Titoli di Stato area Euro GRECIA Operativo titoli di stato - Cap. 1

[tommy271]

Sì, i rigoristi a tutti i costi erano i liberali della FDP, che hanno preso una batosta storica. Quindi perdono un po' peso politico per far valere le loro posizioni anche a livello federale.

Se la FDP andrà sotto il 5%, la CDU della Merkel non avrà più alleati con cui proseguire il cammino.
Salvo riproporre la "Grosse coalition", ma a questo punto non saprei se la SPD sia ancora dell'avviso ...

 

[tommy271]

Politicians "messed up" Greece
New party wants low taxes, samaller government and more transparency

Interview with: Dora Bakoyannis
27 March 2011


Dora Bakoyannis, the leader of the Democratic Alliance party, and former Foreign Minister of Greece was in Brussels last week meeting with key European Commissioners and European political leadership. “We messed up” Bakoyanni confessed about the political class of Greece, and explained her vision for her new party to Alexandros Koronakis: a vision for a Greece with a 20% flat tax and no corruption, in a transparent world.
Was the Democratic Alliance a creation of a personal need to lead a party, or a circumstance of your leaving New Democracy?
Neither. The Democratic Alliance is a product of the crisis in Greece. The crisis is not just an economic crisis, it’s primarily a political and social crisis; a crisis of values. The people who came together to create the Democratic Alliance wanted a new political model: an open party, a party committed to truth and far away from any kind of populist rhetoric.

Previously, as a member of New Democracy you were affiliated with the European People’s Party. In this visit however you met with the leadership of Liberal Democrats. Should we expect official ties to the Liberal Democrats?

Yes, we are much closer to the Liberal Democrats today than we have been in the past. But this decision will be a party decision taken at our congress at the end of May.

