Tuberider
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Posts posted by Tuberider
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I am only really wintering here, doing nothing special. A place to sit on a balcony and write. Life of a cat, really. But it has been very interesting to be in the eye of an EU storm. And to witness at first hand the disconnect between Brussels, the reality on the ground and the politicians in the middle.
I don't see any ready solution for the Turkish 'irritant', since Turkey is a 'valued member of NATO' which just happens to have its HQ in Brussels too. Real tangled web of dishonest diplomacy.
I am surprised that the previous (Moscow leaning) Cyprus Pres didn't just give the energy concessions to Gazprom and then tell the Turks to take up their problems with Putin. That would have shut them up.
Sounds idylic.
Enjoy the heatwave. I'm sweating like a dog today.
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What convinces you your domestic charges will halve...firms tend to pay for energy in international markets.
AHK is state owned. They generate electricity from crude right now, expensive. Having own source of natural gas will slash costs dramatically.
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Well, they say a week is long time in politics. The Government might just get overtaken by events. It's clear that the EU isn't going to prop Cyprus in the same way as Greece.
Things have been calm up to now, but the shrinkage in the economy is starting to appear. Quite a few shops closing on my street. Salary cuts have started.
I wouldn't know about 2018. Much of what I read suggests the revenue coming on stream is further away, maybe ten years. And there's the small problem of Turkey wanting a slice . . .
What do you do here by the way ? Are you also in energy / shipping ?
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Well, they say a week is long time in politics. The Government might just get overtaken by events. It's clear that the EU isn't going to prop Cyprus in the same way as Greece.
Things have been calm up to now, but the shrinkage in the economy is starting to appear. Quite a few shops closing on my street. Salary cuts have started.
I wouldn't know about 2018. Much of what I read suggests the revenue coming on stream is further away, maybe ten years. And there's the small problem of Turkey wanting a slice . . .
The gas should be available for domestic consumption by 2018. This means our electricity cost will halve. A huge advantage to consumers and businesses on the island.
I know the negative climate is all-pervading right now, but the gas is there. It exists. It is extractable. We have major players involved like TOATL/ KOGAS/ENI. Israel and Lebanon have expressed strong interest in exporting their reserves via our (future) liquefaction terminal. It is real. it is happening.
Turks have always been there. If we worried about the Turks every time we farted, we'd never get out of bed.
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Much as I would like a concise, clear and well-thought out plan to emerge from our political class for Cyprus to leave the Euro, I don't think it is going to happen with this government.
The political costs are far more terryfying than the economic ones, and they will not risk it.
The government will hold on, until the gas starts to flow in 2018.
600 billion is a lot of money.
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Im sure every person in those countries with a diminished income is lying in bed at night terrified that prices of goods may fall.
50,000 posts all as relevant and interesting as the one above
are you a bot
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A friend of mine just got back from a holiday in Cyprus - apparently it was ruddy expensive.
Told me tales of meals costing about 90 euros whereas last year the same cost about 30 euros. Price of steak was crippling and beer in pubs was a rip off. Friend ended up buying most of her family's food in the supermarkets and apparently loads of Brits were doing the same.
Never seen prices like that here, so i'm with Copydude on this one.
Of course, tourist traps do exist in Cyprus, and people get ripped off from time to time as they might in any holiday resort. But it's not the norm.
Pint of good local beer is what, 1.50 to 3 euros depending on where you are
MT, next time your mate is over here tell him about the following:
Aristos and Kiki - Cineplex road near the beach lights. Incredibly good kebabs, full of locals. 4 people eat til you bust around 45 euros total
Tsolias - underworld meze joint, tucked away in town behind Makarios ave. great food, just don't make eye contact with anyone.
Neo Falliron - near the big starbucks by the law courts. Top quality. Lots of oligarch wannabe's and business people, but prices reasonable around 20 euros per head
Kalimera India - best Indian in Limassol, opposite Rio Cinema. Huge curries, rice and japati for 7.50 euros. website: kalimeraindia.com
Chris Blue Beach at Curium Beach. Good food, great setting, prices are very reasonable.
Anywhere in Saripolou square, especially Kanela.
