Tired of Syriza, Greece embraces a mainstream party

The centre-right New Democracy party is dull, technocratic and leading the polls
Dec 3rd 2016 | ATHENS


The Economist

THE headquarters of New Democracy, a centre-right political party, is in an unexpected part of Athens. The building, surrounded by warehouses, housed a branch of a Japanese technology firm before standing derelict for years. Few other political types are nearby. The rent, at €9,800 ($10,400) a month, is a tenth of what the party’s old office used to cost. Yet the relocation, which happened in August, is also symbolic. As the opposition party has moved to a cheaper part of town, so too does it hope that it can present itself to the public as a new, improved alternative to the Greek government. With Alexis Tsipras, the prime minister (pictured, on the left), growing less popular, New Democracy may well have a chance.

Greece can meet 2017 primary surplus, must conclude bailout review- cenbanker

Tue Nov 29, 2016 | 3:25am EST

Reuters
Nov 29 Greece can achieve a primary budget surplus of 2 percent next year, the head of the country's central bank said on Tuesday, warning that the main risk for the economy would be a failure to conclude a crucial bailout review.

"Despite the positive projections ... serious risks remain," Yannis Stournaras told a conference in Athens. "The main risk would be the eventuality of failing to reach agreement on the second bailout review and any delays in implementing the programme or backtracking."

First Grexit, Then Brexit, Now Trump?

Bryan Rich ,   CONTRIBUTOR

Forbes

As we head into the election, everyone involved in markets is trying to predict how stocks will perform on the results. When the Clinton e-mail scandal bubbled up again, the stock market lost ground for nine straight days, the longest losing streak since 1980. Since the probe has allegedly ended, stocks have been up.

Does it mean Clinton is good for stocks and Trump is bad for stocks? Not likely.

Big institutional money managers think they have a better understanding of what the world will look like under Clinton than Trump, and therefore feel more compelled to go on with business as usual heading into the event (i.e. allocating capital across the stock market) with the expectation of a Clinton win, and conversely, they’re not as compelled to do so with the expectation that Trump might win (i.e. they sit tight and watch).

Will Italy Leave the Euro? Follow the Money

30 OCT 17, 2016 1:31 AM EDT
By Mark Whitehouse

Bloomberg

Will Italy follow the U.K.'s example and leave the European Union? Far-fetched as it may seem, capital flows suggest that some people aren’t waiting to find out.

To keep the euro area's accounts in balance, Europe's central banks track flows of money among the members of the currency union. If, for example, a depositor moves 100 euros from Italy to Germany, the Bank of Italy records a liability to the Eurosystem and the Bundesbank records a credit. If a central bank starts building up liabilities rapidly, that tends to be a sign of capital flight.

Greece govt populism made adjustment worse: EU's Dombrovskis

Mon Sep 26, 2016 | 9:28am EDT

Reuters

Greece has had to go through tougher austerity than it would have otherwise been necessary, because of the populist stance of the left-wing government of Alexis Tsipras in 2015, European Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis said on Monday.

Tsipras, who took power in January 2015, rejected belt-tightening in public finances requested by lenders in exchange for emergency loans and reversed some of the reforms introduced by the previous Greek governments.

As new loans were frozen, Greece defaulted on the International Monetary Fund in July 2015 and had to introduce capital controls to prevent its banking system from collapse.

Greece’s Fragile Economy Faces New Tests After Brexit

“Our effort to exit the crisis becomes more complicated because this decision disrupts our economy,” says one Greek politician.
 06/27/2016 04:14 pm ET

The Huffington Post

The United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union in a so-called “Brexit” has sent shocks through Europe, raising questions about the continent’s political and economic future.

Markets around the world plunged in the wake of the unexpected referendum results. The Athens stock exchange fell by 15 percent in the immediate aftermath of British voters’ decision, while bank shares dropped by 30 percent.

Greece’s already-fragile economy faces new challenges in an increasingly unpredictable post-Brexit world. Especially worrisome are the potential effects Britain’s decision could have on two of the country’s essential industries: shipping and tourism.

Brexit: France and Germany 'in agreement' over UK's EU exit

37 06 2016
BBC

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande have said they are in "full agreement" on how to handle the fallout from the UK's decision to leave the European Union.
Mr Hollande warned that "separated, we run the risk of divisions, dissension and quarrels".
The two will hold talks later in Berlin amid a flurry of diplomatic activity in the wake of so-called "Brexit".
The pound fell further in early trading in Asia on Monday as markets reacted.
UK Chancellor George Osborne made a statement before the start of trading in the UK in a bid to calm markets.
He said the UK was ready to face the future "from a position of strength", although he accepted the economy would have to confront challenges and that further volatility on financial markets was likely.

