Financial Crisis in Greece

[Brian]

Now why can't RoM be more like Iceland and tell the banks, IMF and EU to just F'-off?
(Brian Post060
"Iceland's Viking Victory"
http://www.macedoniantruth.org/forum...?t=5708&page=6 )

RtG Post049
Think Queen ... "Another one bites the dust"

dm dm dm .... Romania bites the dust

Brian Post050
lol, RtG. With a long list of countries going that way, they'll have to get the extended LP version of the song.

For goodness sake the writting is on the wall - 'The EU Will Be Dead'.

Even Spain is going the way of Greece and when that 'bag-of-shit-hits-the-fan' the spray will be massive. Why the hell does RoM want to join the EU??? From Gruo's intentions I think Macedonians should realise he is a sell-out on the take. Is there noone to stand up in RoM like in Iceland?

Is this what Macedonians want for RoM??? Although somehow I suspect they will be sitting in cafes watching the police walking up and down the streets wondering where the protesters are.
30 Mar 2012
Spanish Protests

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=BOAU395mfJw

[Brian]

Goes to show even prostitutes have a concious where bankers don't.

Spanish Prostitutes won't service Bankers

http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/20696/48/

Thursday, 29 March 2012
Credit card declined?
Spain's high-class escorts are refusing services to the country's bankers until they start offering bigger loans for cash-strapped families and firms.

The sex workers say their indefinite strike will continue until bank employees "fulfil their responsibility to society", it has been claimed.
Sneaky bankers were trying to circumvent the protest by claiming to be architects or engineers, the sex-workers said, adding that this was "not fooling anyone".
"It has been many years since these professionals could afford rates that start from 300 euros per hour," the Daily Telegraph quoted a sex worker as saying.

Madrid's largest luxury prostitute trade association is reportedly initiating the strike.
"We are the only ones with a real ability to pressure the sector.
"We have been on strike for three days now and we don't think they can withstand much more," said a woman, known as Ana MG.

The association said the move came after one of its members, Lucia, pressured a bank employee client to grant a loan by halting her 'sexual services.'
Mexican website SDPnoticias.com, who was joined by Russia Today in breaking the news which some have claimed is a "hoax", reported that the bankers became so desperate they called in the government for mediation.

[Brian]

Now why can't RoM be more like Iceland and tell the banks, IMF and EU to just F'-off?
(Brian Post060
"Iceland's Viking Victory"
http://www.macedoniantruth.org/forum...?t=5708&page=6 )

British MEP: Icelanders are too smart to join the EU
30 March 2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=669cmmGeui8

[Risto the Great]

Goes to show even prostitutes have a concious where bankers don't.

I'm thinking hoax, but whores are attracted to the EU by definition.

[George S.]

If it were by example look at where it got greece & bulgaria & other countries .Soon they are all going for broke.What do they hope to get out of it???Can they survive without the eu headaches??Of course don't join no one is holding a gun at your head??

[Brian]

I really feel said for the Greeks I really do

I hope that's tong-in-cheek!, otherwise your insane.

I know it's not entirely all there fault but that's irrelevant - whether an enemy hurts themselves or is hurt by someone else you should still cheer.

I hate reading articles of Macedonians who have no relatives there (or anyone else) going on just a holiday to Greece as if it's some cool thing to do. I have NO sympathy at all for Macedonians with no legit reason who do.

Anyone who sees them as anything else than an enemy is insane.

[Risto the Great]

I feel sad for Greeks.
Then I remember them kicking my grandmother's head in and pulling her hair out ... then I see those maggots "Moulden Spawn" pretending they are some pure uber-race ... then I don't feel sad for Greeks.

But I would hate for any of them to lose their Mediterranean paunches if that means anything.

[Zarni]

I hope that's tong-in-cheek!, otherwise your insane

Sarcasm Brian, I hate Greeks

[Stojacanec]

It's strange how their knees are still dirty from begging the Germans to save them from financial ruin, only to get up and beat their chests again.

[George S.]

Greek debt accord hostage to political passions

Greek debt accord hostage to political passions

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

9:13PM GMT 21 Feb 2012

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/9097005/Greek-debt-accord-hostage-to-political-passions.html#.T0QlsI-_aYM.email

Eurozone leaders have put off the day of reckoning for a few more months but the latest €130bn rescue package for Greece offers no path out of the crisis and is hostage to explosive political passions.



Greek elections in April are likely to sweep away the political class tainted by the hated "Memorandum" of the EU-IMF Troika, with the once dominant PASOK party down to 13pc in the latest poll and votes peeling away to the Communists, the Democratic Left, and Syriza.

Alexis Tsipras, the Syriza leader, told the Greek parliament on Tuesday that his country was victim of a "terrorist" assault. "This agreement is binding only on those who signed it. The accord carries the signature of a government with no popular legitimacy. It does not bind Greek democracy, or Greek society, or the Left. Very soon the sovereign people will regain their sovereignty," he said.

