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Now Even Greek Politicians Are Taking Cover
Wolf Richter www.testosteronepit.com
Greeks yanked €65 billion out of their bank accounts since 2009, Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos told parliament on Friday. “Of that total, €16 billion has been legally taken abroad,” he said. The rest? Stashed under mattresses or hauled to Switzerland via the land route. A whopping 20% of GDP! Capital flight of massive proportions. They see a forced conversion of their euros to drachmas. With good reason.
"The case of Greece is hopeless," said Otmar Issing, former member of the Executive Board of the Bundesbank and of the Governing Council of the ECB. But it’s legally impossible to kick Greece out of the Eurozone. So he suggested a procedure—a procedure that is already happening. Read.... Kicking Greece out of the Eurozone.
And now even the political elite in Greece is taking cover: former Prime Minister George Papandreou told MPs of his party, the Pasok, that the coalition government of Prime Minister Lucas Papademos should stay in power till the regular elections in late 2013—rather than hold early elections.
Thus, Papademos would take the fall for Greece’s default and exit from the Eurozone. The former Governor of the Bank of Greece is a “technocrat” who was anointed last November when Papandreou resigned. He is expendable. Dynastic career politicians like Papandreou might then rise from the chaos that would follow Greece’s return to the drachma. Political positioning for the “afterwards” has begun.
Yet they haven’t giving up the hunt for more money. Bailout number one for €110 billion wasn’t enough. Number two for €130 billion, whose details haven’t been decided yet, has already been declared insufficient. Meanwhile, the bailout Troika (EU, IMF, and ECB) has been imposing ever stricter budget cuts and tax increases, which have never been fully adopted by the Greek parliament or executed by the ministries.
Exhibit A: In 2011, the national healthcare system spent €4.1 billion (2% of GDP) for medications though the Troika had set a budget of €3.8 billion. For 2012, the Troika cut that to €2.1 billion. Options: rationing medications and forcing price reductions on the pharmaceutical industry. But on Thursday, Health Minister Andreas Loverdos told representatives of the pharmaceutical industry that he was shooting for €3.1 billion, and that he was working on a compromise with the Troika.
So it goes. The Troika imposes cuts. The country pushes back. The deficit is coming down, but too slowly, and gobbles up more bailout money than anticipated, as the economy continues to deteriorate. But for once, there was news that wasn’t even more catastrophic than feared, which in Greece is worthy of being leaked. The budget deficit for 2011 will be above the Troika-set limit of 9% of GDP but won’t hit the feared 9.5%, thanks to €2 billion from the detested property tax that was instituted in September amidst waves of protests.
Demands for debt forgiveness has become a growth industry. Last summer, private-sector holders of Greek sovereign bonds were pushed to accept a “voluntary” haircut of 20%, which grew to 50%, and it’s still not enough, and the negotiations are bogged down. If there is no agreement, the Troika threatened to withhold the next bailout tranche. In return, Greece threatened to default in March. And then, something even more bizarre happened... Abysmal news for Greek Bonds and Debt Swap Negotiations.
But it’s still not enough. Now the Greek government demanded that public-sector holders also accept haircuts. The ECB, which bought $45 billion of these crappy bonds to prop up the country, and Germany were incensed.
The core of the fiasco isn’t just Greece’s debt and the political machine that took it on and hid it, but also the bloated public sector and uncompetitive private sector. So the Troika demanded brutal cuts in private-sector wages and benefits. Alas, they’re set by a wage pact. And unions are rebelling. On Thursday, they were joined by employer groups. Together they’d oppose the government and the Troika. And on Friday, the Prime Minister threatened to resign unless the Troika’s demands were implemented. A Greek tragedy turns into a farce.
And they’re all still fuming over Germany’s demand that Greece surrender control over its budget to EU institutions as a condition for being spoon-fed with bailout money. This Teutonic reluctance to pay ever more to bail out Greece—and increasingly the Eurozone—has made Germany a global punching bag. Yet the amounts it has committed are already staggering. Read... Germany Frets As Bailout Risks Balloon.
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The 49bio "missing" can be found in 10 min through GCB and Euroclear...
IF SOMEBODY REALLY WANTS TO FIND OUT !!!
