Greece updates - October 31 , 2013 .... Troika and Greece Government at loggerheads regarding additional austerity demands made by Troika ? NPLs at Greek Banks continue to swell - now 65 billion euros worth of NPLs or 30 percent of all loans issued ......ATE Bank having "troubles " - lines outside ATE branches , checks not being cashed by bank due to " computer glitches " ? Greece fire about to flare up again ?

November 2 , 2013 updates....


http://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2013/11/01/greece-the-truth-samaras-is-a-liar-and-the-economy-is-still-going-backwards/

GREECE: The truth….Samaras is a liar, and the economy is still going backwards

BY JOHN WARD NOVEMBER 1, 2013 FULL STEAM BACKWARDS FOR GREECE

There are times when putting up certain posts strikes one as pointless. But then one remembers that – who knows – some of this information might be hidden from historians in the immediate future….and then pop up from some cloud somewhere in the far future, thanks to the archaeological skills of somebody from the Third Millennium.

The following data are from the Greek Statistical service.

Go to this link here (you may need to press ctrl and + at the same time to read it) and you will see that every indicator of economic activity in Greece has been in 5th reverse gear since the 2008-10 period, depending on the specific measure. This should also alert you to the fact that any surreal talk of recovery in 2014 is the sort of thing that, were Dali still alive, he would’ve included in one of his more formative nightmare canvases.

Some examples will suffice.

All indices of production output have been negative since 2008. All production indices since 2009 have been very severely negative. All wholesale trade turnover has been in double-digit decline since 2011. (Most of this is food for restaurants, upon which a tourist economy like Greece’s is massively dependent). All retail trade turnover has been negative since 2009. But against all this impoverishment, inflation in Greece ran at an average 2.65% from 2008-2012.

The lower and upper middle class traditional New Democracy supporters need to wake up from their slumber. While they overslept, Greece has been conned by the political class and raped by Berlin-am-Brussels.

This has been said many times before, but the solution for Greece is perfectly obvious: do it to them before they do it to you….as the anchor policeman on Hill Street Blues used to say.

They’re going to f**k you, Greece. So come March, f**k them with a disorderly default. And have a plan in place for the restoration of the Drachma.

Stop giving away your unique jewels like the world’s best olive oil to the Italians, and the world’s most sublime coastlines to German carpetbaggers. Start seriously marketing a Greek summer lasting from April to November to the sun-starved North Europeans – at prices that make France, Italy and Spain look outrageously expensive by comparison. Sell the unique beauty of a holiday property in Greece to the new Asian rich.

But above all, banish the uncertainty from your lives. Be not afraid: the only way from your current position is up. As FDR said to Americans in 1933, “You have nothing to fear but fear itself”. Fear is endemic in your political class: fear of losing the privileges, fear of falling off the gravy train, fear of citizen revenge. Get these bastards off your backs, give yourselves back a flexible currency. I’m not a Marxist or anything close to that, but I have no hesitation in saying, “You have nothing to lose but your chains”.

Stournaras hopeful of agreement with troika In a message likely aimed at both a domestic audience and Greece’s lenders, Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras has called for “common sense” to prevail in the government’s latest talks with the troika after it was confirmed that officials from the eurozone and the International Monetary Fund would resume their program review in Athens on Monday. “There are solutions for all the matters, as long as there is realism, flexibility and common sense on all sides,” Stournaras told Kathimerini ahead of the troika’s return. “We all have to be calm,” he said. “Our lenders have to pay close attention to the fact that the Greek economy is turning around, which the markets have already recognized.” Apart from checking on when Greece will fulfill its three remaining “prior actions” to unlock another 1 billion euros in bailout funding, the troika representatives will also hold further talks with the Greek government about next year’s fiscal gap. Greece says it will be no bigger than 500 million euros but the troika sees the figure being between 2 and 2.5 billion euros. Sources said the three key arguments that Greece will use to defend its position are that tax revenues have beaten their targets this year, that the economy will contract by less than had been forecast and that the unified wage structure will be applied strictly across the public sector, including state companies, thereby generating at least 500 million euros in savings. ekathimerini.com , Saturday November 2, 2013 (17:32)   Troika to arrive next week after all The European Commission confirmed around midnight on Friday that it has received the necessary guarantees it had asked from the Finance Ministry in Athens, which means that early next week the creditor representatives will after all arrive in Greece to begin the next round of talks with the government as planned. While a Commission spokesman had said on Friday evening that the visit was not to take place yet as Athens had not sent the details required by the troika, the leading inspectors of the Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund will be starting their negotiations and monitoring in Greece on Tuesday, as the Finance Ministry had stressed all along. At 12 noon on Tuesday the troika will visit the Finance Ministry and at 4 p.m. the Labor Ministry, according to the government. The IMF also insisted that its top representative Poul Thomsen will be in Athens late on Monday to start talks with the government on Tuesday. Deutsche Welle reported early on Saturday that talks will start after a teleconference that Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras will have with his eurozone peers, ahead of the Eurogroup meeting of November 14. ekathimerini.com , Saturday November 2, 2013 (12:13)   Unpaid PPC bills grow by 4 mln euros a day By Chryssa Liaggou The electricity market in Greece is in serious trouble as a source at the Public Power Corporation (PPC) told Kathimerini that unpaid bills are growing at a rate of 4 million euros per day. PPC officials speak of an unmanageable situation concerning the company’s cash flow, which is getting worse by the day and is set to reach its limit in December, which will mean trouble for the rest of the electricity market too. The problem starts with consumers’ inability to pay their bills and is aggravated by recent regulations regarding the operation of the electricity market and the renewable energy sources sector which have burdened PPC with very high costs. “The picture we now have is far worse than we had anticipated regarding the collection of bill payments. The situation has been deteriorating since August and in the last two months the gap between bills issued and payments collected has reached 4 million euros per day,” a PPC official told Kathimerini. ekathimerini.com , Friday November 1, 2013 (22:27)