Nervous Greeks worry Brexit may lead to Grexit

By Richard Galpin
BBC News, Athens
26 June 2016
BBC

Its people and government are embittered by the imposition of harsh austerity measures by the EU and IMF.
Those bailout conditions have brought years of deep recession and high unemployment, but have done little to reduce Greece's huge debt burden.
And as a frontline country in the migrant crisis, Greece feels let down by Brussels and EU member states, in its struggle to cope with the arrival of more than a million refugees and migrants over the past 18 months.
The anger shows in a pan-European survey published by the Pew Research Center earlier this month, in which Greeks top the table in their response to many of the questions asked.
For example, 71% of those who took part had an unfavourable view of the EU - far higher than in the UK.
More than 90% disapproved of the way the EU was handling economic issues and the migrant crisis.

Sterling and euro struggle as Brexit shock lingers

 Mon Jun 27, 2016 3:37am EDT
LONDON | BY ANIRBAN NAG

Reuters

Sterling stayed under siege on Monday, holding above a 31-year low against the dollar, with sentiment distinctly sour after Britain opted to exit the European Union, triggering shockwaves across global markets.

The euro was also under pressure, pulled down by sterling, as Brexit clouded the future of the European Union. Safe-haven currencies like the yen and the Swiss franc extended gains, much to the discomfiture of the Japanese and Swiss central banks.

Sterling was down 1.8 percent at $1.3460 GBP=D4, having hit a trough of $1.3228 on Friday, its lowest since 1985. It recovered from a low of $1.3356 struck in Asia on Monday after British Chancellor George Osborne sought to assure markets that he was staying on and that the economy was in good shape.

Greece's bailout funds released; EU's Juncker hails Greek efforts

Tue Jun 21, 2016 8:16am EDT Related: WORLD, GREECE

Reuters

Greece got more than 7 billion euros in bailout funds on Tuesday after a review of the country's progress in implementing economic reforms, the head of the euro zone's bailout fund told reporters in Athens.

Greece needs the money to pay off growing state arrears, maturing ECB bonds and International Monetary Fund loans. Talks with its foreign creditors over Greece's efforts to implement a reform program have dragged on for six months.

French Prime Minister Expresses Support for Greece

France is interested in investing in Greece in areas of energy, transportation and tourism

The Wall Street Journal

By NEKTARIA STAMOULI
June 3, 2016 11:52 a.m. ET
0 COMMENTS
ATHENS—French Prime Minister Manuel Valls on Friday expressed his country’s interest in investing in Greece and promised the crisis-battered country more support with reforms needed to overcome the financial crisis, as well as help in dealing with the refugee crisis.

“A eurozone without Greece, a Schengen Treaty without Greece, represents another view of Europe that we do not share,” Mr. Valls said during a press conference with his Greek counterpart Alexis Tsipras.
He said he was confident the next bailout funds for Greece would be disbursed soon and added that he hoped a solution for Greece’s debt problems would be found.

Why Greece’s Syriza Party Is Embracing Austerity Now

COMMENTARY by  Sotirios Zartaloudis  JUNE 3, 2016, 1:00 AM EDT

Fortune

Question is, how long will it last?
For more than five years, Greece has been dominating the global news, with fears of default and an exit from the Eurozone or even the European Union (EU). While experts predict political and financial disaster, I would say Greece appears to be returning to some level of normalcy, although it still has a long way to go before it returns to economic and political stability.

Vague Promises of Debt Relief for Greece

By THE EDITORIAL BOARDMAY 30, 2016

The New York Times

European leaders congratulated themselves last week for reaching an agreement to provide more loans to Greece and eventually ease the terms of the country’s huge debt. But there is little to celebrate.

Greece is bankrupt in all but name. The country has a debt of more than 300 billion euros ($333 billion), or about 180 percent of its gross domestic product, a sum it cannot hope to repay in full.

Most of that money is owed to Germany, France, Italy and other countries in the eurozone. After an 11-hour meeting last week, the eurozone finance ministers said that they would lend another 7.5 billion euros to Greece next month to help it pay off debt and grant it some relief, possibly including lower interest rates and extended payment periods, but not until mid-2018.

