Greek Referedum Designed To Blackmail Merkel?

Papandreou calling for a referendum has not only put Greece in an interesting situation but also Angela Merkel

To recap Merkel has been the only voice in the troika calling for the private banks to take a larger hit for Greek losses, could this referendum be the way Papandreou, Sarkozy and the rest of the banking cartel put Merkel in the spotlight.

Merkel has been a constant thorn in the side of the international banking cartel, she has constantly and consistently slowed down and forced them to adjust the expectations with regards to how much money they will loose due to a Greek debt restructuring.

Could a Greek referendum be the way that the international banking cartel force Merkel to give Greece bailout money without any pre conditions?

The Greek government will have to cut spending by 2 billion Euros a month by the end of November/beginning of December 2011 if it doesn’t receive the next tranche of bail out money.

A referendum will take at least a month to organise and execute with Greek politicians saying it is likely to be held around the middle of December and possibly January.

Germany has already come out and more or less stated that they will not be issuing then next tranche of bail out money if no conditions are attached.

If Germany sticks to its guns and the Greek government does not have a referendum before the next tranche is due, Greece will more thank likely default unless another party can come in and give the money Germany was going to.

If the referendum does not happen in time and Merkel does not issue the next tranche you can see that Merkel will be hung out to dry.

I can imagine that the stories will be something like “Merkel sacrifices Greece for political ambitions”, “Merkel lets principles get in the way of helping Greeks”, “Merkel has sabotages Greece for petty reasons”, “Merkel destroys Europe”, “Merkel leaves Greek pensioners in the cold” and so on and so forth, I think you get the idea.

If Merkel caves and issues the tranche without any condition attached it sets a precedent for future bailout tranches and also massively weakens Merkel’s position with regards to pushing banks to make greater sacrifices.

This could turn into the metaphorical equivalent of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, who will blink first?

In my personal opinion looking at the way the Greek government is going through money I believe the Greek government will default before the end of November if no tranche is given so that means the Referendum will have to come within the next 3 weeks.

I do not know if the government will be able to run the referendum within 3 weeks and I do not know how long they can go on before they have to massively cut spending but one thing is for sure, the next 3 weeks are going to be interesting.

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