Greece Needs Debt Relief More Than Ever

COMMENTARY by  Remy Davison
MAY 24, 2016, 1:00 AM

Fortune

It would be short-sighted to challenge aid.

As Eurozone finance ministers on Tuesday prepare to gather for a meeting to discuss Greece’s bailout, some officials are once again holding out on approving much needed funds to help the financially-troubled country pay off its debts. Regardless of their reasons, the idea of limiting aid to Greece is different today and shouldn’t even be an issue, given how increasingly vulnerable Europe’s economy has become.

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.

Euro Area Said to Plan $12 Billion for Greece After Review

 Ian Wishart

 Eleni Chrepa

Bloomberg

May 23, 2016 — 11:39 AM EEST Updated on May 23, 2016 — 1:23 PM EEST

Greece’s European creditors are preparing to disburse 11 billion euros ($12.3 billion) once the nation successfully completes a review of its bailout program.
The funds will be used to clear arrears and to cover debt servicing needs, including a 2.3 billion-euro payment scheduled to the European Central Bank in July, according to a draft of the European Commission’s compliance report for the Greek economic program seen by Bloomberg News.

Greece bailout: MPs approve new cuts to unblock bailout funds
22 May 2016

BBC

The Greek parliament has passed new budget cuts and tax rises two days before a eurozone meeting expected to unblock much-needed bailout funds.
The government led by the leftist Syriza coalition passed the widely unpopular bill by 153 votes to 145.
Greece agreed to a third bailout worth €86bn (£67bn; $96bn) last year.
Demonstrators gathered outside parliament on Sunday to protest against the new legislation. Eurozone finance ministers meet in Brussels on Tuesday.

15 Books, Hemingway thought were worth reading

The Blue Hotel (public library) by Stephen Crane
The Open Boat (public library) by Stephen Crane
Madame Bovary (free ebook | public library) by Gustave Flaubert
Dubliners (public library) by James Joyce
The Red and the Black (public library) by Stendhal
Of Human Bondage (free ebook | public library) by W. Somerset Maugham
Anna Karenina (free ebook | public library) by Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace (free ebook | public library) by Leo Tolstoy
Buddenbrooks (public library) by Thomas Mann
Hail and Farewell (public library) by George Moore
The Brothers Karamazov (public library) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Oxford Book of English Verse (public library)
The Enormous Room (public library) by E.E. Cummings
Wuthering Heights (free ebook | public library) by Emily Brontë
Far Away and Long Ago (free ebook | public library) by W.H. Hudson
The American (free ebook | public library) by Henry James

Now or later? Euro zone, IMF at odds over when Greece should get debt relief

Thu May 19, 2016 6:50am EDT Related: GREECE
BRUSSELS | BY JAN STRUPCZEWSKI
Reuters


The euro zone and International Monetary are struggling with Greece's debt crisis - not with Athens this time, but with each other over when to give Greece a break on its future massive debt repayments.

The euro zone has begun talks on debt relief for Greece but wants to postpone the final decision until 2018; the IMF insists Greek debt repayment is unsustainable and investors need clarity now.

Euro zone finance ministers are likely to forge a tentative plan when they meet next Tuesday - what in Brussels-speak is known as a political agreement. But their offer is unlikely to be anything but highly conditional, euro zone officials preparing the talks said.

Forecast Bright for Greek Tourism, Despite Refugee Crisis

Voice of America
http://www.voanews.com/content/greece-tourism/3332701.html

Margaret Besheer
May 16, 2016 3:10 PM

Despite the ongoing migrant and refugee crisis, Greece expects to welcome a record 27 million tourists this year.

“I think it’s an achievement given the fact that we have capital controls, we still have the refugee and migration crisis - which make tourists think twice if they want to visit Lesbos or some other places that are migration hubs,” the government’s top spokesperson Lefteris Kretsos told reporters on Monday.

“Greece is a brand name in tourism. It was always, and I think it will always be,” he added.

Tsipras inaugurates TAP gas pipeline in Greece

By Nasos Koukakis, special to CNBC
17-5-2016
CNBC.com

ATHENS- Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras will inaugurate the start of construction for the TransAdriatic Pipeline (TAP) in Thessaloniki, Northern Greece on Tuesday. Official representatives of the European Union and U.S. State Department as well as high ranking officials from Greece, Turkey, Albania, Italy and Bulgaria will attend the ceremony.

TAP will transport Azerbaijani gas from Shah Deniz-2, extracted in the Azeri sector of the Caspian, to western Europe through Greece and Albania. It is part of the Southern Gas Corridor, one of the most complex gas value chains ever developed stretching over 2,174 miles. The first delivery of Azerbaijani gas is scheduled for early 2020.

The $45 billion project represents the biggest foreign investment that has ever taken place in Greece. The shareholders of the project are: Socar (20 percent), BP (20 percent), Snam (20 percent), Fluxys (19 percent), Enagas (16 percent) and Axpo (5 percent).

This project opens broad opportunities for transportation of Azerbaijani gas to such European markets as Italy, Germany, Great Britain, Switzerland and Austria. It also will help Europe diversify its sources of natural gas. Currently Russia is the major gas supplier for the continent.
At the same time, construction of the pipeline will help the anemic economies of Albania and Greece. It is expected that construction of the pipeline will employ 150 Greek companies as contractors, subcontractors or track support, and about 8,000 workers.

On Monday, Greek Minister of Environment and Energy Panos Skourletis told the Athens News Agency, "We are entering into a new phase for the economy. The TAP project will offer a strong boost to move forward."

TAP's initial capacity of 10 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas per year is equivalent to the energy consumption of approximately seven million households in Europe. In future, the addition of two extra compressor stations could double throughput to more than 20 bcm as additional energy supplies come on stream in the wider Caspian region.

