HAHAHAHA..."If we take the capital and divide it by the GDP and leverage the debt in a restructure while swapping the bonds in a derivative market, hypothecating the gold in a keynesian austrain economic hybrid, our macro-economic situation should improve and gowth will be robust." "Meaningless bullshit economic psychobabble will be the end of us all. "Greece continues to kick the can down the road. The Government missed a third deadline yesterday to agree cost cutting measures including a 20pc cut in the minimum wage. They meet again today - at least that's what's due to happen. Greece doesn't have a monopoly on protests: firemen, nurses and other public sector workers came out in their thousands today in Madrid to criticise spending cuts. They were protesting a decision to extend working hours and cut sickness benefits, warning that the cuts undermined social care and emergency services. Dolores Escrivano, 57, a nursing auxiliary, said: The hospitals are running at half capacity because there are not enough staff. There are hospital beds lying empty because there are no staff. We've heard that the Greek meeting between Lucas Papademos and the head of the IIF has now been postponed until tomorrow. As Sky's Ed Conway points out, this is hardly a surprise.
Thomas Jordan, who's likely to become the next head of Switzerland's central bank, predicted the eurozone crisis more than two decades ago, reports Reuters. "Italy and Greece would not be able to control their debt. Pretty accurate, we'd say. He's served on the Swiss National Bank's governing board since 2007 and is currently interim chairman. In his dissertation for the University of Berne, published in 1994, roughly eight years before Europeans handled their first euro notes and coins, Jordan prophetically warned of strained public finances in exactly those countries that have actually needed a bailout or where debt levels seem particularly precarious: Achieving the 60 percent debt limit is hardly possible for Belgium, Ireland, Italy and Greece. Italy and Greece need to undertake major steps even to stabilise their debts."
11 comments:
Europe still has big fires to put out, namely coming up with a fresh bailout for Greece and ensuring that Italy and Spain take credible steps to rein in their public spending. But economists say structural economic changes across the Continent are just as important to Europe's long-term prosperity as is fiscal discipline. Euro-zone gross domestic product is expected to fall by 0.5% this year and to rise by a meager 0.8% next year, according to the International Monetary Fund.
art of the problem, according to Mr. Monti, is that while the European Union is now introducing tougher sanctions for budget violations, it doesn't have an efficient mechanism to swiftly sanction countries that don't open up their economies to competition.
To this end, the Italian government last month submitted a proposal aimed at giving the European Commission—the EU's governing body—greater power over sanctioning member states, according to Mr. Monti. The proposal, which hasn't been reported before, could speed up the process by years, by making it easier for the commission to impose rulings rather than having to take member states to court, as it often does now.
"What does this have to do with growth?" asked Mr. Monti, sipping a cappuccino in his gilded office within the Italian prime minister's Renaissance palazzo. "A lot, because if you give more teeth to the commission to remove national obstacles to the functioning of the single market, we'll create a large level playing field, which the business community always insists is a key component of growth."
Philip Torbol, a Brussels-based lawyer specializing on EU regulation, said that if the EU's member countries agreed to such a move it would dramatically help to advance the single market. But he warned that countries such as the U.K. and France are likely to oppose the proposal, if it appears to encroach on their national sovereignty. EU members "are not ready to have the commission dictate decisions without having a court in between," Mr. Torbol said.
international patience with Greece is fast running out.
This situation was exacerbated by the decision to postpone by one day a meeting due to start on Tuesday night, for the country's political leaders to approve a "final draft document" on austerity measures.
Although a raft of measures have been agreed, members of the three main parties had been scheduled to try to find another €1.3bn of cuts.
They will now meet on Wednesday night. Eurozone finance ministers have scheduled a meeting for Thursday to review the budgetary plans so the Greek parliament can vote on the measures at the weekend.
Greece needs international aid to avoid defaulting on a €14.5bn bond on March 20, but will not receive help without a deal.
Ben Bernanke has promised to shield America from the EU Debt crisis???
Isn't the EU debt crisis a $ liquidity crisis? Isn't that why Bernanke has opened up international $ swap lines, because his overnight money market is hyper-ventilating.....again???
Isn't this, in fact, a crisis with "Made in America" written all over it - a country which thinks that it is easier to clean up bubbles after they burst by slashing interest rates and printing money????
Greece won't default (well not in eurospeak in any case). All that free money, why would they?
They will simply take the discussions to the brink, sign the document and then default on the terms of the agreement once they get the money.
In threee months time it will all start again with another "final draft document" to cover the next set of waste.
Someone will get shot sooner or later amongst the political elite of the EU because it's becoming far too obvious how corrupt this system is and how the whole thing is draining away the competitiveness of individual nations.
This waste exists (almost like Rome burns) whilst they shuffle the debt and taxes
Debt crisis and Greek debt talks: live
Greece misses its third deadline in a week to deliver an austerity agreement, as talks continue to reach a deal needed to release the country's €130bn (£108bn) second bail-out.
09.21 Today we await approval on a finalised plan to cut Greek debt fleshed out by the troika and reportedly handed to Greek PM Lucas Papademos's coalition partners this morning (which has ballooned from a rumoured 16 pages earlier to 50 pages now).
