The Greek crisis isn’t over

The more you read about the deal between Greece and the Eurozone, the clearer it becomes how temporary a deal it is. First, the Syrzia-led government has to submit on Monday a list of the reforms that it intends to implement over the next four months before the bailout is extended. Then, negotiations will have to start on a third Greek bailout for when this one runs out in the summer.

These negotiations will be particularly fraught because of the lack of goodwill on all sides. Last night, Wolfgang Schauble, Germany’s finance minister, declared ‘The Greeks certainly will have a difficult time to explain the deal to their voters.’

Now, Schauble said this, in part, because he wanted to show his own domestic audience that he had driven a hard bargain; my reading is that he was forced to retreat a wee bit from the hard-line position he took on Thursday in rejecting the Greek request for a six month extension.