THE GREAT BIG FAT GREEK THREAD

[pl1]

Golden Dawn on the rise:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/anti-immigrant-golden-dawn-rises-in-greece/2012/10/20/e7128296-17a6-11e2-a346-f24efc680b8d_story.html

Mounting evidence that it is establishing alternitive markets within Greece. A market within a market. Examples touted in the article refers to Greek only blood banks and handing out milk and food to people but checking their identity documents beforehand.

[billybong]

The eurozone has gone through the brunt of its fiscal squeeze and will be well on the way to recovery by 2013. The economic/debt crisis will rotate from Continental Europe to the UK, with "peak austerity" hitting the British in 2013/2014 just in time to do maximum damage before the Scottish referendum.

.....

.....

I don’t wish to single out Holger Schmieding. He is one of my favourite EMU bankers. He is unabashedly idealistic about the project. And he likes a scrap anyway.

But the claim that Europe is through the worst is surely courting fate. Yet this is now the new orthodoxy. French president Francois Hollande said this morning that the eurozone is "very close" to close to overcoming the EMU crisis.

It's not exactly new.

They've been claiming that they're close to overcoming the crisis almost every day since the crisis began all those years ago and it's just got worse as time goes by.

Likely 2013 will be little different with regard to claims that it's all been solved.

Edited October 22, 2012 by billybong

[interestrateripoff]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20028170

Meanwhile, Greece's deficit last year was higher than previously expected.

Greece's deficit was 9.4% of output in 2011, the Hellenic Statistical Authority said. In April, it estimated that the public deficit stood at 9.1%.

That compares to -10.7% in 2010 and -15.6% in 2009.

Greece's debt stood at 170.6% of GDP, a large jump from 148.3% in 2010.

Who are these stupid people expecting these not to keep going up?

Still at least they aren't fooked!

[Bloo Loo]

http://www.bbc.co.uk...siness-20028170

Who are these stupid people expecting these not to keep going up?

Still at least they aren't fooked!

more deficit is good...gets money into the private sector which they save and this creates more capital....according to our MMT friends.

[R K]

Really excellent piece by Paul Mason - one of the few journalists who is really getting beneath the surface of what's happening in Greece. Well worth your time.

Parallels with the final years of Weimar

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-20105881

[copydude]

Really excellent piece by Paul Mason - one of the few journalists who is really getting beneath the surface of what's happening in Greece. Well worth your time.

Parallels with the final years of Weimar

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-20105881

Thanks for posting that. Surely one of Paul Mason's best pieces yet. It should be required reading in Brussels - but probably won't be.

Oh, and if he thinks Athens is bad, he should take a detour to Thessalonika. Very grim there.

I'm in Cyprus at the moment, so I'm fairly aware of the side-effects of the Greek farce.

Greece and Cyprus are inextricably linked . . . neither should have joined the EU, neither met any professed criteria and the only people to have seen any benefits from EU membership are rich Russians.

[Blue Peter]

Thanks for posting that. Surely one of Paul Mason's best pieces yet. It should be required reading in Brussels - but probably won't be.

Oh, and if he thinks Athens is bad, he should take a detour to Thessalonika. Very grim there.

I'm in Cyprus at the moment, so I'm fairly aware of the side-effects of the Greek farce.

Greece and Cyprus are inextricably linked . . . neither should have joined the EU, neither met any professed criteria and the only people to have seen any benefits from EU membership are rich Russians.

But see also this from a tweet by Paul. I was very unclear about what he meant by like the Weimar,

Peter.

[copydude]

But see also this from a tweet by Paul. I was very unclear about what he meant by like the Weimar,

Peter.

Try this quote from the article.

These names - Bruning, von Papen, Schleicher - troublesome though they are to remember, should be as famous as the words Stalingrad, Arnhem and Dunkirk.

These were the men who tried and failed to use a mixture of austerity, tough policing and what we might now call "technocratic" rule to save German democracy. They failed.