The Woodman - opposite Dassoudi beach. Top pub grub but gets very busy.
Terra e Mare opposite Hawai Grand.
La Boca (Italian) in Colombia Plaza, St Andrew's St
3 Alonia in Ayios Tychonas village - great meze
List is endless. if you want to eat good, fresh and cheap then Cyprus is the place to be. We are obsessed with food.
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Four months on, and we seem to be holding up better than I imagined
Unemployment is climbing but the massive exodus of businesses has not materialized (yet)
The gas is going well, too. Noble are conducting their appraisal drill and in 3 months we will know how much gas is in the aphrodite field. Israelis seem interested in exporting their gas via Cyprus too...
...and the kebab joints are still full. i was in Aristos and Kiki's the other night and had to wait for a table for half an hour
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People are dying at home and abroad while their idiot politicians bicker.
Nothing will change.
Poor black folk living in the ruins of the Katrina flooding in Louisiana never received proper help from the state or federal governments.
Nobody in America cares about poor people, or the mid-west except for the mid west.
I agree, but that's the way they want it. The system might not be broken, it was made that way. The econonmy of New Orleans is booming and has been since Katrina. It's what keeps the wheels of the capitalist system turning. Boom, bust, build, tear down, consume, detox.
Destruction leads to a very rough road but it also breeds creation...
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I wonder the same thing, surely a country with the wealth and technology of the USA can create housing solutions to fit the environment,to me it would make far more sense to build your housing as a semi underground structure, something like this is the best example I could find:
This has to be better than the wooden frame above ground housing in a tornado zone? At least for places like schools and hospital perhaps, I don't know the cost of digging a hole and waterproofing etc, maybe it would be too expensive, but really doesn't it just make sense to build like this rather than the current methods?
jeez, that looks like mosquito heaven
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Americans have a different attitude to their houses, basically: they're not designed to last as long as ours in the first place, and if they are destroyed in a natural disaster, it's cheaper to clear the site and build from scratch in most cases than it is to repair a damaged structure.
My fiancee's family live about 10 miles from the San Andreas Fault in California, where almost all the houses are wood frame and cladding. Local building codes in most areas actually ban the construction of brick houses, the rationale being that in an earthquake, timber sections will fall over in one piece, usually after people have had a chance to get out of their way, whereas bricks flying around is something you seriously do not want. Ditto bush fires: if one goes through a brick house, it'll gut the interior and destroy the roof structure anyway, after which it's as cheap if not cheaper to build a new wooden house from scratch as it is to repair a brick or concrete structure.
So what they'll probably do in Oklahoma is simply to bulldoze the wreckage out of the way and rebuild from a brown field.
I know what you are getting at, but the American insistence of building homes out of balsa wood is absolutely insane. I live in an earthquake zone and I could not imagine building such a house and living with that risk every day that it could collapse on top of my family.
Things in america may be changing though. I was in NOLA shortly after Katrina, and the devestation was unbelievable. Huge areas devestated, especially in the SE of the city, with areas like St Claude/ lower 9th ward completely destroyed. I was there again last month and I noticed some big new developments downtown near the superdome being built with reinforced concrete skeletons like we do here in the med. the design of these blocks was also decidedly European. Perhaps they are waking up after so many hard lessons.
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The USA doesn't have a legal limit on it's deficit, only on it's total debt.
The deficit is shrinking. Unemployment is falling. The economy is growing. These are three things the USA can say, but which we cannot.
+1
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All over the med (Spain, Greece, Italy, North Africa) they use reinforced concrete even for single family houses so it can't be too expensive.
I remember reading once that planning laws in most parts of the US don't allow reinforced concrete for family houses, I'm not sure if that's true though, might be an Internet myth.
Building a house now in Cyprus, and yeah by law you have to construct a reinforced concrete skeleton. it's expensive, and more or less doubles up the cost of the build.