and....






http://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2013/10/31/eu-sourcetroika-wont-go-to-greece-because-no-one-wants-them-via-reuters-sigh/

 tagged: eurozone sources, Greece, put on hold, Reuters, Troika, visit

EU source:Troika won’t go to Greece “because no one wants them” (via Reuters) *sigh*

Posted by keeptalkinggreece in Economy

Do the Troika inspectors boycott Greece? Have they put their visit to Athens on hold? Reuters reported so on Thursday afternoon citing two “eurozone sources”. According to Reuters, the Troika put its visit on hold because the Greek government rejected more austerity measures.

The news of a possible postponement set Samaras’ government in general and the Greek Finance Ministry in particular on alert. Greek private Skai TV tried to explain that it wasn’t clear whether it would be the EU/IMF/ECB Thomsen & Co who would not come or the units of technical inspectors, as well. “Greek Finance Ministry said, it was still expecting the Troikan to come to Athens next week,” Skai Tv said.

Troika inspectors to put return Greek visit on hold, officials say

* Troika’s visit to Greece put on hold for now

* Greek government rejects more austerity measures
* Athens says still expects visit next week
* EU, IMF, ECB want 2 bln euros budget hole closed

BRUSSELS, Oct 31 (Reuters) – International inspectors are set to put on hold a trip to Athens because they have been unable to bridge differences with Greece over how to close a 2 billion euro hole in its 2014 budget, euro zone officials said.

A team of officials from the IMF, the European Commission and the European Central Bank – the Troika – visits Athens regularly to check on progress on its bailout commitments and to decide whether to release the next tranche of loans.
Greek government officials said they were expecting them to come next week as scheduled.

“There are growing differences between Athens and the Troika,” one euro zone official said, adding that the planned trip was, for now, on ice.
“The Greeks are saying: ‘We are doing enough’, and the Troika says they need new steps to close the budget,” he said.

Greece has been kept afloat by a financial lifeline from the euro zone and the International Monetary Fund since 2010, with 240 billion euros ($330.5 billion) of loans granted in exchange for spending cuts and reforms.

Troika inspectors, who began the current inspection in September, had initially been expected back in Athens at the end of October. Greek officials said last week the inspectors would return on Nov.4 to resume the audit.
…..
“No one is going because no one wants them (the Troika) there,” a second euro zone official said.

Greek Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras has rejected any new tax increases and across-the-board wage or pension cuts but said there was instead scope for “targeted” spending cuts and “structural measures” to plug any fiscal gaps. (Full story REUTERS)

What? The Troika is not coming to Greece “because no one wants them”? I didn’t know, the Troikans felt unloved and unwanted here in Greece. #NoOffence, guys! Honestly.
Nevertheless, this has happened in the past as well and therefore I wouldn’t worry so much.

PS We are out of breath and money anyway.