Russia is trying to bolster pipeline links with the continent through southern Europe. Gazprom tried and failed to gain strategic entry through Bulgaria and Turkey. Recently it announced new plans with Italian utility Edison and Greece's DEPA to supply natural gas along the seabed of the Black Sea into Greece and Italy, from where it could be sold in Europe.

The so-called Interconnector Turkey Greece Italy (ITGI) Poseidon pipeline scheme — unable to get off the ground for years — was shelved in 2012 after it lost out to TAP. Gazprom is now trying to get this project revived. It would consist of an offshore pipeline that will connect the Greek and Italian natural gas transportation systems. The capacity of the pipeline would be 8 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year.

It is expected that during his visit to Athens on May 28 Russian President Vladimir Putin will seek to gain support for the Poseidon pipeline.

Follow CNBC International on Twitter and Facebook.

—By Nasos Koukakis, special to CNBC.com

IMF Wants Eurozone Debt Relief for Greece Until 2040

Interest rate on eurozone loans would be fixed for 30 to 40 years, say people familiar with IMF proposal

By MARCUS WALKER
Updated May 17, 2016 3:28 a.m. ET
3 COMMENTS
BERLIN—The International Monetary Fund is pressing the eurozone to let Greece skip paying interest or principal on bailout loans until 2040, say officials familiar with the talks.

The IMF wants the loans to Greece to fall due gradually in the following decades, and as late as 2080, according to the IMF’s proposal.

Greece’s interest rate on eurozone loans would be fixed for 30 to 40 years at its current average level of 1.5%, with all interest payments postponed until loans start falling due, under the IMF proposal.

Dying Infants and No Medicine: Inside Venezuela’s Failing Hospitals

By NICHOLAS CASEYMAY 15, 2016


The New York Times

BARCELONA, Venezuela — By morning, three newborns were already dead.

The day had begun with the usual hazards: chronic shortages of antibiotics, intravenous solutions, even food. Then a blackout swept over the city, shutting down the respirators in the maternity ward.

Doctors kept ailing infants alive by pumping air into their lungs by hand for hours. By nightfall, four more newborns had died.

“The death of a baby is our daily bread,” said Dr. Osleidy Camejo, a surgeon in the nation’s capital, Caracas, referring to the toll from Venezuela’s collapsing hospitals.

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.

Greece hit by general strike over pension and tax change

6-5-2016

BBC

Greeks have begun a three-day general strike in protest at further austerity measures that are being proposed in return for more bailout money.
Shipping, public transport and civil service departments were among sectors hit in a bid to stop the introduction of tax and pension changes.
The sudden 48-hour strike on Friday and Saturday was called in addition to action previously planned for Sunday.

Το γλωσσάριο της κωλοτούμπας – Υποτέλεια

Του Θ Πάγκαλου

Posted on 26/04/2016 by admin2 — 0 Comments
Δυστυχώς, στην πολιτική μας ζωή κάποιος ανεγκέφαλος, πότε από το δεξιό άκρο πότε από τ’ αριστερό, διατυπώνει την αξίωση του μονοπωλίου της «εθνικοφροσύνης». Συχνά οι αιτίες είναι συμμετρικά αντίθετες. Τελευταία, με την ανάπτυξη του ρεύματος του εθνικώς υπερήφανου αντιευρωπαϊκού παραλογισμού (ΕΥΑΠ, προσοχή χωρίς Δ), ακροδεξιοί και ακροαριστεροί συμμετέχουν, χωρίς περίσκεψη και αιδώ, ισότιμα στο κυρίαρχο ρεύμα ιδεολογίας. Οργανώνουν και διαχειρίζονται κοινές αντιευρωπαϊκές και αντικοινοβουλευτικές συγκεντρώσεις, όπως η Άνω και Κάτω πλατεία Συντάγματος, των «αγανακτισμένων». Σε τελευταία ανάλυση ακροαριστεροί και ακροδεξιοί συγκροτούν ενιαία κυβερνητική πλειοψηφία και με απερίγραπτες κωλοτούμπες προσπαθούν να τη διατηρήσουν για να μη χαθεί η εξουσία.

Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey’s Prime Minister, Is Expected to Be Replaced

By TIM ARANGO and CEYLAN YEGINSUMAY 4, 2016


The New York Times

ISTANBUL — The Turkish prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, a close ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, will soon leave office, a government official said. His departure is occurring amid a disagreement between the two men over Mr. Erdogan’s drive for more power.

The two leaders met on Wednesday night, according to the Turkish official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a decision that had not been announced publicly. “It’s unlikely that Davutoglu will run for leadership again,” he said.

The threat of Grexit never really went away

Bailing out Greece

Brinkmanship over emergency loans resumes again

The Economist

May 4th 2016 | Online extra


THE tagline of the film “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2”, which was released in March, is “People change. Greeks don’t.” Whether any euro-zone finance ministers have seen the film, let alone detected any resemblance to their ongoing talks with the Greek government over its third bail-out, is unknown. But the renewed bickering about whether Greece is keeping to its end of the bargain, complete with threats of a snap election if its creditors don’t give more ground, has the air of a duff sequel.

For ‘Brexit,’ Like ‘Grexit,’ It’s Not About Economics

Fear of political union is why many in Britain dislike the EU; it’s what keeps the Greeks attached to the euro

The Wall Street Journal

By GREG IP
Updated May 4, 2016 1:50 p.m. ET
9 COMMENTS
Britain’s flirtation with leaving the European Union is as puzzling as Greece’s stubborn desire to stay. After all, Britain’s economy has done quite well inside the bloc while Greece’s has been decimated.

What explains both sentiments is that the European project has always been about more than economics. It also seeks “an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe,” as the Treaty of Rome, its founding charter, declared in 1957.