An approval meeting has been scheduled for around 11am GMT, AP reports.
But don't hold your breath
As I predicted, the European Financial Stability Facility is going to be the middle man in a transaction that will involve no formal loss for the ECB - and, crucially, no formal write-down of any of its holdings - but could leave the Greeks up to 11bn euros (£9.2bn; $14.6bn) better off.
For weeks, there has been a clear gap between the amount of debt relief for Greece that the private sector would "voluntarily" sign up to, and the amount needed for the IMF or anyone else to be able to say, with a straight face, that Greek sovereign debt was on a sustainable path.
This complicated climb-down by the ECB will do something to bridge that gap. But, as usual, this is only one piece of the horrendously complicated puzzle that is the Greek "bailout".
For one thing, those private sector creditors voluntarily losing a large part of their shirts still have actually to sign on the dotted line.
Greek leaders to thrash out deal on second bailoutPrime minister to meet heads of three largest parties to push through more austerity measures and secure €130bn of funds
reddit this Helena Smith in Athens and Graeme Wearden
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 7 February 2012 17.06 GMT Article history
Lucas Papademos, the Greek PM, is faced with attempting to force a second round of deeply unpopular austerity measures on disillusioned population. Photograph: Orestis Panagiotou/EPA
Greece's political leaders are to meet on Tuesday night to consider a draft agreement that could finally pave the way to the country's second bailout, worth €130bn (£108bn).
Talks between Lucas Papademos, Greece's technocratic prime minister, and the heads of the three largest political parties are scheduled to begin at 9pm local time (7pm GMT). If agreement is reached, the full Greek cabinet could endorse the agreement on Wednesday.
News that a draft agreement was on the table sent the euro rallying to its highest level against the US dollar in eight weeks. On Monday, Greece disappointed the City by missing a deadline to tell the EU whether it accepted the austerity measures demanded by its international lenders in return for the €130bn package of aid.
Those austerity measures are deeply unpopular in Greece, where union leaders organised a general strike on Tuesday. Transport links, government offices and schools were all disrupted.
An estimated 10,000 people joined a march organised by Greece's two unions, with a similar number taking part in a march organised by the Greek communist party. A German flag was burned outside the Athens parliament, prompting riot police to break up the demonstrations.
Nikos Zeppos, a pensioner at the marches, claimed that opposition to fresh austerity was growing. "The battle is maturing … With these latest messages people will wake up," Zeppos said.
But Stathis Asimakopoulos, an Athens cobbler, argued that the Greek economy should have been reformed decades ago. "Papademos is a serious person and we should support him," Asimakopoulos said.
Papademos had held negotiations with the EU, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund until the early hours of the morning. This troika have insisted that Greece would not get more assistance until the Pasok leader, George Papandreou; the New Democracy head, Antonis Samaras; and the Laos party leader, George Karantzaferis, are signed up to another raft of painful spending cuts, salary reductions and tax rises.
According to one senior government source, Tuesday's talks were delayed from 7pm to 9pm because the draft agreement needed to be translated into Greek, to allow Karantzaferis to read it.
Greece has yet to reach a deal with its creditors over the terms of its debt restructuring, another key hurdle on the path to financial support.
Willem Buiter, chief economist at Citigroup, has warned that the risk of a Greek exit from the eurozone is greater than before. "With Greece currently struggling to secure reform pledges from its public sector and its wider population, willingness to help has diminished somewhat," Buiter wrote.
21 Following reports that Greece has given tax exemption to an armoured Toyota Land Cruiser used by IMF experts monitoring austerity implementation in the country (see 10.39), I've managed to find the IMF's founding charter. Here's the bit on tax exemption:
Section 9. Immunities from taxation
(a) The Fund, its assets, property, income, and its operations and transactions authorized by this Agreement shall be immune from all taxation and from all customs duties. The Fund shall also be immune from liability for the collection or payment of any tax or duty.
(b) No tax shall be levied on or in respect of salaries and emoluments paid by the Fund to Executive Directors, Alternates, officers, or employees of the Fund who are not local citizens, local subjects, or other local nationals.
(c) No taxation of any kind shall be levied on any obligation or security issued by the Fund, including any dividend or interest thereon, by whomsoever held:
(i) which discriminates against such obligation or security solely because of its origin; or
(ii) if the sole jurisdictional basis for such taxation is the place or currency in which it is issued, made payable or paid, or the location of any office or place of business maintained by the Fund.
In his fluent but worrying interview on Today earlier, Stephen Hester mentioned the wealth pie and the importance of making it bigger. This remains the central challenge facing the government, and no amount of sport over bankers and their bonuses should distract us from it. If anything, Mr Hester's ominous talk of RBS losing all the money we have put into it underscores how difficult a task he faces reversing the disasters of his predecessors and returning his bank to success. His line about his role being that of a 'manager who rescues value for the taxpayer' by defusing the bank's 'time bomb' said it all.
It's his pie talk that is most timely. George Osborne was on about much the same thing last night in his speech to the FBS. His attack on those trying to create an 'anti-business culture' will be welcome by those who were beginning to wonder whether the Tory wing of this Government
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