European Union officials are bracing themselves for the possibility that Greece’s negotiations with its lenders will not be concluded in time for Athens to receive funding to pay a 3.5-billion-euro bond held by the European Central Bank on August 20, meaning a second bridge loan could be needed.

Greece received an initial loan of 7.16 billion euros last week to meet another maturing bond held by the ECB and repay some 2 billion euros to the International Monetary Fund. It had been hoped that a third bailout could be agreed in time for Greece to receive funding before the next ECB-held bond is due on August 20 but some officials believe that talks may not be completed before the beginning of December. Greece’s total funding needs for August stand at around 5 billion euros as another payment to the IMF is also due next month. A European official who wished to remain anonymous told Kathimerini that the European Financial Stability Mechanism (EFSM) may be tapped again next month – as it was last week – to provide bridge financing to the government until a third bailout has been agreed and approved by Greece’s Parliament, as well as others in the eurozone.

In Brussels, European Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici said on Wednesday he is hoping the bailout deal can be signed by mid-August, while accepting that Greece has to meet a “punishing” schedule. “After months of deadlock, we are now making swift progress on the implementation of the euro summit agreement,” said the commissioner.

The US Federal Reserve plans to raise interest rates this year on the back of an improving American economy, and that is taking the shine off gold. ... Why? Because gold is a store of wealth for investors, but generates no returns from regular interest payments or dividend income. Investors have been happy to park their money in gold over the past six years while returns from other 'safe haven' assets have remained low and the economic backdrop has remained volatile. But, with borrowing costs set to rise, commodities, such as gold, are losing favor with investors, as higher returns can start to be generated elsewhere. The UK interest rate is 0.5pc. In the US, the interest rate, set by the Federal Reserve, is 0.25pc. US Federal Reserve chairman Janet Yellen has suggested interest rates should rise by the end of the year, while Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, also signaled that UK interest rates could begin to rise around the beginning of 2016, if not earlier. .. The US dollar has been growing stronger, boosted by a resurgent American economy and the prospect for a rate rise in the next few months. The US dollar index, which tracks the price of the US dollar against the world’s currencies, has increased by more than 20pc within the past year.   The value of the US dollar typically follows an inverse relationship with commodities. When the dollar strengthens against other major currencies, the prices of commodities - such as gold - typically drop. When the dollar weakens, commodities generally move higher. The main reason for this is because most commodities are freely traded in international markets and prices are quoted in US dollars.  Foreign buyers will purchase commodities with dollars, so, when the value of the dollar drops, they will have more buying power, and demand increases. Similarly, when the value of the dollar rises, they have less buying power and commodities become more expensive, muting demand and sending commodity prices lower. .. The slowdown in the Chinese economy, the world's largest consumer of commodities, has also caused the gold price to fall steadily since 2011.  China has increased its reserves of gold bullion by 60pc since 2009. However, on Friday the People’s Bank of China revealed it has been buying far less gold than expected. China updated its gold bullion reserves for the first time since 2009 last week, showing that while reserves had increased, the 57pc gain to 1,658 metric tons was smaller than the 3,500 tons analysts had been expecting.

One of the European officials said that the four major Greek banks - National Bank of Greece, Eurobank, Piraeus and Alpha Bank (all of which have subsidiaries in Romania) - could become two. "The Greek economy is in ruin. That means that banks need a reboot", according to the quoted source, which stressed that prompt action will be necessary in the event of any bail-out between Athens and the Eurozone, adding that Cyprus could be a model in that regard.  Another official said that even though the mergers of banks are necessary, that measure would be a process that could take a long time.  Ever since autumn last year, there have been rumors circulating in the Romanian market that talks concerning the merger between Bancpost and Piraeus Bank or Banca Românească had taken place.  Banking market sources told us, at the time, that the financial institution that would acquire Bancpost would be designated following the decisions made at the level of the parent banks, headquartered in Athens.  In the beginning of October 2014, the press wrote that Piraeus Bank was considering acquiring Bancpost from Eurobank, in exchange for selling its Bulgarian subsidiary or those in Bulgaria and Serbia together.  According to a scenario presented in a reorganization plan drafted upon the request of the General Competition Department of the European Commission, the Piraeus plan proposes for the Greek banks to consolidate their Balkan operations through exchanging branches, in order to reach critical masses on those respective markets, as written on October 8th by Greek portal Sofokleous10. At the time, Piraeus representatives were saying that the operations in Romania, Bulgaria, Albania and Cyprus were viable and of strategic importance for the group. The Greek press had written, a few days earlier, that Banca Românească, the subsidiary of National Bank of Greece (NBG), the biggest bank in Greece, was for sale. The four major Greek banks - Eurobank, Piraeus, Alpha and NBG - have not yet succeeded in merging, even though in the past, a merger agreement was signed between Eurobank and NBG, which was later cancelled, in the beginning of last year.