What has been the aim of your visits and meetings in Brussels, which included several Commissioners and EU leading figures?
The aim of the visits were to present our ideas about a new economic policy, a policy that we believe would be more effective and produce better results in Greece.
My main discussion with Olli Rehn was based on two ideas: Firstly, that we need a revolution in the Greek tax system. Our current system is broken and cannot provide results. We cannot change the tax law every month like we do today in Greece and believe we will stimulate investment. We believe that a flat tax of 20%, which will be paid by everybody, would increase tax revenue, and allow the Greek business community to make the necessary investments and create new jobs.
On your twitter account this week you wrote, “I am happy that Wikileaks are coming out.” What role do you think that organizations like Wikileaks have in bringing transparency into politics?
I don’t believe that every possible telegram or cable on foreign policy issues should be published. Sometimes, ongoing or sensitive negotiations need to remain undisclosed in order to produce results. But personally and perhaps egoistically, I was happy about Wikileaks because it showed the role that some of the Greek politicians, including myself, played in the foreign-policy making in Greece.
You’re an avid user of social media. Going one step further –Digital Diplomacy– how far away are we?
Were not very far away from digital diplomacy. I once said that the invention of the Internet signaled the end of dictatorships across the globe. My generation, who lived through a dictatorship in Greece, knows firsthand that dictatorships survive on the absence of communication and knowledge. This can no longer be the case around the world; in China, in Egypt, in Yemen. Transparency, like it or not, is part of the game. In my opinion, it is the best thing that has happened in my lifetime.
You have been talking very harshly about government corruption. Did you see this kind of corruption while you were foreign minister?
We knew that Greece was stricken with vertical corruption and we also knew the price of this corruption. One thing Greeks cannot forgive is the feeling that the political class has voted in laws that encourage corruption and prevent justice from reaching them. I never voted for these laws.
In Greece, civil servants reportedly account for more than 10% of the population. How many civil servants are actually needed to run a country and how will you get to that number?
What we propose is that in the next 10 years, we need two-thirds of what we have today. We need a strict plan to limit the size of the government. The government discussed the idea of a one-to-five plan: for every five civil servants let go, one is hired. I believe we have to apply a zero-to-five plan for a while to get where to the needed levels. We need these two-thirds of the civil servants to be paid better, to do a better job, and be free of corruption.
How will you tackle the problem of rising unemployment as this number is achieved?
We believe in privatization of very big sectors of the Greek economy. You don’t need to have a very big public sector; privatization will create new jobs and will allow people to keep their jobs.
Where does the Democratic Alliance fall on the Greek political spectrum- is it to the left or right of New Democracy for instance?
The Democratic Alliance is to the left of New Democracy and to the right of the Socialists. We are a free market party, but we believe that it is extremely important that we maintain social cohesion and focus our efforts on social policy.
If there were to be a coalition government in Greece, would the Democratic Alliance be willing to participate in such an agreement?
It depends on what the program is and what is needed. We are less interested in getting ministerial chairs than we are in on working towards concrete agreement on the policies that need to be implemented in Greece.
What is your outlook for Greece? Your biggest hopes, but also your biggest fears.
I’m a born optimist. I strongly believe that we Greeks will make it. It’s difficult; the biggest crisis of my generation. We messed up, honestly, and part of our mentality has to change. The Greeks are intelligent, hardworking people, and they are successful all around the world. The crisis is not the Greek people’s fault; it’s the fault of the system we built: a broken system of clientelism and corruption.
I hope that the old parties will understand that we need a new approach, opposed to the old logic of promising everything and not delivering. This is out. It died with the crisis.
A final question, somewhat more personal. When was the first time you realized ‘who’ your father was, and what politics means in terms of running a country? And when did you decide you wanted to be a politician?
I was ten when I realized my father was a politician. I felt that our lives, which were until then extremely well protected, without television and too young to be reading newspapers, depended on the situation in Greece. It was very difficult because this was in 1965 when a lot of people where against my father. And then I realised that this was, and would be my life. The worst thing was when my father went to prison in 1967, the dictatorship, the exile, and then I realized that in many ways, Greece’s history is directly linked to my private life. I liked to be in politics, but I didn’t want to have the leading role. I was very much afraid of the media exposure.
I went into politics after the assassination of my husband. Then I was playing a leading role, but it wasn’t my goal from the beginning. I loved being just a person who works, without the exposure.

(neurope.eu)

 

[tommy271]

buona sera tommy.il g7 ci preserva e ci onora per ora .speriamo rimanga tale anche perchè abbiamo poco indebitamento privato. ho idea che i cds Italy possano arrivare in zona 100 a medio termine;uno stravolgimento della lista sovrana per noi sarebbe un danno lo pagheremmo molto caro .anche perchè si protrarrebbe per anni

I CDS sull'Italia li possono portare dove vogliono, le prospettive sono buone.
L'Europa ci sarà di aiuto con il suo "Patto per la stabilità".

 

[METHOS]

Se la FDP andrà sotto il 5%, la CDU della Merkel non avrà più alleati con cui proseguire il cammino.
Salvo riproporre la "Grosse coalition", ma a questo punto non saprei se la SPD sia ancora dell'avviso ...

Quindi per la questione greca è un bene o un danno?

 

[tommy271]

Quindi per la questione greca è un bene o un danno?

In prospettiva è senz'altro positivo, la coalizione di sinistra è più europeista.
Nell'immediato c'è il rischio che la Merkel si arrocchi, però (come sul nucleare) potrebbe cambiare idea per andare incontro ai dubbi dell'elettorato.
Ma agli elettori tedeschi non credo sia semplice spiegare che la Grecia non è un pozzo senza fondo.

Altra alternativa potrebbe essere che in vista delle elezioni del 2013 la CDU-CSU cambi cavallo, e la Merkel si faccia da parte.
In questo caso si potrebbe riaprire la questione, spero sulla scia di una continuità di idee alla Helmut Kohl.