BUT NOBODY WANTS TO FIND OUT !! BECAUSE THIS "MISSING INFO" GIVE GROUD TO EXERCISE THE SCHEME...
THEY EVEN TALK ABOUT 600BIO IN SWISS.... GO TO GCB AND EUROCLEAR AND GET ALL THE INFO YOU NEED.
( AT LEAST FOR THE FUNDS FLYING OUT OF GREECE VIA SWIFTS !! )
BUT AS I SAID... NOONE WANTS THIS MONEY BACK !!! NOONE WANTS THE "NAMES" AND THE DESTINATION BANKS.
SO THE NEW DICTATORSHIP HAS A RESON TO RULE.-
"ABSOLUTE PRIORITY TO DEBT SERVICE" , MEANS... ie NEXT Q, WE MIGHT/WILL DECLARE INTERNAL FREEZE OF ALL PAYMENTS TO THA AMOUNT EQUAL TO "A BALANCE".. THAT IS.. WE WILL HAVE REVOLUTION TO ITS PUREST FORM !
1.
Absolute priority to debt service. Greece has to legally commit itself to giving absolute priority to future debt service. This commitment has to be legally enshrined by the Greek Parliament. State revenues are to be used first and foremost for debt service, only any remaining revenue may be used to finance primary expenditure. This will reassure public and private creditors that the Hellenic Republic will honour its comittments after PSI and will positively influence market access.
De facto elimination of the possibility of a default would make the threat of a non-disbursement of a GRC II tranche much more credible. If a future tranche is not disbursed, Greece can not threaten its lenders with a default, but will instead have to accept further cuts in primary expenditures as the only possible consequence of any non-disbursement.
That is absolutely astonishing. These are harsher terms than the British Empire ever imposed, even backed up by gunboats and the Royal Navy. Imposed on anyone at all that is, not just whatever tussles were had with Greece.
An “all good efforts” committment to debt repayment is usual enough but an absolute one simply unheard of. It does, quite literally, say that if there’s an outbreak of plague that sweeps through the country (or any other disaster you might like to think of) then Greece has to repay the debts before offering health care to its own citizens at a time of national disaster.
PP
There really isn’t any way that a democratic government is going to sign up to that: or that any demos would allow their government to do so.
Not as and when they understand it that is. This is reducing Greece to less power than a Lander in Germany, to less than a county or city government in the US system. This won’t be agreed to as long as Greece has any alternative at all, that’s my supposition.
And the thing is, Greece does now have an alternative. Stephanie Flanders at the BBC says that Greece is now running a primary surplus. I explained the implications of that (with reference to Italy) back here. Long story short, if you’re in primary deficit then you’ve got to do pretty much what you’re told. However, if you’re in primary surplus you have the option (yes, an explosive one, a difficult one, but it is an option) to tell everyone to go take a hike.
pp
FORBES
I have some very nice Iceland ...or island as they call it ..1000 kroner silver pieces , from 1979 , beautiful
I <strikethrough have strikethrough/> had some (before my boating accident, you know) from '74 --874 - 1974, that's 11 centuries. Just for Tradition, of course.
>>>
Greeks yanked €65 billion out of their bank accounts since 2009...
<<<
What I find surprising is that there are any domestic deposits left inside the Greek banking system at all.
Why haven't all the big players wired their money out long ago, and all the little people taken EUR notes (or bought gold/CHF) to go under the mattress?
Seems very odd to me...
the only news here is that it's being reported. MOVE ALONG SHEEPLE! MOVE ALONG!
Evangelos Venizelos
Financial Times rated Venizelos as one of the worst finance ministers in EU.
http://www.evenizelos.gr/curriculumvitae
I bet these positions offered a few benefits as contracts were signed with cash rich foreign firms
Yeah, let L-Pap take the fall. Like the people there don't know who has been running the place for the past whatever years. Isn't Greece one of those countries run by political dynasties of some sort? I recall reading something like that here like they have something like four generations of Papandreou and three generations of some other shitartists? Yeah sure people will blame it on L-Pap. I think the lynching will be more widespread than that.
So soon forgotten the Colonels you have.......
What hole do you creeps crawl out of? ( Not you, them)
Who? Me? Or, am I one of "them"? I'm confused.