European Commission will use €7bn from an EU bail-out fund for Greece, as Tsipras says banks might not reopen for months

What is legal basis to use EFSM? The treaties establishing the new rescue fund ruled out the use of the previous EFSM to rescue a eurozone member. Mr Dombrovskis is asked on what the legal basis is for using the moribund fund. "Given the very difficult situation, and given the urgency, and given the way we are addressing the real concern, I think it is still possible," he says. "There are technical interpretations of this decision. There is a political problem that needs to be addressed. At the end of the day, the decision is to be made by the Council. Currently, we don't have better solutions on the table." He adds that by just helping one eurozone country, and not the bloc as a whole, the Commission can get round its own prohibition.

No one believed Porter Stansberry seven years ago.  As head of one of America’s largest independent financial research firms, Mr. Stansberry’s work back in 2008 led him to a bold, but worrisome, conclusion:  That the world’s largest mortgage bankers–Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which at the time were responsible for nearly 50% of all the mortgages in America–would soon go bankrupt.

In fact, in June of 2008, while their stock prices were still trading at well over $20 per share, Stansberry published a report to his customers titled: “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Are Going to Zero.”Inside this report, Stansberry explained:  “For those of you who don’t work in the financial industry, it might be hard for you to immediately grasp what’s so dangerous about the extreme amount of leverage employed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Let me explain exactly what Fannie and Freddie do and why they’re in so much jeopardy…” We all know what happened next.

Both agencies went bust—and if not for a bailout from the Federal Government, both would have declared bankruptcy.  Barron’s—America’s second biggest financial newspaper—even wrote a story about Mr. Stansberry’s accurate prediction short, and called it “remarkably prescient.”

Over the years, Mr. Stansberry has made a name for himself by accurately predicting the biggest and most important collapses in America.  A few of the others he’s accurately identified well in advance include: General Motors, General Growth Property (America’s biggest mall owner), D.R. Horton (a homebuilder), and Gannett newspapers, to name just a few.  Stansberry also predicted the recent collapse of oil and natural gas prices as early as 2010, when he wrote a report titled: “Peak Oil is a Flat Lie.”  Well, now Mr. Stansberry has issued another fascinating warning, about a new and looming bankruptcy.

The EU is increasingly weaker and it is becoming impossible to control the processes that are taking place on its territory, informs Sputnik International, which states that Europe will become a playground for the US and Russia, which are trying to expand their influence. According to the publication Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten, the EU is no longer capable of controlling the processes that are happening on the European continent because the policy is dictated by NATO, led by the US, and the European governments are mere members of the audience.  According to the German newspaper, the government led by Angela Merkel is weakened by the espionage scandal, while the EU is no longer a community of values, just a purely economic community, in which every party is trying to balance its selfishness. The EU is helpless when its conflicts appear on the European territory, Sputnik International further shows, and it says: "Whether it's Greece, Ukraine or Macedonia, the EU governments have proven incapable of making efficient decisions and are only acting as observers.   For example, this is valid for the conflict in Ukraine, where the United States have forced the European governments to impose economic sanctions on Russia, one of the most important trade partners of the EU, Sputnik International also says, which adds that now, the EU has to pay twice: first of all the business sector is suffering significant losses because of Russia's sanctions, and second of all, European taxpayers have to finance new loans to keep Ukraine's economy afloat.  According to the German newspaper, the EU is becoming a playground for Russia and the US, which are trying to extend their areas of influence in the region: "Europe is a major energy market if the US decides to export the technology of hydraulic fracking and Russia is trying to secure its exports of natural gas".  "It is highly unlikely that the two opponents will have a monopoly, but even without it, both of them can earn a lot of money", the article further states. Thus, the outrageous statement of American official Victoria Nuland - "Fuck the EU"- seems to have become a reality, the EU states.  According to Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten, this negative trend is the logical consequence of the contradictory development of the EU, which is derived from the paradox of arrogance and of the strife within the EU.

Banks are bracing for hundreds of millions of pounds in new claims for foreign exchange manipulation from class-action lawsuits triggered by last week’s vast market rigging fines.

Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and four other banks were ordered on Wednesday to pay $6bn (£3.84bn) by UK and US authorities.   The Barclays penalty represents the biggest bank fine in British history. The regulators, detailing how traders gathered in chatrooms using monikers such as “The Cartel” and “Coiled cobra” to rig the $5.3 trillion-a-day currency market, also forced the banks to plead guilty to criminal charges. Lawyers say that the fines, as well as an investigation from the European Commission, could be a springboard to damaging civil litigation in the UK and Europe. Some lawyers believe settlements could ultimately exceed the fines handed out by regulators, although the total bill will depend on how claimants assess the scale of damages they have suffered.

