Showing posts with label Germany. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Germany. Show all posts

Friday, March 6, 2015

Greece vs. Germany: Two Competing National Narratives

One reason behind the bitter turn in Greek talks is how the two countries view themselves

The Wall Street Journal

By STEPHEN FIDLER
March 5, 2015 4:34 p.m. ET

The tone of Europe’s political debate about keeping Greece afloat has turned bitter, particularly between Germans and Greeks. One important reason is the stories the two nations are telling themselves about their own recent history.

Germans see themselves as having built economic success from the ashes of World War II through self-sacrifice, personal reliance and hard work. When their economy started to underperform in the 1990s, they enacted a series of tough reforms more than a decade ago that laid the platform for economic strength today.

Thursday, February 26, 2015

Unlikely Winners of Greece's Surrender

FEB 26, 2015 2:00 AM EST
By Mark Gilbert
Bloomberg
The Greek government's apparent capitulation in debt negotiations with its euro partners makes it less likely that Athens will be forced out of the common currency. The real winners, though, are the European governments who have stuck with spending cuts in the face of mounting domestic opposition. They don't have to worry about a successful austerity renegade giving ammunition to their opponents.

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Grexit: Was Germany ready to pull the trigger?

A temporary deal largely on German terms has been struck to avoid Greece crashing out of the euro. A key factor may have been that Germany was ready to contemplate Grexit - Syriza wasn't.

23 February  2015+

As we predicted and noted in our instant response to Friday’s deal to keep Greece in the euro, as things stand, Syriza spent an awful lot of political capital in return for limited result.+

There are several reasons why  Syriza’s bargaining hand is relatively weak. At the end of the day, Syriza isn’t yet prepared to contemplate Grexit, with over 70% of the Greek public still in favour staying in the euro. In contrast, it may well be the case that the German government genuinely was ready to let Greece go, absent a deal. You can credit Syriza for acting responsibly on that point. However, it also meant that in that epic stand-off between Wolfgang Schäuble and Yanis Varoufakis, only one of them had a nuclear option.+


Friday, February 13, 2015

Greece and Germany Are Working Toward a Compromise


by Rebecca ChristieEleni and ChrepaBirgit Jennen

(Bloomberg) -- Greece and Germany are pursuing a deal on the conditions required to continue the Greek bailout as each side signals a willingness to compromise, according to government officials taking part in the talks.

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Syriza Shouldn't Underestimate Merkel

18 FEB 2, 2015 10:52 AM EST
By Leonid Bershidsky
Bloomberg 
It's widely assumed that the European Union will cave to Greek demands to write off some of Greece's debt. What, however, if it doesn't? A Greek exit from the euro and even the European Union is not the only alternative: The fall of the far-left Syriza government in Greece is another distinct possibility. The EU's ponderous, compromise-prone decision-making machine can be tough when challenged by mavericks -- just ask David Cameron or Plamen Oresharski.

Saturday, January 31, 2015

As Greece and EU Clash, Clues on Deal Emerge

Despite Finance Ministers’ Frosty Exchanges, Prospects Seen for Sharing Pain Between Athens and Creditors

The Wall Street Journal

By MARCUS WALKER,  STELIOS BOURAS and NEKTARIA STAMOULI
Jan. 30, 2015 7:10 p.m. ET
41 COMMENTS
ATHENS—Greece’s finance minister and a representative of its European creditors exchanged grimaces, tough rhetoric and a frosty farewell on Friday, capping a week in which Athens’s new antiausterity government roiled its eurozone paymasters almost daily.

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

New Europe’s Old Ghosts


JAN 9, 2015 6
Mazower Marc
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/europe-nationalism-russia-germany-conflict-by-mark-mazower-2015-01

NEW YORK – The past stalked Europe in 2014. When the year started, the centennial of the Great War’s outbreak attracted much commemorative energy. But, as it progressed, disturbing parallels appeared – not to 1914, but to some of the nastier features of the interwar years.
From Scotland and Catalonia to the borders of Ukraine, the politics of nationality flared, while Europe’s economy stagnated – hostage to a German inflation phobia that dates back to 1923. And, as the year unfolded, a new geopolitical tug of war between the continent’s two early-twentieth-century giants, Germany and Russia, became apparent, while Europe’s amnesiac political elite seemed to be fumbling on one front after another.

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Greek leftist: German taxpayers have nothing to fear from Syriza gov't

Tue Jan 13, 2015 4:55am EST

* Germany says Greece must stick to bailout conditions

* Tsipras' party ahead in polls, wants end to austerity

* Tsipras says Greece needs growth to repay debts

BERLIN, Jan 13 (Reuters) - German taxpayers should not be afraid of a Greek government led by the left-wing Syriza party, its leader Alexis Tsipras wrote in an article published on Tuesday in a German business daily.

