http://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2013/09/12/greece-exclusive-samaras-under-suspicion-as-he-plots-to-sell-bog-subsidiary-to-american-associates/

GREECE EXCLUSIVE: Samaras under suspicion as he plots to sell BoG subsidiary to American associates

The Troika doesn’t want to bring justice to Greece, it just wants to take money from it

Jam for Samaras today, recovery for the rest tomorrow

In what might at first sight look like a desperate attempt to raise money to pay off mathematically unrepayable debt, The Slog has learned that the Athens Government is set to sell the Mutual Fund Management subsidiary of the Bank of Greece to an American investment consortium. This is being personally arranged and handled by Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, and The Slog can confirm that the purchasers are personal friends of Samaras.

At least two of the members of the US consortium set to purchase BoG’s international Diethniki subsidiary from Greece are known to Samaras, and the lead player is a close person friend of the Prime Minister. Their intimacy goes back many years, probably from the time the Greek leader spent at Amherst and then Harvard in the 1970s.The deal as a whole is clouded in doubts about the ethics involved on both sides.

Diethniki manages funds made available through the Bank’s branch network. It is a service for big players, but these crooks took their funds out of the system long ago, and so the original legitimate income stream has dried up. It seems likely that the motives for the deal lie elsewhere: Diethniki offers a total of 35 mutual funds, 14 of them under the NBG SICAV brand name. This is managed through the Bank’s intermediaries NBG Luxembourg Holdings and Lux Finance Holdings. Athens sources suggest that these could represent a perfect vehicle for discreet tax evasion by both Americans and expat Greeks. Luxembourg is strenuously opposing EC attempts to open up its “doubtful” banking activities. The EC would have much greater difficulty getting an American-owned bank in Luxembourg to come clean on its transactions: but it won’t care: what the Sprouts, lenders and Draghulas want is some quick deficit-reducing cash. What Samaras will get out of this is anyone’s guess.

Some might see The Slog’s doubts about the Prime Minister’s honesty as unjustified. They shouldn’t: Samaras is a card-carrying member of the corrupt Greek élite, a man who follows policies and disburses funds aimed largely at feathering his own nest. He is not remotely unique in this, but he isn’t an exception to the rule either.

Antonis Samaras hails from Messinia. Just north of its large city Kalamata, a brand new motorway recently opened, cutting the time from Athens by a substantial amount. It was constructed and completed at a time when Greek government expenditure was under the cosh; but if you’re the PM, you can organise things such that your constituents get an unfair advantage…..and the travel to your own constituency becomes less arduous. Such are the ways of the Greek political and bureaucratic class.

The Troika has little interest in changing this culture, wanting only the survival of the euro, and safety for the loans offered idiotically by its banker friends. Not surprisingly, looting of the State’s tax and welfare systems has filtered down to the desperate professional classes. All of them have seen income streams disappear since 2008, but don’t be fooled into believing that such behaviour is a recent phenomenon: for years, pharmacists and GPs have been ripping off the system. Rich clients and patients can get cosmetic drugs and procedures recorded as something different – and thus supplied at a fraction of private practice prices. Nose jobs, botox and facelifts being carried out in this manner represent a very common practice. Hospital surgeons demand upfront cash payments from life-threatened patients as a matter of course. Most of the middle class and wealthier citizens of the larger suburban and urban centres accept this as perfectly normal….indeed, in many cases they are complicit in it.

Of course, the real sufferers are the growing legions of genuinely poor Greeks, but the Troikanauts don’t GAF about them. Only the radical Left in Greece is bothered about such things: the PASOK/New Democracy Coalition is just a bloodstained chariot of convenience into which lender shovels are thrust at regular intervals.