NPLs swell to 65 bln euros, says PwC report By Yiannis Papadoyiannis Nonperforming loans (NPLs) have grown this year to more than twice the size of local banks’ capital, as, according to a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), they now amount to 65 billion euros, while the capital base of domestic lenders stands at 30 billion euros. PwC added that the share of bad loans has exceeded 30 percent of all loans issued, up from 25 percent at end-2012 and 18 percent at end-2011. However, Greek banks are very reluctant to sell their bad assets due to the very low prices that investors are offering. Bank officials have told Kathimerini that the offers they have been quoted would make the sale of bad loan portfolios practically pointless. ekathimerini.com , Thursday October 31, 2013 (22:48)   http://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2013/10/31/eurozone-alert-pants-on-fire-in-italy-smoke-and-mirrors-in-greece/ EUROZONE ALERT: Pants on fire in Italy, smoke and mirrors in Greece. BY JOHN WARD OCTOBER 31, 2013 ARE MERKEL DRAGHI AND SCHAUBLE PLAYING GAMES? CLUBMED CRISIS RETURNS IS ATE BANK IN TROUBLE? ISTAT FIGURES 'BIASED'ITALIAN BONDHOLDERS CONNED WHY IS EURO UP 8% AGAINST DOLLAR? Did Istat lie? Is ATE bank lying now? Are Draghi and Merkel playing games? ‘Three days ago, I wrote here that “The [EU] focus has now shifted bigtime to Italy, where the unemployment rate amongst 15-24s just soared to 40%….well behind Greece – but Italy is a far bigger and more industrialised economy. As Bloomberg reports pointedly, “the [eurozone] region cannot recover without Italy’s revival”. That simply isn’t going to happen.’ At the start of Summer – in June as I recall – the Italians shocked everyone with ‘news’ that the economy was turning round. Shortly beforehand, I posted this much-lambasted comment in another post: ‘Another of my long-running ClubMed hobby-horses (informed by Spanish and Italian contacts rather than guesswork) is that various governments in Rome have been lying for Europe about their true financial state for donkey’s years: they’re just better at it than the Greek elite. More and more of this is coming to light, but still the yields stay lower than a double-jointed anorexic limbo-dancer. Go figure. Well alright, if you insist, I will. The markets must decide, as rusting iron ladies were wont to remark, but unfortunately markets are often driven by people on the other side of the Pond who don’t understand europolitics…..and couldn’t analyse their way out of a paper bag anyway.’ It turns out that June’s leap forward was nothing more than Italy’s data agency Istat changing the survey. It looked at a different “socio-demographic structure” and “sample structure”. Istat quietly revealed some details a month later, but only a handful of Italian economists were paying attention. Not all Italians (or bondholders) are convinced by the ‘just a clerical error’ defence. But the ‘change’ explains how the economy component of the confidence index jumped miraculously from 71.7 to 91.6 in one month. After the miracle, I posted on June 20th (ever the optimist) ‘I’ll give you my conservative estimate: it will take the euro markets roughly three days to work out that this is an unholy cross between a sham and a scam. Then the nonsense will start all over again.’ So much for what I know: the point is that four months on, it’s a sham-scam turning into a scampering shambles. Simon Ward from Henderson Global Investors (no relation) now says, “Italy is flashing red”. Not hard to see why he thinks this: Industrial production fell 4.4% in August, and new orders fell 6.8%. The Bank of Italy said credit to non-financial firms fell 4.6% in August (year-on-year), worse than in July. Business confidence fell back to 79.3 in September. And even Istat said this week that the economy is weaker than previously thought. GDP will shrink yet again in the third quarter. Common sense told the informed last June that the ‘recovery’ was a mirage. Now we know it was a lie. Meanwhile, there were queues outside ATE bank branches in Greece yesterday. Customers I spoke to said the excuse for not being able to cash cheques was ‘a computer breakdown’. Not many in the crowd believed it. Piraeus bank rescued ATE in 2012, and the liabilities were put onto the naughty step into a bad bank last May. But clearly, things haven’t been getting any better: largely unnoticed by the Western MSM, Piraeus Bank cut its entire workforce by 12% last month. Although Greek banks allegedly ‘secured their long term futures through the implementation of restructuring programs following successful recapitalizations in June’,  as we saw several paragraphs ago, not everything announced in June retains the scent of verity. Reports in August optimistically suggesting that ‘Improved macroeconomic conditions are expected to have a direct positive impact on the [Greek] banking system, as the stabilisation of the economy will slow down the rate of new nonperforming loans, and also improve profitability – making more capital available to deal with problems’ -  is piffle on a par with Antonickis the Helmsman telling Greeks that the worst is over. I think this could be one to watch…..and don’t forget that in the broader sense, debt relief for Greece has now been put back to Summer 2014…as reported here exclusively a week ago. To make a disastrous situation apocalyptic, Butch in New Mexico reminded me earlier this week that the euro is rising against the dollar. In fact, in recent days it’s risen almost 8% against the dollar. This must raise the question as to whether the Berlin-Brussels-ECB axis of obfuscation is at its dirty work trying to push some or all of ClubMed into default. I can’t see the logic myself, but little Wolfie Wheelchair moves in mysterious ways, his blunders to perform.