The Greek government will not receive €1.2bn (£883m) in European rescue funds after the bloc's officials ruled the Leftist government had no legal claims on the cash.  Athens requested a return of the funds it said were erroneously handed to creditors from Greece's own bank recapitalisation fund, the Hellenic Financial Stability Facility (HFSF).  The transfer was originally arranged by the previous Greek administration.   But eurozone offcials have blocked the claim, saying it is "legally impossible" transfer the money back to Athens.   "There was agreement that, legally, there was no over payment from the HFSF to the EFSF," said an fund spokesman.   Germany's finance ministry was also reluctant to allow the release, claiming there was "no reason" to make the transfer. The decision is a further blow to the Greek government's attempts to stay afloat over the next few weeks. Athens has been scrambling to make repayments to its creditors and continue to pay wages and pensions. The government now faces another €450m cash squeeze at the beginning of April. As part of its efforts to stay solvent, the Leftist government has also requested a €1.9bn transfer of profits held by the European Central Bank, from the holdings of its Greek debt.  So far, the ECB has rebuffed all Greek pleas to alleviate their cash squeeze. The central bank moved to officially bank the country's banks from increasing their holdings of short-term government debt.

A Greek court overturned a governmental decree on Monday which saw the closure of the country’s state broadcaster last week. The ERT can now resume programming until a final decision is made, a judicial source said. A Greek court ruled that shuttered state broadcaster ERT must reopen immediately, a court official said on Monday, offering the squabbling ruling coalition a way out of a political crisis over the station’s abrupt closure.  The ruling - which ordered ERT switched back on until a restructured public broadcaster is launched - came six day after Prime Minister Antonis Samaras took it off air in the name of austerity and public sector layoffs to please foreign lenders.  The ruling appeared to vindicate Samaras’s stance that a leaner, cheaper public broadcaster must be set up but also allowed for ERT’s immediate reopening as his coalition partners had demanded, offering all three a way out of an impasse that had raised the specter of snap polls.  “It appears that the interim decision of the top administrative court gives the three leaders an opportunity to find a face-saving formula,” said Theodore Couloumbis of the ELIAMEP think-tank.  A live feed of ERT - whose journalists have continued broadcasting over the Internet in defiance of orders - showed workers breaking into applause on hearing the court ruling. ERT’s Symphony Orchestra began an outdoor concert outside its headquarters, playing an old news jingle to cheering supporters.  “I’ve been here seven nights and this is the first time I’ve seen people smile,” said Eleni Hrona, an ERT reporter outside the headquarters.  Earlier, Samaras had offered to reopen a pared-down version of the state broadcaster under temporary management, reshuffle the cabinet and update the coalition’s agreement to improve cooperation between the parties, a government official said.  “It’s a last-ditch move by the prime minister to reach a compromise and avoid elections,” the official said.  The transitional broadcaster would then pave the way for the smaller, cheaper public broadcaster that Samaras initially had promised would replace ERT.  Exactly a year after a parliamentary election brought Samaras and his two leftist allies to power, the parties have fed fears of a hugely disruptive snap poll by refusing to compromise over an entity widely unloved until its shock overnight closure.  “It’s clear that over the last days any semblance of logic in dealing with this issue has been lost,” said Costas Panagopoulos, head of ALCO pollsters.

IS THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH (ALL OF THE 53 STATES) PART OF THE E.U .????...

IS THE BRITISH COMMONWEALTH (ALL OF THE 53 STATES) PART OF THE E.U .????...Well, I believe it should ...at least Canada, New Zealand and Australia should ...what do you say ???

  The big political changes being made in the eurozone as a result of the currency crisis would warrant a renegotiation, Brussels concedes. But there are major political obstacles in the member states militating against reopening the treaty. Even before a vote on a new settlement in Britain, a revised Lisbon treaty would certainly trigger referendum calls in Ireland or Denmark. "Then you have the domino effect. What about the Netherlands, Sweden, France. [President François] Hollande's position is key. He needs a referendum like a hole in the head," said one of the officials. Opinion polls show a pattern of collapsing support for the EU in France while Hollande's ratings are at historical lows for a French president. Hollande was traumatised by France's rejection of an EU constitution in 2005 and would seek to avoid any such repetition. "There will be huge pressure for referendums," said one of the senior sources. "But politicians are unlikely to start on the road to referendums if they think they will lose them." There is also exasperation in EU capitals that Cameron has declined, as yet, to flesh out what kind of changes he wants or which policy areas he hopes to renegotiate. The puzzlement extends to British officials and business. A delegation from the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) was in Brussels on Monday and sounded out the European Commission about what Downing Street wanted because they have not been told. Similar puzzlement surrounds the battery of EU police, justice, and security measures that Britain needs to renegotiate, a policy recently severely criticized by a House of Lords inquiry as damaging the British national interest.

Under the Lisbon treaty, Britain has to opt out of more than 130 EU police and justice instruments en bloc and then re-negotiate the bits it wants to retain with other EU governments and with the European Commission. Senior commission sources say the home secretary, Theresa May, has not contacted Cecilia Malmstrom, one of the commissioners responsible, since last year....

