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

[tommy271]

Dutch Minister Unconcerned About Annoying EU on Greece, ANP Says

By John Buckley - Jul 10, 2011 2:43 PM GMT+0200

Dutch Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager said he’s willing to make himself “immensely unpopular” within the European Union for defending the Netherlands’ interests in the Greek debt crisis, ANP reported,
De Jager said in an interview that he is using the current mood in the Dutch parliament to justify his unwillingness to make any concessions in Brussels regarding the Netherlands’ position on financial guarantees and loans to Greece, ANP reported. Irritation among EU leaders isn’t a major concern, the finance minister told the Dutch news service.
De Jager, who supports further aid to Greece only under strict conditions, is dependent on opposition support, ANP said. Geert Wilders’s Freedom Party, which agreed to support the Cabinet as part of last year’s governing coalition accord, opposes any more financial aid to Greece.



(Bloomberg)

 

[tommy271]

ECB Trichet Calls For Stronger EU Governance Amid Global Economic Fragility







-- Strengthening resilience is essential as global economy remains fragile
-- Trichet calls for advances in regulating systemic institutions
-- Stronger coordination needed on public spending among EU members
-- Trichet reiterates call for federal minister in future
-- Swedish finance minister opposes EU finance minister idea, calls for stricter governance
(Adds comments from IMF advisor Zhu Min in 17th-19th paragraphs)

By Gabriele Parussini, William Horobin and Frances Robinson
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES


AIX-EN-PROVENCE, France (Dow Jones)--The global economy is still fragile and more work needs to be done in terms of strengthening economic governance in the European Union and coordinating policies among its 17 members to avoid future crises, European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said Sunday.
"The major revelation of the last four years was the fragility of the global economy," Trichet told the Rencontres Economiques d'Aix-en-Provence conference. "Strengthening resilience is absolutely essential given the fragility exhibited by the global economy."

Trichet's remarks come as the European economic bloc faces increasing challenges with some observers warning that it ultimately runs the risk of disintegrating unless it founds a way to coordinate and reduce discrepancies between the economic cycles of its members.
The escalation of the sovereign debt crisis in some E.U. countries has shown a clear divide between a European economic core, centered around Germany, and a periphery that includes highly indebted countries with fledging, uncompetitive economies, such as Greece and Portugal.

Trichet, whose term as ECB president ends in October, called for a "serious advance in the way we regulate systemic institutions, including non-banking institutions."
"We have a lot of work to do on non-banking institutions in terms of reinforcing the non-cyclicality of regulations governing these institutions," he said.

Trichet's comments echo those of Bank for International Settlements General Manager Jaime Caruana on the shadow-banking sector, which includes insurers, hedge funds, and money market funds and could be subject to growing regulation in the wake of the crisis. Caruana said Thursday there is a need to "monitor and where appropriate address the risks represented by the shadow banking sector," which can "create opportunities for arbitrage that might undermine future banking regulation."

Trichet also reiterated calls for stronger coordination of public spending in the 17-nation currency union and the E.U. as a whole. The approval of the European Union's key economic-governance proposal, which is central to strengthening oversight, is stalling due to disagreement between the Parliament and the European Council.

"We evidently need a strengthening of governance for the constellation of sovereign states that we have seen working together so effectively in terms of creating wealth," he said, adding that this could even go as far as a single euro zone finance minister in the future.

"I've said we have a lot of work to do now, but it's not forbidden, to think about medium and long term," Trichet told the audience in the university law faculty of this Southern French town. "So after tomorrow can imagine a flexible confederation that would be very different from the U.S., but in which we would have a federal minister in the economic domain."
"As a citizen I want this, but it's not for tomorrow, it's for after tomorrow."

However, Trichet's calls for a unified, continent-wide economic policy to match the ECB-managed monetary policy have met with opposition from some EU governments.
Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg on Sunday dismissed the idea of a EU finance minister, or an official that would embody a homogeneous economic policy within the union, because that would imply increasing transfers among member countries.

Borg said he would rather see the implementation of stricter governance mechanisms to prevent the national public accounts of some member states to deteriorate.
"I'm skeptical about a transfer union," Borg said on the sidelines of a panel at the Aix-en-Provence conference. "We don't need a EU government, but rather a EU governance system that prevents public spending from spiralling out of control in the future."