 

[tommy271]

Government to unveil plans to find another 22 bln euros




Ministers express concern about further spending cuts in their departments

It is expected that the government will announce this week a new set of measures that will be designed to slash another 22 billion euros from Greece’s deficit by 2015, but there are concerns and disagreements within the government about where this money is going to come from.

In its mid-term fiscal plan, which covers the period 2012 to 2015, the government will have to find a way to raise 22 billion euros on top of another 1.8 billion that must be cut this year. Greece’s target is to bring the deficit down to 1 percent of gross domestic product by 2015.

Of the 22 billion euros, 15 billion euros will come from spending cuts and 7 billion from increased revenues, according to government plans. The Finance Ministry is hoping that a reduction in the number of civil servants will play a vital role in achieving these targets. It is estimated that 150,000 people will leave by 2015.

The prospect of government departments having to further reduce their expenditure prompted some ministers to raise their concerns at last week’s Cabinet meeting. Education Minister Anna Diamantopoulou pointed out that her department’s budget has already been slashed by 6.5 billion euros and any further spending cuts would undermine the country’s efforts to achieve growth.

Health Minister Andreas Loverdos will oversee a reduction in spending of 1.3 billion euros this year and believes it will be difficult to find more room for savings. Labor Minister Louka Katseli has told journalists that it is not realistic for her ministry to reign in expenditure by 8.5 billion euros but that 6.5 billion might be realistic.

Regional Development Minister Michalis Chrysochoidis has indicated it will be tough for his department to increase revenues by 400 million euros by 2015 when the public investment program has shrunk. Citizens’ Protection Minister Christos Papoutsis has suggested it would be dangerous to cut funding from the police and other emergency services.

ekathimerini.com , Sunday March 27, 2011 (23:04)

 

[tommy271]

Banks' deleveraging may prove self-defeating

Lenders set to suffe additional liquidity deficit if they hold back on issuing loans

By Dimitris Kontogiannis


Austerity measures are bound to hurt the Greek economy even more as it strives to bring its public finances under control.
However, the situation may be aggravated if the economy experiences a liquidity crunch as local banks face the prospect of cutbacks in their funding from the European Central Bank (ECB) in coming quarters and years.
It must have become obvious by now that Greece will not be able to service its huge public debt unless the economy returns to growth and a way is found to lighten its debt load by more than the 50-billion-euro sum sought by privatizations and the sale of certain public real estate assets in the next few years.
Nevertheless, the return to satisfactory growth rates in the next two years has become even more challenging due to two factors.
First, the planned imposition of new austerity budget measures owing to the conditionality of the economic policy program agreed with the European Commission (EC) and the IMF.
Second, the deleveraging in which local banks have embarked to comply with the ECB’s call for a gradual reduction in their dependency on eurosystem funding.
This is not good news for the Greek economy, which shrank a cumulative 6.5 percent in 2009-2010 and is likely to contract by an additional 3 percent this year, pushing the underestimated unemployment rate to more than 15 percent of the labor force. Perhaps even worse than that may be the prospect of weaker than projected in the economic program real GDP growth in 2012 and 2013. If realized, this may entail even more austerity measures to attain the budget deficit goal in those years.
Although most analysts expect a rather significant pickup in the exports of goods and services this year, the small size of the sector relative to the Greek economy makes its impact less noticeable despite an anticipated positive contribution from a drop in imports for another year.
It is noted that the sharp fall in private consumption spending mainly due to contracted disposable income and other effects such as the negative wealth effect from lower financial and real estate values has had a dampening impact on imports.
This, along with a relatively small increase in exports, proved to be a smaller drag to the Greek economy than usually in 2010, partially offsetting the negative contribution from sharply contracted consumption spending.
Still, the economic situation does not look promising as new spending cuts and revenue enhancing measures will come into effect at some point during the year.
Even more cause for concerns comes from the liquidity conditions in the Greek economy as banks continue to face deposits withdrawals to the tune of 6 billion euros in January-February according to bankers’ estimates.
With the wholesale and interbank market freeze still in place and local banks coming under a new round of credit downgrades since the start of the year, reducing their ECB-eligible collateral values, Greek credit institutions appear to have relied even more on ECB funding to close their liquidity gap, borrowing some 98 billion euros according to the latest figures from around 94-95 billion euros before. It is noted banks can borrow from the central bank by posting eligible collateral such as government guaranteed securities, government bonds etc.
The ECB has gone out of its way to help them in the past, i.e. suspending the minimum credit rating floors in the collateral eligibility requirement on Greek government bonds, but along with other members of the troika appears to be asking banks to plan to reduce their dependency from this source of funding.
Already some local banks have tried to cope with the hemorrhage of deposits by providing fewer loans to keep their loan-to-deposit ratio from rising and complying to as much as possible with the calls of the so-called troika -- that is the representatives of the EC, IMF and the ECB -- for less funding from the eurosystem.
But the negative dynamics in retail deposits will most likely persist in 2011 and deposit withdrawals may exceed 20 billion euros in total according to some estimates.
Notwithstanding the contradiction of the Greek state issuing additional state guarantees so banks have enough collateral for ECB funding at the same time the troika advises for gradual disengagement from this practice, one cannot ignore the impact on the real economy.
It is known that new loans help boost deposits and therefore the opposite is happening as banks go into reverse. So, the withdrawal of deposits from local households and corporations can be partly explained by this factor in addition to the more obvious of smoothing out their spending pattern.
Therefore, the implicit encouragement of deleveraging by the ECB and the rest of the troika when the economy contracts will add to deposit withdrawals and increase the Greek banks’ liquidity deficit.
This will lead to a vicious cycle as banks will be forced to fire sell assets and cut back on new lending to conform with the stricter ECB requirement and the wholesale/interbank markets.
Of course, Greek banks will at some point have to drastically reduce their dependency from cheap ECB funding.
However, doing so under the prevailing circumstances amounts to a self-defeating exercise of smaller deposits and more deleveraging, hurting the real economy and aggravating the debt problem.