Just proves that if you are prudent and manage your affairs properly, all the neer-do-wells will come calling demanding that you share your good fortune with them. Welcome to Obamaville European style.
Germany is not doing well. Germany can expose others before they expose Germany.
It is all.
Few countries escape the Ponzi and they are certainly not countries US citizens would like to see take the leadership.
.
As has been pointed out many times here, Greece isn't the only one. Many countries are upside down on Debt-To-GDP ratio The clock is running out on the debt pyramid. The global currency exchange system can't continue sowing the seeds of it's own destruction, forever.
http://georgesblogforum.wordpress.com/
you are right, George
Richter writes:
The core of the fiasco isn’t just Greece’s debt and the political machine that took it on and hid it, but also the bloated public sector and uncompetitive private sector. So the Troika demanded brutal cuts in private-sector wages and benefits. Alas, they’re set by a wage pact. And unions are rebelling. On Thursday, they were joined by employer groups. Together they’d oppose the government and the Troika. And on Friday, the Prime Minister threatened to resign unless the Troika’s demands were implemented. A Greek tragedy turns into a farce.
the core of the fiasco is the banks, mostly German, who are holding the bag for the British and US banks that want their money.
The fact that Greece's economy is found wanting, is very much secondary.
If they want to complain that Greece's private sector is uncompetitive, well 160 000 private sector employees
have been let go and another as many will go this year.
That should make Greece more competitive.
Thanks Troika.
The Greek government is full of sneaky shits, but they've seen the Troika endgame,
and its the usual rape and pillage that banks/IMF/US have been
doing to the Third World forever.
THey want to buy Greece at fire-sale prices and
people-be-damned, democracy-be-damned.
So, everybody should be congratulating Greece that they seem to be slowly squeezing out of
this death grip, and I congratulate the corrupt government for doing so.
An honest politician in this situation is defined as an idiot.
Greece is gonna write the book on how to escape Debt-catraz.
What about the chapter Iceland wrote?
What about the chapter Iceland wrote?
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Iceland is interesting because it is one of those other blind spots US citizens have.
Iceland story has nothing glorious US citizens want to see.
For once, in Iceland, we have that kind of engineering US citizens want to see so much.
Iceland story started in the late 1980s to speed up in the 1990.
Iceland had a consumption issue: either they kept their currency, being more and more excluded from consumption as goods were sucked by the European sink or they ran into an inflationary race allowing them to consume and trap much more wealth than they could have without that currency move.
The renegation of debt was just the escape route planned in the heist program.
Greece absolutely cant claim to act the same act to achieve the same result as the Greeks never engineered the previous parts of the plan.
Icelanders played their cards well. They were allowed to get away with it. A third world country acting the same would have been severely punished by US citizens of the world.
But Iceland is the result of a 20 years plan. They inflated their currency on purpose, played the bubbles game on purpose and had an escape plan.
Greece,well, they missed way too much of the plan to cut it out to the escape move only.
Well said.
Iceland is also not in the EU. That's the anti-democratic group that will eventually have Brussels bureaucrats
taking over our countries at the behest of the banks.
Iceland is not in the Euro. They have their own currency.
And, from what it looks like , they also don't have an overlord of any sort. Greece has and will always
have some bully telling it what to do, largely nowadays because of the two things I mentioned above.
However, Greece does have a way of surviving over the millenia. You're watching it wriggling out of the
death grip, right now.
BTW, in both cases, the people are doing what they can. In Iceland, the President and the people killed the banks,
Iceland's government is still sold out, but the people know where the politicians live, and the politicians know that.
watch any show with Bergitta Jondottir on Keiser.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLjIn0HAcr4
Actually, Keiser has a show mocking the carrytrade established by Icelanders.
Establishing the carrytrade, pumping up resources into Iceland through that carrytrade was the first step of the plan.
Renegating on payback was the second part of the plan.
Icelanders are thieves, plain and simple.
They have just for them they robbed blind other US citizens instead of your typical second or third worlder classical US citizenish target.
the carry trade was part of the Iceland banking miracle.
The bearded guy that Keiser interviewed was the worst
and he was lying to Keiser about the sustainability
of his theft.
But, what does it matter who robs you. It's mostly the British
US and German banks. The Iceland people are still fair people
in my estimation.
