A “yes” is no solution either in Greece Referendum

Just ahead of the weekend attention is increasingly focussing on the imminent referendum in Greece. The result remains uncertain even if it seems that the "yes" side might have caught up a little recently. 

While the Syriza government is trying to convince people that the referendum is not about remaining in the euro zone the European politicians are trying to make exactly that clear. That in return may turn out to be a dangerous signal to be sending out to the financial market as it suggests that the difficulties will be easy to overcome in case of a "yes" vote. 

And what would be more obvious than allowing the euro and also stock markets to trade higher again following a positive vote. There is only one catch: the Greek banks are not going to be able to open next week either, as they simply lack the liquidity. And it would come as a major surprise if the ECB would increase the ELA emergency funding short term. First of all it would really have to pull out all the plugs and agree an extension by a double digit billion amount. 

Moreover it would have to do that in a situation when Greece neither has a working government nor a current aid programme. In that case the ECB would finally turn into the politicians' lackey, providing a stop-gap. If however, the ECB as expected does not extend the funds, the financial markets might soon regret their initial euphoria following a "yes" vote. 
Who are the donor countries going to negotiate with? It will be impossible to arrange a new aid package by 20th July, which is when the next EUR 3.5bn. are due to be paid back to the ECB. And now the IMF has presented calculations suggesting that a new aid package would have to amount to at least EUR 50bn.