Borg noted that it would be politically too hard to ask voters from rich countries to subsidize high spending in poorer union members.

But Zhu Min, an advisor to the International Monetary Fund, said that some of the region's problems stem from a market that is fragmented along national lines.
"We don't have a real single market to support the system," Zhu said. "That will become even more important than fiscal consolidation. We need the government and the market working together to promote a single market. It's most important for growth."

Zhu said Europe needs economic growth to stabilize its financial sector, urging banks to improve their capital ratios.
Views remain divided over how to tackle Greece's sovereign debt crisis which is threatening stability in other indebted EU nations. Sweden's Borg said the EU should set help the troubled country service its massive debt only after it manages to stabilize its finances.

"The key issue would be whether we see an implementation of the decisions made by the Greek parliament, and if there's a political willingness to enforce the program," Borg told Dow Jones in an interview over the weekend. "If that were in place, we would be in a better situation and that could open the door for discussions on what can be done in the medium and long term perspective on Greek debt service."

European policymakers are walking a fine line, discussing proposals to give Greece some respite from its mountainous debt of EUR350 billion while trying not to trigger a default, which would cut the country off from global financial markets for a long time.

A French plan to have Greek bond holders invest some maturing debt into new 30-year Greek paper was undercut earlier this week when Standard & Poor's, one of the three major rating agencies, declared the plan would lead Greece into "selective default."

This opened the way to other options, including the possibility of allowing the euro-zone's rescue fund, the European Financial Stability Facility, to directly or indirectly finance purchases of bonds at a discount to face value, a proposal that was blocked earlier this year by governments led by Germany and the Netherlands. Other proposals have floated included a scenario where investors would swap their bonds at maturity with new Greek paper.

Angel Gurria, secretary general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, suggested extending the debt's maturity in order to gain time and prepare for a possible haircut -- a percentage subtracted from the par value of assets being used as collateral -- in the future.

"You take all the debt maturing today, tomorrow, in the next five years. Every single maturity you put it out seven years. Then, you'll be able to know better if there's a need to have a reduction in the nominal value of the debt," Gurria told Dow Jones in an interview.

Efforts to find a permanent solution to Greece's debt problems have intensified amid concerns that the crisis could spread potentially destabilizing the rest of the EU and world economy.
Trichet, who was previously head of the French Central Bank, said advanced economies' growth potential is "insufficient" and that the highly interlinked nature of the global economy means "crises spread quickly" so risk has to be managed on a cross-border basis.

"We have a system risk council on both sides of the Atlantic, I can see a lot of good work is being done," he said. "Success is imperative, because we won't be able to find 27% of GDP on both sides of the Atlantic to save the financial sector and the global economy from implosion again."

Addressing the same conference, European Central Bank governing council member Christian Noyer said emerging markets want to see a solution to the euro-zone sovereign debt crisis.
"Advanced countries and Europe need to change their business model," Noyer said. "The difficulty of sovereign debt needs to be solved, emerging markets have a wish that this will happen--and let me add there's no euro-skepticism in emerging [market] countries."

 

[tommy271]

EU calls emergency meeting to deal with eurozone crisis

European Council President Herman Van Rompuy has called an emergency meeting of top officials dealing with the euro zone debt crisis for Monday morning, relecting concern that the crisis could spread to Italy, the region’s third largest economy.
European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet will attend the meeting along with Jean-Claude Juncker, chairman of the region’s finance ministers, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and Olli Rehn, the economic and monetary affairs commissioner, three official sources told Reuters.
The talks were organised after a sharp sell-off in Italian assets on Friday, which has increased fears that Italy, with the highest sovereign debt ratio relative to its economy in the euro zone after Greece, could be next to suffer in the crisis. A second international bailout of Greece will also be discussed.
Greece is already receiving 110 billion euros ($157 billion) of international loans under a rescue scheme launched in May last year but this has failed to change market expectations that it will eventually default on its debt.
Senior euro zone officials worry that progress towards a second Greek bailout, also totalling around 110 billion euros, is not being made quickly enough and that the delay is poisoning investors’ confidence in weak economies around the region.
”We need to move on this in the next couple of weeks. It’s not a case of waiting until late August or early September as Germany is saying. That’s too late and markets will make us pay for it,” a top euro zone official told Reuters on Saturday.
German officials insist they too want to put together the second Greek bailout as quickly as possible, but the private sector’s contribution is proving to be a major sticking point. [Reuters]






