Insults Fly in the Greek and German Media

[ArsalanKhan21]

Corrupt, lazy and deadbeat Greeks don't want to repay their debts and insult the countries who have helped them during the financial crisis.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/30/w...click&contentCollection=Europe&pgtype=article

Europe
As Insults Fly in the Greek and German Media, Some Wish for Less News
By JIM YARDLEYMAY 29, 2015

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras of Greece and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany met in Berlin in March to discuss Greek debt. Credit Sean Gallup/Getty Images
ATHENS — As a nightly news anchor for Skai TV in Greece, Sia Kossioni closely monitors Germany, checking the latest remarks from German politicians, studying public opinion polls and reading the German news media to learn what they are saying about the Greek bailout negotiations. She even speaks German.

Ms. Kossioni is not alone in her obsession — the entire Greek news media is obsessed with Germany. (The German media is fascinated with Greece, too.) This is not surprising, given that Greece is staring at default on its debt and economic disaster, possibly as early as June, unless it can reach a deal with creditors — and Germany is its biggest creditor and the most immovable objector to concessions.

So every blunt utterance from Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister, can dominate the news, as can the typically more opaque remarks from Chancellor Angela Merkel. Even backbench German lawmakers — whose views might be ignored in their own country’s news media — can merit airtime in Greece by tossing a rhetorical grenade about the bailout.

“The German politicians are covered as if they are our politicians,” Ms. Kossioni said recently at her office, where translated German news reports were stacked on her desk. “We wake up and we know what the German newspaper headlines are, what the basic articles are.”

How the mutual media fascination might influence the delicate bailout negotiations is its own point of discussion. Some analysts and politicians have sharply criticized the news coverage, even as politicians or their proxies have frequently leaked information from the negotiating room, often with strategic intent.

At the same time, the rivalry between Mr. Schäuble and his Greek counterpart, Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, has transformed what might have been a story about the mechanics of restructuring debt — not to mention the fate of the eurozone — into one that is also about a clash of personal styles and egos. Mr. Schäuble has seemed to relish tweaking the government in Greece, surely knowing that his remarks will make headlines there.

“I would actually welcome, from both sides, less microphones, less interviews,” said Jens Bastian, a German financial consultant in Athens and a former member of the European Commission’s task force on Greece.

Not so many years ago, the average Greek probably knew or cared little about what, if anything, Germans said about them. But in the Internet age, an entire nation of Greeks can track every shift in German public opinion — and every blast from the German newspaper Bild.

“Lies From Bild Again About I.M.F.!” screamed a recent banner headline stretched over two pages of a Greek newspaper, Dimokratia, referring to the International Monetary Fund, a major Greek creditor.

The tensions recently heightened because the January election of Greece’s left-wing, anti-austerity government, led by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and his Syriza party, was seen as a direct rebuke to Germany, which many Greeks blame for five years of punishing economic policies that led to the current showdown.

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Giorgos Tragkas, one of Greece’s most popular radio show hosts, estimates that he has done 1,500 programs about Germany on radio or television since the onset of the financial crisis in 2009.

“When I speak about Merkel,” he said, “I get 100 text messages at the same time saying: ‘Bravo!’ ‘Keep it Up!’ ‘Keep Bashing Her!’ ”

And so he does. Mr. Tragkas — a controversial figure in Athens who has been linked to allegations of tax evasion — once put Ms. Merkel on the cover of his political magazine, Crash, in shackles and an orange Guantánamo-style jumpsuit.

He also unsuccessfully sought to sue her and other European officials for crimes against humanity in Greece. Now he just pillories them — with gloves off — on weekday mornings from the studios of Real FM in Athens.

“Our creditors, the Germans — our extortionists, our pimps — the only thing they haven’t asked Syriza for is that we provide our firstborn daughters to some German on their wedding night,” Mr. Tragkas said recently, tapping his feet in the studio.

The German doppelgänger to Mr. Tragkas is Bild, which signaled its anti-Greek sentiments in February as Mr. Tsipras was seeking an interim agreement with Germany and other creditors. “NEIN!” Bild screamed in a huge blue and white headline, as it declared, “Not One More Billion for the Greedy Greeks!” — and encouraged readers to pose for selfies with the same message.

All of which has made life complicated for Liana Spyropoulou, who worked for 14 years as a political reporter for a Greek newspaper before the financial crisis pushed it out of business. Now, after a period of unemployment, she is the Greece correspondent for Bild and works with a rotating team of German journalists.

“When we are doing a story, and we say we are from Bild,” she said, “people are like this” — she recoiled and grimaced — “but it is only for about five seconds. Then they are very polite and nice.”

Ms. Spyropoulou demurred when asked about the infamous “NEIN!” headline, but she said that Bild also provided extensive coverage of the negative effect of austerity policies in Greece and had even raised the question of whether Germany still owed reparations to Greece for crimes of the Nazis.

“We publish many good stories,” she said. “The problem is the Greek media never translates them. They are translating every story that is not good. Bild is always the bad guy. I don’t know why.”

The cross-border vitriol ebbs and flows, and some analysts have fretted that the sensationalism and obsessive coverage have only made the negotiations more difficult. Mr. Varoufakis, who has become a global celebrity in just four months, has regularly complained about news media coverage and posted rejoinders on his personal blog.