Greek nationalists of all stripes are enraged by EU demands for an escrow account to dock Greek revenues at source for debt repayment, with an EU taskforce chief stationed permanently in Athens to enforce reforms. "If Europe keeps adding insult to injury, this is going to turn explosive," said Dimitris Daskalopoulos, head of the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises.

Greek finance minister Evangelos Venizelos said the deal had averted the "nightmare" of default in March. "What would have happened today in Greece, in the eurozone, in Europe, and to the world economy if early this morning after 15 hours of talks the Eurogroup didn't approve the programme?" he asked.

His EU colleagues put the best face on the accord, which cuts Greece's debt by about 30pc. Banks, pension funds, insurers, and other private creditors will bear the brunt of the losses, with a change in Greek law if necessary to flush out resisters. The new "haircut" will be 53.5pc on €206bn of bonds, a 74pc writedown with stretched maturities.

The EU has shaved 50 basis points off the interest charged on its rescue loans to Greece, reducing the profit made by AAA creditor states. The European Central Bank will chip in €11bn by forgoing future "gains" on Greek bonds bought at a discount.

The package will in theory allow Greece to cap its debt at just over 120pc of GDP – deemed the maximum sustainable level by the International Monetary Fund – but only if all goes perfectly, and only if the Greek people are willing to endure a decade of belt-tightening and depression for such a meagre prospect.

The unvarnished view of EU insiders is laid bare by a document marked "strictly confidential" that confirms what critics have been saying for months: that "Troika" policies are self-defeating.

"Even under the most optimistic scenario, the austerity measures being imposed on Athens risk a recession so deep that Greece will not be able to climb out of the debt hole," it said.

The document sketched out an "alternative scenario" if the economy fails to recover. "Debt to GDP would fall to around 160pc of GDP by 2020. Financing needs through 2020 would amount to perhaps €245bn. With debt ratios so high in the next decade, smaller shocks would produce unsustainable dynamics, leaving the program highly accident-prone."

In a damning verdict, it said there was a "fundamental tension" between the two goals of cutting debt and cutting wages. "The internal devaluation needed to restore's Greece's competitiveness will inevitably lead to a higher debt to GDP ratio in the short term," it said.

Much the same critique could be made of EU austerity demands imposed on Portugal, and to a lesser extent on Spain, and Italy. It is hard – if not impossible – for a country to regain lost competitiveness in a fixed exchange system if it has a high debt stock, as famously argued by Irving Fisher in "Debt Deflation Causes of Great Depressions" in 1933.

The EU's "alternative scenario" already looks optimistic. It assumed that Greek GDP fell 6.1pc last year. In fact, it fell by 6.8pc, accelerating to a 7pc rate in the final quarter. It sketches a worst-case contraction of 4.8pc this year, while the Greek Labour Institute is forecasting -7pc.

Unemployment jumped by 126,000 in November in a country of 11m, pushing the rate to 20.9pc. The picture is certain to darken further as state slashes the public sector by a fifth over three years to comply with EU demands. With the banking system paralysed – unable to issue letters of credit accepted anywhere in the world – the private sector is hamstrung. "We still see Greece leaving the eurozone before the year is out," said Jennifer McKeown from Capital Economics.

If pessimists are right, it will become clear within months that Greece needs an even bigger rescue package, this time with "haircuts" for the EU's creditor states as well. Any such request is likely to stretch patience in the German, Dutch and Finnish parliaments to snapping point.

Simon Derrick from BNY Mellon said the stark reality of Euroland is that Germany has still refused to cross the Rubicon to genuine EU fiscal union or debt-pooling, sticking adamantly to its mantra of "Stability Union".

There have been no bailouts so far, only loan packages. Countries trapped in EMU with overvalued exchange rates and no control over monetary policy face the choice of immense pain or "dignified exits" from the euro, he said.

For now, Europe's leaders are holding to their line that Greece is a special case, refusing to acknowledge that the EMU drama is at root a North-South trade crisis, compounded by contractionary polices that have tipped Club Med back into recession and made the task that much harder. It may take more than Greece to force epiphany.

[George S.]

Greek debt deal will have others demanding the same

Greek debt deal will have others demanding the same
ERIC REGULY



ROME— From Saturday's Globe and Mail - Published Friday, Mar. 09, 2012 7:27PM EST

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/eric-reguly/greek-debt-deal-will-have-others-demanding-the-same/article2365168/

If I were in Dublin or Lisbon or Madrid, I would be thinking: You lucky, undeserving bastards.

The bastards are, of course, the Greek Treasury and Finance thugs – led by that bulldozer of a Finance Minister, Evangelos Venizelos – who shook down private holders of Greek sovereign debt for more than €100-billion ($130-billion). The investors really had no choice in the deal. Athens presented them with an all-or-nothing option, to the point that the coalition of the unwilling was squeezed out through retroactive collective action clauses.

