The Athens Stock Exchange plummeted, losing more than eleven percentage points at the beginning of the afternoon, with the banking sector down by 14,6% (Alpha Bank -11,2%, Piraeus Bank -16% and National Bank of Greece -13,7%). For the main Greek index it is the sharpest daily decline since 1987. Meanwhile, on the bond market, the yield on Greece's 7,8-year bond jumped to 7,25%, from XNUMX% yesterday.
The financial storm was unleashed after Prime Minister Antonis Samaras brought forward the first vote to elect the new President of the Republic to December 17th. The problem of the Conservative government is in the numbers: to elect the Head of State a qualified majority of 180 votes out of 300 is needed and at the moment the National Unity Executive has only 154.
If a quorum is not reached for three consecutive votes, Greece will go to the polls between January 18 and the beginning of February. At the moment, Syriza is leading the polls, an alternative left party led by Alexis Tsipras, accredited with around 32% of the votes, with a margin of advantage of between three and six percentage points over the centre-right of Nea Demokratia. Tsipras has already said that, in case of victory, he will declare the agreements with the Troika null and void and will ask for the convening of a European conference to cut the debt of the countries in crisis.
To improve its image and avoid this scenario, the Conservative government had announced its intention to raise 9 billion in 2015 directly on the capital market, exiting the IMF assistance program by the end of 2014, ahead of schedule march, which envisaged the conclusion of the aid in 2016.
The exit strategy would have allowed Samaras to put an end to the Troika visits, but the ESM (European Stability Mechanism) would have accompanied the process with precautionary credit lines to be activated in case Greece had "need more funds". Basically, Samaras would have continued to collect international aid without however being forced to periodically receive the representatives of the Troika, so unpopular in the eyes of the electorate.
In the end, however, the Premier was forced to admit that the Troika bailout plan will not end at the end of the year, “but will continue for a few more months. The positions of the EU, the ECB and the IMF and ours have become somewhat closer, but differences still remain on the latest measures to be taken”. Brussels wants a correction of the accounts of 2,5 billion next year as well, while Greece calls for a stop to austerity.