In late March, Marc Brost, a German journalist with Die Zeit, argued that the nationalistic media atmosphere was one of the factors undermining the negotiations and making compromise more difficult. “We don’t have a pan-European media, only national knee-jerk reactions,” Mr. Brost wrote, adding, “All over Europe, every newspaper, every TV station caters to its own national audience.”

The tensions often manifest outside the news media. In Athens, lawmakers with To Potami, a party that favors accommodation with Germany and other creditors, have complained that subway stations in Athens are presenting a documentary on Greek war reparations claims against Germany.

At the newsroom of Skai TV in Athens, Ms. Kossioni said that her network focused on objectivity, rather than sensationalism, and that most Greeks loved German products and held no ill will toward Germans. (“Half of our tourists are German,” she said. “It is not about people. It is about policy.”)

A few weeks ago, Ms. Kossioni dedicated several minutes of her newscast to footage from skits on a satirical German television program, “Die Anstalt,” or “The Institution.” The skits had already gone viral online in Greece because they were pro-Greek, which alone counted for news.

“It was just that somebody in Germany supports us,” said Ms. Kossioni. “So that was an issue for us.”

With her fluent German, Ms. Kossioni has scored interviews with officials like Mr. Schäuble. (“I found him friendly and personable,” she said.) But she says much of the debate is driven by leaks intended to provoke reactions from one country or the other.

In spite of the leaks, the translations and other noise, Ms. Kossioni said the media was still mystified by what was happening in the negotiations.

“We really don’t understand what is going on,” she said. “This is a problem, a huge proble

 

[ArsalanKhan21]

Why can’t Greece shake its corruption problem? - Ideas - The Boston Globe


Why can’t Greece shake its corruption problem?
A report from a country where everyone knows a thousand ways around the rules

By Thanassis Cambanis Globe Correspondent August 22, 2014
PAROS, Greece — A few summers ago, every merchant on this island—which means pretty much everybody with a job—faced ruin. Greece’s economic catastrophe had bankrupted the government and brought nearly every industry to a standstill. A modern European country faced the prospect of unthinkably widespread poverty. The local crisis reached up to the highest level: the European Union contemplated the collapse of the euro. Meanwhile, here on Paros, where the crisis was exacerbated by a global recession that had depressed tourism, mom-and-pop hotels, cafes, and tchotchke shops were going bust.

To avoid calamity, Europe agreed to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out Greece. In return, Greece pledged to overhaul nearly everything about its economy. The government promised to fire half its employees, and liberalized laws on everything from trucking to private universities. Generous pension benefits were slashed, and once-cushy lifetime government gigs were turned over to the free market.

The reforms were supposed to rout corruption from the senior ranks of government, bring efficiency and a service ethos to a notoriously indifferent government, and make it easy for entrepreneurs to launch new businesses. Many Greeks were anguished, even taking to the streets to protest the overhaul of a welfare system that had given the working poor and lower middle class an exceptionally humane and dignified standard of living. But on the bright side, others saw a window opening: finally, the cozy and corrupt Greek economy would be cracked open by genuine market discipline. Scouring out corruption and entitlements might be painful, but it would also clean up daily life and create genuine opportunities.

Europe came through on its end of the deal: hundreds of billions flowed into the Greek treasury. This year, the island is flush again. The tourists are back, eager to spend their euros. New souvlaki joints fill once quiet alleys. Bars have sprung up in orchards. Small business owners who have exuded anxiety since 2008 are once again smiling and confident.

But not everything has changed in Greece. In daily life here, cheating, bribes, and tax evasion are still a matter of course. Even anticorruption officials reputedly accept bribes, and only one Cabinet minister has gone to prison for embezzlement. At the bottom level, freelance workers and shopowners still hide most of their income, like a workman who got angry when I filed a receipt for the repairs he did at my house.

What’s happened over the past five years shows Europe’s surprising ability to pull together as a region and avoid a financial disaster. But developments on the ground in Greece offer a less encouraging view of human nature. In response to additional laws and regulations, Greece’s corrupt system has simply upped its game. If anything, the new rules have just given Greeks more official protocol to maneuver around.

Why does this corrupt system survive, when everything points toward how it needs to be improved? Macroeconomists and development theorists have studied this problem for years, examining cases in countries that are abjectly poor and ones that are developed and comparatively rich, like Greece. There have been bold initiatives underwritten by international loans, and pointed local efforts like Italy’s long-losing battle against Mafia-driven graft. But conversations with ordinary people in Greece make it clear just why it’s so hard to reverse a culture of corruption once it becomes engrained. Even in a relatively prosperous European country, never mind Liberia or India, the most immediate self-interested move is for everyone to keep playing the game.

My ancestors have lived for centuries on Paros, since before Greece fought for independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1821. My grandparents were the first generation to leave the island for Athens, after World War II, but we’ve been coming here every summer since then.

Although my lineage is pure Greek, I grew up with American attitudes about cheating. I spent my childhood surrounded by a certain moralism that I found appealing: you don’t cheat not because you might get caught, but because it’s wrong. You pay taxes because it’s the law and the government provides security and services in return, regardless of whether your politics are welfare-state liberal or “don’t tread on me” libertarian.