Total build cost comes in between 950 - 1200 Euros per square metre. Not sure how that compares with USA/ UK
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Wednesday 15 May 2013 17.31 BST
US budget deficit's fall should make European 'austerians' think again
Budget shortfall predicted to drop to 4%, from 10% in 2009, vindicating Obama's policy of US growing its way out of debt
Phillip Inman, Economics correspondent
If only the "austerians" had listened. According to the latest forecasts, the US budget deficit will shrink to 4% of GDP this year.
The slide from 2009's 10.1% budget shortfall is one in the eye for the Tea party and any other advocate of "contractionary expansion".
Worse for the fans of austerity, forecasts published by the US congressional budget office expect the deficit to fall to 2.1% of GDP by 2015 as tax revenues soar.
By comparison, the UK's official forecaster, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), expects a budget deficit on a Maastricht treaty basis of 7.6% this year. Not until 2017 will it fall below the Maastricht maximum of 3%.
The Obama administration was regularly battered by critics who said the deficit would balloon without massive budget cuts. The president resisted much of the rhetoric and put in place a stimulus plan. It was weaker than economists such as Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz wanted, mainly because constitutionally required cuts in local state spending went ahead regardless. But it was still a stimulus plan and by last year it was helping millions of workers find jobs and this year is making serious inroads into the deficit.
Trevor Greetham, a director at Fidelity Worldwide Investment, congratulated the president on his strategy.
"The anti-austerity camp will get a boost today," he said. "It is increasingly clear that the Obama administration was right to put off fiscal tightening and focus reforms in the medium to long term. America is growing its way out of debt. The deficit is shrinking because tax revenues are coming in better than expected and a rise in house prices has seen the two government-sponsored lenders, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, repay some $95bn (£60bn) to the Treasury.
"The good US fiscal performance stands in stark contrast to the UK, where front-loaded spending cuts and tax rises have hurt the economy and caused a shortfall in government revenues. The OBR expects the deficit to shrink to a manageable level by 2017 but this forecast, like all of the previous ones, relies on sustained economic expansion of 2-3% a year. It is hard to believe this level of growth will be achieved especially as next month will see another year of cuts tacked on the end of what has become a rolling five-year austerity plan."
Greetham is one of the few City investors to say loudly and consistently that austerity was the wrong medicine. In 2011 he contradicted George Osborne's message that the UK was like Greece. He said then it was more like the US and should adopt the same remedy.
And Japan is moving in the same direction. Even now Tokyo is looking to boost government spending by 2% to 3% as it seeks to generate growth and reduce its almost perpetual 10% annual deficits. Alongside this plan is the expansion of the money supply by the Bank of Japan, which together with the spending boost will be the ultimate test of the Keynesian answer to a slump.
Yet many will argue the Obama administration has done enough to show that Keynesianism works and it is only ideology that has hindered growth in the UK and Europe, not the availability of an oven-ready solution.
http://m.guardian.co.uk/business/economics-blog/2013/may/15/us-budget-deficit-austerity-stimulus
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Two independant audits clear Cyprus of money laundering
But then we always knew it was a load of b-llcks
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What ever happened to France's voice in Europe?
Financial Mirror
24 April, 2013
A few hours after midnight one Sunday last month, as negotiations over a rescue for Cyprus dragged into a second day, French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici fell asleep.
Most euro zone ministers in Brussels that night failed to notice, continuing to pore over the details of the multi-billion-euro deal. It fell to Christine Lagarde, French director of the International Monetary Fund, to approach Moscovici and nudge him awake, according to witnesses at the March 24 talks.
The sight of the IMF head waking up France's top finance official in a crisis meeting neatly illustrates a question that is troubling European diplomats: what has happened to France's voice in Europe?
For decades France has been central to the European project that was born out of World War Two and now reaches from Europe's Atlantic coast to beyond the former Iron Curtain.
Straddling north and south, France has a unique perspective on Europe. It is the European Union's largest economy after Germany. One of six founders of the original European coal and steel community in 1951, it has shaped and often led, the institutions that make the EU tick.
The readiness of successive French and German leaders to work together has for decades created a consensus among two former enemies that has steered Europe through crisis and change - from the end of the Cold War and Germany's reunification, to the expansion of the EU to the east and the introduction of the single European currency in 1999.