Global stocks climb as Brexit, Grexit risks ease

Wed May 25, 2016 5:26am EDT

LONDON | BY PATRICK GRAHAM
Reuters

Easing concerns over several major global risks helped stock markets rise robustly for a second day on Wednesday, underpinned by gains in oil and metals prices and data showing the U.S. economy can deal with a hike in interest rates.

Traders say several polls showing Britain will vote strongly to stay in the European Union in a referendum in June have done more than just support sterling, up 5 percent in trade-weighted terms from lows hit in April.

A new debt deal for Greece also looked to have headed off the risk of another round of uncertainty over its finances and even its future in the euro zone after a funding crisis a year ago, pushing European stock markets higher across the board.

Greece Begins Moving Refugees Out of Idomeni Camp

By NIKI KITSANTONISMAY 24, 2016


The New York Times

ATHENS — The Greek authorities began moving hundreds of refugees on Tuesday out of a sprawling makeshift camp near the village of Idomeni, on the border with Macedonia, a crucial point on the so-called Balkan trail for migrants that has been closed off for months.

A police operation started around 6 a.m., with officers, some in uniform and others in plain clothes, leading 340 people onto six buses bound for state-run encampments near Thessaloniki, the second-largest city in Greece.

Riot police officers were stationed outside the area, as there were concerns that the operation would lead to unrest. But a spokesman for the Greek police, Lt. Col. Theodoros Chronopoulos, said the evacuation of the camp, which had 20,000 migrants at its peak in March and until Tuesday morning about 8,000, most of them Syrians, was carried out “completely smoothly” and would continue though the end of the week.

International Monetary Fund Faces Pressure From Germany Over Greece

Berlin believes IMF will accept Europe’s offers despite reservations, people familiar with the talks say

The Wall Street Journal

By MARCUS WALKER
May 12, 2016 10:38 a.m. ET

ATHENS—In Europe’s battle with the International Monetary Fund over Greece, Germany has a way to win.

Germany, Europe’s dominant economic power, is leaning heavily on the IMF to accept hypothetical assurances that Greece’s debt burden will be addressed in the future if needed, rather than the definite and far-reaching debt relief that the IMF wanted, according to people familiar with the talks.

Berlin believes the IMF will have to accept what’s on offer, even if IMF staff are unhappy about it, these people say. The IMF is also under heavy European pressure to accept Greek austerity policies that are less specific than the cuts the IMF wanted. An accord hasn’t been reached yet, and some warn it could take several weeks.

Why Greece Still Needs Debt Relief

FORTUNE

COMMENTARY by  Barry Eichengreen  @b_eichengreen  MAY 11, 2016, 3:29 PM EDT

The Greek debt crisis is the crisis that never stops giving. More than six years have now passed since the crisis broke, and the country is still struggling to get its finances under control. In the latest installment, Greek lawmakers agreed early Monday morning to a new set of pension and tax reforms.

Unfortunately, the new package will not be enough, by itself, to prevent the crisis from blowing up again. Its higher marginal tax rates for top earners, lower tax-free thresholds, and additional pension cuts are designed to reduce the budget deficit by 1.5% to 3% of GDP. This is an expression of good faith intended to reassure German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble and his constituents.

Everyone’s outraged': angry Greeks foresee Grexit and drachma's revival

Greece faces its toughest austerity measures yet, with €5.4bn of budget cuts backed by the leftist government of Alexis Tsipras

The Guardian

n his tiny shop in downtown Athens, Kostis Nakos sits behind a wooden counter hunched over his German calculator. The 71-year-old might have retired had he been able to make ends meets but that is now simply impossible. “All day I’ve been sitting here doing the maths,” he sighs, surrounded by the undergarments and socks he has sold for the past four decades.

“My income tax has just gone up to 29%, my social security payments have gone up 20%, my pension has been cut by 50 euros; they are taxing coffee, fuel, the internet, tavernas, ferries, everything they can, and then there’s Enfia [the country’s much-loathed property levy]. Now that makes me mad. They said they would take that away!”

A mild man in milder times, Nakos finds himself becoming increasingly angry. So, too, do the vast majority of Greeks who walked through his door on Monday. “Everyone’s outraged, they’ve been swearing, insulting the government, calling [prime minister] Alexis Tsipras a liar,” he exclaims after parliament’s decision on Sunday night to pass yet more austerity measures. “And they’re right. Everything he said, everything he promised, was a fairy tale.”

Until the debt-stricken country’s financial collapse, shops like this were the lifeblood of Greece. For small-time merchants, the pain has been especially vivid because, like everyone Nakos knows, he voted for Tsipras and his leftist Syriza party.