This is not how people see the bargain in Greece. Individuals refuse to pay taxes or obey the rules not just because it’s cheaper and easier to do so, but also because they don’t want to be suckers.

“I took my daughter to the government day care and they put her on the waiting list. The waiting list! Can you imagine?” a man griped to me recently. “And then they expect me to pay taxes! I’ll pay taxes when they do their job.”

The man wasn’t a sidewalk souvenir vendor or otherwise working in the gray market. He was an insurance broker, making small talk in his office while filling out a 20-page form to insure my moped, a glorified bicycle whose Greek government-mandated paperwork was more complicated than an American mortgage application.

The Greek system can feel like a Mexican standoff. Citizens won’t obey the law until the government fulfills its duties. The government shirks its duties because it doesn’t have enough revenue to govern responsibly. Small-time tax cheats refuse to bend until the corrupt elite is tried and imprisoned. The government says it can’t punish scofflaws because it doesn’t have the resources. And so the vicious circle turns.

education images/UIG via Getty Images

Beach touts in Paros, Greece, sometimes pick up old receipts and give them to new customers as a way to avoid paying taxes to the government.

Merchants watch out for the tax man. If they know the customer, they don’t issue the legally required receipt. Workmen offer discounts: 20 percent off a job if you pay under the table. Beach touts pick up old receipts and give them to new customers. Only nerds check carefully and demand a fresh receipt.

The electrician who rewired my house called in a panic after I deposited the payment in his bank account.

“Can you take it back?” he pleaded. There was no way to erase the transaction. Now he would have to pay value-added tax (as he was legally obligated to do).

“There goes all my profit,” he complained. That wasn’t true, but it irked him that he’d have to share a few hundred euros of his take with the government.

Cheating is so common that the few who don’t do it feel like saps. Among them are salaried employees who don’t have the option to hide their income. They must pay their ever-increasing tax bills, carrying a disproportionate share of the burden, and yet they don’t see any improvement from the government. Complaining is a social lubricant, whether it’s about the tab you escaped, or the one you paid.

“Sixteen thousand euros, my friend, that’s the name of my pain,” an antique dealer told me. “After you pay that, nothing feels good.”

“You must have made a nice profit if your tax bill was that high,” I said.

“I’m barely living,” he said.

***

It’s tempting to blame all this misbehavior on some kind of national character. I admit at times I’ve thought that myself, but I’ve observed enough to know that it’s not that simple. A whole web of social structures undergirds bad attitudes and practices. Historians go even deeper; they start the story with the Ottoman Empire, which dominated the region, including most of Greece, from 1453 until the end of World War I.

Greece still carries the traces of Ottoman rule, under which it chafed for four centuries. The sultanate in Istanbul tried to crush provincial uprisings, but was remarkably tolerant toward territories that paid their tribute and created no problems. The Ottomans ruled through a combination of neglect and stifling bureaucracy, which gave rise to a system of institutionalized bribes. The sultan milked his provincial governors, who in turn squeezed the citizenry. Taxes were just another negotiable kickback.

That Ottoman legacy is still alive, nearly two centuries after the first parts of Greece won independence. The Greek elites mirror the predatory habits of the sultanate, while the citizens act as if evading taxes is a heroic act of revolt against the occupier. “You know what they say about the rotten fish, don’t you? It stinks from the head,” said a restaurant owner who for most of my lifetime has avoided ringing up dinner bills at the cash register.

Those officials and the plutocratic elite have escaped the crisis relatively unscathed. One minister, Akis Tsochadzopoulos, who stole an obscene amount of money from defense contracts, was sentenced to 20 years in jail. For the most part, however, the rich and powerful have been left alone even as small business owners and pensioners have been squeezed by huge tax hikes and massive cuts in benefits. For the vast numbers of Greeks in that category, it’s hard to appreciate why they should be more accountable than the government itself. Even the new tax inspectors sometimes turn out to be on the take, shopowners say, offering to take a bribe in exchange for a lower fine that goes to the treasury.

Petros Giannakouris/Associated Press/File 2013

After Greece instituted tax hikes, demonstrators rallied outside Parliament against the increases, claiming that they were being driven out of business.

Suspicion breeds suspicion, and everyone has a horror story. A doctor who is a family acquaintance told me that he used to be a model citizen, declaring all his income and scrupulously paying taxes. Then, he said, some years ago he was hit with a huge bill by the tax inspector.

“We know you hide 40 percent of your income,” the inspector told him. “So we’ve charged you accordingly.” The doctor promptly stopped reporting his full income, and has been strategically lowballing it ever since.

Academic economists have been fascinated by the persistence of Greek corruption since the reforms. Yannis Ioannides, an economist at Tufts University, and Costas Azariadis, an economist at Washington University in St. Louis, surveyed the topic for a forthcoming book published by MIT. In it, they offer suggestions on stanching the corruption: they’d like to see the government mount a genuine effort to punish wrongdoers at the top, coupled with a robust new independent watchdog agency to catch tax cheats and embezzlers.