Traders at the banks colluded to manipulate currency benchmarks used to peg foreign exchange orders from corporate clients, meaning they made huge profits while clients were ripped off.

Several class-action lawsuits have been filed and settled in the US, with banks paying out hundreds of millions in compensation. Citigroup, one of the six banks to be fined last week, said on Wednesday that it had agreed $394m of payments to settle private cases in the US, and RBS said it had reached a deal, without revealing how much it will pay.  US laws make it easier to arrange such cases, but firms in the UK are now canvassing support for action on this side of the Atlantic.  Law firm Hausfeld, which has been involved in several class action cases in the US and has secured settlements worth $800m, is drumming up support from institutions in the UK and Europe. It says court cases are expected on the continent in the coming months.

Greece could start using a "parallel currency" to pay its civil servants if it runs out of cash, one of the European Central Bank's board members has suggested.  Highlighting the desperate situation faced by the country, Yves Merch, a member of the ECB's executive board and governor of Luxembourg's central bank, told Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia that Greece could resort to using "exceptional tools" to pay its obligations.  "There are intermediate solutions circulating, such as the issuance of a parallel currency or IOUs," he told the newspaper. "All these measures are among the exceptional tools that any government can consider if it has no other options. But all of them have a high cost."   His comments come as the country scrambles to reach a deal with international creditors and avoid a default. The ECB has already analysed how such a scenario could play out. Officials told Reuters in April that creating a virtual second currency within the eurozone might not be enough to keep Greece in the 19-nation bloc.  Analysis showed around 30pc of Greeks would end up receiving such "IOUs" rather than cash, which would put further pressure on Greek banks as workers dipped into their their savings.  Mr Merch singled out Greece as the eurozone's black sheep. “Rarely have I seen Europe so united, except for one country, on the need to follow the rules. Those countries wouldn’t like everything achieved in the past, the effort made, frustrated now that it is starting to bear fruit."   He also suggested that a Greek exit may be relatively pain-free for the rest of the bloc. "There have been defaults in the US and other monetary unions without political consequences," he said. However, Mr Mersh added that policymakers remained ready to defend the single currency "by all means". "The markets have greatly underestimated the political will to save the euro," he added.   Meanwhile, Michel Sapin, France's finance minister, said that eurozone policymakers remained determined to keep Greece in the eurozone, but insisted that the country "must respect its commitments" to remain in the bloc.  Sarah Carlson, an analyst at Moody's said the risk of a Greek exit had grown, adding that any exit from the monetary union by a country would mark a significant change in how the euro area is viewed.  A poll by Paddy Power on Thursday indicated a 56% chance of a Grexit.

The Polish electorate is fed-up with Brxelles...

Bronislaw Komorowski, the Polish president, has a fight on his hands to remain in office after coming a surprise second in the first round of voting in Poland’s presidential elections on Sunday, according to exit polls.  Taken after voting stopped at 9pm local time, the polls put Andrzej Duda, candidate from the conservative Law and Justice party, 2.6 per cent ahead of the president with 34.8 per cent. With no candidate securing an outright majority the two men will meet in a fortnight’s time in a run-off vote.   If the result stands, it will come as major surprise.  An affable former anti-communist dissident Mr Komorowski became acting president in April 2010 when as speaker of parliament he was elevated to the office under the terms of the Polish constitution following the death of Lech Kaczynski, then the president, in a plane crash in western Russia. Opinion polls had routinely found the president as the most popular politician in Poland, and polls before Sunday’s vote had put ahead of Mr Duda.  Political commentators in were quick to attribute Sunday’s surprise result to the president’s apparently low-key and complacent election campaign.  Along with Mr Duda, the other big winner on the night was Pawel Kukiz, a former rock star and strident government critic, who won 20.3 per cent of the vote, according to the polls.  The night was a disaster for the left-wing Democratic Left Alliance. Once a dominant force in Polish politics, the party’s candidate Magdalena Ogorek came in with just 2.4 per cent.  

Greece's finance minister has ramped up the political stakes in his country's debt drama, by personally telling President Barack Obama to push eurozone creditors over his country's bail-out crisis. In an 12-minute exchange with the President on the sidelines of an event marking Greek Independence day, Mr Varoufakis is reported to have repeated his desire for the US leader to influence events.   Mr Obama is reported to have responded by urging flexibility from both parties.  

