What I'd Expect on Sunday

Tomorrow is the big meeting in Brussels over the Greek loan request.  Yesterday, some journalists felt they had the inside scoop and that Germany's Chancellor Merkel was agreeable to some type of loan deal.   If you asked a hundred adult Germans.....barely ten I think.....would be approving of some loan.  Greece comes over fairly negative in the German press and I just don't see the Greeks repairing the situation....that's not their past behavior.

This is the deal that I would offer the Greeks:

1.  Agree to a forty-odd billion and three year deal.  But the agreement of the deal doesn't end with a Brussels vote.....mandate another vote in Greece on 'yes-no', and mandate a second vote with the Greek Constitutional Court on 'yes-no'.  If either vote against the deal....terminate the deal and end the misery for the EU.  Let Greece walk way.  Put the pressure on the court members to be agreeable with the deal or veto the deal.

2.  After the 'yes' vote, immediately pay out a five-billion Euro down-payment and give the Greek parliament sixty days to pass specified changes that the agreement has in it.  If they fail to wrap this up by the sixty-first day.....delay all future loan payments.  If they meet the sixty-day requirement, make another five-billion Euro down-payment on the loan.

3.  Six months must pass and no challenges or veto's by the Greek Supreme Court....otherwise, it'll delay the payment of the next five-billion.

4.  Anger by the public with the current political party in charge, and another election to bring a new party in.....which says they never signed this deal and aren't responsible?  Stop payments, and suspend the deal for six months.

There are over a thousand ways that the Greeks could take the fifty-odd billion Euro and actually do a positive thing with the money, and come out of this crisis in five to ten years.  Sadly, no one expects them to do this.

My humble bet is that roughly 250,000 Greeks will pack up by late August and leave for Germany, France, Italy or central Europe.  They will pack bags and cars, and just leave.  Teachers will step into classrooms which ought to have twenty-five students and find only fifteen kids there.  By December, I'm betting that almost a half-million Greeks will have left the country in 2015....giving up.

The sad truth is that they've spent two thousand years building this character and mentality.