And herein lies the parallel with Greece

[jfk]

Really excellent piece by Paul Mason - one of the few journalists who is really getting beneath the surface of what's happening in Greece. Well worth your time.

Parallels with the final years of Weimar

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-20105881

Really, really good article. Fascinating read. Have shared to facebook...

[interestrateripoff]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/9636931/Greece-faces-30bn-bill-for-two-year-delay-to-meet-bail-out-targets.html

Dutch finance minister Jan Kees de Jager said that “Greece must bear the costs of any delay”, as think tank Open Europe warned that a two-year extension would cost at least €28.5bn (£23bn) to ensure the struggling eurozone nation can refinance its debts and pay its bills. His comments came as Ireland appeared to clash with its eurozone partners despite being hailed as a bail-out “success story”.

Eurozone officials were yesterday reported to be discussing how much Greece’s request to extend its debt and deficit targets until 2016 would cost and how it would be financed.

Open Europe said a small portion could be met by a cut in the interest rate on the €126bn of emergency loans from its European partners. However, the bulk would have to be financed by Greece. “Further austerity will be politically and economically difficult but there may be little alternative,” it said.

The release of a key €31.5bn tranche of Greece’s aid package is tied up with the negotiations on the bail-out timetable. Eurozone finance ministers are scheduled to discuss its release next Wednesday. Athens has warned it will run out of money next month unless it gets the funds.

So if Greece needs to extend because it can't make the targets it will have to fund the extension with more austerity to avoid more austerity???

[interestrateripoff]

Really excellent piece by Paul Mason - one of the few journalists who is really getting beneath the surface of what's happening in Greece. Well worth your time.

Parallels with the final years of Weimar

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-20105881

Extremism seems to be coming to the fore once more, we just have to hope we don't get the same ending as well.

All through economic stupidity.

[R K]

'Lagardes List' of prominent Greeks with Swiss bank a/cs leaked and published in Greece

http://www.nytimes.c...&smid=tw-share

ATHENS — The speaker of the Greek Parliament, several employees of the Finance Ministry and a number of business leaders are on a list of more than 2,000 Greeks said to have accounts in a Swiss bank, according to a respected investigative magazine. The Greek magazine, Hot Doc, published the list on Saturday, raising the stakes in a heated battle over which current and former government officials had seen the original list passed on by France two years ago — and whether they had used it to check for possible tax evasion

Hours after the magazine hit newsstands, Athens prosecutors issued a warrant for the arrest of Kostas Vaxevanis, the owner and editor of Hot Doc, "where names from the Lagarde list have been published," the Athens police said in a statement on their Web site. They said he was sought on misdemeanor charges; the Greek media reported that the charges were related to violating the privacy of those on the list.

Citing privacy concerns for those on the list, Hot Doc said it had redacted how much money was said to be in each account, but added that some accounts were listed as containing as much as 500 million euros. The list dates to 2007.

Yanis Varoufakis ‏@yanisvaroufakis Kostas Vaxevanis just tweeted his address, saying that there are 15 policemen outside - and daring them to break in to arrest him.

[/url]

Yanis Varoufakis ‏@yanisvaroufakis Greek investigative reporter just arrested by police. Journalists the world over: Spread the word, shame the Greek authorities!

Edited October 28, 2012 by Red Knight

[Bloo Loo]

'Lagardes List' of prominent Greeks with Swiss bank a/cs leaked and published in Greece

http://www.nytimes.c...&smid=tw-share

this could be it...the elites holding on and now "forced" to fight back.

The police are stupid following this path....they themselves will become target from people defending themselves.

shame...but with people waking up, the fighting starts.

America has prepared for this apparently.

