How the world sees Greece
Greece – next tranche of bailout money due by March ForexLive (blog) European authorities are worried however that legal interventions might hamper some of the measures, as in the case of the special property tax paid via electricity bills, which would demand the introduction of other measures to fill the gap. Other ... |
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Dimitris Stratoulis, deputy of leftwing Greek party, set upon at football match in Athens on Sunday night
Greek politicians have denounced an attack on a prominent leftist MP amid mounting fears of growing extremist violence in the country. With the main opposition group, Syriza, going so far as to describe the assault on its deputy Dimitris Stratoulis as a "brutal assassination attempt", Athens' tripartite governing coalition moved swiftly to condemn the incident. "Any kind of attack and threat is unacceptable in our democracy," the government spokesman, Simos Kedikoglou, said. "Violence has no place in our culture."
Stratoulis was set upon by three men in their 30s as he attended a football match with his son at the Olympic stadium in Athens on Sunday night. Recognising him during the half-time break, the assailants are reported to have said "now we are going to kill you" before claiming they were members of the far-right group Golden Dawn and kicking and punching the politician in the head.
Golden Dawn vehemently denied it was behind the assault and launched legal action against Stratoulis for referring to the organisation as a "gang of criminals". The ultra-nationalists, who have become Greece's fastest-growing party on the back of anti-austerity sentiment, have decried "the left-wing politicians who foment violence".
"[They] should stop using the name of Golden Dawn," the party said in a statement.
With social tensions spiralling amid record levels of unemployment and poverty, the incident has highlighted concern over the growing friction between left and right as the debt-stricken nation navigates its worst crisis in modern times.
Golden Dawn, whose party logo has been compared to the swastika and whose rhetoric is unabashedly xenophobic, has been linked to a dramatic rise in racist attacks across Greece. Clashes between the extremists and anti-establishment leftists have also proliferated with commentators raising the alarm over a potential civil war.
The Golden Dawn MP Ilias Panagiotaros, who filed the suit against Stratoulis on behalf of the party, recently told the BBC: "Greek society is ready – even though no one likes this – to have a fight: a new type of civil war. On the one side there will be nationalists like us, and Greeks who want our country to be as it used to be, and on the other side illegal immigrants, anarchists and all those who have destroyed Athens several times."
Earlier this year, Golden Dawn's spokesman Ilias Kasidiaris assaulted two leftwing female MPs on live TV, repeatedly slapping one of the politicians across the cheek and throwing a glass of water at the other. Instead of waning, the party's popularity ratings rose.
Expressing consternation over the latest attack, the media called on the Greek government to take immediate action. In a front-page editorial the authoritative newspaper, Ta Nea, insisted that condemning the assault was "not enough".
"Uncontrollable violence is becoming part of everyday life in Greece," it wrote. "Dealing with Golden Dawn is a crucial issue."
In a letter to Stratoulis, the UK-based Greece Solidarity Campaign also highlighted international concern saying:
"We have been here before – with Hitler and the Nazi party in the early 1930s. The rise of Chrysi Avgi [Golden Dawn] is the direct result of the extreme austerity measures imposed by the troika [the European Union, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank] and implemented by the Greek coalition government."
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News Summary: Tax collection still lags in Greece - Business Breaking News ... MiamiHerald.com (registration) LAX ON TAX: Greece is failing to collect the tax it is owed and is in danger of missing key targets that need to be met to reduce the government's staggering debt pile, the European Union warned on Monday. BILLIONS BEHIND: An EU task force said that ... |
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 New Europe | Greece: Task Force is gathering momentum New Europe On 17 December, the European Commission announced that the Task Force for Greece is gathering momentum. On 26 October, Transparency International reported that Greece is the most corrupt country in the EU, scoring the same with China. Regarding ... 17/12/2012 Task Force for Greece presents report "Greece has fulfilled important conditions" |
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 Telegraph.co.uk | Eurozone crisis live: Mario Draghi warns economic weakness will continue The Guardian European Central Bank president Mario Draghi arrives on December 17, 2012 at the EU Headquarters European Central Bank president Mario Draghi has told MEP's that 2013 will be a challenging year. Photograph: GEORGES GOBET/AFP/Getty Images ... Euro-Zone Exports Fall - WSJ.com Greek banks' ECB funding drops in November, ELA up Debt Crisis - Draghi asserts ECB can ask "any question" of all eurozone banks -live |
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Those who are 'violating their own dignity' by dragging index into disrepute deserve fines, says syndicated finance pioneer
Amid mounting calls for the bankers who rigged Libor to be jailed, the Greek financier widely credited with inventing the benchmark interest rate has said that without the key ingredients on which it was built – honesty and trust – the formula was doomed to fail.