Still, they’re not optimistic these measures would change what they call “the entire value system of nihilism and antisocial behavior that parents and schools have allowed to percolate through Greek society.” Research has shown that Greece’s culture of mistrust and cheating is far more extreme than anywhere in Europe. According to surveys, 80 percent of Greeks believe it’s all right to claim government benefits to which they are not entitled, while 20 percent disapprove. In most of Europe, the ratio is almost exactly flipped.

A look around the world doesn’t offer much inspiration that corrupt cultures can mend their ways. There have been some successes: New York’s Tammany Hall was once synonymous with total corruption. So were Hong Kong and Singapore. Time and reform turned them into models of efficiency, relatively speaking, though the latter two are notably undemocratic today. More common are the kinds of marginal improvements seen in places like Rwanda or the former Soviet republic of Georgia, where reformers have steadily improved police, courts, and some other government services but where graft, bribery, and inefficiency are still serious problems.

Some observers argue that Greece’s economic near-death experience wasn’t deadly enough. “People didn’t starve in the streets,” said Yiannis Vlahos, a surgeon who also writes a column for Estia, one of Greece’s oldest newspapers. “We didn’t suffer enough. Now things are a little better and everyone thinks they got away with it.”

His daughter, a marketing executive, lists a litany of banal ignominies visited upon her by the state: she had to take three full days off work to stand in line to register with the Greek tax authorities so she could pay her taxes online. She can’t count on public education or health care for her children, and must instead pay for private schools and doctors. When a neighbor encroached on a family summer home, it took 20 years for the courts to issue a ruling.

“Only one thing has changed,” she said of the reformed Greece. “Now I ask for receipts.”

***

When I was a kid in the 1970s, Paros regularly ran out of water during the summer. There was no sewer system, and mosquitoes flourished in the septic tanks whose stench marred the scenic whitewashed alleys. No one had a swimming pool, and most of the roads were unpaved.

Today Paros has a better infrastructure than Beirut, the far more cosmopolitan and wealthy capital city where I live and work. A custom-built miniature garbage truck circulates every morning through the ancient streets, and immigrant workers roam around picking up litter.

Petros Giannakouris/Associated Press/File 2013

After Greece instituted tax hikes, demonstrators rallied outside Parliament against the increases, claiming that they were being driven out of business.

The carpenter drives an Audi and the restaurateurs send their kids to university in Athens or London, but almost everyone I talked to swears to me that they still have to cheat to make ends meet. No amount of unearned money, apparently, will ever be enough.

Jokes aside, it’s obvious that there’s really no such thing as national character—just culture and history. By their nature Americans aren’t less prone to lie, cheat, steal, or kill than people from any other country. Habitual high-scorers on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, like the Scandinavians and Singaporeans, aren’t wired to be more honest than low-scoring North Koreans and Somalis.

Corruption persists because it is a system, and it provides benefits in places where the state does not. Inefficient states create incentives for people to pay bribes to get things done—a building permit, a health department seal of approval, a new passport. Scandinavia is less corrupt than other parts of the world because it’s a better deal to not cheat; you pay really high taxes, but the government really does give you everything you need.

Overcoming corruption, therefore, requires almost unimaginable transformation. You have to build an entirely new system—for instance, a new tax code and incorruptible people to collect the taxes—and you have to convince individuals to completely overhaul their personal behavior and their view of authority. One only has to spend a few weeks in Greece to see why, not just here but in places like India and Afghanistan, this is such a Herculean task.

The resistance lies in institutions, in political cultures, and in expectations that have become deeply ingrained in daily life. Cultures and institutions are made of people; people and policies can both change. But some places, like Greece, have been stuck in these feedback loops of corruption and stagnation for so long—for their entire modern history—that it’s hard to see where the reservoir of a new public morality would come from. You’d have to look back to Pericles, two and a half millennia ago, to find a Greek leader who could claim with a straight face to be “not only a patriot but an honest one.”

Thanassis Cambanis, a fellow at The Century Foundation, is the author of “A Privilege to Die: Inside Hezbollah’s Legions and Their Endless War Against Israel.” He is an Ideas columnist and blogs at thanassiscambanis.com.

 

[Dubious]

 

[Steve781]

Austerity clearly isn't working but neither will spending like there's no tomorrow. The only way out is for Greece to exit the Euro.

 

[DRaisinHerald]

How cruel is time. The once bar-bar-bar Barbarians are dominating the once-illuminated-enlightened Greeks.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

Greek Insolvency Could Be ‘Gigantic’ - WSJ

 

[ArsalanKhan21]

How cruel is time. The once bar-bar-bar Barbarians are dominating the once-illuminated-enlightened Greeks.

Ancient Hellenes were intelligent and enlightened but for last thousand years Greeks are nothing but backward greedy people. In last hundred years, Greece has defaulted on its external sovereign debt obligations at least five previous times 1826, 1843, 1860, 1894 and 1932. Looks like it will default sixth time in 2015.



Greek default draws closer as opposing sides swap ultimatums - Telegraph

Greek default draws closer as opposing sides swap ultimatums
'The Greeks cannot have their cake and eat it. A hard choice has to be made between euro exit and adjustment to remain in EMU,' says Goldman Sachs

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, and Szu Ping Chan

7:51PM BST 02 Jun 2015

Greece and its European creditors have both issued “last ditch” demands in their bail-out talks that appear incompatible, raising the stakes in an increasingly dangerous showdown.