Greece's Leftist government has looked to the White House to play the role of honest broker in protracted negotiations with its international creditors. Following Syriza's election in January, the President called for an end to harmful austerity policies and the introduction of a "growth strategy in order for them to pay off their debts to eliminate some of their deficits.” ...  Hopes of a deal before a meeting of the eurozone's finance ministers on April 24 have rapidly faded as both sides show no signs of bridging their differences over Greece's cash-for-reforms bail-out extension.   "In the absence of a deal in the next few weeks, the government might not be able to avoid default, which – we fear – would likely raise the risk of Grexit," said Reinhard Cluse at UBS.  The situation has become increasingly critical as Greece's public funds dwindle and the government faces a near €1bn IMF bill in the first two weeks of May. IMF managing director Christine Lagarde repeated that she would not countenance any delay in payment to the Fund.  “We will do everything we can so lending to the Fund remains the safest lending route any debtor can adopt. That is my determination” said Ms Lagarde. ...  Unfortunately for the Greeks, this is not Obama's call to make here. The Euro Zone is left to its own faltering accord. Quite sometime ago, Greece was thrown out of the Markets, and there is very little anyone can do to get Greece back in with all of this airing their dirty laudry infighting. Calmer heads did not prevail after the Greeks elected this Syriza government. Austerity and internal deflation have political consequence. The EU wont work with Syriza, but an overwhelming majority of Greeks approve of them. Would not be at all surprised if we see a Grexident soon. Only then will all of the self appointed experts report what really went wrong here, just like with Lehman. Heads will roll after the fact. Not Obama's call to make. His advice? Play nice guys. Geithner shook his head in disbelief at how this matter was handled quite sometime ago as well. Little good anyone can do the Greeks now. This situation calls for Greek self help. No not the Troika's prescription. Sorry to say, there is no way around declaring insolvency, rebooting, and starting over.

Excerpt from TOWER OF BASEL: The Shadowy History of the Secret Bank that Runs the World by Adam LeBor ... : The world’s most exclusive club has eighteen members. They gather every other month on a Sunday evening at 7 p.m. in conference room E in a circular tower block whose tinted windows overlook the central Basel railway station. Their discussion lasts for one hour, perhaps an hour and a half. Some of those present bring a colleague with them, but the aides rarely speak during this most confidential of conclaves. The meeting closes, the aides leave, and those remaining retire for dinner in the dining room on the eighteenth floor, rightly confident that the food and the wine will be superb. The meal, which continues until 11 p.m. or midnight, is where the real work is done. The protocol and hospitality, honed for more than eight decades, are faultless. Anything said at the dining table, it is understood, is not to be repeated elsewhere.  As a result of allegations that the BIS had helped the Germans loot assets from occupied countries during World War II, the Bretton Woods Conference recommended the "liquidation of the Bank for International Settlements at the earliest possible moment".[6] This resulted in the BIS being the subject of a disagreement between the non-governmental U.S. and British delegations. The liquidation of the bank was supported by other European delegates, as well as the United States (including Harry Dexter White, Secretary of the Treasury, and Henry Morgenthau),[7] but opposed by John Maynard Keynes, head of the British delegation.

Fearing that the BIS would be dissolved by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Keynes went to Morgenthau hoping to prevent the dissolution, or have it postponed, but the next day the dissolution of the BIS was approved. However, the liquidation of the bank was never actually undertaken.[8] In April 1945, the new U.S. president Harry S. Truman and the British government suspended the dissolution, and the decision to liquidate the BIS was officially reversed in 1948.[9]

One strongly suspects that Roosevelt was assassinated because of this. Cui Bono. Ditto Kennedy, who opposed the Federal Reserve, an unconstitutional abomination, with his famous executive order 11110. Again that was quietly forgotten about after the events in Dallas. One must always analyse subsequent events to understand who benefited from these atrocities... The BIS has the right to communicate in code and to send and receive correspondence in bags covered by the same protection as embassies, meaning they cannot be opened. The BIS is exempt from Swiss taxes. Its employees do not have to pay income tax on their salaries, which are usually generous, designed to compete with the private sector. The general man- ager’s salary in 2011 was 763,930 Swiss francs, while head of departments were paid 587,640 per annum, plus generous allowances. The bank’s extraordinary legal privileges also extend to its staff and directors. Senior managers enjoy a special status, similar to that of diplomats, while carrying out their duties in Switzerland, which means their bags cannot be searched (unless there is evidence of a blatant criminal act), and their papers are inviolable. The central bank governors traveling to Basel for the bimonthly meetings enjoy the same status while in Switzerland. All bank officials are immune under Swiss law, for life, for all the acts carried out during the discharge of their duties. The bank is a popular place to work and not just because of the salaries. Around six hundred staff come from over fifty countries. The atmosphere is multi-national and cosmopolitan, albeit very Swiss, emphasizing the bank’s hierarchy. Like many of those working for the UN or the IMF, some of the staff of the BIS, especially senior management, are driven by a sense of mission, that they are working for a higher, even celestial purpose and so are immune from normal considerations of accountability and transparency....The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), is the bank for central banks. Its current members [ZH: as of 2013] include Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the US Federal Reserve; Sir Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England; Mario Draghi, of the European Central Bank; Zhou Xiaochuan of the Bank of China; and the central bank governors of Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, Canada, India, and Brazil. Jaime Caruana, a former governor of the Bank of Spain, the BIS’s general manager, joins them.

