Meet Greece's new liar in chief: "Greece will not default"

A laughable article today quotes Greece's new leader as saying that the country won't default on its debts.  What he really means is "not until we have milked the rest of the EU for all the up front concessions and goodies possible".  Greece will default because, as I have been writing for a long time, its debt is unpayable, just like the US debt is unpayable.

Tsipras makes his intentions clear in that article: "We won't get into a mutually destructive clash but we will not continue a policy of subjection".  This is nothing but the current spin on the old saying which I have seen attributed to J. Paul Getty which is that "If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem.  If you owe the bank $100 million that's the bank's problem.".  Tsipras is simply notifying the German and French dominated EU banking system that the Greek debt problem is a shared problem and there will have to be shared responsibility for it.  Greece racked up the debt but someone lent it the money to do so after all.

Of course, the only thing that the Germans and French can do is either stop asking for repayments or lend more money so that Greece can use it to make payments while increasing the debt size.  Either way it will turn out to be a default.  I absolutely guarantee that because math, history and logic will not allow otherwise.  All of the stuff that Greeks borrowed money to buy is now old and ratty.  It is no longer new and shiny.  So the threat of repossession is not very serious anymore and the more stalling that is done, the more ratty the collateral becomes and the less serious the threat of repossession becomes.  Tsipras is just buying time and trying to soak the EU for more bail out money in order to fund his program.  Germany et. al. should just tell him to pay up or shut up but then Greece will just default and dumb asses the world over will blame them for mishandling the deal when in fact there is no deal.  Either Greece gets more free stuff or it will default because the Greek people are tired of doing without in order to make payments on past extravagances.

Interestingly, Tsipras seems to have serious political skills.  Per Mish's article, it seems that he has realized that as a member of the EU Greece has absolute veto powers over continued sanctions of Russia!  the first thing he is doing upon taking over the PM spot is to piss on the whole idea of sanctions!  So we are now talking about the tail wagging the dog because Tsipras has found serious leverage there.  Of course, the EU could move forward to change these rules but it would take a long time and it would also show the smaller players that the equal voice they were promised in order to get them to sign on in the first place really meant "equal until it no longer serves the needs of the EU oligarchs Germany and France".

Bottom line: Greece will default in one way or another because the Greek people have elected the only guy who ran on that implication.  You cannot make a deadbeat sovereign pay unless you go invade them and even then you only end up with pennies on the dollar as the insiders squirrel all the real money (gold and silver) out the back door as soon as tanks cross the border.  Additionally, you take the risk that someone like Russia will then step up to Greece's aid (I would not be surprised if Russia funded Tsipras' campaign...) and promised to defend the poor nation against out of control capitalists, blah blah blah.