The eurozone’s negotiators and the International Monetary Fund have been putting the finishing touches on what amounts to a package of take-it-or-leave-it conditions that offer scant leeway on Greece’s austerity or debt relief.

It is understood that the proposals offer no real concessions on Greece’s “red lines” on pensions and labour rights. The creditors have promised a degree of flexibility but continue to insist that the far-Left Syriza government comply with the chief sticking points of the old EU-IMF Troika”Memorandum”.

Alexis Tsipras, Greece’s prime minister, pre-empted the move by rushing through his own set of proposals, more or less conceding in advance that his plans will not be accepted by the technocrats.

“The decision now lies with the political leadership in Europe,” he said.

Mr Tsipras seemed determined to show that Greece is still the master of its fate, if only before his own people.

“We are not waiting for them to submit their own plan back to us. Greece is the one that submits the plan,” he said.

Huw Pill, at Goldman Sachs, said a sovereign default along with a freezing of bank deposits and a parallel scrip currency or IOU are increasingly likely and may even be “necessary” to break the impasse.

“The platform on which the current Greek government was elected is simply infeasible. The Greeks cannot have their cake and eat it. A hard choice has to be made between a euro exit and an adjustment to remain part of the single currency,” he said.

Mr Pill said the country now faces such an acute crisis that it may soon be forced into policies that hurt its core supporters for the first time, changing the character of the Greek political drama.

“As the liquidity squeeze intensifies and cash reserves are exhausted, the (creditor) seniority enjoyed by pensioners and public sector workers evaporates. Being first in the queue does not help when there is no cash left,” he said.

Whether Mr Tsipras will in fact retreat in order to keep Greece in the euro is far from clear. He threw down the gauntlet in a blistering article in Le Monde on Sunday, accusing the creditors of making “absurd demands” and asphyxiating democracy in Europe.


Mr Tsipras alleged that the EU powers wish to “make an example out of Greece” so that no other country will dare defy the austerity regime or the “doctrines of extreme neoliberalism”.

While the language was Marxist, his threat to default and detonate a strategic crisis in Europe was wickedly Byzantine.

“If some, however, think or want to believe that this decision concerns only Greece, they are making a grave mistake. I would suggest that they re-read Hemingway’s masterpiece, For Whom the Bell Tolls,” he said.

Yannis Dragasakis, the deputy prime minister and normally a conciliator, issued his own warnings in a series of tweets on Tuesday morning. “We will not accept ultimatums nor succumb to blackmail,” he said.

Mr Dragasakis said Greece cannot withstand further austerity and insisted that Syriza will not accept a deal unless the target for the primary budget surplus is cut to 1pc of GDP in 2015 and 1.5pc next year. The eurozone wants a medium-term surplus of 3.5pc.

While the creditor bloc has tried to maintain a unified front, it is riven with differences. The German coalition itself is deeply split, with the Social Democrats (SPD) expressing open irritation with hardliners in the German finance ministry.

Sigmar Gabriel, the SPD leader and German vice-chancellor, said the world would lose all confidence in Europe if the EMU project broke apart in its first big crisis. He warned that consequences of a Greek bankruptcy would be “gigantic”.

A quintet of key figures held an emergency meeting in Berlin on Monday night to thrash out an emergency position as time runs out. Hosted by German chancellor Angela Merkel, it included French leader Francois Hollande, the heads of the European Central Bank and Commission, as well as Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund.

They broadly agreed on a technical paper drafted by the Commission, but that in itself solves nothing.

Eurogroup chief Jeroen Dijsselbloem played down any hope of a deal this week, leaving it unclear what will happen on Friday, when Greece must pay the IMF €300m (£218.3m).

“There is some progress, but it’s really not enough,” he said

There is a growing concern that much of the Syriza leadership – and possibly Mr Tsipras himself – has already concluded that a deal on tolerable terms is impossible, and may be resigned to default and a return to the drachma rather than betray their cause. If so, the strategy at this point is to try to justify a final rupture by persuading Greek public opinion that Grexit was forced upon them.

Gabriel Sterne, at Oxford Economics, said the prevailing narrative that Syriza keeps making mistakes and is drifting towards disaster is “half-baked and superficial”.

It assumes that Mr Tsipras wishes to remain in the euro at all costs and is therefore likely to capitulate in the end. Yet he may equally have concluded a return to the drachma might not be so bad and that he will pay an even higher political price if he abandons his election pledges.

Mr Sterne said there is “universal anger over creditor treatment” in Greece. While there are many opinion polls, the one that matters may be a survey showing that 58pc of Syriza voters would rather return to the drachma than submit to Troika policies.

 

[-SINAN-]

Greece still carries the traces of Ottoman rule, under which it chafed for four centuries. The sultanate in Istanbul tried to crush provincial uprisings, but was remarkably tolerant toward territories that paid their tribute and created no problems. The Ottomans ruled through a combination of neglect and stifling bureaucracy, which gave rise to a system of institutionalized bribes. The sultan milked his provincial governors, who in turn squeezed the citizenry. Taxes were just another negotiable kickback.

