Apparently german exports to Greece have massively gone up after the bailout recently. Can't really work out what this means, anyone able to explain?
Complicated question, first you have to understand the Greek import-export balance.
Greece is a small economy so
trades with the rest of the world for economies of scale. A lot of this stuff can't be replaced quickly, if you need metal fittings for a furniture business you can't afford to wait until supply and demand create a domestic supplier for you and start buying at the higher price the domestic supplier wants. This requires cash come from somewhere else to pay for those. In addition to paying for imports, austerity means immediate payback of capital which from a money standpoint can be thought as an additional "import" (money flowing out) to balance out the "export" of debt certificates before the crisis. This isn't just government debt getting paid off, the Troika made sure that nearly every private investor investing in Greece got paid almost 100 cents on the Euro. All the private investors now want to leave Greece. And the Greek economy is supposed to find the money to replace that private money as well.
However a broad range of factors have made it impossible for Greek exports to rise very much.
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/charts/greece-exports.png?s=gktbexe&d1=20100101&d2=20151231&URL2=/greece/imports&title=falseBasically Europe says to Greece "export more you lazy bums but dont export to us." So something's got to give and that something is imports. If the crisis becomes bad enough in Greece then the Greek people cut back on spending enough to destroy the Greek import sector. If you lose your job, you use less gasoline (domestic) which means refining (domestic) uses less imported crude. Get evicted from your apartment and your apartment needs fewer light bulbs and wont get the air conditioning fixed with imported parts.
Each time a deal is struck, Greece is allowed to "export" a tiny amount of debt certificates again. Each time a deal isn't struck, Greece is being required to buy back a small amount of debt certificates, another "import". So the deals affect the amount of money in the Greek economy dramatically, especially around the time of the debt. The shift might be 20 billion euros in a year but the month of the deal might be eight of those billions.