Now the man who was swept to power on a platform to eradicate austerity has passed the toughest reforms to date – overhauling the pension system, raising taxes and increasing social security fund contributions as the price of emergency bailout aid.

As MPs voted inside the red-carpeted 300-seat chamber on Sunday, police who had blocked off a large part of the city centre deployed teargas and water cannon against the thousands of anti-austerity demonstrators amassed outside. It was a world away from the day the tieless, anti-austerity leftists first assumed office, tearing down the barricades outside the sandstone parliament building.

The latest measures – worth €5.4bn (£4.3bn) in budget savings – mark a new era. After nine months of wrangling with the international creditors keeping the country afloat, Athens must apply policies that until now had been abstract concepts for a populace who have suffered as unemployment and poverty rates have soared.

For many, their arrival marks a new juncture, a psychological cut-off point whose consequences are yet untold. “For a long time, people had a cushion. There was fat in the system but that has now gone,” says Vassilis Korkidis, who heads the National Confederation of Hellenic Commerce.

One by one, Korkidis rattles off the figures: Greece’s internal debt amounts to €220bn of which €119bn are non-performing loans; its external debt is close to €330bn; about 230,000 enterprises have shut since the start of the crisis including 10,000 this year alone. “Soon people will have to deal with tax declarations and Enfia and, by September, everything will have piled up. An explosion is possible. September is going to be a very decisive month.”

In his yellow Toyota, Giorgos Balabanis, a taxi driver for the past 15 years, puts it another way. His car, he insists, is a university of life. “All sorts” get in and out. “And what I am hearing every day is that until we leave the euro, until we return to the drachma, until we have a currency that is not so strong, things will never be right,” he says. “Remember me because it’s going to happen. There will be an explosion and Grexit and the drachma will come back.”

Sunday’s vote follows a period of relative calm. After the drama that underpinned the country’s third bailout last summer – €250bn has been given to Greece since the EU and International Monetary Fund first saved it from bankruptcy – Europe’s most indebted nation had dropped from the headlines.

It was thought the crisis had subsided, usurped by the drama of Europe’s refugees. But it had not gone away.

In 2016, just as in 2015 and every year for the previous five years, it had coursed like a cancer through Greek life, corroding families, closing businesses, decimating hospitals and every other form of state care, leaving ever more destitute. Denuded of basic supplies, doctors say it is only a matter of time before the health system implodes.

“Learning to cope, living with uncertainty, it’s the new normal,” laments Pandelis Stergiou, a graduate medical student who would, he says, have joined the 300,000 who have migrated abroad if he did not love his country so much.

Increasingly, Greece is a land inhabited by rich and poor. Sights that were once shocking – middle class men and women rifling through the rubbish cans on streets – are now mundane. That worries Stergiou. Just as it worries Korkidis who foresees more companies fleeing, massive tax evasion returning and the black market flourishing as people try to survive.

“It can’t go on for ever,” the student, Stergiou, says. “Greeks are running out of stamina, they are running out of endurance. Who will be able to survive on pensions of €384 a month? Something will have to give.”

Greek PM Tsipras seeks debt relief and end to 'vicious cycle'

9-5-2016

BBC

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has said it is time to end the "vicious cycle" of cuts and to start talks with the eurozone on debt relief.
Controversial new pension and tax reforms were passed by Greece's parliament on Monday.
The measures are needed to unlock further international bailout money, to be discussed at a meeting of eurozone finance ministers on Monday.
But they are unpopular with Greek anti-austerity campaigners and unions.
"We have an important opportunity before us for the country to break this vicious cycle, and enter a virtuous cycle," Mr Tsipras told MPs.
Monday, he said, "is a very important day. After six years, the Eurogroup will meet to discuss debt relief".

Key dates to watch on Greece as bailout rift cracks open

Published: May 9, 2016 10:14 a.m. ET
Market Watch

Greece faces key ECB repayment in July and still needs to unlock bailout funds

By
SARA SJOLIN MARKETS REPORTER

The seemingly never-ending Greek debt crisis returned to the fore on Monday, with the country trying to secure a fresh tranche of bailout money to keep it financially afloat over the summer.

The Greek parliament over the weekend approved an unpopular package of pension reforms and tax hikes that is seen as taking it one step closer to wrap up the long-delayed first review of its €86 billion bailout program agreed last summer. Concluding the review is key to unlocking bailout funds, which are crucial to repay €2.3 billion ($2.6 billion) to the European Central Bank in July. Greece is also due to pay the International Monetary Fund €300 million in June.