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“Southern Europe Does Almost Nothing—Except Complain”
Wolf Richter www.testosteronepit.com
“While Eastern Europe is largely implementing the necessary reforms, Southern Europe does almost nothing—except complain,” said Bulgarian Finance Minister Simeon Djankov in an interview, a withering blast aimed at neighboring Greece.
And in Greece, “The risk of bankruptcy is still existent,” said Fotis Kouvelis, the leader of Democratic Left, smallest of the three parties in the coalition government. His way of reminding the bailout Troika—the EU, the European Central Bank (ECB), and the IMF—to open the money spigot all the way, or else! The Troika inspectors are scheduled to return to Athens next week to have another look [read.... Greece Flails About, Troika Inspectors Paint “Awful Picture,” Merkel Draws A Line, German Industry & Voters Back Her: It’s Almost Over For Greece].
In September, armed with the inspectors’ final report, the Troika will decide whether or not to make the next bailout payment to Greece. If the decision is no, Greece will default and most likely return to the drachma.
“We demand an extension,” Kouvelis said, summarizing eloquently the strategy since the June elections. Instead of implementing with fiendish dedication the reforms that the prior government had agreed to in exchange for the second bailout package, the new government insists on renegotiating those reforms and then delaying those renegotiated reforms, while insisting on the continuous flow of other people’s billions. He complained about the recession, and that therefore structural reforms couldn’t be implemented.
But neighboring Bulgaria is one of the EU’s fastest growing economies. It has the second lowest national debt of all EU countries and even sports a budget surplus. Individual and corporate income tax rates are 10%. And it’s one of only three EU countries in compliance with the financial stability criteria in the Maastricht treaty. The very criteria that were supposed to have prevented the debt crisis ravaging the Eurozone. So the fiscal union treaty, pushed through by Chancellor Angela Merkel but hung up in the German Constitutional Court, is supposed to accomplish the same thing that the Maastricht treaty already failed to accomplish: force countries to obey limits on deficits and debt.
But Bulgaria has been in compliance, in part due to Djankov, who became Finance Minister in 2009, after a 14-year stint at the World Bank. When asked if his country, still one of the poorest in the EU, wasn’t balancing its budget at the expense of the people, he said: “That is a false and dangerous contradiction that the Southern Europeans recently added to the debate. Countries like Germany, Finland, or also Bulgaria have growing economies and still adhere to the deficit rules. Balanced budgets and growth are not a contradiction. Prerequisite is that the necessary reforms are implemented.”
Spain has been trying to do that. But people resist. With unemployment at 24.4%, their government on the brink of financial doom, and their banks collapsing, Spaniards have turned to protests. Yesterday, firefighters were on the forefront. While some battled the police, others protested tongue in cheek, and with a good laugh, making their point with perfect visual clarity—and with a lot of bare skin. Read.... Naked Firefighters Protest Salary Cuts (VIDEO - they use their hands or helmets to cover up their equipment).
And in Greece, reforms just aren’t implemented. Even the privatization of bloated state-owned enterprises is bogged down. 28 projects by 2015: electricity provider DEI, the postal service, airports, railroads, ports, hospitals.... For €19 billion, an amount that keeps shrinking. But this year, only two projects are on the list: the national lottery and the former International Center of the Olympic Press, a mere building.
And so, Costas Mitropoulos, the frustrated CEO of the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund, which was put in place a year ago to implement the privatizations, resigned. “The newly elected government has not given the support needed,” Mitropoulos wrote in his letter of resignation. “Instead, they have indirectly yet systematically reduced the prestige and credibility in the eyes of potential investors.”
And the argument that Bulgaria has an advantage over Greece because it has its own currency doesn’t hold water. After losing value at an exponential rate, the lev was pegged to the Deutsche Mark in 1999 at 1:1 and then to the euro at the DM’s conversion rate. And the peg has held! Alas, Bulgaria was scheduled to adopt the euro by January 1, 2012. A deadline that came and went. So was Djankov hesitating to adopt the euro? “Hesitating?” he said. “More than that. We put the process on ice. We first want to see what the future rules of the Eurozone look like.”
If it sticks around. In December 2001, when I was in Germany on business, bank showcases were filled with feel-good euro agitprop. Euros would enter circulation on January 1, and this was part of the campaign to persuade Germans to surrender their Deutsche Marks. Some were apprehensive, but my business contacts were gleeful: the euro would become the dominant reserve currency, and oil would be priced in it! Read.... Now Even Counterfeiters Are Giving up on the Euro.
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Too often people we try to hire can't read, their math skills are so bad they can't make change if the cash register is down, and they do not even have the cultural skills of understanding the importance of coming to work the same time, on time, every day. We employers can take care of vocational skills when we need to, but we can't fill the gap for skills that needed have been learned at childhood. If the base skills, and the critical thinking skills are absent, it is too late to be fixed by an employer
Most people would not disagree with you if you decided to jump off a bridge and end it all
All resources are scarce. Labor skills that( until really recently. ) were scarce.
