So welcome to a new week, and a "deal" has finally been reached for Greece, and one which demonstrates that democracy in the Eurozone is completely and utterly dead, in so far as the outlines are infinitessimally worse than those that were rejected in the Greek referendum. Indeed what is on the table as a deal highlights that: a) there is no long-term future for the Eurozone; b) the desire on the part of Eurozone creditor nations to completely destroy the Greek economy - it can certainly be asserted that this is indeed a worse deal than the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. In terms of a near-term timeline:
a) Tsipras will have to form a new government of national unity as soon as he gets back to Athens
b) By Wednesday 15th, Greece will have to pass laws including simplifying VAT rates, and applying VAT on a wider basis, cutbacks on pensions, and making its statistics agency independent.
c) Once these have been passed, ESM bail-out parliamentary process can commence, and this will require parliaments in Finland, Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Slovakia and Estonia to approve starting ESM talks
d) The Greek parliament will then have to rush through further laws to attain brige financing to pay the ECB on July 20th.
Per se this is anything but a done deal, and the recriminations at a political and general public level in both Greece and across the Eurozone, above all Germany, are likely to be as bellicose and pugilistic as the negotiations have been. Markets will doubtless perform a "risk on" jig, though it will probably have a rather short shelf-life. To compound the complexity of macro and geo-political inputs, a deal with Iran does now appear to be a very strong possibility, while the comments on Friday from the generally very dovish Rosengren from the Boston Fed that rate lift-off could come as early as September leave financial markets being pulled hither and hither. This, in a week, which is not only replete with US (Retail Sales, CPI, PPI, Industrial Production, China (starting with the overnight Trade data ahead of GDP, Retail Sales & Industrial Production) and UK (CPI, Unemployment, Average Earnings, BRC Retail Sales) economic data, but also has an ECB meeting, the Fed's beige Book and testimony from Yellen and a barrage of US Corporate Earnings.
from Marc Ostwald