Wednesday, June 15, 2011

In a economic news vacuum, it's all about Greece

Pretty much all of the important economic news s out for the day, the latest was the NAHB Home Builder Confidence report, which as expected, plunged.

The market is having trouble establishing a foothold and the recent weakness seems to be from news out of Athens. Papandreou, the Greek P.M. apparently held conversations last night with the main opposition government, the New Democracy and was exploring the possibilities of creating an all party consensus government. Apparently the New Democracy feels it's not possible with Papandreaou retaining his position of P.M. to which he responded,  he was not concerned about retaining the P.M position.

The ND apparently also threw another monkey wrench in the mix by demanding that any coalition government would only be formed with substantial changes in the terms that the Troika is demanding.

In essence it seems Papandreaou understand he doesn't stand much of a chance passing the intermediate terms from the Troika for a bailout and is reaching out to build a broader consensus government. The problem being, this apparently can't happen without a renegotiation of terms for Greece's bailout which is highly unlikely to happen.

The bottom line, this isn't good for Greece, for the ECB, for the EU or for the markets.

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