http://www.zerohedge.com/news/greek-finance-minister-resigns-just-days-after-appointment-cyprus-officially-requests-bailout
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/25/2012 12:12 -0400
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http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite1_22279_25/06/2012_448915
http://www.athensnews.gr/portal/1/56470
Greek Finance Minister Resigns Just Days After Appointment; Cyprus Officially Requests Bailout
This has to be a record:
- GREEK FINANCE MINISTER RAPANOS RESIGNS; PRIME MINISTER ACCEPTS
This is the same guy who was appointedlast week, and who fainted after seeking the official Greek numbers. In fact we are not sure he ever got an official appointment. And elsewhere:
- CYPRUS REQUESTS EU AID
- CYPRUS SEEKS EXTERNAL FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE FROM EURO AREA: China just said NEIN
- Prepare the bath salt firehose.Repanos: we hardly knew thee. Courtesy of William Banzai, this is what happened when Rapanos...
...saw the inside of the Greek Finance Ministry:
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http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite1_22279_25/06/2012_448915
Finance minister wanted
Rapanos rejects position, citing health reasons, but cabinet lineup also played part 
Prime Minister Antonis Samaras is due to meet the leaders of the other two parties in his coalition government on Tuesday to discuss who could fill the role of finance minister after National Bank President Vassilis Rapanos turned down the position on Monday for health and political reasons.
Rapanos upset the government’s plans when he wrote to Samaras Monday to declare that he is not well enough to become finance minister. The banker was hospitalized after complaining of stomach pains and dizziness on Friday. He was still undergoing tests on Monday.
“The recent incident that led me to being hospitalized indicated that my health problem has not been overcome,” Rapanos said in his letter. “Following discussions that I had with my doctors, I have concluded that the condition of my health, for the time being, is not what it should be in order to fulfill my duties adequately.”
Samaras responded by accepting Rapanos’s decision and wishing him a quick recovery. Sources said the prime minister had suspected since Saturday the would-be finance minister would reject the role. It appears that beyond his health problems, Rapanos had serious concerns about the cabinet named by Samaras.
Sources said that Rapanos had expected technocrats like caretaker Development Minister Yiannis Stournaras and ex-Interior Minister Tasos Yiannitsis to hold ministerial positions and the banker’s own choices to be appointed as deputy ministers in his department. Rapanos is also thought to have been alarmed by the content of the coalition’s policy program, which was made public on Saturday. He felt the proposals would have made achieving the country’s fiscal targets more difficult and would have been challenged by Greece’s creditors.
The post is currently held by caretaker Giorgos Zannias. One option open to Samaras is to keep the experienced Zannias in the position for the time being. Yiannitsis and Stournaras were also linked to the role on Monday but the former is thought not to be interested. As things stand, Zannias will accompany President Karolos Papoulias to the European Union leaders’ summit on Thursday, so a new finance minister will not be sworn in until Saturday at the earliest.
PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos and Democratic Left chief Fotis Kouvelis, who Samaras will meet at his home Tuesday, held talks Monday and decided not to travel to Brussels this week. Instead, they agreed to wait until Samaras recovers from eye surgery to fly there together.
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http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite2_3141_25/06/2012_448920
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http://www.athensnews.gr/portal/1/56470
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1. TWO OUT, FIVE IN. New Prime Minister Antonis Samaras will not attend this Thursday's EU summit in Brussels, as attending physicians advised the Greek leader not to travel for a few days after his serious eye operation. The country will be represented by Foreign Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos, who will head up the Greek delegation, as well as outgoing Finance Minister George Zanias (who replaces Finance Minister Vasilis Rapanos, who also can't attend) and Alternate Finance Minister Christos Staikouras. Sources close to government have said that both Fotis Kouvelis and Evangelos Venizelos will also accompany the delegation. Safety in numbers then.
2. NO GO RAPANOS? There was intense speculation late on Sunday that new Finance Minister Vasilis Rapanos would not in fact be taking up his duties at the ministry, even after he is given the go-ahead by doctors, following his recent health scare. It has been said that Rapanos would in fact be returning to his BoG post under orders from doctors that he avoid the stressful finance ministry position. Well, that didn't last long…
3. SECURITY GUARD KILLED. A 37-year-old man, an employee of a security firm, was fatally injured early Sunday in the Piraeus district of Rendis. The victim was attacked by two individuals and was hit on the chest repeatedly by a sharp object, resulting in his fatal injury. Police found the victim covered with blood in the courtyard of the company he patrolled. His attackers, two Greek males in their early thirties have since been arrested and have confessed to the murder.