That Ottoman legacy is still alive, nearly two centuries after the first parts of Greece won independence. The Greek elites mirror the predatory habits of the sultanate,

Oh..yes, blame this on us too...

 

[ArsalanKhan21]

That Ottoman legacy is still alive, nearly two centuries after the first parts of Greece won independence. The Greek elites mirror the predatory habits of the sultanate, while the citizens act as if evading taxes is a heroic act of revolt against the occupier. “You know what they say about the rotten fish, don’t you? It stinks from the head,” said a restaurant owner who for most of my lifetime has avoided ringing up dinner bills at the cash register.

Oh..yes, blame this on us too...

The criminals and insane blame others for all their problems. The Greeks boast superiority of ancient Hellenic culture while they are lazy and who live money sucked from EU by fraud and deciet.

 

[Vassnti]

The creditors are getting tired of Tsipras. When push comes to shove in a battle between their own pockets and Greek pride the Greeks can shove it.

"Any new agreement between the European Union and Greece will not cost the Netherlands more money, Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte told parliament on Wednesday.
No one should be afraid this might happen, given the boundaries of the on-going debate with the Greeks, Rutte told MPs.
The prime minister chose his words carefully so as not to ‘inflame the situation’, the Financieele Dagblad reports. ‘Answers to “what if” questions and headlines in the international media are no help,’ the prime minister said.

Parliament was debating the negotiations with the new Greek government ahead of Wednesday night’s meeting of European finance ministers. European leaders will meet on Thursday and Friday to discuss the situation.
Rutte told MPs that the Dutch standpoint is that ‘a deal is a deal’. Greece must deliver the results as promised in the current rescue programme in terms the government’s finances, economic reforms and ensuring a healthy financial sector, the prime minister said."

Greece will not cost the Netherlands any more money: prime minister - DutchNews.nl

 

[ArsalanKhan21]

The previous Greek government got a great deal, hair cut and concessions from Troika for loan repayment. Now they new government is asking for even more concessions. The Greeks don't want to repay even one cent. The Greek debt is equal to the debt nearly 50 poor countries with a population of a billion people. The 11 million Greeks want to live as first world country with a economy of second world country subsidized by EU.

Greece and Its Creditors Agree on Some Measures in Bailout Talks - WSJ

Greece and Its Creditors Agree on Some Measures in Bailout Talks
‘Combative’ negotiations resume after ‘some aspects of a financing deal’ agreed overnight

Gabriele Steinhauser in Brussels and
Nektaria Stamouli in Athens
Updated June 4, 2015 8:56 a.m. ET

BRUSSELS—Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and his country’s international creditors were able to agree on some aspects of a financing deal at a meeting Wednesday night, but differences remain on some key issues, European officials said Thursday.

“The next hours, the next days…are absolutely essential,” said Pierre Moscovici, the European Union’s economics commissioner. “I would say I’m optimistic.”

Mr. Tsipras will submit a counter offer to his country’s creditors, including the rest of the eurozone and the International Monetary Fund, two officials said. They spoke after the Greek prime minister held late-night talks with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister who represents the currency union’s national governments in the talks.

The Greek leader is now scheduled to meet with Mr. Juncker again “in coming days,” Mr. Juncker’s spokesman Margaritis Schinas said. “They agreed to meet again, intense work will continue.”

Officials warned that Greece and its creditors still have issues to resolve before a deal is struck.

“Proposals and counter proposals are part of the combative negotiations that are ongoing,” one official said.

“Yesterday we saw some convergence in a few points, but not on others. It will be difficult,” the official added.

 

[Penguin]

It's all about keeping the banks up and running.

 

[ArsalanKhan21]

Markets slide as fears grow that Greece is close to defaulting on debt | Business | The Guardian

Markets slide as fears grow that Greece is close to defaulting on debt
Collapse in talks with creditors heightens default fears as Greek PM Alexis Tsipras attacks ‘five years of looting’ under bailouts
Graeme Wearden and Helena Smith in Athens

Monday 15 June 2015 11.10 BST Last modified on Monday 15 June 2015 12.30 BST
Fears that Greece is close to defaulting on its debt swept European trading floors on Monday morning after talks between Athens and its creditors collapsed on Sunday.

The Greek stock market slumped by almost 7% in early trading, as traders showed alarm that a deal will not be reached before the country’s bailout programme expires on 30 June.

Despite growing pressure, the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, is refusing to accept new spending cuts and tax rises to achieve the budget surpluses demanded by Greece’s lenders.

“One can only see a political purposefulness in the insistence of creditors on new cuts in pensions after five years of looting under the bailouts,” Tsipras told Greek newspaper Efimerida Ton Syntakton on Monday morning.

“We will wait patiently until the institutions accede to realism,” he said. “We do not have the right to bury European democracy at the place where it was born.”

The war of words between the two sides continued, with Jens Weidmann, the head of Germany’s Bundesbank, saying time was running out for Greece.

Greek financial shares were routed on Monday morning, with Piraeus Bank tumbling by 18% and Eurobanks down 15%, dragging the Athens market to its lowest point since mid-April.

The price of Greek two-year government bonds fell sharply, as investors raced to sell up in case Athens should default on its debts.

