The German (Fourth Reich's ) Governor of Greece - Horst Reichenbach made no comments !!!!!

No final decision on next tranche of Greek bailout expected today, despite "broadly positive" Troika report ( Governor's Horst Reichenbach report in fact).

The German finance ministry has declared that there is no chance of a deal today on Greece's bailout programme, despite Athens approving its 2013 budget last night.

Ministry spokeswoman Marianne Kothe told reporters in Berlin that it wasn't realistic to expect a decision at tonight's Eurogroup meeting (of euro finance ministers), particularly as German MPs must have their say first.

Kothe said: Everyone is working under a lot of pressure to resolve questions which are still open...I think it's rather unrealistic to expect a final decision today as in Germany the Bundestag has to agree to it in advance.

There are also reports this morning that Jean-Claude Juncker, chair of the eurogroup, has also ruled out a decision this evening.

The precise whereabouts of the Troika report on Greece is another issue ... Germany's Kothe said today that she didn't think the final version was complete yet...in fact The German (Fourth Reich's ) Governor of Greece - Horst Reichenbach made no comments !!!!!

What has Weimar to do with the Greece ...????? nothing !!!!

I was in Greece a few weeks ago, people are living on nothing, some people have not been paid in months, others surive on low salaries while the social welfare system is nowhere near good enough.  Greek people are being crushed, their livelihoods are being crushed, their spirit is being crushed, their country is being crushed.  If this EU is assisting in that process rather than stepping in to try and assist and find proactive ways forward then the whole damn thing should be wrapped up as a monumental failure, it simply has not performed in the way the founding fathers envisaged as it is all stick and no carrot. Debt on debt, austerity and stupid statements out of  Berlin and Brussels from mult-millionaire natzies like The Governor designated of Greece - Horst Reichenbach... who know next to nothing about deep personal and financial struggle.

What has Weimar to do with the Greeks?  Fake Left and Neo-Fascist Right keep on talking about ...Weimar.  Greece never was an imperialist power. It is almost  a banana republic. It is currently occuppied by the Troika and has a german governor. Under the Euro Greece had massive de-industrialisaion, massive importation of illegal labour. a collapse of agricultural production and an arms budget that has skyrocket beyond all proportion.  Yesterday they used riot police vans to arrest half a dockworkers demo outside the Defence Ministry, which is a crime scene, for all the financial fraud and bribery from Franco-German defence contractors.

On the other hand ... Germany went nationalist under Hitler, rearmed, got involved in civil wars in other countries and then allied itself with France, took over Europe leading to a war where 50-70 million died.
That was Weimar..."WTF" has that to do with a small banana republic on the outskirts of Europe ????  Nothing.

 

Greece has a German Governor - Horst Reichenbach - there is no "troika"

The Greek people can hardly complain when this greek government (right-wing) tries to accept the capitlistic approach of the IMF/EU. They had the chance only a few months ago to elect a party (Syriza) into Government that wanted to put Greek people first and they decided against it. They will now have to pay the price. Just as the Greeks led the way with Democracy over 2500 years ago, they should now be taking the first steps of overhauling systems put in place to ensure the continuation of Capitalism, by letting the "rule of the people" rather than the "rule of the creditors" such as Germany and other countries of the European Union decide. Although the measures, such as extending the working week, supposedly only apply to Greeks in a dysfunctional economy - the aim is clearly also to remind those at home, e.g. fellow Germans back home or in the UK for that matter, that work is the only way to save yourself. Instead, Greece should take advantage of this symptom of global financial mismanagement by those in 'power', and set it's own agenda for the "good of the people". Well, half of so called Europeans (the term is BS) (by "you" I mean non-Greeks) wanted for people to vote Syriza and the rest, especially the creditor countries, were "pushing" for the same old governments, by literally starting a campaign (or propaganda) of fear. So, damned if we did and damn if we didn't. You don't care now, others would not care if it was the other way around. Big whoop....I say : Greece will have to exit the Euro and return to the Drachma - with all the extreme pain this will lead to (making the current situation look like a picnic), but long-term, it will have to reform its labour laws and skills base, in order to compete with the likes of China, Germany and Eastern Europe (regardless of its currency). Borrowing to maintain a good standard of living is no longer an option.