There will be no social justice in Greece until the Hellenic Republic defaults, and the long-dormant Greek spirit of honourable resistance is revived. By far the best chance for this is Syriza, the radical Leftist Party led by the increasingly savvy Alexis Tsipras. But Tsipras himself has become more equivocal over time: he has been cuddling up to Brussels here and there…..and is himself a product of the privileged professional classes. My sense (having spent more time recently in Greece) is that the Syriza leader may have learned his lesson: we can only wait and see. But if he wants to pull the older Greeks away from Samaras and Pasok, as a strategist it seems to me Mr Tsipras absolutely must lay massive stress on his reforming zeal when it comes to the corruption of privilege. And if he wants to get rid of that, there can be no alternative to default, leaving the eurozone, reverting to the Drachma, and placing Greece once more on a fiscally sustainable footing. For the European Union and its Troika accomplices have absolutely no interest in achieving any of those aims.

The country’s eurodebt management is not sustainable: that much is obvious to any reasonably competent 12 year-old mathematician. As long as the political Establishment is in power and Greece is in the euro, nothing of any value to the future of Greece will change. Tsipras and his Syriza apostles should nail their colours to the mast called Independent Greek Integrity: a fairer society in which export growth is stimulated by marketing untainted by kickbacks, tourism unhindered by eurozone membership, and the dignity of ordinary Greeks is restored along with the alleviation of their plight.

Right now in Greece, radicalism represents responsibility. Maintaining Status Quo will produce nothing more than the predictable playing and percussion one expects from the addled brains of ageing political musicians who know only how to sing Whatever you Want to Brussels.

I am respectfully begging Greek Sloggers to get this post in front of Alexis Tsipras, share it widely, and RT Twitter references to it.

http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite1_1_12/09/2013_518375

ELSTAT posts record unemployment rate as poll gives SYRIZA edge over New Democracy

Greece's jobless rate rose to a record 27.9 percent in June from 27.6 percent in May, according to data from the country's statistics service ELSTAT made public on Thursday.

The figure was more than double the eurozone's average of 12.1 percent in July.

Even worse, 58.8 per cent of people under age 25 are out of work, ELSTAT said.

The number of unemployed increased by 174,709 persons compared with June 2012 and by 20,254 persons compared with May 2013, data showed. The jobless total stood at just over 1.4 million.

Meanwhile, a survey broadcast on Skai television late Wednesday, showed leftist SYRIZA opposition would win 29 percent of the vote if national elections were held now.

The poll, conducted by Public Issue, put the pro-bailout conservative New Democracy party in second place with 28 percent of the vote. A previous VPRC forecast in July showed the conservative party of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras in the lead, with 28.5 percent, and SYRIZA of Alexis Tsipras second with 27.5 percent.

Golden Dawn was up 2 percent from July with 13 percent, while coalition partner PASOK was slightly down at 7 percent. The survey put support for the Communist Party (KKE) at 6.5 percent while Independent Greeks, a right-wing anti-bailout party, polled at 5.5 percent.

Former coalition partner Democratic Left saw its support drop to 2.5 percent, thus slipping below the 3 percent threshold for entering Parliament.

The Public Issue survey showed Samaras is still considered the most suitable Prime Minister, receiving 35 percent over SYRIZA chief Alexis Tsipras's 31 percent.

The majority of respondents (60 percent) said there was no need for premature elections. A similar percent (57 percent) however said that a snap poll will not be avoided.

http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite1_1_12/09/2013_518348

'Greece in terrible state,' Oxfam warns

“Greece is in a terrible state,” Oxfam has said as a new report by the international aid agency warns that about 146 million Europeans, almost a third of the Continent's population, will be trapped into poverty by 2025 as a result of austerity policies across the region.

“The European model is under attack from ill-conceived austerity policies sold to the public as the cost of a stable, growing economy, for which all are being asked to pay,” said the report which is set to be published Thursday.

“Left unchecked, these measures will undermine Europe's social gains, creating divided countries and a divided continent, and entrenching poverty for a generation,” the document said.

Austerity has helped Greece cut its primary deficit by 9.2 percent of gross domestic product in 2010-2012, one of the largest fiscal improvements recorded worldwide.

The achievement however has come at a cost of mammoth unemployment and a deep economic recession-cum-depression, now in its sixth year.