And, they will not pay the debts of their banks. It's buyer beware
for the people who sent their money electronically to Iceland to
get an extra 3% interest, in real terms, it was just keeping ahead
of inflation, and Icebank was making millions with that cash,
and oops, the MFs kept it.
Iceland doesn't count. They refused to play kick the can and forced the stoopid skanks to eat losses immediately. The Greek paradigm works for the banksters as it gives them time to unload most of their trash on the various taxpayers/slaves of governments that are still bankster controlled.
Ding ding ding. We have a winner! Iceland forced the banksters into insolvency and even told off the EU thugs when they threatened them. The Norske blood is strong.
We humans will all learn this mandatory lesson, the only question is when. Hopefully before too much blood is spilt.
And don't they even have a couple bankers in jail, in Iceland?
Hundreds of cruise passengers hit with stomach illness By Ashley Kosciolek, Cruise Critic
Princess Cruises has announced delayed embarkation times for the next sailings of Crown Princess and Ruby Princess, following an increased number of Norovirus cases on each of the ships' current voyages.
According to statements from the line, 92 of Ruby Princess' 3,133 passengers and 13 of its 1,186 crewmembers have come down with the virus. Meanwhile, 364 of 3,103 passengers and 30 of 1,168 crew on Crown Princess were affected.
http://overheadbin.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/04/10318599-hundreds-of-c...
One can't fight gravity in a long term.
So all you have to know, is where a real market would be without government intervention. Place long term bet against central planning in current "market" and wait, but watch out your back and prepare accordingly for a time when all sucessing players without special connections are to be called speculators and put in FEMA camps.
Your 'testosterone pit' has a regrettably ugly name for your blog, distracting from the messages in your articles.
It is such a crude name it discourages readership.
A female voice tells me the name 'sounds disgusting, like something men would use on a porn site'.
Just sayin' ...
The word "pudendic" also has been known to both offend and encourage readership.
fine. we'll change it to "masturbation clinic" and see how many people chime in. is that better?
it's the 'Style Over (Trumps) Content' crew
Zzzzzzzzz
these guys would follow Adolf and his Hugo Boss suits
Next, here come the fuking spell-check brigade
We need a clear out of the human race like you wouldn't believe
Very true.......let us start with you!!
the ugly thing is his crude messages.
He probably does suffer from too much testosterone. He probably shoots up on it.
I guess it make him search for easy answers to complex questions.
I feel my hairy beast taking over:
what are you doing talking finance with a lady? give 'er a glass of wine.
What would she call the website?
sphincter monologues?
LMFAO x 2
that line of thinking never stops... it continues untill there is no part of life that, can just be enjoyed by adults, mouths blurred, the fucking bleeps can hardly follow dialogue ..the word retard is bleeped...everyone of your kind always needs to make things "better"...so with all due respect stfu...please
just give her a cumshot to the eye and tell her to shut up and learn
Representing the sane here...
It's his blog and his choice. And while she may not appreciate the meaning of the words you are just an embarrassment to mankind.
I thought the piece was well thought out btw.
Tell her that her testosterone level is a little low for a woman if she is that sensitive.
Who is junking me? Don't you fuckers know that men produce estrogen and women testosterone? Idiots.
This idiot would like to point out that both men and women produce the same hormones, but at different levels.
Without some testosterone in her blood, there is no chance that you'd ever find a consenting female.
Oh! is that the reason we are now seeing such an increase in dikes...?
Consent? It was never a problem for Clinton or Ted Kennedy.
Well, Dissent is a weird and round about route that some men on strong testos take for Consent. Its all a question of semantics for the watchers but of aroused hormones for the actors; the dividing line between those who "do" and those who go to the "peep show".
What makes it unfair is not the level of testos but the level of "political" power that men use and abuse to satisfy testos urge. The DSK leverage efect.
And the damsels, as they be damsels, play along not because the testos effect is the aphrodisiac, but the power is. "Diamonds are a girl's best friend!"
Thats why life is perceived by the sheeple as a bleeding unfair game. "If only my testos had been taken at face value and not my wallet size or my pecking order hierarchy in society" is what we all sing...But thats why we aren't Bill or Ted. Just self appointed raiders of the lost arc of feminine ecstacy. I'll drink to that to console my male pride!