Speculation is growing that if anti-bailout Syriza wins Greece's Jan. 25 parliamentary election, it will try to renegotiate European Union loans and conditions, possibly provoking a crisis between Athens and its euro zone partners.

Thursday, January 8, 2015

Don’t Believe the Hype: Why Germany Needs Greece to Stay in Euro

By Simon Kennedy  Jan 8, 2015 1:08 PM GMT+0200

Bloomberg

Don’t believe the hype.

A reading of the German press suggests Chancellor Angela Merkel is at peace with the idea of Greece quitting the euro. Der Spiegel says her government views that as a manageable outcome; Bild reports that officials are preparing for the prospect. Lawmaker Michael Fuchs says Greece is no longer a threat to financial stability.

All that is mostly posturing for an electorate tired of the aid and angst Greece has demanded since 2010. In fact, Germany has no interest in risking the dissolution of the single currency that a Grexit could entail.

Monday, February 3, 2014

Germany preparing third financial rescue for Greece

New loan, outlined in a German finance ministry position paper, would be worth €10bn-€20bn, says Der Spiegel magazine
Helena Smith in Athens
The Guardian, Sunday 2 February 2014 20.14 GMT

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

German Turns Near Record Trade Surplus in November

By AP / David Rising Jan. 08, 2014Add a Comment
(BERLIN) — Germany’s trade surplus widened to a near record in November, official figures showed Wednesday in a development that may add potential fuel to critics’ concerns that the country is not spending enough to help out its struggling partners in the eurozone.

The figures could well form the backdrop to discussions later between U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew and German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble. Lew has voiced his opinion that Germany should be looking to get its current account more into balance as a means of shoring up the eurozone’s stragglers.

Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Gunmen in Greece Attack German Ambassador’s Residence

December 30, 2013
The New York Times
By LIZ ALDERMAN
Assailants raked the German ambassador’s residence in Athens with gunfire early on Monday in an attack that caused no injuries, Greek police officials said.

The police found 60 spent bullet casings at the scene and detained six people in connection with the incident, which occurred around 3:30 a.m. in an affluent suburb north of Athens. The bullet casings came from two Kalashnikov assault rifles, according to the police.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack, in which four bullets hit a security gate. But anti-German sentiment has been festering among many Greeks struggling with record unemployment and reduced salaries under a harsh austerity plan required for Greece’s international bailout, which Germany had a major role in selecting the terms of.

“Nothing, but really nothing, can justify such an attack on a representative of our country,” the German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said in a statement in Berlin. He said Germany took the attack seriously, and a Foreign Ministry spokesman said that the Greek authorities had reacted swiftly and assured Germany they would strengthen security in Athens.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany received a phone call from Prime Minister Antonis Samaras of Greece, according to a spokesman for the German government, Steffen Seibert. He added that Greece, which on Wednesday will take over the rotating presidency of the European Union, can count on Germany’s full support.

“The Greek government expresses its abhorrence and utter condemnation of today’s cowardly act of terrorism, the sole and obvious target of which was Greece’s image abroad just a few days before the start of the Hellenic presidency of the Council of the E.U.,” the Greek Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Germany is the largest contributor to Greece’s 240 billion euro, or roughly $330 billion, bailout. Recently, Mr. Samaras has been pressing Germany to reduce and renegotiate Athens’s delinquent debts as it grapples with a wrenching five-year recession — something Germany has refused to do.

That has also fed a persistent low-grade anger over hundreds of billions of euros in reparations that Greeks say Germany owes the country from World War II, money that some say should go toward helping to forgive Greece’s debt bill. Greek newspapers regularly run articles on how much money Germany owes Greece.

Greece has made some progress in improving its finances to meet the terms of the bailout — so much so that it is forecast to have a primary surplus before debt payments in 2014 for the first time in five years. But Greece still faces a mountain of debt that economists say is all but unpayable unless some new form of debt forgiveness is extended to Athens.

Over the weekend, Jens Weidmann, the chairman of the German Bundesbank and a member of the European Central Bank’s Governing Council, ruled out another reduction in Greece’s state debt, saying in a German newspaper interview that Athens still needed to press ahead with a number of reforms as required by the terms of its bailout.

While financial markets have calmed recently, he told the newspaper Bild, “this could be some misleading safety. The crisis could be fanned again like a fire.”

His remarks echoed those of the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, who is widely reviled in Greece. During a visit to Athens this summer, the police locked down the center of the city to pedestrian and car traffic as helicopters flew overhead, leaving the streets in a ghostly state of quiet. The scenes were reminiscent of when Ms. Merkel visited Greece in 2012.

Representatives of the so-called troika of lenders — the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission — are scheduled to return to Athens in January to resume talks over a fresh 4.9 billion euro tranche of aid.

The same building as the one struck on Monday was targeted in a rocket attack in May 1999 claimed by the terrorist group November 17, which has since been dismantled.

