blog: greek elections [politics]

[nikos]

here's the comment area for today's blog post found at
http://zabkat.com/blog/greek-election-special.htm

[efemmeral]

As your customer, for years now I’ve read the things you’ve written. I’ve been fascinated that a man so clearly brilliant with software is equally talented at language and communication. I was delighted to read about your happiness at birth of your daughter, teared up at your touching goodbye to your father, and fumed along with you at the rude requests for customer support.

It’s useless to suggest that you become a politician; the current system is failed. I hope you take comfort knowing you’ve aided Greece by posting this clear, poignant picture for those of us who struggle to understand.  Your earnest, unaffected tone makes you a joy to read. Your message is heard.

[resato]

Media / lobbies in Germany have created such a negative image of Greece, that the uncritical / nationalistic masses in Germany do even project  their dumb and completely unfounded hate - germans are by far still better off than greeks - unto sports. God knows what will come out of the football game in a couple of days.... however, comments on several german online news where inequivocally agressive. Shall I say: typisch deutsch?

[IneedHelp]

This requires some special Tuxman intervention.

[nikos]

it sadens me that we have drawn quite innocent europeans into our mess. I mean this literally

however now that you're in the ball, there is no way out. It is a choice between bad and worse. You cannot just kick greeks out of euro/EU/whatever. The way the global market system works, any mass shock will wipe out globally unimaginably vast sums, which is the worse scenario

the ideal solution would be to just print out more euros, the way americans and english are surviving the past couple of years

[Robert2]

Europeans aren’t “innocent”. No one is on this planet. Ask Kilmatead. I am sure he could post a piece on mankind’s loss of innocence. This happened as soon as mankind was born, whatever your religion might be.

In more concrete terms, everybody knew that Greece did not meet the required financial and institutional standards when it joined Europe and the Euro. I read several articles warning people of that fact at the time. Everybody looked away. There was a gold rush. Everyone thought they would benefit. No one would listen. The same happened in the American Gold Rush. And guess who benefited almost exclusively from that Gold Rush? Not the prospectors actually. The only people who actually made a lasting fortune in the American Gold Rush were the people (companies) selling prospectors mining tools, machines, and equipment. A bit like today’s bankers lending money in the current crisis to ever greedier borrowers… Margaret Thatcher used to say that “greed is good”. One thing is sure, it has proven to be good for lenders…

Printing out more money would be living on borrowed time and money again and again, a process that got us where we are now…

But it seems we are all incapable of doing anything else than living on borrowed time and money. Rio+20 will soon prove that we cannot escape living on borrowed time and money. We simply cannot face the consequences of our actions. Future generations will look in dismay at the mess we’ll leave for them to clean up.

[narayan]

I have a different understanding of the crisis:

See-
http://www.rediff.com/business/slide-sh ... 110819.htm

http://www.lapasserelle.com/billets/greek_crisis.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_s ... ebt_crisis

So as a certified layman, I understand this:

1. A loan @5% is good if Greece is forced to pay the open-market rate @15%.
That's a discount of 10%.

2. Greece does have the option to use Euro for external transactions and run its internal economy with its internal (local) currency. Thus its economy would not slow down because Euro is unavailable.

According to the article, this policy is already followed By China (and HOW!).

3. All Eastern European countries borrowed heavily because it was cheaper than the inflation rate. The lender banks complied because they considered a sovereign debt as safe. Whom do you really blame if this love-feast never thought of tomorrow?

4. China built a huge trade surplus with USA, the largest economy in the World. So it can afford to buy USD to peg the Yuan.

[Robert2]

...never thought of tomorrow...

[CrossX]

Greek shipowners warn SYRIZA against abolishing tax break

By Michelle Wiese Bockmann

Greek ship owners who remitted more than $175 billion in untaxed earnings to the country in 10 years say they would relocate the businesses if a new government scraps the fiscal exemption, risking as many as 60,000 jobs.

The country’s estimated 762 vessel owners pay no tax on international earnings brought into Greece under rules incorporated in the country’s constitution since 1967. The SYRIZA party, which opposes Greece’s international bailout and is shown by polls as vying for first place before a June 17 election, says it wants to abolish the tax break.

Greek maritime companies and others in related service and supply industries employ 200,000 workers, of whom almost a third could lose their jobs if local ship owners were to leave, according to the National Confederation of Hellenic Commerce. As well as vessel managers, work in insurance, ship repair and other industries would also be at risk, according to Vassilis Korkidis, the confederation’s president.

“Shipping is an offshore industry, and any act against it is like shooting yourself in your own foot,” Ted Petropoulos, founder of Petrofin Research, said by phone yesterday. He worked in his family’s shipping business in the 1970s and also held positions at lenders including First National Bank of Chicago before starting the ship-finance consulting firm.

