Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Russia President Vladimir Putin. Reuters
Leonid Bershidsky. Bloomberg: Did Putin Sell Out Greece?
There's been a rash of conspiracy theories about secret concessions that Russian President Vladimir Putin is supposed to have made to Western leaders. The latest asserts that Putin could have helped Greece exit the euro but reversed course at the last moment, thus pushing Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras into the cold embrace of European Union leaders.
The Greek newspaper To Vima reported earlier this week that Tsipras had asked Putin for a $10 billion loan so that Greece could transition back to the drachma. If it reintroduced the national currency, it would need foreign reserves to back it up, and Greece was out of euros. According to the report, Russia floated the idea of a $5 billion advance on the construction of a gas pipeline through Greece, a branch of the Turkish Stream project that Russia and Greece agreed to build in June.
WNU Editor: I guess the Greeks now have nothing better to do but talk about conspiracies. But the part of this report that did get my attention was former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis's description and explanation on why it would be very difficult (if not impossible) for Greece to leave the Euro and set up its own currency ....
.... To exit, we would have to create a new currency from scratch. In occupied Iraq, the introduction of new paper money took almost a year, 20 or so Boeing 747s, the mobilisation of the US military’s might, three printing firms and hundreds of trucks. In the absence of such support, Grexit would be the equivalent of announcing a large devaluation more than 18 months in advance: a recipe for liquidating all Greek capital stock and transferring it abroad by any means available.
Wow .... I can now understand why Greece had to accept the EU's terms.