background preloader

Greece

Facebook Twitter

Greece is being destroyed by 'respectable' fanatics. Greek democracy is being destroyed.

Greece is being destroyed by 'respectable' fanatics

Not by soldiers marching with insane slogans on their lips about the inevitable triumph of the German master race, international proletariat or global jihad, but by moderate men and women who think themselves immune to ideological frenzy. John Markakis · Taking to the Streets: Greek Democracy · LRB 22 March 2012. ‘The state is bankrupt, let’s face it,’ an editorial in the Greek daily Kathimerini concluded the day after a museum in ancient Olympia – left virtually unguarded owing to personnel cuts – was robbed in broad daylight.

John Markakis · Taking to the Streets: Greek Democracy · LRB 22 March 2012

The furore over the country’s economic troubles has deflected foreign attention from the collapse of the political system, though it’s causing Greeks more anxiety than the disastrous drop in their standard of living. They know it has ceased to function and that it cannot be expected to bring about an economic recovery. Opinion abroad is that Greece has too much democracy and not enough of an economy and foreign creditors are determined to redress the balance.

Europe's Cash-For-Trash LTRO-'Scam' And The Indentured Servitude Of The Citizenry. Greece Is Still Doomed: Why the New Bailout Is a Fantasy - Derek Thompson - Business. Europe kicks the can down the road, while Athens continues to burn Reuters Greece has finally secured a new $170 billion loan from its European landlords, and the terms are just as unrealistic and doomed-to-fail as you expected.

Greece Is Still Doomed: Why the New Bailout Is a Fantasy - Derek Thompson - Business

Greece Is on Pace for the Worst Recession in Modern History - Derek Thompson - Business. If only the country's deeper crisis ended there Reuters The Greek economy shrank nearly 7% in 2011, the fifth straight year the country has been in a recession.

Greece Is on Pace for the Worst Recession in Modern History - Derek Thompson - Business

From Greece: Declaration for the Defense of Society and Democracy. [The following statement was issued by a group of Greek academics regarding the ongoing crises in Greece.]

From Greece: Declaration for the Defense of Society and Democracy

Greek society is suffering both from the crisis and the responses to it, which have reached a dead-end. Major social and political institutions that were created with enormous struggles and sacrifices in post-War Greece—social security, the public health care system, public education, public transport, the natural and urban environment, the right to live a safe existence, and various elemental goods and services that underwrite the very existence of an already curtailed and devalued Greek state—are all being utterly dismantled so that Greek society is now dying of asphyxiation. For Greece a tear, for Brussels a blush. Will Greece comply with the Troika's diktats?

For Greece a tear, for Brussels a blush

Very quickly: some of you will have seen that Greece’s tax revenue from VAT collapsed by 18.7pc in January from a year earlier. Nobody can seriously blame tax evasion for this. It has happened because 60,000 small firms and family businesses have gone bankrupt since the summer. The VAT rate for food and drink rose from 13pc to 23pc in September to comply with EU-IMF Troika demands.

Greece - curators...

Greek Games. I haven't made up my mind yet about the wisdom of the latest plan to secure the financial viability of Greece within the eurozone, but as a piece of financial engineering it has some very intriguing features.

Greek Games

Current bondholders have the option of exchanging their assets for new issues that promise less and deliver later, but are considerably more secure. There are four new issues to choose from, varying with respect to maturity, interest rate, and the proportion of principal that is guaranteed (by highly rated zero coupon bonds or funds held in an escrow account). But these options are designed to be roughly equivalent in present value terms, and it is expected that they will be selected in approximately equal measure by those who choose to participate in the exchange.

Participation is voluntary, so current bondholders can simply choose to do nothing. For this reason, the financing offer does not trigger payouts on credit default swaps. Athens Mulls Plans for New Currency: Greece Considers Exit from Euro Zone - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International. Greece's economic problems are massive, with protests against the government being held almost daily.

Athens Mulls Plans for New Currency: Greece Considers Exit from Euro Zone - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

Greek Economics: Drachmas, debt and Dionysius. The poor economic record of Greece goes back a very long way, says Matthew Lynn.

Greek Economics: Drachmas, debt and Dionysius

Sweeping old drachmas into a furnace, Athens, November 1944 (Getty Images / Time Life / Dimitri Kessel)In 1929 the Harvard economist Charles Bullock published a magnificent essay on a monetary experiment conducted by Dionysius the Elder, ruler of the Greek city state of Syracuse from 407 BC until his death in 367. After running up vast debts to pay for his military campaigns, his lavish court and spectacles for the common people he found himself painfully short of ready cash. No one wanted to lend him any more money and taxes were drying up. So Dionysius came up with a great wheeze. On pain of death he forced his citizens to hand in all their cash. Except, of course, it wasn’t. If Europe’s leaders had looked more closely at the country’s past they would probably have never allowed Greece to merge its currency with Germany and the other euro-zone members of the EU.