Analysts warned that the collapse of negotiations on Sunday, after just 45 minutes, has pushed Greece closer to default and a potential exit from the single currency.

“Even if the parties involved do reach a deal in the near future it will likely be a short-term one only,” said Gary Jenkins of LNG Capital. “Indeed the lack of trust suggests that funds will be drip-fed to Greece and that a longer-term agreement will be very difficult to reach.”

According to local media Tsipras has called an emergency meeting with top ministers to discuss the situation, including chief negotiator Euclid Tsakalotos, the deputy prime minister, Yannis Dragasakis, and the state minister, Nikos Pappas.

Talks are now in limbo until Thursday, when eurozone finance ministers meet for their scheduled Eurogroup meeting.

That is probably the last chance for Greece to negotiate a deal to unlock the €7.2bn (£5.2bn) of bailout funds that have been frozen for months, says Peter Rosenstreich, head of market strategy at online bank Swissquote.

“We expect markets will feel the heat this week as the odds of a Greek default have increased considerably,” Rosenstreich added.

All the main European markets fell on Monday morning, with Germany’s DAX index down 1.1%. In London, the FTSE 100 index of blue-chip shares was down 37 points or 0.5% at 6746.

How the talks collapsed
On Sunday night, the European commission warned that: “While some progress was made, the talks did not succeed as there remains a significant gap between the plans of the Greek authorities and the joint requirements of the commission, European Central Bank and IMF.”

In fiscal terms, the differences amounted to €2bn a year in permanent budget savings.

The gulf between the sides prompted a call from the IMF’s chief economist for both sides to compromise further. Olivier Blanchard said Brussels should be prepared to delay more of Greece’s debt repayments, accept only limited reforms and cut the interest applied to debt-relief loans, while Tsipras should offer further pension reforms and accept that some VAT exemptions must be dropped.

“On the one hand, the Greek government has to offer truly credible measures to reach the lower target budget surplus and it has to show its commitment to the more limited set of reforms,” Blanchard wrote in his economic blog. “On the other hand, the European creditors would have to agree to significant additional financing and to debt relief sufficient to maintain debt sustainability.”

The intervention by Blanchard late on Sunday will be widely seen as supportive of the Greek position, though with the sting for Athens in his call for pension reform, which Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek finance minister, repeated on Saturday was a dealbreaker.

With the future of Greece in the eurozone on the line as never before – and time now of the essence if Athens is to honour a €1.6bn debt repayment to the IMF on 30 June – the magnitude of the moment was not lost on Greek officials or the prime minister’s radical-left Syriza party.

Dragasakis, who flew to Brussels to head talks, said Athens remained ready to conclude negotiations “with a mutually beneficial agreement”, suggesting there was still room for compromise.

Blaming foreign lenders for the breakdown in talks, he said the Greek government had submitted complementary proposals that “fully cover” the fiscal gap and the primary surplus – the two major sticking points between the two sides.

Creditors, he said, had insisted on pension cuts and increases in VAT both worth 1% of GDP – or €3.6bn – to close the projected gap, measures that Athens regards as untenable for a population already pauperised by five years of biting austerity. It was the second economic reform package to be proposed by the Greek government and rejected by creditors in June.

“Despite the presence of the Greek delegation in Brussels, there was no response on the part of the institutions [European commission, ECB and IMF] for discussions at the same [political] level or authorisations that would permit a solution to the issues that remain open,” Dragasakis said in a statement.

Tsakalotos said it was clear “the opposite side did not have a mandate to negotiate”. He told the Guardian in a text message: “We made huge efforts to meet them halfway but they insisted on both pension cuts and the increase in VAT on restaurants and would not accept closing the gap even partially via administrative measures to reduce tax evasion, even though this was a central plank of our electoral programme. Moreover, they told us bluntly they had no mandate to discuss a compromise! So much for negotiating.”

With developments taking such a dramatic turn, opposition parties urged Prokopis Pavlopoulos, the head of state, to call an emergency meeting of political leaders. “The country has to remain intact within Europe and this has to be understood by everyone,” said the centrist party, To Potami. “We await a responsible reaction from the political leadership of the country.”

Failure to keep Greece in the euro, after years of arduous negotiations and two emergency bailouts totalling €240bn, would send it lurching into the unknown and mark a historic blow to the EU’s most ambitious project.

Greek officials flew to Brussels after Tsipras signalled he would soften his stance and accept painful compromises in return for promises to alleviate the country’s staggering debt.

Government sources had indicated that Athens was “very close” to sealing a deal that would release more than €7bn in bailout funds the country now desperately needs to avoid defaulting on loans to the IMF and ECB over the summer. Creditors have refused to disburse financial assistance since August as both sides have wrangled over reforms.

A gesture on the ever-contentious issue of Greek debt would also allow Tsipras to sell a deal to hardliners in Syriza, which was catapulted into power in January on a pledge to end five gruelling years of “self-defeating” austerity, and to Greeks at large.

At more than €320bn, the equivalent of 180% of the country’s entire economic output, Greece has the highest debt-to-GDP ratio in the EU with economists far and wide agreeing it is unsustainable. Following the breakdown in talks, leftwing militants implored the government not to concede on any measures that would entail “the extinction of the Greek people”.