Greek vessel owners remitted 15.4 billion euros ($19.2 billion) to the country in 2010, Bank of Greece (TELL) figures in the Union of Greek Shipowners’ annual report for 2011 showed. Remittances between 2000 and 2010 came to 140 billion euros, according to the data.

Alexis Tsipras, leader of SYRIZA, said in a June 1 election speech he would seek to abolish tax breaks for owners.

The Greek-controlled fleet numbered 3,325 vessels, or about 15 percent of the global total, the union said. There were 762 companies managing ships from the country last year, according to Petrofin.

Greeks are voting again this month after an election in May failed to produce a viable governing majority. New Democracy, the largest pro-bailout party, led Syriza by 22.7 percent to 22 percent, according to an ANT1 TV poll on June 1, the last date surveys were made public.

George Economou, president of DryShips Inc. (DRYS), said he’s “totally unconcerned” about possible changes to the tax exemption. The company owns a fleet of 58 dry-bulk ships and tankers, according to first-quarter results released May 29.

“I wouldn’t even worry about it,” Economou said in a May 30 interview. “Your corporate office can be anywhere in the world, so they would lose a percentage of GDP.”

“We need Greek shipping,” Korkidis of the confederation, said on Monday by phone from Athens. Unemployment could rise to between 20 and 30 percent in the maritime industry from less than 8 percent now if owners relocated to places such as Dubai or Singapore to avoid a new tax, he said.

Vessel owners worldwide enjoy a degree of fiscal immunity because most countries levy taxes based on fleet size rather than revenue, said Victor Restis, Greece’s fifth-largest shipper.

“You cannot squeeze and tackle a person that is in international shipping trade and finance and say, ‘I will tax you,’” said Restis, who controls a fleet of more than 200 vessels. “The answer is ‘sure, tax me. Find me.’”

Tax benefits for owners of international vessels who chose to base themselves in Greece were no better or worse than those offered by other European nations including Germany, Malta, Cyprus and the Netherlands, Theodore Veniamis, the union’s president, said in a June 8 interview in Athens.

Government Involvement

A lack of government involvement helped Greece’s maritime industry to remain competitive, according to Michael Bodouroglou, chairman of Paragon Shipping Inc. (PRGN) The Voula, Greece-based company operates 11 dry-bulk vessels and has three more under construction as well as two container ships, its website shows.

“If we have tax officers visiting shipping companies, they would eventually stop being as efficient as they are now,” Bodouroglou said in a May 30 interview. “The most important characteristic of this business is that we’re lucky enough to have very little interaction with the state.” [Bloomberg]

source: http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_ar ... 012_446527

[Robert2]

A loan @5% is good if Greece is forced to pay the open-market rate @15%. That's a discount of 10%.

Here is from http://www.informationclearinghouse.inf ... e31632.htm ("The Genius of Mutual Indebtedness"):

You know, this deal makes things worse not better. A hundred billion [euro] is put up for the Spanish banking system, and 20 per cent of that money has to come from Italy. And under the deal the Italians have to lend to the Spanish banks at 3 per cent but to get that money they have to borrow on the markets at 7 per cent. It's genius isn't it. It really is brilliant.

So what we are doing with this package is we are actually driving countries like Italy towards needing to be bailed out themselves.

In addition to that, we put a further 10 per cent on Spanish national debt and I tell you, any banking analyst will tell you, 100 billion does not solve the Spanish banking problem, it would need to be more like 400 billion.

And with Greece teetering on the edge of Euro withdrawal, the real elephant in the room is that once Greece leaves, the ECB, the European Central Bank is bust. It's gone.

It has 444 billion euros worth of exposure to the bailed-out countries and to rectify that you'll need to have a cash call from Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Greece and Italy. You couldn't make it up could you! It is total and utter failure. This ship, the euro Titanic has now hit the iceberg and sadly there simply aren't enough life boats.”

And from http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0607-hanc ... oints.html:

Scientists warn that the Earth may be reaching a planetary tipping point due to unsustainable human pressures, while the UN releases a new report that finds global society has made significant progress on only four environmental issues out of ninety in the last twenty years. Climate change, overpopulation, overconsumption, and ecosystem destruction could lead to a tipping point that causes planetary collapse, according to a new paper in Nature by 22 scientists. The collapse may lead to a new planetary state that scientists say will be far harsher for human well-being, let alone survival.

"The odds are very high that the next global state change will be extremely disruptive to our civilizations. Remember, we went from being hunter-gathers to being moon-walkers during one of the most stable and benign periods in all of Earth's history," co-author Arne Mooers with Simon Fraser University explains in a press release.

If it all sounds apocalyptic, the scientists say it probably should.

"In a nutshell, humans have not done anything really important to stave off the worst because the social structures for doing something just aren't there," says Mooers. "My colleagues who study climate-induced changes through the earth's history are more than pretty worried. In fact, some are terrified."

… never thought of tomorrow…