More from the IMF: "The external position of the Euro area as a whole has been close to balance, and only slightly weaker than the estimated value consistent with fundamentals and desirable policies. However, this masked, and continues to mask, substantial divergences across the Euro area primarily financed from within the union, including by major banks with global links. Germany currently has the world’s second largest current account surplus, partly with the rest of the world, while Spain and (to a lesser extent) Italy have deficits. Major estimated external imbalances that are regionally-financed imply a need for substantial real and financial rebalancing within the Euro area as well as a much more modest rebalancing by the bloc with the rest of the world. Unsustainably large intra-Euro area imbalances were part of the global boom-bust cycle, and the failure to resolve the Euro area crisis is causing heightened stresses that are spilling over to other countries". -- Germany is doing OK though, and have done since the Eurozone was created. No wonder Merkel wants to preserve the status quo. The eurozone is on life-support, it won't be long before the apparatus is switched off, but by then millions of people in Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece et al will have had their lives ruined by arrogant, stubborn eurocrats. ..... What's the youth population of Europe? Say, around 100 million people (depending on how you define youth) of which roughly 20 million are unemployed. Now take the quantitative easing (QE: new money printed and issued, a taxpayer liability) amounts given to the banks, and the other forms of money given to them in bank bailouts. £375 billion and counting in the UK. Don't have close to hand, the QE, bank bailout, and other monetary relief sums for the bad debt of banks given to Spain, Italy, Greece, Ireland, and Portugal. Let's take a conservative estimate of a total of £600 billion: divide this by 20 million and you have £30,000 per unemployed youth. The new money printed and issued by European governments if given directly to the public instead of the banks would certainly wipe out unemployment for at least a year or two. That would be even truer for the Non-Euro Countries, forget about the rest of Europe. But we the public are such stupid, apathetic sheep, we play along with this massive misdirection of financial resources by the states, done for the banks, at your cost.

The ECB declined comment on Friday

"Private creditors have already suffered big writedowns on their Greek bonds under a second bailout for Athens sealed in February, but this was not enough to put the country back on the path to solvency and a further restructuring is on the cards. The latest aim is to reduce Greece's debts by a further €70bn to €100bn, several senior eurozone officials familiar with the discussions told Reuters, cutting its debts to a more manageable 100pc of annual economic output. This would require the European Central Bank and national central banks to take losses on their holdings of Greek government bonds, and could also involve national governments also accepting losses. The favoured option is for the ECB and national central banks to carry the cost, but that could mean that some banks and the ECB itself having to be recapitalized, the officials said. The ECB declined comment on Friday".

Spain is Bust. Italy is pretty much bust and if the truth be told is bust. Ditto Portugal.. Greece is just the weakest and as such fell first.
You have to let people including Governments fail if they are incompetently run. Let them go to the wall and any bank that was dumb enough to buy debt from these States.

REUTERS - Standard & Poor’s raised Greece’s credit rating out of default territory on Wednesday, as expected after Athens slashed its debt by about a third by completing the biggest sovereign debt restructuring in financial history. But the firm kept Greece firmly in the junk category with a CCC rating and warned that a deep recession, unpredictable elections on May 6 and popular anger against austerity could threaten Athens’ efforts to put its finances back on track. “While the exchange has, in our view, alleviated near-term funding pressures, Greece’s sovereign debt burden remains high,” S&P said in a statement, adding that it expected the debt to stay as high as 160-170 percent of GDP in the next three years. S&P assigned Greece’s rating a stable outlook, indicating it was not planning to change the rating again soon, but it warned that risks remained. “The ratings could be lowered if we believe that there is a likelihood of a distressed exchange on Greece’s remaining stock of commercial debt,” it said. The three major rating firms have repeatedly slashed Greece’s rating throughout the debt crisis, cutting it to default over the debt deal in which private bondholders lost most of their investments in the country’s government bonds. S&P had flagged as early as February that it was likely to raise Greece’s rating to the CCC category after the debt swap was completed. Fitch assigned Greece a slightly higher B-rating in mid-March, becoming the first major rating agency to upgrade Athens’ rating after the swap cut its debt by about 100 billion euros. Moody’s is the only one of the three major rating agencies to have kept its Greek rating unchanged at the lowest level. It has said it would revise the rating “in due course” and that any upgrade would likely be small.