1. Showing up.
2. On time.
3. Ability to subtract whole numbers from 10.
4. Any sense that you're not working in a Soviet labor camp.
5. That there are reasons your position can and is filled at 8$/hr. And others command 450$/HR.
6. The word " margin ". As in marginal pay for marginal working a marginal business.
7. You live in the wealthiest time beyond ever imagination. If you cannot make it, somewhat, you are a genetic mistake.
I'm glad I don't have your genetics
otto, it's hard for CEOs to pass up free taxpayer money via gubbermint subsidies.
to train a skill takes at least 5 years. and people don't stick to the same job for 5 years. once they have the skill they run off.
so why bother?
better to hire skilled people and train those constantly.
you've got a return from the start and they only get better throughh the years and they will actually stick longer.
I know it sounds strange for unskilled people but remember this: when somebody is 25 or 30 and he or she is still unskilled, it means that people might want to train but never bothered before so how do you know they'll bother this time?
To take a user name that was a nazi war criminal wanted for murdering us prisoners is really sick dude.
Fucking american nazi's posting on ZH, what next klanners telling us how to pack a first aid kit, fuckoff you white power/national socialist prick.
What the hell are you talking about? Skorzeny wasn't wanted for murdering prisoners or anything like that. The only prisoner killing involved with either of the two operations he conducted against the US (bridge destruction and the use of men in US uniforms to create confusion behind the lines during the Bulge offensive) was when the men captured in US uniform were executed.
Skorzeny was acquitted during the Nuremberg trials you blithering idiot. Allied feigned outrage over the enemy uniforms tactic got blown out of the water during his trial when British Wing Commander Yeo-Thomas (one of the directors of the French Resistance during those years) came out of nowhere and volunteered on his own accord to help Skorzeny's defense, he testified on Skorzeny's behalf that the British and French used that tactic with regularity.
While the Allies were mad at Skorzeny for what he had done for sure, he never did anything that could be twisted into a war crime.
You simply do not know what you are talking about, you are parroting some bullshit from television. Skorzeny was one of the early practitioners of Special Ops for sure, but your claim about prisoners is pulled straight from your stupid ass.
What prisoners? When? Where? Oh wait- there were none. Read some damn books you ignoramus.
chill dude...otto was instrumental in setting up the national security apparatus of the USA...without him, the Dulles, Donovan and the Scherff family(aka Prescott Bush and sons) there would be no CIA today! Then who would defend yur freedoms for yu?
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/familythatpreystogethercompared24aug07.shtml
:...white power/national socialist prick...?!?! no offence, but did u just recently arrive on this planet? The only "Klan" operational in Merika is the KKK...kosher kriminal klan...they invented the whole white power\nazi thing and set up braindead goy dupes to run the scam...kind of like finding socially-challenged muslim guys and paying them to rattle off explosive rhetoric about phony islamic extremist movements - paid for by the klan-owned CIA!
Why just catch criminals when yu can create them and catch them too!
Well, it does not work this way in US citizen economics.
The skilled people those firms are waiting for are people who feature skills that are not available (for most of it) in the firms. They can not train them since they do not have them domestically.
Reliance on an exterior is big in US citizen economics and here, the expectation is transfer to the interior from the exterior of skills that do not exist in the interior.
Flakes flakes ......
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKE3ZLj7_V8&feature=related
read the words to this song under this video for a laugh.
From memory,
"We are millions and millions, we're comin' to get ya.
We're protected by unions, so don't let it upset ya.
Can't escape the conclusion it's probably God's will,
that civilization will grind to a standstill.
And we are the people who will make it all happen,
while your children are sleepin', your puppy is crappin'."
Do your wheels ever start smoking as you zoom around ever faster on your closed-loop track of insanitation and blithering gibberish?
Ha ha akak! + 1
MISH has a new article out saying the IMF will no longer give Greece any money... The plug is being pulled...
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/
akak
I haven't heard about citizenism in weeks...maybe he has been off...on vacation?....give him time to warm up...his gibberish can be pretty OK once he gets going...
Thanks for the laugh, I was getting dizzy reading that post.
No amount of interest (Usury) is ever payable mathematically, so the Greeks are entirely justified in staying home from work. You can't get blood out of a turnip. The Euro was a ponzi scheme from the start and the people were forced to use it.
If I hand you a million dollars in an elevator, how the hell can you hand me back 2 million if you entered the elevator with not even a dime? Is that supposed to come from some parellel fucking universe or WTF?
Then how would you feel if I demanded your Gold jewelry as debt payment? And then took it from you, and the cops were on my side?
This entire fucking scam has gone on waaaaaay too long, in Europe and on this side of the pond. Here in the United States they're not content just to steal your Gold watch (for not being able to pay their imaginary interest), after you leave the elevator they follow you home and steal everything else that you own (and call it foreclosure/repossesion)
Blame it on people for being lazy?
The entire fucking Government(s) is/are a big ponzi scam based on 2nd grade math that most people don't understand
Lazy people?
YOU HAVE TO BE FUCKING JOKING RIGHT?
Our criminal Military Banking Political Complex (revolving door) might be the best place to look if you want to talk about some real lazy theiving sons of bitches