January 28, 2015

Greek Investors Apparently Surprised By Stuff No One Should Be Surprised About


The latest news from Greece is a bit peculiar:

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras told his new cabinet on Wednesday that he would move swiftly to negotiate debt relief, but would not engage in a confrontation with creditors that would jeopardize a more just solution for the country….Later, the new finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, appeared to harden the tone, saying that Greece’s bailout deals were “a toxic mistake” and that the new government was determined to change the logic of how the crisis had been tackled.

While many Greeks were hopeful that Mr. Tsipras would follow through with even a fraction of his populist promises, investors were more rattled. The Athens Stock Exchange, which already had billions of euros in value wiped out during Greece’s election campaign, fell around 7.5 percent in midday trading on Wednesday after slumping around 11 percent on Tuesday. Shares in financial companies in Greece plummeted more than 17 percent on Wednesday.

I wonder what has the stock market so spooked? After all, Tsipras is just doing what he’s said he was going to do all along. Everyone expected him to take at least this hard a line on Greek debt, if not harder. So why the sudden panic? Shouldn’t this have been priced in long ago? What’s new here?

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From the desk of Mother Jones CEO, Monika Bauerlein...

Newsrooms can be funded in many ways. One of the most controversial (and volatile) ways is by a for-profit corporation or a billionaire owner. We see it across the headlines on a weekly basis: the claw backs in public media, the gutting of The Washington Post, the bending over backwards to appeal to Trump and his allies.

But not here.

When Mother Jones first started publishing 50 years ago, our founders made a critical decision: to be a reader-supported nonprofit. They knew that no corporate owner would be interested in a muckraking newsroom; they also knew that no muckraking newsroom would be interested in following the agenda of a corporate owner.

And so, we’ve been reader-funded for half a century. We rely on contributions from our readers—readers like you—whether it’s $50, or $15 a month, or whatever fits your budget. People give what they can, and every donation makes a difference for our newsroom, which has grown tremendously—in size and reach and renown—since its inception in 1976.

You may be wondering: What does it take to publish an investigation? And what does my donation actually fund? The answers are one and the same: It takes people, resources, and time. And that’s what your donation funds directly.

Every donation Mother Jones receives from readers fortifies our newsroom, whether we’re covering underreported scandals out of Washington, DC, or the most important news of the day. And right now, each donation will be doubled because of our $50,000 match. So when you make a donation—$5, $50, any amount—it’ll go twice as far.

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