Friday, February 20, 2015

Delphic Demarche

by Paul Krugman

New York Times

February 20, 2015

OK, we have an agreement re Greece, according to which … what?

We do have four months of funding, plus what looks like an agreement not to hold Greece to fiscal targets for right now in the face of probably fiscal deterioration. The question is what strings were attached.

Greece seemingly gave a lot of ground on the language: the stuff about fiscal adjustment in line with the November 2012 Eurogroup is back in, which Germany will presumably claim represents a commitment to stay with the 4.5 percent primary surplus target. But Greece apparently is claiming that the agreement offers new flexibility, which means that it will assert that it has agreed to no such thing.

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