Speaking to the Guardian, Minos Zombanakis described how the London Interbank Offered Rate, which underpins $300tn of loans and financial transactions ranging from complex derivatives to ordinary mortgages, was born into a very different world. Manipulating the system, or indeed any unscrupulous behaviour, would have been unthinkable, Zombanakis says, because the system was based not only on the probity of men in bowler hats and pinstripe suits but on something more important still: an unwritten code of conduct inspired entirely by fair play.
"It was a matter of behaviour," the former banker said. "You always worked in the market with the assumption that you were dealing with gentlemen, and you assumed that people acted honourably because they couldn't afford to act otherwise," he said.
"The whole international banking system was based on the fact that people trusted each other," he insisted, adding that no bank would have wanted to cut itself out of the loan market by sullying its reputation. "Their primary goal was to secure the loan," he said. "If they quoted unreasonable rates, they might lose the opportunity to work again."
Long seen as the father of major syndicated finance, in which groups of banks provide one loan, Zombanakis has watched Libor's descent into disrepute and scandal with incredulity. "Banks that manipulate the rate deserve, absolutely, to be fined," he said. "They are violating their own dignity."
When Zombanakis proposed his innovation, in the 1960s, the rate was based on little more than a loan agreement, which participating banks signed.
"We were more or less going into new territory, and we had to create certain things that were acceptable to all the lenders," the octogenarian recalled. "One of those key things was the rate of interest. I remember well calling each of the reference banks two days before the agreement had to be signed. We all knew what the various rates of interest were, and rounding them up to within a margin of one eighth of one per cent we would come to a realistic rate for both the lender and borrower."
The first time the benchmark was used in a single syndicated loan was in 1969, when Zombanakis, who had just set up Manufacturers Hanover bank in London, was approached by the vice-governor of Iran's Bank Markazi to raise $80m (£49m, at today's rate of exchange).
Between 20 and 30 banks participated in the process. Most had a presence in the Middle East, and among them were the Ottoman Bank, Grindlays, the British Bank of the Middle East, Citibank and Chase Manhattan. At that time, fixed-loan rates were the standard business practice, but the Libor-linked loan was oversubscribed, and an immediate success.
"It was celebrated with champagne and Iranian caviar at MHL's Mayfair offices and was widely reported in the financial press as a groundbreaking event," writes David Lascelles in his recently published biography of Zombanakis. "The Economist described it as 'very cunning'. Even allowing for the hype, it was a key moment."
The innovation would lead not only to the syndicated lending market getting off the ground, but ultimately to the mammoth interest rate derivatives market and London's birth as the prime locale for hundreds of international banks.
Zombanakis, a rags-to-riches success story who talked his way into Harvard after an impoverished childhood in Crete, acknowledges that the world of international finance has been transformed in the intervening years.
"Things have changed. Back then, money was hard to find and expensive to acquire," said the retired banker, now a prominent Greek philanthropist, who spends most of his time in Crete.
Regulators, he says, should have moved faster to stop the rot.
"The market now is very different. Banking institutions and finance houses are so big today. A chairman of a bank has no idea what rates some little guy is going to quote. There is always the danger that some smart aleck will do something to get a bonus."
Undoubtedly Greece's most celebrated banker, Zombanakis blames the country's debt crisis mostly on banking excess: "They were over-lending, pushing money down peoples' throats. And, very simply, today's borrowers can't repay what they borrowed," he said. "Greece is not about to collapse. At some point we are going to come out of it … but it will take time."
There may also be "indirect benefits" to eventually emerge from the country's worst crisis in modern times, he said.
"It's a sad thing to say, but this negative story may be good for Greece. The economy was overheated. It has got to lose some of its steam to support itself, probably at a lower level of activity. It will take between three to five years before the country manages to stabilise itself."