Report UE - The central question in the report is that of forced loans the Nazi occupiers extorted from the Greek central bank beginning in 1941. Should requests for repayment of those loans be classified as reparation demands -- demands that may have been forfeited with the Two-Plus-Four Treaty of 1990? Or is it a genuine loan that must be paid back? The expert commission analyzed contracts and agreements from the time of the occupation as well as receipts, remittance slips and bank statements.  They found that the forced loans do not fit into the category of classical war reparations. The commission calculated the outstanding German "debt" to the Greek central bank and came to a total sum of $12.8 billion as of December 2014, which would amount to about €11 billion.  As such, at issue between Germany and Greece is no longer just the question as to whether the 115 million deutsche marks paid to the Greek government from 1961 onwards for its peoples' suffering during the occupation sufficed as legal compensation for the massacres like those in the villages of Distomo and Kalavrita. Now the key issue is whether the successor to the German Reich, the Federal Republic of Germany, is responsible for paying back loans extorted by the Nazi occupiers. There's some evidence to indicate that this may be the case.  In terms of the amount of the loan debt, the Greek auditors have come to almost the same findings as those of the Nazis' bookkeepers shortly before the end of the war. Hitler's auditors estimated 26 days before the war's end that the "outstanding debt" the Reich owed to Greece at 476 million Reichsmarks.  Auditors in Athens calculated an "open credit line" for the same period of time of around $213 million. They assumed a dollar exchange rate to the Reichsmark of 2:1 and applied an interest escalation clause accepted by the German occupiers that would result in a value of more than €11 billion today.

The agreement signed between Greece and the EU after three weeks of lively negotiations is a compromise reached under economic duress. Its only merit for Greece is that it has kept the Syriza government alive and able to fight another day. That day is not far off. Greece will have to negotiate a long-term financing agreement in June, and has substantial debt repayments to make in July and August. In the coming four months the government will have to get its act together to negotiate those hurdles and implement its radical programme. The European left has a stake in Greek success, if it is to beat back the forces of austerity that are currently strangling the continent.   In February the Greek negotiating team fell into a trap of two parts. The first was the reliance of Greek banks on the European Central Bank for liquidity, without which they would stop functioning. Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, ratcheted up the pressure by tightening the terms of liquidity provision. Worried by developments, depositors withdrew funds; towards the end of negotiations Greek banks were losing The second was the Greek state’s need for finance to service debts and pay wages. As negotiations proceeded, funds became tighter. The EU, led by Germany, cynically waited until the pressure on Greek banks had reached fever pitch. By the evening of Friday 20 February the Syriza government had to accept a deal or face chaotic financial conditions the following week, for which it was not prepared at all.  The resulting deal has extended the loan agreement, giving Greece four months of guaranteed finance, subject to regular review by the “institutions”, ie the European Commission, the ECB and the IMF. The country was forced to declare that it will meet all obligations to its creditors “fully and timely”.   Furthermore, it will aim to achieve “appropriate” primary surpluses; desist from unilateral actions that would “negatively impact fiscal targets”; and undertake “reforms” that run counter to Syriza pledges to lower taxes, raise the minimum wage, reverse privatisations, and relieve the humanitarian crisis.   In short, the Syriza government has paid a high price to remain alive. Things will be made even harder by the parlous state of the Greek economy. Growth in 2014 was a measly 0.7%, while GDP actually contracted during the last quarter. Industrial output fell by a further 3.8% in December, and even retail sales declined by 3.7%, despite Christmas. The most worrying indication, however, is the fall in prices by 2.8% in January. This is an economy in a deflationary spiral with little or no drive left to it. Against this background, insisting on austerity and primary balances is vindictive madness.  The coming four months will be a period of constant struggle for Syriza. There is little doubt that the government will face major difficulties in passing the April review conducted by the “institutions” to secure the release of much-needed funds. Indeed, so grave is the fiscal situation that events might unravel even faster. Tax income is collapsing, partly because the economy is frozen and partly because people are withholding payment in the expectation of relief from the extraordinary tax burden imposed over the last few years. The public purse will come under considerable strain already in March, when there are sizeable debt repayments to be made.  But even assuming that the government successfully navigates these straits, in June Greece will have to re-enter negotiations with the EU for a long-term financing agreement. The February trap is still very much there, and ready to be sprung again.  What should we as Syriza do and how could the left across Europe help? The most vital step is to realise that the strategy of hoping to achieve radical change within the institutional framework of the common currency has come to an end. The strategy has given us electoral success by promising to release the Greek people from austerity without having to endure a major falling-out with the eurozone. Unfortunately, events have shown beyond doubt that this is impossible, and it is time that we acknowledged reality.   For Syriza to avoid collapse or total surrender, we must be truly radical. Our strength lies exclusively in the tremendous popular support we still enjoy. The government should rapidly implement measures relieving working people from the tremendous pressures of the last few years: forbid house foreclosures, write off domestic debt, reconnect families to the electricity network, raise the minimum wage, stop privatisations. This is the programme we were elected on. Fiscal targets and monitoring by the “institutions” should take a back seat in our calculations, if we are to maintain our popular support. At the same time, our government must approach the looming June negotiations with a very different frame of mind from February. The eurozone cannot be reformed and it will not become a “friendly” monetary union that supports working people. Greece must bring a full array of options to the table, and it must be prepared for extraordinary liquidity measures in the knowledge that all eventualities could be managed, if its people were ready. After all, the EU has already wrought disaster on the country.   Syriza could gain succour from the European left, but only if the left shakes off its own illusions and begins to propose sensible policies that might at last rid Europe of the absurdity that the common currency has become. There might then be a chance of properly lifting austerity across the continent. Time is indeed very short for all of us. ( source : The Guardian)

