The monthly Eurogroup meeting, which
normally consists of a fairly routine discussion by the Finance Ministers of
the Euro area member states, and which gets underway later today at 11:00 GMT, is
normally an affair that gets little if any attention from the Forex markets.
That is because, in the normal course of
events, any market moving measures will have already been announced and
publicly elaborated on by the European Central Bank President during and
immediately after his monetary policy statement of some weeks earlier.
This Eurogroup meeting is likely to
be different, however. It is the first formal occasion on which Greece will
gave an opportunity to present its government debt-dealing proposals to the
other member states and to the ECB itself. Let us hope they are, at this stage,
somewhat well thought out.
There is likely to be some market turbulence
around the Euro when the details of what has taken place become known to market
participants.
All parties in this drama are on
record as saying that they do not want to jeopardise the Euro currency project,
and an implied threat to take action that might have this result seems to be
the only real card that the Greeks have in their hand. It will be interesting to
see how they play it, and what the reaction of the other performers at this
high-stakes poker table will be.
Enter
“Die Hard” Varoufakis
According
to a Reuters report, the Greek Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis, has hit
something of a chord with certain sections of the German media. One TV newscaster
was greatly taken by his virility:
"Varoufakis
is without doubt a man full of charisma," ZDF anchor Marietta Slomka said
on air. "Visually, he's someone you could imagine starring in a film like
'Die Hard 6' - he's an interesting character."
Stern magazine carried a piece
extolling his “classical masculinity”.
One cannot help wondering exactly how
much ice all this will cut with the Wolfgang Schaeubles (above) of the
Eurozone.
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