Fears now abound that Greece could be heading for a Cyprus-style denouement with the ECB pulling the plug on the emergency liquidity assistance (ELA) it has been drip-feeding Greek banks. The Frankfurt-based institution has come under growing pressure to make such a move in recent weeks.

Indicative of the growing tensions between Athens and Berlin, the biggest contributor of Greece’s bailout programme to date, Sigmar Gabriel, Germany’s vice-chancellor and head of the country’s Social Democratic party – who has long been seen as a friend of Greece – criticised the Greek government’s negotiating tactics in an article for Monday’s daily Bild newspaper.

“The game theorists of the Greek government are in the process of gambling away the future of their country,” he wrote in an excoriating critique of Varoufakis, whose academic expertise includes game theory. “Europe and Germany will not let themselves be blackmailed. And we will not let the exaggerated electoral pledges of a partly communist government be paid for by German workers and their families.”

 

[ArsalanKhan21]

Greece crisis: PM blasts 'criminal' IMF in defiant speech - live updates | Business | The Guardian

Greece crisis: PM blasts 'criminal' IMF in defiant speech - live updates
Prime minister Alexis Tsipras has told his MPs that the IMF has “criminal responsibility” for the damage caused by Greece’s austerity programmes



Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras addresses his MP’s and ministers at the Greek Parliament today. Photograph: Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty Images
Graeme Wearden (until 2.30pm) and Nick Fletcher (now)

Tuesday 16 June 2015 15.03 BST

Wall Street moves higher
US markets are in positive territory in early trading, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up around 50 points.

The latest US Federal Reserve meeting starts today with the central bank’s latest thinking on interest rates due to be announced tomorrow. Investors believe there will be no increase in borrowing costs until later in the year at the earliest.

The rise on Wall Street has helped mitigate some of the gloom in Europe, with Germany’s Dax and France’s Cac now in positive territory after earlier falls, and the FTSE 100 now down just 8 points.

Hopes that Greece can come to a deal with its creditors, despite prime minister Alexis Tspiras’ rhetoric in parliament earlier.

 

[ArsalanKhan21]

Greece at make or break moment - Jun. 21, 2015

Greece at make or break moment
By Ivana Kottasova @ivanakottasova

Greek Minister of State: Greece's heart is in Europe
Greeks crowded into Athens Sunday to urge their leaders to stand firm against austerity as the country made a last ditch attempt to persuade Europe to release urgently needed bailout cash.
Protesters gathering outside parliament carried flags and signs that read: "The people cannot be blackmailed, the country is not for sale."


Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras spoke to German Chancellor Angela Merkel by phone, and to the leaders of France and the European Commission, on the eve of a summit that could determine Greece's future in the eurozone.

"The prime minister presented the Greek proposal to the three leaders for a mutually beneficial agreement that will provide a definitive solution and not a postponement of addressing the problem," Tsipras' office said in a statement.

Tsipras knows that without a deal with Europe, and the International Monetary Fund, he risks leading Greece into default -- it owes the IMF about 1.5 billion euros this month -- and out of the euro.

Several thousand people packed into parliament square in Athens Sunday.


Banks are tottering as anxious account holders rush to get their hands on cash. They're only able to remain open because the European Central Bank is pumping in emergency support -- something that can't continue indefinitely and is not guaranteed if Greece goes bust.

Related: Planning a Greek vacation? Take cash!

Tsipras was elected in January on a promise to ease the pain of austerity -- the spending cuts and tax increases that were a condition of Greece's record 240 billion euro international bailout over the past five years.

That money has kept Greece afloat while it has been unable to borrow money from financial markets. But the last tranche of loans -- 7.2 billion euros -- has been withheld pending agreement on more economic reforms.

Many Greeks have had enough: The economy has shrunk by more than 25%, one in four Greeks is out of work, and pensions and salaries have fallen. And Tsipras has refused to accept the terms on offer.

Europe and the IMF have held firm, arguing they can't hand over more money if Greece isn't prepared to take the measures necessary to live within its means and get the economy back on track. They point to Ireland and Portugal, which have come through harsh bailout regimes and are now growing again.

So four months of talks have gone nowhere. Monday's summit represents a make or break moment for Greece.

Most Greeks tell opinion pollsters they want to remain in the euro, but for some the price may be too high.

"I'm not worried about the euro. We can find other partners, like China, Russia," said Ioanna Tsironis, a public health inspector whose salary has been cut by 40% in three years.

Related: Greece agrees Russian gas pipeline deal

Others attending Sunday's anti-austerity protest also called on the government to continue to resist creditor demands for more pension cuts.

"I'm lucky because I live with my parents, who are retired and get pensions. But there are too many people who are not that lucky, who don't have family to help them," said Konstantinos Papageorgiou, who has been unemployed since finishing university two years ago. "This government is doing a good job. This government is the result of many years of protests."

European finance officials will meet early Monday to try one more time to get a deal before eurozone leaders including Merkel and Tsipras convene later in the day in Brussels.

Related: Greece: The ultimate doomsday scenario

-- Chris Liakos and Elinda Labropoulou contributed to this article.

CNNMoney (Athens) June 21, 2015: 2:08 PM ET