The termite-eaten timbers under the rotten edifice of the EU are crumbling.

The Alpine region of Carinthia faces probable bankruptcy after Austria’s central government refused to vouch for debts left by a disastrous banking expansion in eastern Europe and the Balkans.

It would be the first sub-sovereign default in Europe since the Lehman Brothers crisis, comparable in some respects to the bankruptcy of California's Orange County in 1994 or the city of Detroit in 2013. Austria’s finance minister, Jörg Schelling, said Vienna would not cover €10.2bn (£7.4bn) in bond guarantees issued by the Carinthian authorities for the failed lender Hypo Alpe Adria, or for the "Heta" resolution fund that succeeded it. This leaves the 550,000-strong province on the Slovene border to fend for itself as losses spin out of control.  “The government won’t waste another euro of taxpayer money on Heta,” he said, insisting that there must be an end to moral hazard. The Hypo affair has alredy cost taxpayers €5.5bn. The Austrian state has said it will cover €1bn of its own guarantees “on the nail” but nothing more. 

Sources in Vienna suggested that even senior bondholders are likely to face a 50pc writedown, becoming the first victims of the eurozone’s tough new “bail-in” rules for creditors. These rules are already in force in Germany and Austria, and will be mandatory everywhere next year.

The cracks are widening - and just a few days ago we heard Austria telling us to treat Greece like lepers.  The euro falls like a brick - with a lot further to go.  It will be interesting to see who dumps this toxic currency first....Germany? France or Italy - a race to the bottom.

 

What did Greece do with the money? Put on an Olympics, pay higher pensions, hire more government workers and overpay them ? Even if we admit that Greece had a debt to gdp ratio far in excess of the 60% claimed when they joined it was not 120% or 150+% when they needed their first bailout. Even Ireland and Spain's own banking regulators could have applied the brakes to their housing bubbles by simply raising the down payments to get a mortgage or construction loan. They were also bribed to buy (faulty) German submarines and unreliable metro/trams and much else by German firms like Siemens (which profited mightily by use of slave labor, even going so far as to open a branch in the Ravensbruck concentration camp). The Greeks were also inundated by loans from French and German banks, and the so-called bail out was, in fact, a bail out be the poor, long-suffering European tax-payer, including Greek ones, of those banks by the corrupt Euro-political class.

Eurozone finance ministers have approved reform proposals submitted by Greece as a condition for extending its bailout by four months, officials say.  The Eurogroup said it had agreed to begin national procedures - parliamentary votes in several states to give the deal final approval.   The measures proposed by Greece include combating tax evasion and tackling the smuggling of fuel and tobacco.  The European Commission said earlier they were a "valid starting point".   Eurozone finance ministers - known as the Eurogroup - then held a conference call before giving their backing to the Greek proposals.  "We call on the Greek authorities to further develop and broaden the list of reform measures, based on the current arrangement, in close co-ordination with the institutions," the Eurogroup said in a statement.  The agreement had "averted an immediate crisis", said European Commissioner for Economic Affairs Pierre Moscovici.   "It does not mean we approve those reforms, it means the approach is serious enough for further discussion," he added.  'Lack of clear assurances' .  However, International Monetary Fund (IMF) head Christine Lagarde was quoted as expressing reservations about the reform proposals.  "In some areas like combating tax evasion and corruption I am encouraged by what appears to be a stronger resolve on the part of the new authorities in Athens," she wrote in a letter to the Eurogroup.  "In quite a few areas, however, including perhaps the most important ones, the letter is not conveying clear assurances that the government intends to undertake the reforms envisaged."