“We were founded in 1942 because of the famine in Greece; no one would have believed we would be here more than 70 years later, saying, Greece is in a terrible state,” Max Lawson, Oxfam's head of advocacy said in a statement.

"The UK, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain – countries that are most aggressively pursuing austerity measures – will soon rank amongst the most unequal in the world if their leaders don't change course,” he said.

The charity urged European Union finance ministers who are due to meet in Lithuania to take action to reverse the trend. [Combined reports]

http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite3_1_12/09/2013_518308

Utter confusion

By Costas Iordanidis

Given the changes that have been brought about by the Greek bailout program, we would expect some kind of change in the prevalent political rhetoric, an adaptation to the new state of affairs.

The main opposition party, however, functions on the terms of a head-on confrontation, as has mostly been the case not just since the return of democracy to Greece following the fall of the junta, but ever since the very founding of the Greek state, bar a handful of exceptions. SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras is promising civil servants who have been fired or placed in a labor mobility scheme that they will be given back their jobs if he is elected to government, that things will go back to how they were. It is clear that he has his eye on the premiership, something that was not apparent in last year’s elections. And those who passionately pursue the top post normally succeed.

As far as the coalition government is concerned, the need for New Democracy and PASOK to coexist – following decades of bitter rivalry – has compelled the two parties to come together with the aim of forming a barrier against SYRIZA. Having clinched the support of the European establishment, the government possibly thought that it could marginalize the main opposition.

There is no doubt that some progress has been made since Greece signed the first bailout deal but the failures have been much more marked. Instead of assessing the results – positive and negative – of reforms so far, the coalition instead has chosen to limit its role to managing public sentiment.

It assures the public that no more austerity measures will be adopted even though the numbers show huge shortfalls at the country’s social security funds, which will inevitably lead to more pension cuts. The rise in new hirings in the month of August was announced as though it were some sort of miracle, despite the fact that unemployment climbed even higher. What’s more, expectations for a primary surplus prompted the government to make assurances that it will take measures to help the weaker members of society.

There are two sides to the brand of populism we are experiencing today: that practiced by the government and that of SYRIZA. Yet despite what the government says, come late 2014, Greece will have to borrow between 4.5 and 10 billion euros to cover its financing gap, and that means new austerity measures. Meanwhile SYRIZA has rejected every policy in the memorandum, while at the same time successive governments have undermined all liberalization efforts.

The result, in short, is a society in a state of catatonic schizophrenia.

http://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2013/09/11/ecb-representative-greece-will-most-likely-need-two-more-bailouts/

ECB representative: “Greece will most likely need two more bailouts”

Posted by keeptalkinggreece in Economy

Not one, not two bailouts were enough to solve the Greek debt crisis. While German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble opened the discussion for an additional bailout a couple of weeks ago, a member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank – one of Greece’s lenders, the Troika – said today, that the debt-ridden country will most likely will need two more additional bailouts and not just one.

the long chain of bailouts for Greece

WSJ/Times: One or Two More’ Greece Bailouts Likely
The Greek economy is recovering slowly but may need another boost, says European Central Bank

Experts from supervising bodies will meet for debt recovery talks in Athens later this month.

The eurozone may need to help Greece with one or even two more aid packages, according to a representative of the European Central Bank (ECB).

“We will have to make some extra efforts — certainly once, perhaps twice”, said Luc Coene, a ECB Governing Council member on Wednesday.
Greece’s economy is seeing “very slow” improvements, he said, following a €200 billion ($265 billion) bailout from eurozone lenders and another €40 billion ($530 billion) package from the International Monetary Fund. But the country’s debt problems no longer pose an immediate threat to the “whole edifice” of the eurozone.
The financial situation is “much better armed” to ward off another crisis, said Coene, who is also the president of Belgium’s National Bank. International experts from the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund will meet in Athens later this month for talks on Greece’s recovery (Time.com)

PS ehm… errrmmmm… shall I wrap it or will you eat it here?