Eurogroup chief and Dutch finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem wants new bail-in rules to give "pari passu" treatment to uninsured deposits and senior bank bondholders, and is reluctant to allow exemptions.   He said he was open to discussion on the matter, but wanted the new rules to take effect as soon as possible, in 2015. ere are too many finance ministers around the table to go into as much detail as I would like, but so far France, Ireland, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Belgium, and the European Central Bank have stated that they are in favor of a depositor preference when it comes to bail-ins.  These countries argue that uninsured depositors (people with more than €100,000 in the bank) should be lower in the hierarchy than senior bondholders when it comes to who should be bailed-in to pay for a bail-out. Surprise surprize, the EU has failed to agree on a long-delayed tax evasion directive. Algirdas Semeta, the EU commissioner responsible for taxation, said he was "disappointed" that countries could not reach agreement on the directive.

Banks have virtually admitted to fraudulent activities or in their words "mis-selling",

Although most banks have copped a plea over rate rigging, money laundering and PPI fraud and won't be appearing in a court room any time soon, that still doesn't stopindividuals or class action law suits taking place. We should remember that "mis-selling" in banking parlance is viewed as "fraud" in the public's vocabulary and that is why they copped a plea to stop court actions to test this position. We have seen a few of these private cases already happening in the USA from large investors and considering the banks have virtually admitted to fraudulent activities or in their words "mis-selling", the evidence is sitting there to take them to court for having all manner of common banking products being rigged against the customer.

Up till now its only the large organizations who have taken the steps to sue the banks but there's no reason why it shouldn't dribble downwards to Mr. & Mrs. Joe Public with a 100k mortgage or an investment whose costs or returns were adversely affected by interest rate rigging. Then there's the common cash ISA's which millions of people have in the UK let alone normal savings. Just how much would that cost to re-imburse people for lost interest.

All that needs to be proved in court is that your banking product was adversely affected by your bank rigging interest rates, commodity prices, power costs, etc, etc and the banks are f***** big time. This is the reason the banks have caved in so easily to the regulators to try and deflect the small investor from taking legal action. However, it won't be long before claims company's create a simple program to figure out how much extra a borrower paid on their mortgage due to the illegal actions of banks and then sue them for compensation and of course their 30% cut. If the banks think they're nearing the end of their self inflicted troubles, don't believe a word of it as there is a lot more to come and some banks will more than likely go under. For savers and perhaps investors, its probably a good move to rate the banks on their exposure to self created criminal behavior and if your bank is in the top 10 banks for future 'fraud' compensation, then pull your savings before they go bust as the FSCS has limits to compensation whatever the government says.

Remember, you heard this first here as I predict that within a year we'll see banks paying compensation on inflated & manipulated mortgage interest rates....
The upper echelons of the EU are showing their mastery (or maybe only their determination) in hiding unconvenient things from the public once again. Interesting to note, that during the start of the Target2 discussion in Germany, a Germany economist did an analysis of the collateral, that southern states had provided for their Target2 liablilities. And the result had been quite shocking, from Spain, he found a loan by Real Madrid, that had been created to buy Christiano Ronaldo and from Portugal there was something, you could call a really long-term bond, since it had an interest rate of 0% and a maturity time of 9999 years (and thats not a typo).Basically - as they proclaimed - the ECB will do "everything" to prop up the south, no matter how risky or legit, as long as they can plaster over the cracks of EMU.
And hey, after all the South has the absolute voting majority in the ECB directorate. Why so shy showing that you are damn well using it?


 

There must be times when Elsa Fornero feels she has the world's worst job. When the 63-year-old stepped out to buy a new pair of shoes last weekend, she was accompanied by no fewer than 10 police officers: six plainclothes bodyguards and another four to close off the pedestrian precinct in Turin where she went shopping. There are anti-mafia prosecutors who get less protection. But then Fornero is Italy's welfare and employment minister, and the architect of labour reform laws that were approved by the cabinet on Friday. Among other things, it will now be easier for bosses to axe workers in an economic downturn. The last full-scale attempt to free up Italy's labour market was 10 years ago. The man behind that reform was Marco Biagi who was shot dead by the self-styled New Red Brigades. Three years earlier, the same group murdered Massimo D'Antona, another academic who was the adviser on employment law reform to the then centre-left government. Clearly, some people feel Fornero, an economics professor at the University of Turin, should meet the same fate: a demonstrator was photographed earlier this week outside parliament in Rome wearing a T-shirt with the slogan "Fornero for the cemetery".The New Red Brigades, several of whose members had links with the most extreme wing of the trade union movement, have since been dismantled. But labour law reform remains Italy's hottest political potato. A two-tier labour market divides virtually un-sackable, mainly older workers in indefinite employment from younger ones hired on an endless succession of short-term contracts that offer them almost nothing in the way of welfare benefits. The Fornero reform also includes measures to encourage bosses to give younger people apprenticeships, which guarantee modest welfare benefits and offer the chance of a long-term engagement. The minister behind it has shown a rare - but seemingly unwished for - ability to attract attention. In December, she broke down in tears at a press conference as she announced an end to inflation-indexing for all but the lowest pension bands. The move was later reversed.