As a result, their bonds will lose more than 70 per cent of their net present value and Greece’s crushing national debt of €350-billion will be reduced by a bit more than €100-billion.

The debt-crunch effort, which is bound to be legally challenged by the investors who hold the small proportion of the debt governed by international law, was essentially ordered at gunpoint by Athens, the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank (the latter three are known as the troika). Without it, the EU and the IMF would have withheld Greece’s second bailout, worth €130-billion, and the country would have imploded like Lehman Bros.

Now, pretend you are the finance ministers of Portugal, Ireland and Spain, the three most economically and financially stressed countries in the euro zone, after Greece. Me too, you would say; you would also want special treatment to lighten your debt financing burden.

You could ask, but you would get this answer from the troika: Dream on, debt pigs.

The troika has made it abundantly clear that Greece is a special case, a never-to-be repeated exercise in sovereign debt elimination. Indeed, last summer, the EU leaders said that Greece’s debt “haircut,” to use the argot of the bond traders, “would not be replicated in Portugal.”

This must have made the gums of the Portuguese and Irish finance ministers bleed with rage. Corrupt, feckless Greece had lied for years about the size of its budget deficit and debt. It had allowed tax evasion to become a national sport. It had failed to meet most of the conditions of its first austerity package. That was the one it had agreed to put into place in 2010 in exchange for its maiden bailout, worth €110-billion.

And yet Greece was rewarded for endless bad behaviour. It nailed lower interest charges on its bailout loans (saving an estimated €1.4-billion over five years) plus the right to frog-march private bond investors into the barbershop for a buzz cut and secure a second bailout.

Portugal and Ireland got no goodies, even though they collected taxes, implemented their agreed austerity programs and generally obeyed the troika’s every command.

Of course the troika’s big fat “No” to special treatment for other ailing countries can’t stop the ailing from asking. Why wouldn’t they? Their governments have fiduciary duties to get the best value for their taxpayers.

Ireland had started its lobbying effort for bailout concessions well before Greece knew its debt haircut would succeed. It wants the ECB to cut the cost to the government of bailing out its banks, whose collapse triggered the Irish rescue. “If the ECB are prepared to make this kind of concession to Greece, it would encourage me to think that they might be ready to make concessions on the promissory note to Ireland,” Irish Finance Minister Michael Noon told state broadcaster RTE earlier this year.

With Greece (at least temporarily) fixed, you can bet Ireland, Portugal and perhaps Spain will ramp up their lobbying effort for favours. Spain is already jockeying for position, it appears. Last week, the country’s new centre-right Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, surprised EU officials with the news that Spain had no intention of meeting its 2012 target deficit of 4.4 per cent of gross domestic product; the new target is 5.8 per cent. Might he blow another target unless he gets some concessions on the EU’s new fiscal-discipline treaty?

The problem for the troika is that delivering special treatment to one country – Greece – virtually guarantees that it will have to do the same to anyone else who comes cap in hand. That’s not just because it has set a precedent with Greece; it’s also because the Greek haircut has the potential to make the economic and financial situations worse in the clapped-out countries, Italy included.

How? For the simple reason that the Greek debt haircut turned private bond holders into second-class citizens. The Greek bonds held by the ECB were exempt from the haircut, which only pushed more losses onto the private bond holders. The collective action clauses were inserted retroactively. No investor would have bought the bonds if the CACs had existed at the time of purchase.

The result is wholly predictable. The Greek haircut will rattle the debt market in the weak countries once the soothing effects of the ECB’s €1-trillion gusher of cheap loans to the European banks wears off. Note that Portuguese bond yields are already pushing back up to 14 per cent, a near doubling in one year. That’s a crisis level.

It looks as if Portugal, like Greece, will need a second bailout. It also looks like Portugal will demand a Greek-style haircut on its privately held bonds. The rising Portuguese bond yields suggest investors know their investments could get clobbered. The troika may have contained the Greek crisis, for a while. But it has set the stage for the opposite elsewhere in the euro zone.

[Niko777]

Greece’s debt crisis drives elderly man to suicide in busy Athens square



Source: http://www.thestar.com/news/world/ar...-athens-square

[Niko777]

UNICEF: Over 400.000 children live under poverty line in Greece


Athens, 4 April 2012 (MIA) - Some 439,000 children now live under the poverty line in Greece – the equivalent of 23% of the total population compared to an average 20.5% in other European countries, reads a report by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

The report cited the growing number of cases of underfed children fainting in schools, saying poverty was more pronounced in single-parent families.

The poverty levels are more stunning given Greece's dramatically declining population. Children as a proportion of the country's population have dwindled from 32% in 1961 to 17.4% in 2011, according to the report. More than a third of Greece's entire population are living under the poverty line compared to a fifth before the outbreak of the crisis.

[Zarni]

They will all grow up to call their Neighbours across the border "Skopian Slavs" dont worry they will have plenty to feed on

[Zarni]

Greece’s debt crisis drives elderly man to suicide in busy Athens square

Good one less Greek Dinosaur