httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UOwgBnFYL8

The TV show M.A.S.H. said that “suicide is painless”: I reckon many Greeks would like to disagree with that notion and many did yesterday with protests and sporadic riots in Syntagma Square. Yesterday was the start of a 48hr strike in Greece as public sector workers rallied against the proposed austerity measures that will be voted on later today.

There is not too much new to say on the matter other than it must pass to give financial markets some kind of stability in the coming weeks. The Governor of the Greek central bank said it would be a crime to not pass these measures and I reckon we will see some gutsy debate in the parliament chamber precluding the vote. Even so the euro has rallied in the past 24hrs as traders bet on the likely positive outcome while news from other economies has been poor. I do think the measures will pass by a couple of votes and euro will rally as a result, the downside risk is catastrophic however and we could easily see euro losing 3 or 4 cents against the USD and GBP should the vote be thrown out.

UK GDP was confirmed at 0.5% yesterday as the market believed, and as we thought GBP took a bit of a tumble after the announcement. We are continuing to see GBP as a data driven currency and with releases from the UK economy seeming to remain perennially weak the upside for GBP will remain muted.

And so it is Greece that will be governing movements today. The debate session has already started and we expect the vote to conclude at around 1pm. We will be live blogging the news via Twitter @world_first so pop by to keep up with the latest news.

Latest exchange rates at time of writing