Greek vote on austerity package to drown out the data

Despite an insignificant - if lengthy - calendar, Wednesday promises plenty of action as Greece and its opponents square up in the ring once again. This time the fight is the Greek parliament versus the people on the street.



Greece pairliament vote on austerity programme
Prime Minister George Papandreou and his cohorts in PASOK, the party in power in Greece, will atttempt to push through parliament another round of austerity measures amid plenty of protesters out on the street. The Prime Minister may simply pummel through the EUR 78 billion austerity bill using his 155 votes in the 300-seat parliament, but the key battle is no longer between the Eurozone and Greece, but rather between official Greece and the man on the street. Should the protesters gain enough traction to stall the austerity measures, the Greece politicians may finally discover that they hold better cards against the Eurozone leaders given the perilous state of the currency union's financial system than it may believe at the moment. It is still the outside chance though as the parliament is fully expected to pass the package and inflict more misery - and years of recession - on its people.

Macro calendar today
The eyes of the investment world will be all over Athens today and even a lengthy calendar cannot do anything about that. Pending Home Sales from the U.S, CPI from Canada, and Consumer Confidence from the Eurozone (which is 'final' and hence even more uninteresting as no or only small changes to the initial estimate are usually the outcome) are not important enough to warrant much attention today.

The Eurozone Business Climate Indicator will be released alongside a host of confidence measures (including the aforementioned consumer confidence) at 9:00 GMT and consensus looks for the indicator to fall slightly to 0.9 from 1.0 to bring it more in line with what is observed in the broader economy.