[19 year mortgage 8itch]

'Lagardes List' of prominent Greeks with Swiss bank a/cs leaked and published in Greece

http://www.nytimes.c...&smid=tw-share

Do catch up RK, I posted about the list and made a cryptic reference to the 'suicides' 3 weeks ago.

http://www.businessinsider.com/greek-men-on-lagarde-list-found-dead-2012-10

flickr / MEDEF

The so-called "Lagarde List" –  the name given by the Greek press to a list containing 1,991 names of wealthy, Swiss-bank-account-possessing Greeks who are being investigated for corruption and tax evasion – is causing a major stir in Greece right now.

Since Friday, two men suspected to be on the list have turned up dead in apparent suicides.

Here is what has happened in the past few days.

Last Tuesday, October 3, the "Lagarde List" was passed to Greek prime minister Antonis Samaras from PASOK party leader and former finance minister Evangelos Venizelos.

Apparently, it had been "missing," according to a Financial Times article from a few days prior, and current finance minister Yannis Stournaras had vowed to track it down.

From the FT:

Yannis Stournaras, the finance minister, told the FT on Sunday that he would pursue the issue of the missing CD with Greek depositors names “as a priority”.

“I first learnt of its existence last week from the newspapers . . . but if SDOE can’t track it down, then we’ll ask our European partners for another copy,” Mr Stournaras said.

This provided the impetus for Venizelos to hand over the list to Greek prime minister Antonis Samaras last Tuesday, saying he had already made Greece's financial crimes unit, SDOE, aware of it, as reported by Kathimerini.

Venizelos was given the list by his predecessor, former finance minister Giorgos Papaconstantinou, who received it from Christine Lagarde in 2010, when she was serving as France's finance minister.

Immediately after Samaras received the list from Venizelos, Yiannis Sbokos, a former Greek minister involved in defense, was arrested by SDOE over financial corruption.

Leonidas Tzanis, a former Greek minister who had been under investigation, was found hanged in his home last Friday. The Press Association reports that "the official said Mr Tzanis's death is being treated as suicide but no suicide note has been found."

Now, today, Vlassis Kambouroglou, a wealthy Greek businessman in the defense industry, has been found dead in a hotel room in Jakarta, Indonesia.

The Greek Reporter has the details on Kambouroglou:

A Greek businessman who had been accused of being part of the bribery and money laundering network involving former Defense Minister Akis Tsochatzopoulos, who is in jail on charges of stealing as much as $1.29 billion from defense contracts, has been found dead in a hotel room in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Vlassis Kambouroglou was the Managing Director of Drumilan International, which was involved in the sale of a Russian-made TOR-M1 missile system to Greece. Authorities in Indonesia did not say how he died. Kambouroglou was called to testify before a Parliamentary inquiry into the arms deal in 2004 but denied that his company made any money from the deal. No charges were brought against him.

Now, Stournaras, Papaconstantinou, Venizelos, and another are going to have to testify before the Greek parliament on the list, according to Kathimerini:

Parliament’s ethics and transparency committee on Monday voted in favor of Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras and three former ministers -- Evangelos Venizelos, who now leads socialist PASOK, Filippos Sachinidis and Giorgos Papaconstantinou -- being called before the House to reveal what they know about the so-called “Lagarde list” -- a list of some 2,000 Greeks with deposits in Swiss banks who are being probed for tax evasion.

According to sources, Venizelos and Papaconstantinou testified over the weekend before financial prosecutor Grigoris Peponis in connection with the list, which Papaconstantinou claims to have received from former French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde, who is now head of the International Monetary Fund. No details about the former ministers’ testimonies were released but they are believed to have repeated the positions they have expressed publicly to date on the matter.

Venizelos faces some serious questions, as members of parliament want to know if he's been in possession of the list for a long time. The concern is that he may have been shielding fellow PASOK party members from being exposed.

Venizelos was also the most recent finance minister before the current one and served as the deputy prime minister before that, so he has been in a management position in a Greek government that has been failing to meet troika sanctions for a while, now.