ekathimerini.com , Sunday March 27, 2011 (23:42)

 

[C.Bonacieux]

In prospettiva è senz'altro positivo, la coalizione di sinistra è più europeista.
Nell'immediato c'è il rischio che la Merkel si arrocchi, però (come sul nucleare) potrebbe cambiare idea per andare incontro ai dubbi dell'elettorato.
Ma agli elettori tedeschi non credo sia semplice spiegare che la Grecia non è un pozzo senza fondo.

Altra alternativa potrebbe essere che in vista delle elezioni del 2013 la CDU-CSU cambi cavallo, e la Merkel si faccia da parte.
In questo caso si potrebbe riaprire la questione, spero sulla scia di una continuità di idee alla Helmut Kohl.

Inoltre sia la grecia che il portogallo hanno governi di sinistra, membri dell'internazionale socialista come la SPD.

 

[tommy271]

Greece Plans More Cuts at State Companies, Eleftherotypia Says

By Tom Stoukas - Mar 28, 2011 9:37 AM GMT+0200 Mon Mar 28 07:37:53 GMT 2011

Greece will reduce investment spending at state-run companies and will impose additional benefit and wage cuts for employees, Eleftherotypia reported, without citing anyone.
The moves are part of measures to be decided in April with the European Union and International Monetary Fund designed to achieve a further savings of as much as 2.2 billion euros ($3.1 billion) in 2011, the Athens-based newspaper said.



***
Riportato anche nel post del "Kathimerini".

 

[tommy271]

Inoltre sia la grecia che il portogallo hanno governi di sinistra, membri dell'internazionale socialista come la SPD.

L'esecutivo di Lisbona è ormai dimissionario.
Non credo si possa ricomporre la questione in Parlamento (anche se rimane una possibilità).
Altrimenti si va verso elezioni anticipate, credo verso fine maggio.
Favorita, al momento, la compagine di destra.