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Greek banks' ECB funding drops in November, ELA up Reuters ATHENS Dec 17 (Reuters) - ECB funding to Greek banks fell by 913 million euros in November while emergency liquidity assistance from the country's central bank rose slightly, Bank of Greece data showed on Monday. Lending from the European Central ... |
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ATHENS (Reuters) - Political resistance and potential court challenges are among "very large" risks to reforms required for Greece's bailout program, the country's European lenders said on Monday. The long-awaited report from the European Commission and the European Central Bank details the findings of the "troika" of the EC, ECB and the International Monetary Fund on Athens' efforts to meet targets under its 130-billion-euro ($170-billion) bailout. ...
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NONPROFIT: Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church holding bake sale The Missoulian The Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church Christmas bake sale will be held from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at 301 S. Sixth St. W. Various delicious ethnic and holiday delights will be available. A Lenton luncheon of soup and salad will also be served. You ... |
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 Novinite.com | Greek PM to visit Bulgaria in February 2013 Focus News A joint remark, as the Bulgarian prime minister correctly noted, is that in a time of a crisis, difficulties, the artificial sharpening of the situation does not lead to anywhere; antagonism and irredentism lead to nowhere, said the Greek prime ... Bulgarian, Greek Cabinets Hold Joint Sitting in Athens Bulgarian, Greek Cabinets to Hold Joint Sitting |
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Greek Debt Unsustainable Without Official Sector Losses -Moody's Wall Street Journal Moody's Investors Service on Monday said Greece's government debt level remains unsustainable despite the country's "second default," as only official institutions taking losses on Greek loans will be able to put the country back on track. In a report ... |
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 The Associated Press | Greek tax collection fails to meet targets: EU Montreal Gazette BRUSSELS, Belgium — The European Union says that Greek tax collection is still falling well short of some key targets that need to be met to reduce the government's staggering debt pile. The EU's task force to help Greece overcome the crisis that ... EU Commission: Greek Reform Process Improved Since Elections EU: Tax collection still lagging in Greece |
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Novinite.com | Makaza checkpoint on Bulgarian-Greek border to be opened in March 2013 Focus News Athens. Makaza checkpoint on the Bulgarian-Greek border will be opened in March 2013, Bulgarian and Greek prime ministers Boyko Borisov and Antonis Samaras agreed at the second joint meeting of their government in Athens, FOCUS News Agency's ... Bulgarian, Greek Cabinets Hold Joint Sitting in Athens Bulgarian, Greek Cabinets to Hold Joint Sitting |
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 EU News | Supporting growth and jobs in Greece – Task Force for Greece quarterly report ... EU News The Commission's Task Force for Greece has presented its third quarterly report on technical assistance for Greece. The report describes the assistance provided by the Task Force, the Member States, international organisations and other specialist ... |
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EU Task Force Says Greek Reform Efforts Pick Up, Challenges Ahead Wall Street Journal ATHENS--Greek reform efforts are gathering momentum but more work needs to be done as many challenges lie ahead, the European Commission's Task Force for Greece said Monday as it presented its third quarterly report on technical assistance for ... |
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 Kathimerini | European Union says Greece's tax collection still failing to meet targets Washington Post The EU's task force to help Greece overcome the crisis that brought it to the brink of bankruptcy said in Monday's quarterly report that Athens still has trouble to deal with old, outstanding tax claims. With 2 months to go in 2012, it was still about ... Commissioner Semeta sees steps on fighting tax evasion in Greece, EU Greece must overhaul tax system: EU tax commissioner - MENAFN |
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 Naharnet | Youhanna Yaziji Elected New Greek Orthodox Patriarch of the Levant and Antioch Naharnet Youhanna al-Yaziji was elected on Monday the new Greek Orthodox Patriarch of the Levant and Antioch. He will succeed late Patriarch Ignatius IV Hazim, who passed away on December 5. He will be known as Patriarch Youhanna X. The election was made ... |
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 New York Post | An unintended Greek tragedy New York Post Voigt, one of the Met's favorite sopranos, hit a career low point with her small-voiced, tremulous singing as Cassandra. As the clairvoyant princess, her onstage manner was anything but grand — more like a peevish substitute teacher. Greeks bearing ... |
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