Bucharest, Romania — Outside the National Anticorruption Directorate in downtown Bucharest, more than a dozen reporters and cameramen stand around chatting. It’s a weekday afternoon, and they know it’s only a matter of time before the next high-profile Romanian shows up to face charges of corruption.  Even a few years ago, Romania's powerful and well-connected were able to line their own pockets with impunity, earning the country deserved notoriety as one of Europe's most graft-ridden nations.  But today, in a perfect storm of external pressure from the European Union and internal public anger, Romania's crackdown on corruption is almost routine. With an independent and tenacious special prosecutor's office driving the effort, the country is making dramatic strides in holding elites just as accountable as the common man.   Yet as part of the country’s ascension into the EU, which they joined in 2007 along with neighboring Bulgaria, Romania – where graft reaches to all levels of society – was required to clean up its act.  “It started because we had the right mix of external pressure from the European Commission and internal pressure from the population,” says Laura Stefan, an anticorruption expert and a former director in the Romanian Ministry of Justice.  Yet, she adds: “When this started, there was no trust in the state. A lot of people were skeptical, and it took a long time and a lot of strong cases to convince people.”  In 2003, the country established the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA), a specialized prosecutor's office tasked with fighting corruption and graft. Initially the DNA targeted lower-level figures, but within a few years it was aiming far higher, and the number of people convicted of high-level graft of more than 10,000 euros ($11,300) has risen accordingly.  Last year 1,138 individuals, including politicians, businessmen, judges, and prosecutors, were convicted of corruption in Romania, up from 155 in 2006. This included 24 mayors, five members of parliament, two ex-ministers, and a former prime minister, not to mention seven judges and 13 prosecutors. Those convicted include politicians of all stripes, irrespective of party lines.    This year the headlines have continued to pile up. Last week Monica Iacob Ridzi, a former sports and youth minister, was sentenced to five years in prison for abuse of power and corruption. A few days earlier, a former transportation minister was also jailed, sentenced to two years for taking bribes while in office, including getting a house built for his mother free of charge.  These days Romanian news channels are fixated on the rapid fall from grace of Elena Udrea, a glamorous MP, former tourism minister, and recent presidential candidate (she finished fourth) who was arrested in mid-February on charges of money laundering, influence peddling, and taking bribes. Pundits had a field day when Ms. Udrea asked for permission to refurbish and decorate the cell she was being held in under preventive arrest.  Some 7 percent of politicians elected in 2012 have been convicted or are currently under investigation for corruption, according to estimates. The DNA’s conviction success rate is over 90 percent.  The DNA’s biggest conviction to date has been that of former Prime Minister Adrian Nastase (2000-2004), who was sentenced to four years behind bars in January 2014 for bribery and blackmail.  “Right now it is ugly, but it is a sign of progress, it shows willingness,” says Cristian Ghinea, director of the Romanian Center for European Policies, a Bucharest-based think tank.    Last November, just days after an anticorruption candidate won Romania’s latest presidential election, lawmakers were once again called to vote on a controversial amnesty bill. This one would have opened the way to releasing any inmate serving up to six years in prison for non-violent crimes – which would have included most of those serving time for corruption.  This time the vote was almost unanimously against the bill.   If there were clear-cut signs that no one is now safe from investigation, it has been in recent weeks, as first Udrea, the former presidential candidate, was arrested, and then Iulian Hertanu, the brother-in-law of Romania’s Prime Minister Victor Ponta, was detained. Mr. Hertanu was allegedly involved in embezzling funds worth around 1.75 million euros.  “The area of untouchables has gotten smaller and smaller with time,” says Ms. Stefan, the anticorruption expert.  “People are seeing for the first time, if you steal you go to jail, no matter who you are. This is the way it should be, but we need to keep the momentum.” (source  CS Monitor)

Demonstrators gathered in Brussels to rally againist painful austerity measures and the upcoming TTIP trade deal. Protestors managed to shut down one of the European capital's busiest districts. Tractors rolled into central Brussels Friday as more than a thousand people protested European Union economic policy and a planned free trade deal with the United States. The demonstrations brought together farmers, trade unionists and environmentalists, who burned bales of hay and an effigy of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, long considered the driving force behind Europe's policy of reducing social programs in order to curb government debt. The protest was meant to coincide with the final day of the EU year-end summit, but the talks between European leaders wrapped up a day early. The police cordoned off the whole of Brussels' EU quarter, causing early morning chaos in one of the city's busiest districts.