[COLOR=#005689']ekathimerini.com[/COLOR] , Sunday Jul 10, 2011 (17:14)

 

[tommy271]

Eurozone finance ministers to meet on Monday



Private sector involvement in Greek bailout to top agenda

Eurozone leaders head into fresh talks Monday to craft a new rescue package for Greece hoping to bridge widening splits over private sector involvement as Europe's debt crisis threatens to spiral.
After a tumultuous week that saw debt contagion hit Italian banks and Spanish bonds, and borrowing costs peak for eurozone struggler Ireland, finance ministers from the 17-nation area will meet on Monday afternoon. Their counterparts from the full EU 27 will join them on Tuesday.
Gathered just a week after plucking Athens from default this summer -- clearing a 12-billion-euro slice due from its first 2010 bailout -- eurozone leaders have delayed a final decision on a second rescue until September. Observers are not expecting a quick fix at this week's talks.
Instead, it will focus on how to get banks to bear a fair share of involvement in a second Greek bailout -- and in such as a way as to avoid it being interpreted as a credit default that would ripple across the single currency zone.
The prickly issue in the last days has exposed sharp splits in the euro-front, and comes days ahead of much-awaited July 15 data on European bank stress-tests.
Differences that flew into the open after a market-rattling decision last week by Standard & Poor's ratings agency need to be addressed swiftly, EU sources said.
"We will have to weed out the different ideas,» one source said. «We cannot delay, we need to be on the right track to be ready for September."
European leaders have been working for weeks on drawing private bondholders into a second rescue of Greece tipped almost as big as last year's 110-billion-euro bailout, either by voluntarily buying new Greek bonds when current bonds come due, or swapping them for new, longer-maturing bonds.
Touching off a powder-keg response, S&P poured cold water Monday on a proposal from France, for private creditors to opt to replace Greek debt about to mature with new 30-year bonds. French banks hold a sizeable proportion of Greek debt.
Such a debt rollover «could result in a selective default for Greece,» said S&P, meaning Greece would be technically in default, even if the rescheduling was voluntary.
The hotly contested view undermined weeks of efforts while raising fresh calls from some governments to force the private sector to join taxpayers in rescuing Greece -- whether or not this came down to a default.
"I think we have to accept that a voluntary contribution is not realistic,» said Dutch Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager.
"If a compulsory contribution gives rise to a short and isolated rating event, then it's not so bad,» he said, using a term which refers to a default rating.
In signs that sentiment may be shifting, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble too came out in favour of a debt swap that would be tantamount to a debt default, or restructuring.
The plan to involve the private sector has won backing from key global finance group, the Institute of International Finance (IIF), which represents banks, insurers and investment funds, and which has held talks in Europe this week.
But European Central Bank chief Jean-Claude Trichet is sticking to his guns.
"Credit events, or selective default, or default, we say no, full stop."
Finland meanwhile wants guarantees from Greece over and beyond a four-year austerity plan and ambitious privatisation scheme, that would see its national heritage held as collateral.
With pressure building on Italy as markets closed Friday, eurozone leaders are aware that time is of the essence to prevent contagion from Europe's sovereign debt crisis.
Banks will come under further scrutiny too from the ministers ahead of the publication Friday of the results of stress tests on 91 banks representing 65 percent of Europe's banking sector.
The tests were designed to combat criticism over last year's banking sector review which found that just seven out of the 91 European banks inspected were vulnerable to economic stress.
Those cleared included Irish banks that subsequently needed billions more in bailout funds.
[AFP]






[COLOR=#005689']ekathimerini.com[/COLOR] , Sunday Jul 10, 2011 (12:40)

 

[tommy271]