For much of the past four years, during which the euro zone was nearly torn apart by a debt crisis, the Franco-German axis has held true. But in the past six months, questions have arisen about what France is offering in terms of fresh ideas, and how it is dealing with the rest of Europe.
"You can see a shrinking presence, a progressive disappearance of France on most issues that concern the economic agenda," said Fredrik Erixon, director of the European Centre for International Political Economy, a Brussels think tank.
European diplomats from a range of member states, speaking on condition of anonymity, are more blunt.
"You don't hear France's voice at all. They are nowhere, just nowhere," said a senior European diplomat who is in frequent contact with other member states.
"This is a critical country and yet it seems absent," he said, mentioning as an example a lack of sustained French input to the debate on how to strengthen economic and monetary union.
"It's not just strange, it's worrying," he said. "Everyone is aware of the problem. There's concern at multiple levels."
LOSING INFLUENCE
Even France accepts something is wrong. Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault told parliament this month it was time the country reasserted itself so that "what it says counts in Europe, and that it can rediscover the leadership role it has lost".
Diplomats, officials and analysts interviewed by Reuters offered a range of theories for the ebbing French influence - from the style-change since the consensual Francois Hollande took over from the more combative Nicolas Sarkozy, to the fact that English is displacing French as Brussels' lingua franca.
There is broad agreement that one root of the problem lies in France's inability so far to follow Germany's lead in reforming its economy. A lack of economic competitiveness has undermined France's ability to project influence in Brussels.
Hollande insists early reforms such as a deal with trade unions to loosen labour law should be given time to work, and points to the fact that he has already managed to reduce France's public deficit from its Sarkozy-era levels.
Yet critics say the pace of reform is not fast enough, especially when it comes to pensions reform and overhauling a centralised economy.
In February, France finally conceded what its EU partners had guessed for months: that it would not be able to keep a promise to bring the deficit down to 3 percent of output this year. At the same time growth is weak and debt and unemployment are rising.
Away from the economy, France remains vocal. On foreign and defence policy, its intervention to help combat Islamist rebels in Mali and its diplomatic efforts to end the Syrian conflict show the veto-holding U.N. Security Council member remains a powerful voice, and one able to make an impact. In such matters, France is as confident as it was a decade ago when it galvanised European resistance to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
But on Europe's most pressing economic issue - how it sees off the debt crisis and puts itself on a footing to compete with the United States and Asia - the weakness of France's economy and public finances means its voice is muffled.
"If you don't have your house in order, it's very difficult to influence others," said Erixon of the ECIPE think tank. "This is not the sort of France we've grown used to having in the European Union."
SOUTHERN SYMPATHY?
When Hollande came to power last May as France's first Socialist president since Francois Mitterand was elected in 1981, many in France and southern Europe expected him to act as a buffer to the German-led push for budget austerity.
Such hopes looked set to be borne out when, to the delight of Spain and Italy, he used his maiden EU summit last June to demand that the EU create a "growth pact" to alleviate the pain of deficit-cutting. Yet the growth pact is failing to prevent much of Europe sliding into recession and Hollande has stopped short of rallying a southern bloc against Merkel.
"We understand there is disappointment in the south about that," said a French source closely involved in EU policy. "But there was no way we were going to risk dividing Europe in two."
Finance Minister Moscovici says renewed debate about growth and austerity is proof that France is being heard.
Another factor in Hollande's choice not to align France with the south might well have been the financial markets.
In 2012, whenever Hollande spoke out in sympathy with Spain, Italy or Greece and looked ready to go toe-to-toe with Germany and other northern European states over austerity, the yields on France's benchmark 10-year bonds would rise.
When rating agency Moody's last November stripped French debt of its triple-A rating, some suggested France risked being re-categorised as a southern European economy such as Spain and Italy - with the higher borrowing costs that come with that.
So while Hollande maintains a stream of verbal attacks on austerity, he continues to chip away at France's deficit, albeit at a slower pace than Berlin or Brussels would like.
It adds up to a half-way house that, for now, the markets accept: France's 10-year bond yield has fallen to all-time lows around 1.80 percent, occupying a niche between even lower-yielding German Bunds and riskier southern bonds.
