"Austrian Finance Minister, Hans Joerg Schelling said the Greek proposals left much to interpretation, suggesting clarity and more detail would be needed  before an agreement is possible. This letter has many sentences with much space for interpretation. We have to work on it now...”Now there's a surprise! The Greeks are showing their usual preciseness. Oh, and somebody is working in Brussels on a FRIDAY AFTERNOON!...'Administrative error' = WHITE FLAG = surrender to the Troika - and to hell with what the Greek voters democratically voted for.  Just like re-runs of the LisconAct of Treachery - formerly known as the EU Federalist Constitution. Must admit I was wondering how they were going to 'con' us all - but an - 'administrative error' really is scraping the bottom of the barrel isn't it !!!! Where's the office bod who pushed the button - sack her/him.....!!!!!!  We're approaching silly o'clock in the eurozone. The Greeks are reported to have "accidentally" sent the wrong letter to their eurozone partners on Thursday, according to Germany's Bild. Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis sent an altered version of the letter in which - against previous agreements - he omitted assurances that Greece will accept bailout conditions agreed to by the previous government, according to Bild. "An administrative error" apparently.

The eurozone was never designed with an exit plan in mind. The Maastricht Treaty’s 112 pages make no mention of a way for a country to pull out of the euro project.  At the height of the eurozone crisis in 2011 and 2012, policymakers refused to countenance the idea of a splintered euro bloc.   When pressed on the issue in late 2011, Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank (ECB), would only say the possibility “is not in the treaty”.   He was discussing the chance of a Greek exit - or Grexit - from the euro, a risk that has come back to haunt the project’s architects in recent weeks.   The rise of populist anti-austerity parties across the continent - including Syriza in Greece - threatens to tear apart the bloc. Last week analysts warned that the risk of a euro breakup was greater than at the height of the last crisis.   The odds on a Grexit offered this Friday - before a deal between Greece and its creditors was struck - gave it a more than a one-in-three chance by the end of the year.

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.

 

Greece: Just tell the Jackboots to bugger off.

Greece has secured a four-month reprieve from eurozone creditors at a last-ditch summit in Brussels, heading off imminent default and a traumatic rupture of monetary union.   The interim accord gives Greece breathing room to flesh out its economic agenda and reform plans, and effectively scraps the draconian fiscal targets imposed by the EU-IMF Troika.  Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal: trying to get anything done in those countries is like trying to herd cats. The bureaucracy, the lack of flexibility, the absurd and utterly pointless rituals of administration and form filling, the insane hurdles that have to be faced when doing business or even the most basic of survival functions drives anyone from the Anglo Saxon cultures absolutely crazy. These are countries that live in the aftermath of decades of dictatorship, and the mentality of those societies is still bound by the dynamics between a violent oppressor and a nation of helpless dependents who were not allowed to think for themselves.  Individualism is just not what it is is in say the UK. Spain is a good example of a culture stuck in a corruption. If you want to get anything done you have to avoid going through the bureaucratic processes that are so punitive, irrational and unfair that you are forced into 'going black'. That means avoiding, as best you can, declaring anything you do to the authorities. This is why collecting taxes is difficult. No one declares what they are doing because to do so is such an ordeal of bureaucracy, punitive costs and legal processes that the only way to achieve anything is to avoid the system. Spaniards are very hard, skilful and committed workers, but they work within a framework of rules and regulations, of corrupt traditions and established interests that disable them. These countries need revolutions to throw off their oppressive regimes, and until that happens they will languish in dysfunction.

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.

The economic divide between Europe's largest economies widened in February, as a closely-watched survey showed manufacturing output in France contracted at a faster rate than Greece, despite the weakening euro. Output at French factories fell for a ninth consecutive month in February, as new orders dried up and overseas demand fell. This led to a further fall in employment, Markit said, as it described general demand in France as "lacklustre".   By contrast, a stronger rise in new business helped output at German manufacturers expand for the 22nd consecutive month in February. Markit described the latest rise as "broad-based", but said growth was "weak by historical standards"... France will once again miss an important target which all Euro Zone countries agreed to adhere to upon joining the Single Currency.  It is 3%, but not completely sure if that refers to Balance of Trade, Inflation or so.  This month, it will be discussed in Brussels once the figures for 2014 are finalised. France is not doing very well right now and they won't enjoy Germany telling them how to get their house in order. However, I reckon they will escape being punished/penalised - again. ...

Slowly, all the lies of the "recovery", all the skeletons in the closet, and all the bodies swept under the rug are emerging.  Austrian ORF reported that there have been "spectacular developments" in the case of the Hypo Alpe Adria bad bank, also known as the Heta Asset Resolution, where an outside audit of Heta's balance sheet exposed a capital hole of up to 7.6 billion euros ($8.51 billion) which the government was not prepared to fill, the Austrian Financial Market Authority said.

The motor for economic growth is the spending power of the lower and middle income groups. 20% of the pensioners money flows back into the government coffer with VAT.

Those selling must pay taxes, also the manufacturer and farmers that make the products. Selling, buying creates demand that in turn creates jobs.  The UK used quantitative easing, (printing money-leaving the incurred debt to be paid for by later generations) to increase the availability of cash .  Manufacturing is not the economic motor of the UK, the banks that have moved on from lending to businesses now make their money from speculation in 'money products' leaving manufactures without loans and cash strapped like never before.  Without is social safety network and pensions the UK would see consumer power decimated, its the poor that actually keep the UK ponzi scheme afloat.  The new Greek government has pledged to repay in full  obligations to the International Monetary Fund and the European  Central Bank. Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis outlined plans  to swap some debt into new securities and link repayment with  economic growth.   Until now Greece has been paying its debts with a credit card making the debt larger and unsustainable.  The Greeks must return to growth, for the first time since the 2e world war it has a government that could deliver....As the EU's favourite soap - Greekenders - was entering its fifth  season, we wondered if the writers had run out of ideas.  Of course, we still had all our favourite characters - tough, tight-fisted housewife Mrs Merkel, miserable old sod Mr Schäuble, suntanned (crocodile-skinned?) fashionista Ms Lagarde and stylish, suave Italian lothario Mario Draghi.  But with the endless austerity and falling viewing figures, we wondered whether Greekenders was on the way out as Europe's favourite evening entertainment, whether we were heading for what we in the TV business call a "Grexit".  Thankfully the Greekenders writers have responded to public concern about a boring plot with the introduction of two exciting new characters.  There's the flamboyant young second-hand car dealer Alexis Tsipras with his flashing smile, filmstar looks and smooth sales patter.  And there's the new accountant - Yanis Varoufakis. But the new Greekenders accountant is not some boring, besuited nobody. He's a young, shaven-headed,  motorbike-riding smoothie with a Mediterranean charm and a way with the numbers that might even put a bit of fire into the cold, stone-like hearts of grim misery-guts Merkel and crocodile-skinned Ms Lagarde.