Swedish minister says Greek debt service cost must fall



Ahead of eurozone meeting, Borg suggests Greece is paying too much

The European Union needs to look for ways of reducing Greece’s debt servicing costs, Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg said, suggesting a shift in focus as the bloc begins considering additional aid for the country.
More than a year after the EU and the International Monetary Fund extended Greece 110 billion euros in aid, they’re considering options for additional support as the country’s borrowing costs and indebtedness continue to grow.
The yield on two-year Greek notes rose to a euro-era record of more than 30 percent last week. The nation’s debt burden will rise to 158 percent of GDP this year from 143 percent in 2010, according to EU forecasts.
“If the Greeks are now delivering, and if they can stick to that plan and continue to perform in a way that is building credibility, that is shifting the balance of discussion,” Borg said yesterday in an interview in Aix-en-Provence, France.
“They are at a very, very high debt level, so if we are going to see them return to the market, we have to do something about restoring debt service,” he said, adding that reducing interest rates and debt guarantees are among options that need to be considered.
European finance ministers gather in Brussels on Monday to discuss a possible package, though an agreement probably won’t be reached before early in the European autumn, Borg said. Any effort to draw support for Greece from banks, insurers and other investors should also be judged on how it improves debt sustainability, he said.
Financial firms are discussing a proposal from French banks to roll over 70 percent of bonds maturing by mid-2014 into new 30-year Greek debt backed by AAA-rated collateral. EU leaders want creditors to voluntarily roll over about 30 billion euros of Greek bonds to support loans by the bloc and the IMF.
Standard & Poor’s said last week that the French plan would be considered a “selective default,” prompting Germany to revive a proposal to simply lengthen the maturity of Greek debt.
“It’s not clear that the French plan meets the idea of reducing debt service costs on the Greek economy,” Borg said. Whatever happens, Greece “cannot go to a default situation” and there must be “no credit event,” he said.
[Bloomberg]

 

[tommy271]

Greece may have inadvertently ducked the rollover bullet



Rejection of French proposal means more comprehensive suggestions are now being discussed

By Nick Malkoutzis

When French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced two weeks ago that French banks had agreed to participate in a rollover of Greek debt, it seemed a rare moment of relief in the country’s strained efforts to tackle its fiscal crisis. “The idea is that we won’t let down Greece and that we’ll defend the euro, which is in the interest of us all,” said Sarkozy, reflecting a sense of purpose and unity that the European Union has often lacked over the last 18 months.

However, the French proposal -- which we will come to -- soared briefly on the wings of hope before crashing into the immovable obstacle of reality. Two days of talks between bankers and insurers last week led to the Paris blueprint largely being discarded. However, the rejection of the French scheme appears to have helped Greece dodge a debt bullet. The more experts scrutinized the French plan, the more they realized it was a seriously flawed proposal that would worsen Greece’s debt problems.

The French scheme was based on four key elements. Firstly, Greek bonds that are due to mature over the next three years (reportedly worth 30 billion euros) would be rolled over for 30 years. This was perhaps the only realistic part of the plan. It indicated the path private investors will have to follow if they are going to play a constructive role in helping Greece pay off some 350 billion euros of debt, which it clearly cannot do under the current conditions.

However, this positive element was countered by the other parts of the proposal. As has been reported, Greece would have to pay 30 percent of the value of the bonds in question, while the remaining 70 percent would be reinvested -- 50 percent in 30-year bonds and 20 percent in AAA-rated bonds, probably from the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF). Effectively this means that Greece would be buying insurance for its bondholders.

Furthermore, the interest rates suggested in the French proposal would be prohibitive for Greece, which already has a debt-to-GDP ratio of more than 140 percent. Under the scheme, interest rates would be linked to the country’s growth and would range from a minimum of about 5 percent to 8 percent. Although, The Wall Street Journal reported that analysts calculating a 2-percent annual growth rate for Greece over the next 30 years found that the annual cost of funds to Athens would total 10 percent. Given that Greece is currently paying about 5 percent interest for its EU-IMF bailout package, which many analysts believe is far too high, the numbers in the French scheme simply did not add up.

This is one of the reasons why the Financial Times’s banking editor Patrick Jenkins called the French plan “laughably self-serving.” The Wall Street Journal was equally blunt in its assessment in an article titled “Greece is about to get hosed.” It should be pointed out that French banks are more exposed to Greek bonds than lenders from any other country. According to Standard Life Investments, their exposure at the end of the fourth quarter of 2010 was 65 billion euros, compared to 59 billion euros for Greek banks and 40 billion for lenders in Germany. BNP Paribas has been identified as the biggest single holder of Greek debt outside Greece, with 5 billion euros.

There is a final problem to the French proposal, which is that it addressed only part of Greece’s outstanding debt, and as Jenkins pointed out in the FT: “it would leave the Greek authorities to find the money to either pay back the rest of the maturing bonds, or default -- the very thing everyone is trying to avoid.”