4. TROIKA TAKE RAINCHECK The arrival on Monday of a EC-ECB-IMF delegation (troika) in Athens has not been finalised, given that Prime Minister Antonis Samaras underwent eye surgery and must change his schedule. Government officials estimate that the members of the troika will postpone their visit to Athens, at least until after the prime minister is fit for duty once more.
5. DINGHY DOWN. An inflatable dinghy with two passengers on board overturned on Saturday near the small island of Zourafa, close to the NE island of Samothrace, with one of the two men still missing. The injured man, 49, was transferred from Samothrace to a hospital in Alexandroupoli with a military helicopter. A rescue operation was underway with the assistance of military aircraft to locate the missing man. According to two fishermen who were in the same area and had visual contact with the inflatable craft, the two men were trying to get the boat engine running, which switched on abruptly, resulting in its overturning.
6. SCHAEUBLE IN MORE "GREECE IS TERRIBLE" SHENANIGANS. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said Greece has clearly not done enough to combat its problems. "Greece hasn't tried enough so far, that has to be said quite clearly," Schaeuble said. "No one on earth who has followed this issue would think that Greece has fulfilled what it has promised. Italy and Spain are different on this question," he added. "They're making great reform efforts." Meanwhile he dismissed advice from U.S. President Barack Obama, who has called on Europe to do more to fight the crisis. "Mr. Obama should focus on reducing the American deficit," Schaeuble said. "It's higher than in the euro zone".
7. MAVROS TO SAVE THE DAY. Legendary Aek Athens striker Thomas Mavros has stepped in to help his beloved team get back on its feet. While the fact remains that Aek still need substantial financial backing to avoid from folding and tumbling down to non-league status, it is thought that Mavros already has a plan in place in as much as the playing and coaching staff is concerned, calling on old Aek pals Sakis Tsiolis and Vaggelis Vlahos to take up the reigns. Whatever he does, will have to be fast however, as Aek have only got a small amount of time to sort their sinking ship.
8. GOLDEN DAWN RIDE AGAIN. Choice words by handlebar-shaped facial hair enthusiast Giannis Lagos, Golden Dawn's MP for the second constituency of Piraeus, as told to Real News: "We're not going to Parliament to participate in boxing matches, we want to punish those that have got Greeks to this point, through legal ways. But if someone doesn't respect you with what he says, if someone is being sarcastic…Golden Dawn will not put up with that". So basically they're not going into parliament to hit anyone. Until they do. Hope that has cleared that up for everyone.
9. MORE TAX, GIVE ME MORE TAX. Just in case anyone thought of popping that bottle of champagne over our new government forming, don't. According to figures, Greeks will be called upon to pay a combined tax bill of 8.5 billion euros in the period between July 2012 and the end of the year. And you thought you were in for a nice, sunny summer.
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http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite1_10225_25/06/2012_448785
Germany to confront united euro bloc at summit
As concern mounts over their banking systems and finances, Spanish and Italian leaders have added their voices to those calling for more decisive action, a counterpoint to Germany’s more incremental approach to solving the 2 1/2-year-old crisis. European Union leaders will attend pre-summit meetings as they work to to narrow differences before the June 28-29 gathering in Brussels. “We are too close to the edge of the cliff for comfort, and the time to make big changes is awfully short,” Erik Nielsen, chief economist at UniCredit SpA in London, wrote in a note to clients Sunday. Chancellor Angela Merkel last week resisted attempts by the leaders of France, Italy and Spain to persuade Germany to accept faster action to ease sovereign-debt worries in the financial markets, delineating divisions on greater euro-area integration. Underscoring the friction between Germany and the rest of Europe, the Bundesbank issued a statement June 22 opposing the European Central Bank plans to help ailing banks.
Yields Recede
Spanish and Italian borrowing costs rose Monday, reversing some of last week’s decline, when there was speculation that euro-area leaders will take more action. Spain Monday formally requested aid from a 100 billion-euro ($125 billion) credit line for its banks.Spain’s 10-year bond yield rose 10 basis points to 6.48 percent at 10:40 a.m. in Madrid, while comparable Italian yields were 5.85 percent, up 5 basis points. Stocks fell, with the Stoxx Europe 600 Index dropping 1.5 percent after the Hong Kong Hang Seng Index declined 0.5 percent. The euro retreated 0.6 percent against the dollar to $1.2497. At a June 22 four-way summit meeting in Rome, Merkel faced a united front among her three interlocutors -- Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, French President Francois Hollande and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy -- on making the euro region’s rescue funds more flexible. She dismissed a Monti plan last week to use the funds -- the temporary European Financial Stability Facility or the permanent European Stability Mechanism -- to buy bonds, and spelled out her opposition to directly recapitalizing banks.
