If Ambrose Pritchard Knows What's Happening Then Greece Talks are in Big Trouble

     Whether we get a deal on Sunday is tough to call. Certainly going by some pretty extensive history between 5 years, it's hard to see it. I looked at what Pritchard wrote yesterday in the UK.

     http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-grexit-nobody-wanted.html

    http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/07/was-sundays-no-vote-shock-to-tsipras-as.html

    According to him, this was not the victory for Tsipras and his Syrzia party everyone assumed. According to Prtichard Tsipras had expected to lose the vote-ie, he expected yes. Despite the soaring public celebration:

   "Our NO is a majestic, big YES to a democratic Europe."

    http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2015/07/06/our-no-is-a-majestic-big-yes-to-a-democratic-rational-europe/

     Syrzia is actually in disarray and doesn't know what to do now. I don't know if this picture drawn by Pritchard is accurate or not but it would at least expect why the finance minister, Varoukis, author of the wonderfully majestic quote above is stepping down-after all, he had claimed he was stepping down with a yes vote.

   I was kind of tickled to see that my good buddy Scott Sumner who has now told me not to comment at his blog anymore because I allegedly know nothing about economics-though when I asked him what it is specifically I don't know, he again had no answer-

  http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/07/banned-by-scott-sumner.html

  also wrote about Pritchard-earlier he also wrote about Varoukis:

  http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/07/sumner-on-fdr-vs-varoufakis-on.html

  Fascinating story from Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, maybe even true. If so, is a deal still possible?"

  http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=29899#comments

  If it is true then that's a fair question. It's interesting but since Sumner and my last meltdown, he's actually written 2 pretty reasonable posts in a row.

  Is there any connection at all? My vanity would like to think so but I admit it could be a reach. However, when I was disucssing the reasons why Sumner has had it in for me in the 4 years I've commented at his blog while I talked a lot about mood affiliation maybe what gets him so steamed as well is he does read my blog though he claims not to.

  Actually he once claimed that he has read it but that he decided once was enough. Well Scott, if you are reading this note that unlike you I can afford to be charitable. I don't have to say everything you say is worthless-just about half of it...

    It would be a hoot if he got the Pritchard story from me as I did write a couple of big posts about it yesterday. 

   Pritchard's narrative makes neither side look great. If it's correct then Tsipras and his party is sort of like President Obama in 2009-naive about just how determined and inflexible his opposition really is. 

   However, the EU is the heavy as they have acted the equivalent of the GOP Congress in 2009. I think there's a real analogy. The irony is that Tsipras had accepted a bad deal but then the EU suddenly started making even more inflexible demands:

 "This ultimatum came as a shock to the Greek cabinet. They thought they were on the cusp of a deal, bad though it was. Mr Tsipras had already made the decision to acquiesce to austerity demands, recognizing that Syriza had failed to bring about a debtors' cartel of southern EMU states and had seriously misjudged the mood across the eurozone."

 "Instead they were confronted with a text from the creditors that upped the ante, demanding a rise in VAT on tourist hotels from 7pc (de facto) to 23pc at a single stroke."

 "Creditors insisted on further pension cuts of 1pc of GDP by next year and a phase out of welfare assistance (EKAS) for poorer pensioners, even though pensions have already been cut by 44pc."

 "They insisted on fiscal tightening equal to 2pc of GDP in an economy reeling from six years of depression and devastating hysteresis. They offered no debt relief. The Europeans intervened behind the scenes to suppress a report by the International Monetary Fund validating Greece's claim that its debt is "unsustainable". The IMF concluded that the country not only needs a 30pc haircut to restore viability, but also €52bn of fresh money to claw its way out of crisis.?"

  Here is a very good reason to think that Pritchard knows what he's talking about and is not just giving us some very interesting speculations or stories.

 http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2014/12/11/ambrose-evans-pritchard-on-greece-and-the-rise-of-syriza-from-telegraph/

  Greece today has some 'specifics' for the EU. If history is any guide the EU will declare it''s not enough.

  http://www.cnbc.com/id/102820684

  P.S. See how charitable I am? I just left the Prtichard link at Sumner's blog. Let's see if he will give me a hard time for simply leaving a helpful link. You'd think this is uncontroversial but you know Scott.

 Clearly if he's done with me I'm not done with him...