After the announcement of the French scheme, Standard & Poor’s suggested that if Greece participated, it would be viewed as a “selective default.” It may the first case over the last couple of years of a ratings agency actually doing Greece a favor because it immediately caused jitters among European officials, particularly at the European Central Bank, who have until now rebuffed any suggestions of a Greek default. The knock-on effect was to make the bankers and insurers who met last week under the auspices of the Institute of International Finance (IIF) reconsider how they could play a part in alleviating Greece’s debt burden or protect themselves from a sudden default.

“Like all con games, structured finance works best when the people doing it believe in the con,” wrote Bloomberg News columnist Jonathan Weil. “In this instance, they clearly never did. Better to admit Greece can’t pay its debts and then deal with the problem, rather than delay the reckoning.”

As yet there is no broad public discussion about Greek defaulting but the change in direction at the IIF talks was telling. Once it was clear that the French rollover scheme was dead in the water, the discussion soon moved on to more comprehensive proposals. IIF Managing Director Charles Dallara said on Friday that discussions had broadened to “look at a range of techniques to reduce the stock of debt.“ This includes the possibility of buying back Greek debt, possibly via the EFSF, or switching existing bonds for ones with extended maturities, which could trigger a default. Dutch Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager further emphasized the shift in thinking by saying that “a short and isolated rating event” would not be a “disaster.”

It is inevitable that the private sector will have to shoulder some of the weight of Greece’s debt load, especially since the same bondholders have profited from high yields in the past. But for such a solution to be reached, governments, including Greece’s -- which remained largely passive on the rollover proposals -- will have to adopt a more proactive stance. It will be interesting to see what eurozone finance ministers have to say on the subject when they meet today.

The last couple of weeks have emphasized that if Sarkozy and Europe’s other decision-makers really want to avoid letting Greece down, while also defending the euro, they will have to come up with proposals that involve some sacrifice by more than just Greek and European taxpayers. It is a fine balance though, because Greece will eventually want to return to these lenders to borrow money. There are more bullets to be dodged.






ekathimerini.com , Sunday Jul 10, 2011 (18:41)

***
Opinioni.

 

[g.ln]

sempre notevole la penna di Tommy

IL SACRO MACELLO E IL DESTINO DELLA GRECIA, QUANDO ARRIVERA' IL PUNTO DI SVOLTA?

La settimana che si chiude era impostata per partire bene, risolti i problemi interni con il doppio voto favorevole del Parlamento di Atene al "Piano di Medio-Termine", ci si aspettava un ulteriore passo in avanti con una stretta sugli spread dei titoli di stato ellenic............................i.

Leggo stasera il notevole (come al solito) commento di Tommy.

Buona serata, Giuseppe

 

[PASTELLETTO]

EU stance shifts on Greece default - FT.com

"...Since Greek bonds are currently trading below face value, such purchases would essentially be a voluntary “haircut”, since bondholders would accept payment for far less than the bonds are worth.
It remains unclear how a buyback would be financed, however. The European Commission has long pushed for the eurozone’s €440bn bail-out fund to be used for buybacks, but Berlin blocked the proposal..."

 

[mago gambamerlo]

ci stanno sfracassando i gioielli con sto' logorroico teatrino da medioevo !
Te lo do' e poi non te lo do' ... no non me lo dare ma dammelo ! Ma gli Svedesi che penseranno ? E gl' Olandesi ? i Finnici ?e poi i teteschi ? e come si fa' a darcelo tutti senza che sembri un default tecnico ? allora riuniamci e vediamo come fare a far sembrare che lo diamo senza darlo !! In somma , almeno dal "forse darlo" ora siamo passati a darlo ma pero' lo devono dare anche le banche ma loro lo devono dare senza che nessuno se ne accorga !
E se no' tutti sti Barbagianni come lo spiegano lo stipendione & benefits che si intascano a fine mese ? aiutateci !

 

[tommy271]

Il titolo è un pò fuorviante ...

L'Europa apre al default della Grecia- LASTAMPA.it

(...)

La nuova strategia sarà discussa dai ministri delle finanze dell’euro area e potrebbe tradursi nell’eventuale abbandono del piano francese per le banche. La notizia è stata riportata dal Financial Times. Il giornale sottolinea che il piano prevede anche un taglio dei tassi di interesse sui prestiti alla Grecia e un buyback.

(...)

Come dicevano le "fonti elleniche".