Memorandum Extension in Extremis, and Truth Evasion In Greece.

To paraphrase Hitler's ad-man, Joseph Goebbels, "what is a lie and what is truth... repeat a lie many times and people are bound to start believing it".

This is what Greece's present ruling party Syriza seems keen to acknowledge by keeping all the media towing the party line of unqualified success in the recent cat & mouse "negotiation" at the Eurogroup.

What the Greek media are telling Greeks is that the Eurogroup bent to the noisy Greek government's pre-electoral promises.


What really happened is the opposite; not a bad thing in and of itself, by the way.
(Much better than the various Syriza pre-election promises and declarations.)


Greece signed a 4month extension of the memorandum promising tostart implementing some reform in this time, and come up with a plan for the next memorandum which will be re-badged as the "contract". Good media trick: as in the social contract (JJ Rousseau's "contrat social").

The agreement was a success from the point of view of Greek banking system that today has liquidity and does not need to impose severe restrictions and curtail savings accounts as in Cyprus.

The agreement was a success for the Eurogroup because the people can go back and deal with other pending matters, without suffering the loss of one of the countries in the European Monetary Union.

What about Greece, the country itself.
Well, the present government promised to start implementing what the previous government had also promised but never implemented for populist reasons and to protect our "cronies": control public spending, check public sector inefficiencies, fight corruption etc; who will argue with that?

So, the second bail-out specified in the 2010 1st bail-out is still a possibility.

So, when all is said and done, two things worked:

1) The Greek government envoys made a lot of noise. A lot of noise brings publicity and there is no such thing as bad publicity.
2) A deal was reached and Greece remains part of the Euro. That is good.

Greeks have the Eurogroup members to thank for the second and their government for the first.

Instead, the Greek government is touting a victory.
Of what?

Of propaganda I guess; if you repeat victory a thousand times, people are bound to start believing it.