Although no group has claimed responsibility for the attack on Monday, the incident follows an apparent rise in violent episodes by both far-right and far-left groups in Greece.


Niki Kitsantonis contributed reporting from Athens, and Alison Smale from Berlin.

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

With Its Economy Hobbled, Greece's Well-Educated Drain Away

by JOANNA KAKISSIS
December 23, 2013 6:17 PM

Thanos Ntoumanis and his wife, Laura, are crashing at his parents' apartment in Greece's northern city of Thessaloniki.

The couple have packed their home and are moving to Germany. Thanos, a 38-year-old psychiatrist, is joining some 4,000 Greek doctors who have left the austerity-hit country for jobs abroad in the past three years. It's the largest brain drain in three decades.

"I won't say that I'm never coming back," he says. "I do need some distance, though. I don't want to get to that tipping point. I don't want to get to that point where I hate it here."

"You'll come back," says his mother, Pepi Mavrogianni, trying to break the gloom. She's a retired pediatrician in a "Hippocratic Oath" T-shirt. She brings out a tray of warm cheese pies.

Monday, December 16, 2013

Draghi Ally Asmussen to Leave ECB for German Government

By Paul Gordon and Rainer Buergin  Dec 16, 2013 10:49 AM GMT+0200
Joerg Asmussen is to leave the European Central Bank’s Executive Board for a government position, depriving President Mario Draghi of a key German ally.

Asmussen, 47, will become deputy labor minister in German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government and will shortly resign from his post at the ECB, he said in a statement distributed by the Frankfurt-based institution yesterday. Asmussen has been on the six-person Executive Board, which implements monetary policy for the euro area, since January 2012. His term was scheduled to run until 2019.

Friday, November 22, 2013

Euro rises after unexpectedly strong German data

BY JULIE HAVIV
NEW YORK Fri Nov 22, 2013 4:20pm EST
(Reuters) - The euro rose to a four-year peak against the yen and gained for a second straight day against the dollar on Friday as unexpectedly robust German business sentiment data raised the appeal of the euro zone common currency.

Comments from Federal Reserve officials saying a reduction in stimulus would be discussed at next month's monetary policy meeting failed to boost the dollar. Analysts said the market has already priced in talk of Fed tapering asset purchases in December, limiting its impact on the greenback.

Monday, November 11, 2013

Germany's Surplus Isn't the Problem

By SIMON NIXON
Nov. 10, 2013 9:06 p.m. ET
The Wall Street Journal
On almost any measure, the euro zone is in better shape than a year ago—and much better shape than many expected, not least those who were predicting its imminent collapse.

The currency bloc is out of recession; Spain and Portugal are growing; the Greek government expects growth to return next year. Yields on peripheral government bonds have fallen sharply. And the euro zone is embarking on a major integration project—banking union—that it hopes will restore confidence in the region's banking system and allow credit to flow again.

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Those Depressing Germans

November 3, 2013
The New York Times
By PAUL KRUGMAN
German officials are furious at America, and not just because of the business about Angela Merkel’s cellphone. What has them enraged now is one (long) paragraph in a U.S. Treasury report on foreign economic and currency policies. In that paragraph Treasury argues that Germany’s huge surplus on current account — a broad measure of the trade balance — is harmful, creating “a deflationary bias for the euro area, as well as for the world economy.”

The Germans angrily pronounced this argument “incomprehensible.” “There are no imbalances in Germany which require a correction of our growth-friendly economic and fiscal policy,” declared a spokesman for the nation’s finance ministry.

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Greek bonds rally as German election draws near

Fri Sep 20, 2013 4:50pm IST
By Marius Zaharia

(Reuters) - Greek government bonds rallied on Friday as an election campaign in European paymaster Germany neared its end with little clarity about what it might mean for Greece's future in the euro zone.

Funding gaps facing Athens and the risk Portugal may not return to markets when its bailout runs out next year will be among European policy challenges for Germany's next government.

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Merkel Blames SPD’s Schroeder for Letting Greece Into the Euro

By Stefan Nicola - Aug 28, 2013 1:00 AM GMT+0300
German Chancellor Angela Merkel sought to pin the blame for the euro-region’s debt turmoil on her Social Democratic predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder, saying he should never have let Greece into the single currency area.
Merkel, addressing a campaign rally in the northern German town of Rendsburg yesterday, said the debt crisis that emerged in Greece in late 2009 and dominated her second term had been “brewing for many years” going back to the euro’s inception.

Monday, August 26, 2013

Greece on Track for More Aid, Official Says

August 26, 2013
By JACK EWING
The New York Times
BERLIN — The highest-ranking German in the European Central Bank said Monday that Greece could be eligible for additional aid and debt relief next year if it continued to fulfill promises made for the assistance it was already receiving.