The "Lagarde List" has not been made public, so there is no way to say for sure at present whether Tzanis, Sbokos, or Kambouroglou's names actually appear on the list. However, the timeline of events is striking, and all are tied to past deals between the defense industry and the Greek government.

Meanwhile, the "Lagarde List" doesn't just contain names of Greek tax evaders. It's a list of closer to 22,000 names of wealthy people from various EU member states with Swiss bank accounts. The implication is that wealthy elites from other countries could be revealed in a corruption probe as well.

This is all starting to blow up during a crucial moment for Greece as it tries to come to an agreement with the troika over additional spending cuts and German chancellor Angela Merkel visits Samaras tomorrow in Athens.

Edited October 28, 2012 by SeeYouNextTuesday

[19 year mortgage 8itch]

Really excellent piece by Paul Mason - one of the few journalists who is really getting beneath the surface of what's happening in Greece. Well worth your time.

Parallels with the final years of Weimar

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-20105881

The only thing missing now is why don't people leave? Free to travel and work within Europe, families with generations of migrants throughout the world, options all over the place.but stories about mass migration? Not seeing them. Why not?

It would be funny if it weren't so real but I have links with a GD goon. I've never met his GD handler but the handler is an alleged sex pest a la J Savile. Which sums them up, wrong 'uns. There is a lot of ******** told but obviously someone knows what they are doing. I don't mean to insult the Greeks but they seem to have a "small town mentality" if you know what I mean? I think that narrow minded would be unnecessarily harsh. Maybe my perception is skewed by seeing places at the extremities of the country but it's very much Greece and Greeks are best (reason for lack of migration?). This weakness is like an open goal for GD. Again I don't want to be insulting or condescending but the part of Greece I frequent feels like it is only a generation or 2 out of third world status. At the time it must have been wonderful for them. Heaven knows, my wife's family made hay while the sun shone but even that was hard work and now with the benefit of hindsight, how stable could anyone ever expect such rapid expansion to be?

[copydude]

this could be it...the elites holding on and now "forced" to fight back.

The police are stupid following this path....they themselves will become target from people defending themselves.

But the elites are all in it together . . . Government, banks, judiciary and presumably police chiefs. And one can certainly add in the EU, which actively condoned very high levels of corruption when accepting the new member states.

There's a case in point at the moment in Cyprus. There are tens of thousands of victims (mostly foreign investors) of a property scam . . . none can get the title deeds to places they bought. Cypriot lawyers make the Somalian pirates look like good guys. But any letter to the EU about this is guaranteed to fall on deaf ears.

[R K]

Do catch up RK, I posted about the list and made a cryptic reference to the 'suicides' 3 weeks ago.

http://www.businessi...nd-dead-2012-10

Sorry didn't see it. The significance today I think was the arrest of the editor of the magazine that published it.

[copydude]

Sorry didn't see it. The significance today I think was the arrest of the editor of the magazine that published it.

Too right. And the EU has the gall to complain about Putin rolling back democracy and press freedoms. EU countries figure increasingly in complaints from organisations like Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders.

Reporters Without Borders is deeply concerned by the arrest warrant that was issued yesterday for Kostas Vaxevanis, the editor of the weekly Hot Doc and producer of the national TV programme Koutis Tis Pandoras (Pandora’s Box), after he published a list of around 2,000 suspected tax evaders with Swiss bank accounts.

Published in the latest issue of Hot Doc, the list is of unclear origin but is known as the Lagarde List because it is said to closely match a list which then French finance minister Christine Lagarde gave to her Greek counterpart in 2010. It has been the subject of contradictory statements by Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, finance minister Yannis Stournaras and other officials.

"We are particularly disturbed by the speed with which the authorities issued this arrest warrant. Vaxevanis is not a dangerous criminal and could have just been questioned. The pressure that the warrant puts on this journalist is clearly disproportionate. This excessive procedure also encourages the blackout that the authorities apparently want to impose on coverage of this case, which – although sensitive – is undeniably a subject of public interest.