But Hollande's need to keep a safe distance between France and the countries of the south has not led to a greater meeting of minds with Berlin, his most important relationship.
Whereas Merkel and Sarkozy enjoyed warm relations, no matter how different their personal styles, Hollande and the German chancellor have struggled to find a comfortable pitch, a lack of ease most prominently on show at the EU's frequent summits.
"FRIENDLY TENSION"
Ahead of EU gatherings, Sarkozy, a man of nervous energy and constant activity, would criss-cross Europe in bursts of shuttle diplomacy and then meet Merkel in Paris or Berlin the day before to agree a common position, much to other leaders' chagrin.
The ritual meant France and Germany were always centre-stage and gave the impression of driving decision-making, not least as the EU has held no fewer than 25 summits in the past 3-1/2 years rather than the usual four a year.
Moreover, the body language of what famously became known as "Merkozy" was choreographed to show Franco-German togetherness. When the two arrived at summits, they would make a show of bonhomie, kissing each other on each cheek and smiling broadly.
While Merkel and Hollande have recently started pecking each other on the cheek, flashes of empathy have been few. "As you know, Mrs Merkel and I do not see things the same way, but we have the same duty - to push Europe forward," Hollande said last month, calling the relationship one of "friendly tension".
Hollande's aides say his reluctance to hatch deals with Berlin is a deliberate policy to include the other 25 members of the EU in decision-making. But one consequence is that Berlin is now doing more of its deal-making with others.
"France has found it hard to define itself, either to pretend that there is a Franco-German agreement, or that it can be a driving force behind a Franco-German agreement," said Jean Pisani-Ferry, the director of Bruegel, a Brussels-based think tank that frequently provides policy advice to the EU.
NOT OUR PROBLEM?
Hollande's task of making France's voice heard is all the harder given the internal differences on European policy among ministers and allies. Finance Minister Moscovici is a supporter of deeper EU integration while Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius is seen as wary of further moves to shed sovereignty.
"Hollande has not come down forcefully on either side of the debate so far," noted Thomas Klau, director of the Paris office of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).
Opponents of Hollande are making hay out of the disarray. Bruno Le Maire, Sarkozy's former Europe minister, said France's voice in Europe was now at its weakest since 1957, the year before Charles de Gaulle founded the Fifth Republic.
Whoever is to blame, the fact remains that one of Europe's main motors is not functioning as it should.
"France is tied up with internal problems and is not the strong interlocutor we would like," said Michael Grosse-Broemer, parliamentary whip for Merkel's Christian Democrats. "But that's not Berlin's problem, or the chancellor's."
Others argue it is very much Germany's problem.
Cypriot public anger at an EU rescue package that for the first time imposed losses on bank depositors was directed at Germany - a pattern already observed on the streets of Athens, Madrid and Rome. From Berlin's point of view, not having a partner standing alongside it makes life difficult.
"It's not in the interests of Germany," said Bruegel's Pisani-Ferry. "It doesn't want to be seen as the country running the show. That's not very comfortable for it, obviously."
Just how the European Union will evolve if French influence is durably muted and Germany is pushed against its will into a lone leadership role is hard to predict.
But it did not go unnoticed in Paris that it was the prime minister of Britain and his family who were recently invited to spend the weekend with Merkel at a country estate.
"These days it is with David Cameron that Angela Merkel tries to build a common position," wrote Le Point weekly with a hint of pique. "And not with Francois Hollande."
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I am surprised we do not have more Greek correspondants on the forum. I am down in the wealthy southern islands. For all the stories, last summer the police did not have petrol for their cars, this year you must provide your own plaster cast powder at hte hospital and they ask for donations to use the water fountain, people are still getting treated and life has changed little. It could be an elaborate scam set up by the Greek plumbers union but there are healthy grants available to refirbish bathrooms in tourist accomodation despite there being "no money".
We are fed and watered, life goes on.
I'm a Greek Cypriot, visit Athens and surrounds every other month or so on business.
Things looked calm when I was there last week. My suppliers are buzzing. Cafe's full, the usual hot mounares everywhere and not a jackbooted skinhead in sight.