Christine Lagarde, the IMF's managing-director, said the outlook had darkened suddenly over the summer. "There has been a clear crisis of confidence that has seriously aggravated the situation. Measures need to be taken to ensure that this vicious circle is broken," she said. "The spectrum of policies available is narrower because a lot of ammunition was used in 2009. But if governments, institutions and central banks work together, we'll avoid recession," she told Der Spiegel. The comments come at the start of a dramatic week for the eurozone as Italy prepares to roll over record sums of debt and Germany's constitutional court issues its long-awaited verdict on the legality of the EU's bail-out machinery. Markets are already tense after the EU-IMF 'Troika' withdrew abruptly from Athens on Friday, accusing the Greek government of failing to comply with rescue terms. Mrs Lagarde said the US has scope to "abandon short-term austerity and introduce some measures to drive growth" provided the country lays out a credible debt strategy over the medium term. She said Europe needs to take its foot off the fiscal brake and shift to "growth-intensive measures" until the danger has passed, insisting that Germany has leeway to "stimulate demand".

IMF - John Lipsky, the acting managing director of the International Monetary Fund, has taken a tougher approach than his predecessor, Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Photograph: Aleofficials and diplomats in Brussels confirmed that the IMF threat to pull the plug on its funding – in stark contrast to the more emollient line of Strauss-Kahn – had been defused because of a German climbdown. As political turmoil continued in Greece on Thursday, with the prime minister, George Papandreou, scrambling to form a new government, the stage was being set for a political struggle between Europe's powerbrokers over the fine print of the proposed new €100bn-plus rescue of Greece. Berlin is deeply at odds with France and with the key EU institutions – the European Central Bank (ECB), the European commission, the presidency of the EU and the head of the eurozone, Jean-Claude Juncker, prime minister of Luxembourg – over the terms of a new deal. Germany was forced to agree to bail out Greece for the second time in a year under strong pressure from the International Monetary Fund following the resignation last month of its head, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the Guardian has learned. Under its acting chief, the American John Lipsky, the IMF has taken a more hardline stance and it warned the Germans in recent weeks that it would withhold urgently needed funds and trigger a Greek sovereign default unless Berlin stopped delaying and pledged firmly that it would come to Greece's rescue.

AsiaNewsAgencies - China: Xintang: police and army occupy city to stop protests. Climate akin to martial law, with police patrolling every street, road blocks, orders for shops and restaurants to close early, people advised not to go out at night. Tens of thousands of migrants are ready to protest on the streets for justice and recognition, tired of constant harassment.Beijing (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The police are now patrolling the streets and putting roadblocks on main thoroughfares of Xintang in the city of Zhengcheng, to end to urban guerrilla warfare that first broke out June 10. But it is a deceptive calm, with tens of thousands of immigrants ready to explode with further protests and violence. Beijing (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The police are now patrolling the streets and putting roadblocks on main thoroughfares of Xintang in the city of Zhengcheng, to end to urban guerrilla warfare that first broke out June 10. But it is a deceptive calm, with tens of thousands of immigrants ready to explode with further protests and violence. summoned the managers of 1,200 companies in the area telling them to "pay close attention to their employees." In an atmosphere akin to martial law, shops and restaurants have been ordered to close early. Residents have been "advised" not to go out at night and not to post pictures of the clashes on line.
http://www.eucouncilfiles.eu/

George Papandreou should resign

George Papandreou pledges to form a new government - After a day which saw world stocks tumble, on which tens of thousands marched on parliament to oppose the swingeing austerity measures designed to stave off bankruptcy, George Papandreou effectively conceded that he had not been able to muster enough support in parliament for the cuts required by international creditors to enable Greece to balance its books. Papandreou has told his conservative opposite number, Antonis Samaras, that he would stand aside and make way for a new leader if the opposition joined his party in a national unity government committed to sweeping reform to pull Greece's economy out of its tailspin. It remained unclear whether the opposition New Democracy party would agree to the move. Party insiders indicated that it would only do so if the government renegotiated the terms of last year's €110bn (£96bn) international bailout package, designed to save Greece from default. "The most important member of a ship's crew is the captain, and the captain has to go," conservative deputy Theodoros Karaoglou said, according to Associated Press. "If we joined forces, we could go to our [creditors] together to negotiate and the results of course would be better." Greece's economy is drowning in more than €300bn of debt – around one and a half times more than the country's entire annual output. Unemployment has rocketed to 16.2%, and the economy is predicted to contract by as much as 3% this year, making it Europe's worst performing economy – and one of the worst in the world.