Turning people in merchandise - "Merry Christmas and Happy Austerity," read one banner the protestors hung outside the European Council building. The D19-20 Alliance, which organized the demonstration, represents not only Belgian organizations but French, Dutch, and German ones as well. People came from all four countries to voice their outrage at "policies that do not work and keep accentuating inequalities," one of the organizers told German news service dpa.
The D19-20 Alliance denounces austerity as a means by which the government makes workers pay for the financial crisis and allows for a roll-back of important social programs forged over generations, like free medical care. The Alliance is worried that the upcoming Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a free trade agreement between the EU and the US, will increase these inequalities and give American businesses too much power over European governments to the detriment of their citizens. Rudy Janssens, a senior official with Belgian socialist union CGSP, said the TTIP will turn people into "merchandise” and medical patients into customers.
At the summit, EU leaders reaffirmed their commitment to signing the TTIP by the end of 2015, ushering in the largest free trade agreement in the world.
es/tj (AFP, dpa)

According to many analysts, the future of the eurozone was secured after a now famous speech by ECB chief Mario Draghi, in July 2012, in which he promised to do “whatever it takes” to save the euro.  But according to leaked transcripts - obtained by the FT - of interviews for a book by former US treasury secretary Timothy Geithner, the ECB chief’s comments were anything but planned.

According to Geithner, the remarks were “off-the-cuff” and “totally impromptu”. “I went to see Draghi and (...) at that point, he had no plan. He had made this sort of naked statement of this stuff. But they stumbled into it”, a leaked transcript of the interview says.  Improvisation as the origin to one of the most important comments on the eurozone fits with other descriptions of the ECB president.  Simeon Djankov, Bulgarian finance minister from 2009 to 2013, describes the different personalities of Draghi and his predecessor, Jean-Claude Trichet.

In his book “Inside the Euro Crisis”, he writes about the different personalities of successive ECB presidents Jean-Claude Trichet and Draghi.  During meetings with the EU finance ministers, Trichet “would read prepared statements, and after that he would fade into the role of passive observer,” Djankov wrote in his book “Inside the euro crisis”.  Draghi, on the other hand, had a “more instinctive approach” and “scribbled his talking points on bits of paper a few minutes before the meeting began, tossed out comments throughout the discussions, and stayed until the end”...

Eurozone inflation rose to 0.4pc in the year to October, up from 0.3pc in the preceding month. At that level, price growth remained stuck well below the ECB's medium-term target of close to 2pc.

“It is essential to bring back inflation to target and without delay”, Mario Draghi, president of the ECB, said in a speech in Frankfurt on Friday.

The central bank official made reference to the quantitative easing schemes launched by the Federal Reserve and the Bank of Japan, noting that they had reduced the strength of the country's respective currencies.  Traders sold the euro on Mr Draghi's dovish comments, as the currency fell by more than three-quarters of a percentage point to less than 1.25 against the dollar. Mr Draghi stressed that while there had been improvements in the financial sphere, these had “not transferred fully into the economic sphere”, where the situation “remains difficult”.   The currency bloc has an eye-wateringly high unemployment rate of 11.5pc, while economic growth has ground to a near-halt .   The eurozone managed to dodge a third technical recession since the financial crisis, but it now appears that the euro area economy is unlikely to pick up speed by the end of the year.  The ECB has made a number of interest rate cuts across the year in an attempt to boost the economy, consequently bringing one of its three main rates - the deposit facility rate - into negative territory.   The rate is currently maintained at -0.2pc, meaning that banks that park their money with the ECB overnight have to pay the central bank for the privilege.

 

Chancellor George Osborne has insisted the UK will pursue its "national interest" in Europe despite German warnings about its future in the EU.

Mr Osborne said the British people wanted concerns about EU immigration and access to benefits addressed.  The German government has insisted the right of EU nationals to live and work in other member states is sacrosanct.  Angela Merkel has reportedly said she would rather see the UK leave the EU than allow a quota system for migrants.  The BBC's Europe Editor Gavin Hewitt said the German chancellor wanted the UK to stay in.  But he said an article in Der Spiegel news magazine, which quoted German government sources as saying she feared the UK was near a "point of no return", signalled Berlin's view that British calls for curbs on the free movement of people was a "red line" that could not be crossed.  David Cameron wants to renegotiate the terms of the UK's continued membership before holding an in-out referendum, if he remains in power after next year's general election.  The prime minister, who is expected to set out his next steps on immigration before Christmas, has insisted freedom of movement of workers would be "at the very heart" of his renegotiation strategy.  Der Spiegel reported that Mr Cameron was now looking at a plan to stretch the EU rules "to their limits" in order to ban migrants who do not have a job, and to deport those who are unable to support themselves after three months.

Speaking to journalists on Monday, Mrs Merkel's spokesman - Steffen Seibert - said this was "not a bilateral matter between Germany and Britain but between Britain and all of its European partners".

It was up to the UK to "clarify" what wider role it wanted to play in the EU, he added.

Mr Osborne said a Conservative government would always "do what is in the interest of our country and our economy" but the UK would approach future negotiations in a "calm and rational" way.

Tory backbencher David Davis: Merkel's warning is "bloodcurdling"

"What we have today is a story based on speculation about what Angela Merkel might have said about something David Cameron might say in the future," he told BBC Breakfast.

"The Germans understand the disquiet caused among the British people when you have people coming from other parts of Europe to claim our benefits who do not necessarily have jobs to go to."