Michael Hudson: Will Greece Let EU Central Bankers Destroy Democracy? Yves here.

Michael Hudson: Will Greece Let EU Central Bankers Destroy Democracy?

This is a long and important post. Hudson reports that he has gotten a great deal of correspondence from Greece saying that articles like this arguing against the pending stripping of Greece by banks are being translated and circulated widely to provide moral support. If you cannot read this piece in full, please be sure to read the discussion at the end of how Iceland stared down its foreign creditors.

By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. Athens in Flames - In Focus. Over the weekend, more than 45 buildings across Athens were set ablaze by violent protesters. The fires began as the Greek Parliament passed a strict package of austerity measures, in an effort to meet demands by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

The measures, which were prerequisites for a $170 billion bailout, included steep public-sector job cuts and a 20 percent reduction in the minimum wage. More than 80,000 Greeks reportedly demonstrated in the streets of Athens -- among them, a small, violent group that hurled firebombs at riot police and set dozens of fires. More than 120 police and protesters were injured. The next step for the new austerity measures is implementation, and that may face strong opposition as well. The Way Greeks Live Now. James Meek · Diary: In Athens · LRB 1 December 2011. Athens, 9 November. Voula is a smart district of Athens for rich citizens who want to live by the sea. Sleek white apartment blocks with big balconies face the Aegean, which undulates like a lake of mercury under a cool grey sky. Set some way back from the coast is the local public hospital, Asklepieia Voulas, made up of low-rise buildings of plastered brick spread out among grass and trees and partly unmetalled tracks.

You can wander in; there’s no security. If elections could change things, they'd be illegal. New York, NY - Were one to write a pre-election analysis in the glorious days of Greece's ancien regime, one would most probably have to present and analyse the political positions of the main competing parties. Yet, this is one of the most outdated things one might want to do if one intends to say anything useful about Greece today. In fact, no-one expects to learn anything new from the traditionally televised debates among politicians (no doubt that this disillusionment should be regarded as one positive outcome of the "crisis"). Greeks Blaming Speculators Sure Sign of Panic: Jonathan Weil. There’s a point in almost every financial crisis when pretty much anything anybody says about it can take on a ring of truth, because the leaders responsible for dealing with the disaster have squandered their credibility.

That’s where the Greek financial crisis stands now. The politics and economics of Austerity. EU poised for Greece crisis talks. The euro area's debt crisis: Latin lessons. Economics focus: A question of maturity. Germany Floats Greek Restructuring as Papandreou Seeks Cuts. German officials are putting Greek debt restructuring on the table over declarations by leaders in Athens and policy makers elsewhere in Europe that Greece will make good on its obligations. German Deputy Foreign Minister Werner Hoyer said yesterday a Greek restructuring “would not be a disaster.”

The previous day, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble was quoted by Die Welt newspaper as saying “further measures may have to be taken” if Greece flunks a June audit. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s deputies are raising what has been a taboo issue for European officials -- a restructuring by a euro member -- to show its unwillingness to contribute to more bailouts, Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Joh. Berenberg Gossler & Co. in London, said in a phone interview.

Germany is the largest contributor to European Union rescue funds, which have been tapped by Ireland, Greece and Portugal. Lagarde Warns on Greece's Public Finances. Buba’s Weidmann: Lengthening maturities on Greek debt means no longer accepable for collateral by ECB. Norway Stops Aid Payments To Greece. Citi Expects A 76% Haircut On Greek Debt (And 95% If Country Waits 4 Years) For Debt/GDP Ratio Back Down To 60% Will German Push for Greece Restructuring Tank the Greek Banking System? Funny what a difference a few months makes. Whenever this blog would suggest that Greece, and potentially other eurozone members, might have to restructure their debts, the idea was treated by some readers as a nefarious euroskeptic plot, particularly since badmouthing embattled governments could worsen their conditions by raising their funding costs. It might now be accurate to upgrade discussion of a Greek default to being an Anglo-Saxon plot. From Greece: Declaration for the Defense of Society and Democracy.

Greece Plans $110 Billion in Austerity Measures, Asset Sales to Cut Debt. Greece plans to carry out 76 billion euros ($110 billion) in austerity measures and state- asset sales to meet budget-deficit goals as Prime Minister George Papandreou vowed the country won’t restructure its debt. Greece will enact 26 billion euros in deficit cuts and 50 billion euros in asset sales through 2015, the Finance Ministry said today in an e-mailed statement from Athens.

The measures will cut the deficit to near 1 percent of gross domestic product by 2015, from a targeted 7.4 percent this year, Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou said. Papandreou is trying to convince investors that the country won’t have to renege on its debts after getting a 110 billion- euro bailout last year from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.