With Europe's debt crisis intensifying by the day, fear appears to be the single biggest factor motivating those in charge of policy on the common currency. But as finance ministers from the 17 euro countries debated how to bail out Greece for a second time in a year, before an EU summit on 25 June, the signs are not promising. In Athens, a day after Standard and Poor's gave Greece the lowest rating of any country it covers – lower even than Pakistan and Ecuador – the omens appeared to be particularly poor. Differences over involvement of private investors in the rescue package – which is seen as the key to getting Europe's paymaster, Germany, to agree to it at all – this week pushed the cost of insuring Greek government debt against default up to 1,600 basis points, a record high even by the standards set so far. More than ever, Papandreou appears stuck between a rock and a hard place. Faced with a €340bn (£300bn) debt projected to hit 160% of GDP by 2012, Greece is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. In a country plagued by a shadow economy that accounts for almost 30% of GDP, the medicine prescribed by the EU, IMF and ECB in exchange for €110bn of emergency loans last May, has resulted in a deeper than expected recession with further cost-cutting measures now seen as crucial if Greece is not only to rein in its debt but make it sustainable.

- Romania’s major grain traders such as Cargill, Alfred C. Toepfer, Glencore and Nidera exported grain worth EUR1.3 billion from June 2010 through 2011, according to Victor Beznea, president of the Romanian Association of Farm Product Traders (ARCPA).

- The record-high EUR1.5 billion raised by the Finance Ministry last week from the foreign markets brings to over EUR4.5 billion the foreign currency debt accumulated by Romania since the beginning of the year.

According to the source, the U.S. carmaker will produce over 70 B-Max prototypes in Romania this summer. The car parts needed to assemble the B-Max models were produced at Ford's car plants in Germany. The B-Max minivans will be tested soon in Belgium, at Ford Lommel Proving Ground and in other countries. After tests are finished, the cars will be dismantled. Ford Romania will start the production of the new car model next year. B-Max will be produced exclusively in Romania. At the end of March, Ford finished installing the production lines for B-Max and a new family of engines at the Craiova car plant. Ford produced about 3,000 Transit Connect light commercial vehicles in Romania. The U.S. carmaker has invested EUR450 million so far in operations carried out in Craiova.

European Union - EU solidarity ?!...

French banks lead exodus of EU lenders from hardest-hit European economiesEuropean banks increase pressure on Greece and other struggling economies by refusing support for business dealsThe crisis enveloping Greece, Ireland and Portugal appeared to deepen after figures showed EU banks were refusing to support business deals in the EU's hardest-hit economies. Figures from the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) show French, German and UK banks have embarked on a mass exodus from Greece, Portugal, Spain and Ireland, in what analysts see as an effort to bolster their balance sheets and conform to new rules designed to protect financial institutions from going bust. The move is expected to add to tensions in Brussels over how to prevent Greece defaulting on its loans because vital business contracts will cost more to insure. French banks cut their exposure to Greece from $92bn (£57bn) to $65bn in the last three months of 2010. They also reduced their involvement in Ireland, Portugal and Spain, slicing their total exposure to the four hardest-hit economies by $112bn. Richard Batty of Standard Life Investments said the reduction in credit derivatives issued by French banks was due to "the reduced risk appetite of the major banks, and in parallel, a shift to bolstering capital positions to reflect the requirements of the Basle III rules". He said stress tests planned by Brussels for the summer could lead to a further exodus as banks sought to insure only the safest risks.

German and French banks held over two-thirds of the Greek government bonds at the end of last year, accounting for 70% of the $54.2bn owned by banks from 24 countries that report to the BIS.

