Papandreou to Defend Austerity as Greek Default Bets Mount
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By Natalie Weeks and Maria Petrakis - Sep 9, 2011 11:01 PM GMT+0200
Prime Minister
George Papandreou will seek today to counter mounting domestic opposition to budget cuts and growing doubts that Greece can avoid default as a three-year recession worsens.
With the country’s bond yields at records and European officials increasing pressure on the premier for more cuts before they dole out a sixth tranche of bailout loans,
Papandreou will deliver a nationally televised address on the economy from the northern city of Thessaloniki at 8 p.m.
A total of 4,500 police officers are being deployed in the city to keep order as unions rally, students march against education reforms, and taxi drivers across Greece strike to oppose new licensing rules. Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said on Sept. 6 the government will accelerate austerity measures pledged in return for emergency loans.
“
The policies to solve the crisis are worse than the Greek economy’s disease,” said Yiannis Panagopoulos, the head of the biggest private-sector union federation GSEE “They will deepen the recession and increase unemployment. For the first time ever, we will not attend the prime minister’s speech.”
Papandreou takes the stage a day after the euro slumped to a six-month low and the yield on Greek two-year notes surged to a record 57 percent on concern the country was sliding closer to default and policy makers remained divided on how to respond. Those divisions were laid bare yesterday when
Juergen Stark resigned from the European Central Bank’s Executive Board in protest over the bank expanding its bond buying program that started with Greece.
Euro Concerns
Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, at a meeting of Group of Seven nations in Marseille,
France, said yesterday
Greece may have to leave the euro if it fails to press ahead with its budget-cutting plans. The comments echoed remarks by
Dutch Prime Minister
Mark Rutte this week that countries breaking the region’s budget rules
should face expulsion.
German Finance Minister
Wolfgang Schaeuble said on Sept. 8 Greece
won’t get its next bailout installment unless it meets goals under the aid package, telling lawmakers in Berlin that the Greek government’s budget reforms are failing, placing the country’s financial situation “on a knife’s edge,” according to a report in parliament’s HIB bulletin.
Venizelos issued a statement late yesterday saying the nation was committed to austerity measures and rejection default rumors as “organized speculation.”
Germany is preparing a plan to shore up the nation’s banks in the event that Greece fails to meet the terms of its aid package and misses a payment on its debt, three members of
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition said yesterday.
Default Odds
Fears have deepened since a scheduled quarterly review of Greece’s progress by the European Union and the
International Monetary Fund was unexpectedly suspended for 10 days last week. Greek sovereign debt jumped 212 basis points yesterday to a record 3,238, according to CMA. The five-year contracts signal there’s a 92 percent probability the country won’t meet its debt commitments.
Venizelos expects the economy to shrink by about 5 percent this year, worse than the June estimate of 3.8 percent from the EU and IMF, and a deeper contraction than in the past two years. The forecast damps hopes that
Greece will lower its deficit to 7.5 percent of gross domestic product in 2011, with the government blaming the slump for a
budget deficit that widened 25 percent in the first seven months of the year.
Greece is aiming at an additional 6.4 billion euros ($9 billion) in savings through the end of the year to meet the 2011 deficit target, part of a 78 billion-euro package of state-asset sales and budget measures that threatened to topple Papandreou in June.
Policy Promises
Venizelos this week pledged to immediately transfer state assets to a fund for sale and place civil servants in a “reserve” system to retrain them and cut expenses, as well as merge and shut down dozens of agencies.
Greece’s economy shrank more than previously reported in the second quarter even as a seasonal pick-up in tourism helped bring down the June jobless rate, the Athens-based
Hellenic Statistical Authority said in an e-mailed statement on Sept. 8.
Gross domestic product shrank 7.3 percent from a year earlier after declining 8.1 percent on an annual basis in the first quarter. The figure, based on constant prices and available non-seasonally adjusted data, is higher than an Aug. 12 preliminary estimate for a 6.9 percent contraction. A seasonally adjusted figure wasn’t provided.
Nine in 10 Greeks are dissatisfied with the way the government has handled the country’s economic crisis, according to a poll by researcher
VPRC for
Epikaira magazine on Sept. 8. Greek opposition New Democracy party’s lead over the governing Pasok party is widening, while a majority of voters don’t want early elections, according to opinion polls published over the weekend.