I was up near Chalkis where Golden Dawn paid an impromptu visit to local industrialists. The factory owners thought they were coming for their immigrant and non-Greek employees and were quick to piont them out. No, said GD. We are not here for them but for you. We will be back in a month and if all these jobs are not filled with Greeks, you are dead men.
Needless to say the factories made some quick dismissals and quick hirings the very next day.
It won them tremendous support from locals, people who had voted PASOK/ ND their whole lives.
Fascism is a perfectly rational response to 30% unemployment.
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If you really think that then I think you are wrong. People in misery and homelessness and near starvation do not always make the news.
Wow, that must be another Cyprus and not the one I live in !
I've seen two homeless people this year, one of them a Romanian the other one one a local nutter who refuses to live indoors. It's quite a rare phenomenon here as family ties are very close and everyone has someone they can live with if things really go bad.
Near starvation ? I was in Saripolou on THURSDAY night (not even a weekend night) and the bars, cafes and restaurants were about 70% full, locals and tourists.
Now i don't know how much worse things will be this time next year, and yes we are expecting the worst, but it's not Mogadishu just yet !
P.s Greece is sliding towards fascism, in many ways this can be seen as a perfectly normal and rational response to 30% unemployment.
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Were they weak and useless while they were working down the pit? At what point did they become weak and useless? Was it immediately after redundancy? A year later? Two years?
Depression and anxiety can hit even the strongest. It is no respecter of class, status, wealth or even mental fitness. There but for the grace of God...
Your lack of empathy is frankly chilling.
+1
I wouldn't waste your breath, he doesn't get it
Unless you have been poor, jobless and lived in utter despair it is very hard to imagine. Yes, if you are mentally and physically strong enough the tide will turn eventually and you will be able to claw back some work and self-respect. Over time you might get lucky; the economy improves and your life with it. Or it might not. I have experienced both first hand and I would not wish it on anybody.
But not everybody is physically and mentally strong enough.
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So are these fragile little flowers that need our understanding or big burly muscle bound men righteously digging with their fingernails for the good of humanity? Your view is a little inconsistent.
I believe the fighting was more about class warfare and being easily manipulated than really really wanting to carry on doing a lousy job.
These are grown men, they should be able to stand on their own 2 feet over 20 years from losing a job ffs, there's a point you cross with too much compassion called being taken for a fool.
Don't be a fool. Open your eyes. It doesn't depend on them. It depends on the system. Most of these guys didn't stop to think too much about it all, they were working and then they were not working. They wanted to keep working to feed their families. Some of them may have taken the p1ss, like some of us always do, but the majority were happy to do a hard job that most of us would not survive doing. Their communities were dependent on those jobs to stay alive - those miners were not going to go and retrain as IT programmers or bloody graphic designers to keep their families fed.
And despite what your masters tell you, there is nothing wrong with showing compassion.
You sound like a thoroughly unpleasant little man.
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The miners were just pawns in a game being played by the likes of Scargill.
Yawn
So what
aren't we all pawns in a game played by someone
why attack them
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The lack of compassion here is shocking
These men fought to keep their jobs. Not just any job, not even a GOOD job, but a dirty and dangerous job, the only one they knew how to do. Think about it, they fought to keep a job that most of us would not have lasted 5 minutes doing: digging out coal in the pitch dark, hundreds of metres underground day after grinding day. To them it was their whole life. That was the limit of their aspirations : work hard at a hellish job to put food on the table for their families.
They are working men, is it any wonder then that many of them could not move on and ‘retrain’ into the new spiv economy ?
And anyway what is the problem with miners? Surely there are more deserving targets to focus your hatred upon ?
Some of you can be right orrible cants.
I Need Help!
in House prices and the economy
Posted
If he has a good sized deposit and is confident he can let it out, then i'd say it's about as safe an investment as any other these days.
As other posters have said, even if he ends up subsidizing it with a couple of grand a year, it's still better than paying it into a pension which he may never see, or piling it up as savings which can be seized or inflated away.
I know it's a cliche but there really is nothing safer than property IMO, unless you are highly leveraged. and even then, you might still get away with it.