Romania's Government will seek a confidence vote in Parliament to adopt the act on the country's administrative reorganization, Democratic Liberal Party general secretary Ioan Oltean announced in a press conference on Friday. The government's proposal is to reorganize the country into eight counties, from the current 41. According to Oltean, this new system would improve European Union fund absorption and increase the efficiency with which these funds are used. He pointed out that the EU has not explicitly asked Romania to implement a new territorial organization. The new counties would have their capitals at Cluj-Napoca, Brasov, Timisoara, Craiova, Constanta, Iasi, Ploiesti and Bucharest. The ministries' decentralized services would have eight local offices, instead of 41, bringing the authorities closer to the citizen, according to Oltean. He added that many matters handled by these services and by the county councils would be transferred to commune, town and city halls. Oltean added that the ruling coalition wants the 2012 local elections to use the eight-county administrative organization. Asked why the government has not held a public referendum or a survey on the issue, Oltean replied that they would block or delay reform.

BUCHAREST - Romania sold EUR1.5 billion in five-year bonds at an annual yield of 5.29%, in the first issue of the country's EUR7 billion medium term notes (MTNs) program, with orders books closing at EUR3 billion, a Finance Ministry official said Thursday. Meanwhile - Greece's crisis-hit economy expanded by a sickly 0.2% in the first three months of this year – even worse than first thought – as its fiscal austerity measures strangled demand, official figures have revealed. The bailed-out economy is now shrinking at an annual rate of 5.5%, instead of an initial estimate of 4.8%, the Greek statistical agency said on Thursday. Bond yields jumped after the announcement, with the government now facing paying 25.08% over two years if it tried to borrow from the financial markets. The cost of insuring Greek debt against default also hit new record highs. Athens is widely expected to receive a fresh bailout from its eurozone partners in the coming weeks, but Germany is locked in a standoff with the European Central Bank about the terms of any new assistance package, and whether Greece's private sector creditors will have to bear part of the cost. The ECB is concerned that forcing bondholders to take a loss could spark a catastrophic loss of confidence in Europe's banks, many of which are sitting on millions of euros-worth of Greek debt.

A further indication of Germany’s competitiveness is the constant high GDP share of the manufacturing industry over the past years. While other countries had to relocate production to other countries, Germany was able to keep a large part of the production at home. The German automotive industry is as a good example; the number of cars produced has remained relatively stable at around 5 million cars per year since 1999. However, the value of each car has increased significantly. Germany remains a market leader in many sub segments of the mechanical engineering and equipment manufacturing industry. The good overall economic situation was clearly reflected in the earnings of a lot of German companies. Car manufacturers have reported record sales, in particular driven by exports into booming emerging markets. In China the purchase of Audi cars has now surpassed that of Germany. Industrial and chemical companies were also able to increase sales and profits significantly. The stock price of German companies followed this positive earnings development. The ongoing uncertainty about a solution for the European sovereign debt crisis, stronger increased raw material prices as well as a possible headwind by a stronger euro are currently weighing on the stock market and could result in an higher volatility, especially during the summer months. Several economic indicators, like the IFO business climate index, could also get weaker and thus signal a slight slowdown of the economy in the second half of 2011. Therefore we have a conservative outlook for the DAX at the end of the year of 7600 to 7800 points. The mid-term outlook remains nevertheless positive and ideally new all-time highs for the DAX could already be within reach this year.

HAMBURG, Germany — First they pointed a finger at Spanish cucumbers. Then they cast suspicion on sprouts from Germany. Now German officials appear dumbfounded as to the source of the deadliest E. coli outbreak in modern history, and one U.S. expert called the investigation a "disaster." Backtracking for the second time in a week, officials Monday said preliminary tests have found no evidence that vegetable sprouts from an organic farm in northern Germany were to blame. The surprise U-turn came only a day after the same state agency, Lower Saxony's agriculture ministry, held a news conference to announce that the sprouts appeared to be the culprit in the outbreak that has killed 22 people and sickened more than 2,330 others across Europe, most of them in Germany, over the past month. Andreas Hensel, head of Germany's Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, warned, "We have to be clear on this: Maybe we won't be able anymore to identify the source." At an EU health ministers meeting Monday in Luxembourg, Germany defended itself against accusations it had acted prematurely in pointing to Spanish cucumbers. "The virus is so aggressive that we had to check every track," said Health State Secretary Annette Widmann-Mauz. The EU will hold an emergency meeting of farm ministers Tuesday to address the crisis, including a ban imposed by Russia on all EU vegetables.

