SebastianJer

Greek default looms as voluntary debt deal looks set to fail

European leaders are braced for the eurozone’s first ever sovereign default this week as Greece’s efforts to secure a €206bn (£172bn) “voluntary” bond swap looks increasingly unlikely.

Authorities in Athens are ready to enforce the controversial collective action clauses, or CACs, to impose the restructuring deal on all bondholders as the number of voluntary agreements look set to fall short of the required amount.

Credit rating agencies have warned they will declare Athens to be in default if the CACs are triggered which would be a dramatic culmination to a three-year rollercoaster ride for Athens, the eurozone and global markets.

While the markets have been ready for a Greek default for months, the move could leave Greece and its banks barred from funding from the European Central Bank (ECB). On Monday, Standard & Poor’s declared Greece to be in a state of “selective default” which led to the ECB announcing it would no longer accept Greek government bonds as security for new loans.

The rating agency said its decision had been prompted by the threat of the CACs and the actual use of them is likely to tip Greece into actual default. The agency said it regarded the process as a “distressed debt restructuring”.

Raoul Ruparel of Open Europe, the London-based think-tank, said: “Greece is likely to struggle to reach the targets for a voluntary agreement so the credit rating agencies are almost certainly going to see this as a default.

"What happens next is unknown territory.
"Greek banks will probably be barred from normal ECB funding and have to turn to the Emergency Liquidity Assistance [provided by the ECB] instead but for how long, we don’t know.”

Greece needs around 95pc of its private creditors to accept the deal by the deadline on Thursday in order to secure its €130bn international bail-out package and avert imminent bankruptcy.

Greek politicians back the use of CACs – which allow the deal to be imposed on all bondholders if 66pc agree to it – being inserted retrospectively if the voluntary agreement falls short.

The uncertainty over the deal on Greek debt put further pressure on the euro last week. The single currency fell sharply against the dollar and other major currencies.
Uncertainty over Spanish willingness to stick to its austerity programme also put pressure on the currency.

Last week, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) declared that there had not yet been a credit event in Greece so there was no need for the credit default insurance instruments to be triggered.
If the CACs are triggered this week, the committee will almost certainly reconsider its decision.

The whole issue of abortion came down to a very simple question for me, (I used to be pro choice) it is this.

Is the unborn child apart from the mother or a part of the the mother?

The whole pro choice argument rests with the supposition that the unborn is a part of the mother. There is no doubt that the unborn can not survive apart from the mother but then again neither can an infant live apart from another human being to care for it. That does not make the infant a part of the individual caring for them and to kill an infant like any other human being is immoral and illegal.

Why then I asked myself is the mother able to make a life and death choice for another human being? Because in fact the unborn child is not the mother's body at all. Is an unborn child an appendage of the woman? Of course not she is only the temporary host to that distinct and separate human being.

When that realization finally sunk in with me I realized that abortion was nothing more than murder, plain and simple. This is not and never has been an discussion based on science or logic, it has always been an argument based on one person's (the mother) attempt to have total control of another person (the unborn). It is basically slavery to say that one person has the right to make such choices for another human being, it is worse than slavery it is genocide for convenience.

The only way the pro-choice argument holds any water at all is if you accept either of two untruths. Either the unborn is a part of the mother in which case she is free to do as she pleases with her body. Or there should be an exception for a mother in the case of murder of her unborn child.

Interestingly enough if an unborn child is killed during a criminal activity by another, often times the perpetrator of the crime is charged with the murder of that unborn even though the same murder committed by the mother is somehow lawful.

As a man I have no real say in what a woman does with her body, for that matter neither does another woman. However as a human being I do have a say in societies laws concerning murder.