Troika ‘vetoed’ a 2010 proposal from the Irish government to impose bondholder haircuts.
From the irish Times 9/9/15
Alan Ahearne said these bonds were in the minister’s “line of sight” when the government’s original guarantee expired in September 2010 but the European Central Bank opposed such a move.
Mr Ahearne said the European Commission “sided” with the ECB and that while individuals within the IMF supported discounts being imposed, the Washington DC-based organisation did not.
“The ECB approach was quite strident that there would not be a programme,” he said.
Mr Ahearne said imposing haircuts on bondholders could have saved the State €1.5-€2 billion but the Government backed away following the opposition of the Troika.
“Grexit remains the likely outcome of this sorry process”
Wolfgang Münchau writing in the Finacial Times says:
But Mr Tsipras did not go for this, or indeed any other plan B. Instead he capitulated. At that point, he was no longer even in a position to choose a Grexit — a Greek exit from the eurozone. The economic precondition for a smooth departure would have been a primary surplus — before debt service — and an equivalent surplus in the private sector. Greece has no foreign exchange reserves. If the Greeks were to reintroduce the drachma, they would have had to pay for all of their imports with the foreign exchange earnings of their exports. These minimum preconditions were in place in March but not in July.
Its That Man Again – Yanis Varoufakis is interviewed by Tim Sebastian
Varoufakis also has an article in the New York Times entitled “How Europe Crushed Greece”