Greek Accord - Factory-gate prices in the euro region rose 6.7 percent from a year earlier after increasing a revised 6.8 percent in March, the EU’s statistics office in Luxembourg said. That’s the first decline since August. Economists had projected a reading of 6.6 percent last month, according to the median of 21 estimates in another Bloomberg survey. The yield on Greek two-year debt tumbled 25 basis points to 22.59 percent. It earlier dropped as much as 78 basis points to 22.07 percent, the lowest since April 21. Ten-year yields fell eight basis points to 15.86 percent. The EU and IMF accord to pay the next installment to Greece under last year’s 110 billion-euro bailout paves the way for an upgraded aid package that includes a “voluntary” role for investors. Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou will aim to quell growing dissent this week within his Socialist party -- known as Pasok -- over the deeper austerity measures as voters’ patience wears thin and public protests mount. ‘Buying Time’ - “It’s a question of buying a little bit more time for letting Greece prove that they can, or cannot, put the reforms in place, but also to reduce the risk of contagion maybe to some of the other economies,” Laurent Fransolet, head of European fixed-income strategy at Barclays Capital in London said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “The Pulse” with Maryam Nemazee. Greece remains shut out of the financial markets a year after it became the first euro-region nation to request external assistance. Ireland and Portugal have since requested aid. The euro fell to a more than four-year low of $1.1877 on June 7, 2010, amid market fears of sovereign default. While the shared European currency has recovered, touching a 17-month high of $1.4940 on May 4, bonds from Greece, Ireland and Portugal extended their fall, pushing yields to new euro-era records last month as the market sought assurance that default will be avoided. Portuguese Election - Portugal’s Social Democrat leader Pedro Passos Coelho said he will seek to form a governing coalition with the third-placed People’s Party to enact austerity measures mandated by the nation’s 78 billion-euro bailout. “Early results that the socialist party had lost power and that center-right parties would be able to form a new majority government, avoiding a potentially damaging political stalemate, should be seen as a positive development for Portuguese credit,” Huw Worthington, a fixed-income strategist at Barclays Plc in London, wrote in an e-mailed note today. Portuguese 10-year yields fell four basis points to 9.77 percent, while the two-year note yield declined 14 basis points to 10.79 percent.

S&P warned that the re-profiling of loans would almost certainly be considered a default and lead to a further downgrading of Greece's debt. "Such a lengthening of maturities would constitute a default under our criteria because the sovereign debtor will pay less than under the original terms of the obligation," it said. A further downgrade would increase Greece's already sky-high borrowing costs. The yields on 10-year bonds are already in excess of 16%. S&P said that testing the effect of a voluntary exchange would be a tougher challenge but any hint of the word voluntary being used to disguise an imposed cut in loan valuations would also trigger a default notice from the ratings agency and a subsequent downgrade. Jim Reid, a credit strategist at Deutsche Bank, warned that a technical downgrade was unlikely to stop the EU going ahead with a restructuring of Greece's loan book. He said that EU banks could maintain the nominal value of the loans on their balance sheets despite the view of S&P and other ratings agencies that the loans were worth less after the restructuring. He said the banks and the EU would disguise the real effect of the restructuring. Without a material cut in loan values, hedging instruments, known as credit default swaps (CDS), can remain untouched. CDSs act as a form of insurance against a bond default by a company or country.

Speaking in Aachen in Germany, Trichet urged closer European integration as the means of imposing discipline on countries which failed to keep their public finances in order, monitor economic reform and provide a common approach to dealing with Europe's financial sector.
The ECB president said his plan would fall short of giving a pan-European finance ministry tax-raising powers, but suggested that the idea was a logical next step.
"In this union of tomorrow, or of the day after tomorrow, would it be too bold, in the economic field, with a single market and a single central bank, to envisage a ministry of finance of the union?" he said as he accepted the Charlemagne prize for contributions to European unity.
Trichet's intervention came on the eve of Friday's announcement of the terms Greece will have to accept for a second bailout from the EU and IMF.
Trichet acknowledged that a central ministry would be a radical step for the European Union and require a revision of its underlying treaty. While supporters of closer integration believe there is currently little political appetite in member states for a fresh transfer of powers to the centre, they argue that the only alternative to closer fiscal union will be the break-up of the single currency.