‘Huge Problem’
German taxpayers couldn’t back channeling funds directly to banks in other countries because they have no oversight of how the money would be used, Merkel told reporters in Rome. As chancellor, she only had such powers over German banks. “You would have a huge problem here,” she said. Merkel travels to Paris on June 27 for a pre-summit meeting with Hollande, while ECB President Mario Draghi and Bank of France Governor Christian Noyer meet the French president Monday.Merkel is worsening Europe’s crisis because countries need growth, not austerity, to pay down their debt, billionaire investor George Soros said in a Bloomberg Television interview Sunday. “Merkel has emerged as a strong leader,” Soros, 81, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Francine Lacqua at his London home. “Unfortunately, she has been leading Europe in the wrong direction.”
‘Speculative Attacks’
While the German leader has said repeatedly that counterparts in the euro area need to take a “step-by-step” approach and that there was no “big bang” solution to the crisis, Italy’s Monti said this week may prove critical to the euro’s survival.Should leaders fail to produce a blueprint for a tighter fiscal and financial union, there will be “progressively greater speculative attacks” on the currency bloc’s more indebted nations, Monti told a group of European newspapers including Le Monde and El Pais on June 21. France’s Hollande reiterated his support for jointly issued euro-area debt at the meeting, calling the so-called euro bonds “a useful instrument for Europe.” Merkel has consistently rejected the idea as premature. Merkel’s government agreed to underwrite the debt of Germany’s states, backing a form of burden-sharing that she is resisting at the euro-area level.
Shared Liability
The federal government, facing pressure from the 16 states over tighter EU budget rules that risked worsening a deficit squeeze, unexpectedly backed a form of shared liability to help the states meet constitutional budget limits. The two layers of government plan their first joint debt sale in 2013, the government press office said in an e-mailed statement. The decision doesn’t mean Germany is ready to assume similar liability for the eurozone, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said Sunday.“At the start of the crisis, we really had clear joint actions that worked,” ECB Governing Council member Ewald Nowotny said when asked about euro-area dissonance in a June 23 interview with Austrian state broadcaster ORF. “Now in the second phase, where we have much more differentiated problems, this no longer is the case.” With the European Commission expecting the economies of the 17-nation euro area to shrink 0.3 percent overall this year and six of the member states to contract, the leaders of the four biggest economies unveiled a fleshed-out growth package to underscore their shift from austerity. As much as 130 billion euros will be deployed, equivalent to 1 percent of the euro area’s economic output.
‘Not Trivial’
That amount “is not trivial,” UniCredit’s Nielsen said, though the stimulus’s punch would depend on the details. The funding will likely derive from unused EU funds, increased capital to the bloc’s regional-funding vehicle -- the European Investment Bank -- and project bonds, he said.Possible steps toward a common banking system and the degree to which euro members surrender autonomy to Brussels may form the centerpiece of the summit agreement. While often reiterating that the bloc needs “more Europe,” Merkel, for example, rejects calls for a euro deposit-guarantee fund, saying such a measure would be inconceivable without more robust political union. Proposals for common bank rules and supervision within the euro area are ambitious and would take time, Bank for International Settlements General Manager Jaime Caruana said in a speech in Basel Sunday.
‘Common Vision’
More Germans would favor leaving the euro area than those in France, Italy and Spain, according to a poll published in four European newspapers Sunday. Some 39 percent of Germans would back such a move, compared with 28 percent of Italians, 26 percent of French voters and 24 percent of Spaniards, according to the Ifop-Fiducial survey.This week’s cover of the German magazine Der Spiegel featured a defaced 1 euro coin with the title “If the Euro Breaks Up -- a Scenario.” Germany’s economy could shrink by as much as 10 percent in the year after a euro collapse, the magazine cited an unpublished study from the German Finance Ministry as saying. The statistics suggest that the cost of rescuing the euro would be a lesser evil compared with returning to national currencies, Spiegel cited a ministry official as saying. Joblessness would soar to more than 5 million from less then 3 million Monday, the magazine reported. The ministry “won’t take part in speculation about alleged secret papers,” spokeswoman Silke Bruns said Sunday in Berlin. She said she isn’t aware that such a study exists. Meanwhile, Germany’s Schaeuble is considering the idea of a referendum on further European integration, telling Spiegel that EU members need to move more power to Brussels “without every national state being able to block the decisions.” Schaeuble didn’t say when a German referendum may be needed to approve the changes. “A few months ago I would have said: in five years? Not in my lifetime! Now I’m not so sure,” he told Spiegel.
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