"If the authorities go ahead and arrest Vaxevanis, we insist that a lawyer is present from the very first moment and that all of his rights are respected. It cannot be any other way in a European Union member country. We also point out that Vaxevanis has very right to insist on the need to protect his sources."

Follow Kostas Vaxevanis’ tweeter : @KostasVaxevanis

[winkie]

So if Greece needs to extend because it can't make the targets it will have to fund the extension with more austerity to avoid more austerity???

Interest on interest......maybe they are hoping inflation will repay the debt over time, a very long time or be forced to sell their assets......

Dammed if they do dammed if they don't......

[EvilEdna]

Too right. And the EU has the gall to complain about Putin rolling back democracy and press freedoms. EU countries figure increasingly in complaints from organisations like Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders.

A number of critical journalists have died in very suspicious circumstances in Russia - this hardly bares comparison.

[interestrateripoff]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/9639512/Germany-rattled-as-taxpayer-losses-loom-in-Greece.html

A draft version of the Troika report obtained by Spiegel magazine said EMU governments and the European Central Bank must accept their share of losses in order to bring Greece’s public debt back to 120pc of GDP by 2020, deemed the sustainable level.

Greece must carry out a further 150 reforms, some involving a drastic loss of sovereignty. Troika payments will be held frozen in a special account under creditor control.

The Troika will have power to raise taxes automatically. There must be new laws to make it easier to fire workers and adjust the minumum wage.

In exchange, Greece should be given two extra years until 2016 to meet budget targets, costing up to €38bn.

Surely they mean guessed at sustainable level of 120% of GDP?

Looks like the taxpayer is about to feel the pain.

[Bloo Loo]

A number of critical journalists have died in very suspicious circumstances in Russia - this hardly bares comparison.

ah, so its the same, its just a question of deciding how many constitutes a problem...Id say ...one constitutes a problem, as one is going to be the first if "they" can get away with it.

[Bloo Loo]

http://www.telegraph...-in-Greece.html

Surely they mean guessed at sustainable level of 120% of GDP?

Looks like the taxpayer is about to feel the pain.

there, they say it...EMU Governments and the ECB must accept their share of the losses.

Banks however, must not.

Dont they see the losses are losses, regardless of who loses them....but the taxpayer, with no voice, and the ECB, with no care, are the obvious targets.

The bankers now rule in Europe.

Edited October 29, 2012 by Bloo Loo

[interestrateripoff]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/debt-crisis-live/9639964/Debt-crisis-Troika-paves-way-for-taxpayer-losses-live.html

Such is the degree of uncertainty in Greece that the country is considered a riskier investment than Syria.

The Greek haircut debate rumbles on. Angela Merkel's spokesman has said that German law would not allow a second debt haircut for Greece while new aid for the country is being discussed. Responding to questions about a new writedown of Greek debt to enable it to stay in the eurozone, Steffen Seibert said:

German budget law, in article 39, says that credits can only be given when it is considered unlikely that there will be a default. We would be tying our own hands with such a measure and it would certainly not be in Greece's interests.

[copydude]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/debt-crisis-live/9639964/Debt-crisis-Troika-paves-way-for-taxpayer-losses-live.html

Angela Merkel's spokesman has said that German law would not allow a second debt haircut for Greece while new aid for the country is being discussed.

An awful lot of Germans would argue that German law didn't allow for the first debt haircut.

And you might spare a thought for Cyprus here. As the biggest lender to Greece and buyer of worthless Greek debt, the country is now bankrupt from the first Greek haircut and currently needing its own bailout. Thanks Angie.

In fact, former Moody's man writes that: Cypriot banks are insolvent ‘on an intergalactic scale’

How the troika expects local taxpayers to bail these intergalactically insolvent banks is simply mindbending. For a start, there aren't enough of them - population just 830,000 with 16% and rising living below the poverty line.

But hey, a dose of austerity will sort it, right?