AN APPRAISAL OF GREECE’S NEGOTIATING STRATEGY. I posted here about the new crisis over whether Greece will leave the Eurozone. I noted that these “chicken games” often result in negotiated settlements and also that some of the Greek negotiating tactics seem risky.
In this post at the Marginal Revolution site, Tyler Cowens offers three explanations for the Greek negotiating strategy of insulting the Germans and the other parties to the negotiations on a possible Grexit.
1. The Greek government assumes Grexit is inevitable with accompanying disasters and so it is trying to create a “distraction for the disasters”; or
2. The Greek government knows it will “cave so cravenly on the substance” that they want to provide some “expressive goods” to balance the effects of the cave; or
3. The Greek government is “simply full of out-of-control, ideological maniacs”.
Cowens thinks that at the moment, #2 is the most likely.