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Greece is preparing to require creditors to write off its debt

17 February 2012 / 22:02:54  GRReporter
2607 reads

Some of the winged words of the unique Margaret Thatcher are, "Nobody is able to fool the markets." And she was right until now. However, with regard to the Greek debt crisis, this is not quite certain. Or at least for the moment, the winner of the war between the Greek media and the investors in the country of Olympus is still unclear. Anyone who today has bothered to follow the internal information flow, will be indisputably certain that Greece has survived yet another crushing victory on the European front and on Monday, Eurogroup will vote in favour of the second bailout of 130 billion.
No Greek media has quoted the Bloomberg news that Athens is preparing to oblige its private creditors to write off its debt. The agency states that the team of Lucas Papademos is preparing a bill, which amends the terms of issue of Greek government bonds. Bloomberg refers to an anonymous government source and expects the new bill to be submitted to parliament in the coming days.

It is about triggering the collective action clause, which will require all private creditors of Greece to "voluntarily " write off 50% of the nominal value of the bonds they hold. Formally, the PSI procedure was to be announced today, but it did not happen. Instead, the other news came, namely that Greece will in fact oblige creditors to write off its debt. Or in other words, it will tell them that it is not able to pay its debt. This means launching the Greek default.

Credit rating agencies have agreed that if this happens, Greece will be placed in the "temporary" or "partial" default category and the payment of CDS insurance against default will be triggered. Well, this is not the end of the world to the Greek media. A year ago, they said, "Greece will never go bankrupt." Today, they are more realistic, "The Greek bankruptcy will not be uncontrollable."

Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos will convene a meeting of the Council of Ministers tomorrow, Saturday, at 2 pm. "We have to be certain that the second bailout to Greece will service debt payments," said German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble.

For his part, Eurogroup president Jean-Claude Juncker admitted that Greece will not be able to service its debt even in 2020.

Tags: Debt write offGreek crisisInvestorsEurogroupPSICollective action clause
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