paper examines European discourses during the recent Euro crisis with regard to the Greek case. It argues that the Greek crisis triggered major changes in both coordinative and communicative Eurozone discourses

via LSE / Eurocrisis In The Press 

Manolis Galenianos "The Greek crisis: origins and implications"

...there is no doubt that excessive fiscal deficits are an important element of the crisis, they are not the only (or even the main) culprit and reversing them, though necessary and desirable, will not by itself lead to the return of economic growth. Furthermore, the exclusive focus on fiscal imbalances has diverted attention from the necessary process of adjustment.

PinpointPolitics "Constructing the Eurozone Crisis: A Tale of PIIGS, Debt, and Austerity"

By Johannes Petry. "People need an interpretative framework to understand failures, give meaning to them, and perceive such moments as crises. It is the discursive construction of crises – how we make sense of a failure – that shapes how we respond to it. In this process, the most important actors are largely the media and politicians that convey their interpretation of a crisis’ causes"

Rob Parenteau "How to Exit Austerity, Without Exiting the Euro"

The MMT solution to the intractable problem out of The Levy Institute

Vassilis Paipais "The rise of extremism in Greece is a function of the political and economic crisis, as political leaders continue to fail the country"

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2013/11/23/the-rise-of-extremism-in-greece-is-a-function-of-the-political-and-economic-crisis-as-political-leaders-continue-to-fail-the-country/

Can The Eurozone Be Saved? LBJ School, Univ.of Austin, Tx

The videos of the conference organised by James Galbraith and Yianis Varoufakis were made available

Two notes, without comment.
1. Giwrgos Stathakis : ... "(b) The main cause of the economic destruction of Greece is not the problems of the Greek economy prior to 2008. It is the programme itself, (c) The programme itself does not arrest none (sic) of the problems prior to 2008"
2. Yves Leterne (Deputy Secr.Gen. of OECD, Belgia PM in Spring 2010) ... The decision to support Greece was a political one"

P. Boone & S. Johnson d/d Apr.6 2010 "Greece And The Fatal Flaw In An IMF Rescue"

Peter Boone and Simon Johnson Apr.6 2010
Two informed realists explain (present tense) 

Their essay ends so

Where next for Greece?
Mr. Trichet understands that Greece’s problems reflect a dangerous flaw in the euro zone system, and the solution will set the tone for behaviour of other members for years to come.  He’ll want his pound of flesh before this is done.  The IMF staff surely understands that Greece’s economic problems are critical, and require drastic actions, but the IMF’s managing director just wants to survive to be elected a new President of France in 2012.
The German population detests providing bailouts to periphery nations, while the debtors of the Euro zone would like the same game to continue a little bit longer.  Meanwhile, the Greeks continue to drag their feet on serious reform while claiming to be “courageous”– presumably they are hoping, magically, that markets will start to want to lend to them again at very low rates in the midst of a fiscal program with little hope for long term success.  It all seems horribly reminiscent to those early days when Argentina slid towards a cruel collapse.

Στ.Κασιμάτης συστήνει «Κράτος και ομάδες συμφερόντων»

του Χρ.Ιορδάνογλου (Πόλις)

Othon Anastasakis "The far right in Greece and the theory of the two extremes" 31/5/13

For ND to combat Golden Dawn requires extreme measures of an institutional, legal, political and economic nature and a clearcut rejection of its own political or ideological links. By adopting the unified theory of extremism New Democracy may be gaining marginal votes vis-à-vis SYRIZA but, at the same time, it is losing out on its own voters who will continue to head towards the extreme right.

Στάθης Καλύβας : Ανύπαρκτες θεωρίες και υπαρκτές παθολογίες

Στην ΚΑΘΗΜΕΡΙΝΗ σήμερα ο καθ. Σ.Καλύβας για την μή-θεωρία των δύο άκρων και την βία

Next Greek package: Dangers for the EZ | vox

Next Greek package: Dangers for the EZ | vox

check out the "related"

‘Austerity’ should not be confused with pragmatism by Patrick Honohan, governor of the Central Bank of Ireland, Sep 10, 2013

h/t to Philip Lane . 
The article is here , worth reading all.

At the end of the second World War, Britain faced a crippling debt burden...Keynes presented three options...(3d option) "cancel debt" on the grounds...the British shipped Keynes to Washington in September 1945 to seek “justice”, to wit, the third option...  the creditors were both unimpressed and irritated by the line adopted by the British negotiators... 

Within two weeks Keynes was reduced to asking a shocked Whitehall for permission to reverse course and negotiate that tempting long-term loan (2nd 0ption). It took a further two months before even that was agreed – and on terms which were less favourable than had been hoped for.

History teaches pragmatism!

Did the euro kill governance in the periphery? | vox

Did the euro kill governance in the periphery? | vox

...
""Greece is the poster child for postponed adjustment. Greece's curse, more than any of the other peripheral countries, was an unreformed economy. Although the examples of arrested reforms are many, one of the clearest is the pension system, where reform has been considered imminent at least since 1990 as the system faced both a dramatically rising dependency ratio and an overly generous replacement ratio (OECD 2009). Furthermore, the system was extremely fragmented, with 236 separate funds in 2003 (O'Donnell and Tinios 2003) that caused inefficiencies and duplications and yet left many pensioners at risk of poverty. There had been sporadic attempts at reforming this defective system. Some changes had taken place in 1992 when the budget was under serious strain, but they did not tackle the long-term imbalances. The year 2001 saw the defeat of a reform package of the pension system that had first been proposed in 1958 and was already considered extremely urgent (Borsh-Supan and Tinios 2001). A new reform package, characterised by creative accounting and little real reform, sailed through parliament in 2002. The government of Greece had been under some pressure during the negotiations about joining the Eurozone. But once Greece had entered the Eurozone, the pressure was off, pension and other economic reforms were abandoned and not taken up again until Greece was already in the midst of the worst of the economic crisis.""

Benn Steil and Dinah Walker : The Fiscal Cliff Is a Greek Tragedy

Have things changed since March when Steil and Walker of the Council for Foreign Relations wrote this column?