ITTY BITTY DEFAULT COMMITTEE!

So it begins.

An enormous amount of Greek debt is due to mature in early 2012. On top of the Memorandum money, we will need to tap bond markets for EUR13.1bn, which they almost certainly will not want to give us at anything like reasonable terms. Then it gets even worse.

So what to do? Reschedule our payments to the IMF and the EU, the option currently being discussed. I am not surprised our FinMin is happy to look into this option. I find it amazing though that even the FT's Alphaville doesn't have the balls to call this by its name - DEFAULT. Happily the Germans realise what they are dealing with and have called such discussions 'premature', which is code for 'f*in' bastards!'

I can only chuckle to myself bitterly. This is yet another thing we said we'd never do, and have ended up doing. Can anyone really believe anything we say anymore? Oh yes they do. They believe our PM when he says we're corrupt to our rotten socialist bones.(Though which PM that was became a heated issue for a while - turned out it was our current PM)

Of course our creditors are loving this because it means we get to default on the EU/IMF debt before we default on theirs. This is not something we could have done under the original Memorandum terms because the IMF was a super-senior creditor. They would have had to be paid before anyone else does, unless of course if they were to volunteer to extend their payment deadlines. Of course, as the IMF is not beholden to any taxpayers it can afford to take a small haircut. I expect it will take a bigger one eventually.

Incidentally, what happened to Premier Wen soaking up our bonds? What's that? The Chinese don't like losing money any more than any other people?  Who would have thought that?

Wake up folks. The end of the LOL is coming.