How the world sees Greece
 Anchorage Daily News | Greek markets recover losses from Cyprus crisis Anchorage Daily News Banking stocks in Greece were hammered Tuesday before Cypriot lawmakers rejected a bailout plan, while government officials here urged eurozone countries to give the Mediterranean island more time to come up with a viable solution. Thanassis Stavrakis ... Cyprus Banking Money Grab: Greece, Italy, France, Spain, Next? |
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 Baltic Times | Greece: Living and demonstrating as way of life Baltic Times ATHENS - I believe today's global media depicts Athens, and Greece as a whole, not in the most flattering way, especially in the light of recent events in the euro zone. We see Athens burning in violent protests, we see Greeks going on strike against ... |
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Ministers continue negotiations with EU, IMF and Russia as suspicions grow that Kremlin is pressing for stakes in gas fields
Cyprus ordered its banks to remain closed until next week as the cabinet held emergency talks on Wednesday in an effort to strike a deal with the EU or Russia to avert financial meltdown and stave off bankruptcy.
After the country's parliament rejected a plan to provide €5.8bn (£5bn) by seizing a portion of bank deposits from anyone with a bank account, Cyprus is struggling to come up with a plan that will let it access an EU bailout to stop its banks failing.
The country's eurozone partners and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are ready to provide €10bn in an emergency bailout if Cyprus comes up with an extra €7bn itself. Most of the bailout money is needed to shore up country's oversized banking sector, with the rest for government finances.
No clear "plan B" had emerged after meetings between politicians and representatives of European partners and the IMF. The Cypriot cabinet was said to be discussing ideas including the nationalisation of pension funds of semi-government corporations, which hold between €2bn and €3bn, and another form of levy on deposits. Another option debated may have been natural gas bonds linked to hydrocarbon reserves discovered off Cyprus, which remain uncertain and will not be exported until at least 2019.
It was unclear whether European partners would accept the idea of turning to pension fund assets, which could leave the government exposed to further debts.
"We don't have days or weeks, we have only hours to save our country," Averof Neophytou, deputy leader of the ruling Democratic Rally party, told reporters as crisis talks in Nicosia dragged on into the evening.
Banks in Cyprus will now not open until Tuesday at the earliest, because Monday is already a scheduled bank holiday. They have been shut since last week to prevent a run on deposits. The country's two main banks – Laiki and the Bank of Cyprus – face potential failure if a bailout is not secured. One official told the Associated Press that Europe and the IMF were pressing for the two banks to be wound down.
The Cypriot government was said to be considering the possibility of imposing capital controls amid fears that money would flood out of the country once its banks were reopened.
With the EU deal uncertain, Cyprus was set to launch a second day of talks with its ally Russia in Moscow on Thursday over a multibillion-dollar loan. The Cypriot finance minister, Michael Sarris, held inconclusive negotiations with Russian officials, but said he would stay in Moscow "as long as it takes" to reach a deal.
"We had a very good first meeting, very constructive, very honest discussion," Sarris said after meeting Anton Siluanov, Russia's finance minister. "We've underscored how difficult the situation is." But he said there were "no offers, nothing concrete".
With an estimated $31bn (£21bn) held in Cypriot banks by Russian banks, businesses and individuals, as well up to $40bn in loans to Cyprus-registered firms, Russia has been gripped by fear since the crisis began to unfold, with state-run television transmitting rare live reports from outside the Cypriot parliament.
Yet the Kremlin's reputation for seeking hard assets abroad in exchange for aid prompted speculation that negotiations were dragging as it bargained for stakes in offshore gas fields and Cypriot banks. Gas fields discovered in 2011 could be worth many times Cyprus's GDP but the exact potential revenue stream is uncertain.
Much speculation has fallen on Gazprom, the state gas monopoly that has often been dubbed a tool of Kremlin foreign policy. A spokesman shrugged off speculation that it was seeking exploration rights for gas deposits in the Mediterranean. "There have been a lot of fantasies in the press," a Gazprom spokesman, Sergei Kupriyanov, said. "We have made no proposals." He said no Gazprom officials took part in Wednesday's talks.
The appearance in Moscow of George Lakkotrypis, Cyprus's minister for energy, commerce, industry and tourism, only fuelled the speculation. Cypriot officials said he was visiting a tourism exhibit.
The Russian press has reported that Gazprombank, a subsidiary of the gas group, was interested in Laiki Bank. The Cypriot government denied reports that it had been sold to foreign investors.
Charles Robertson, global chief economist at Renaissance Capital, a Russian bank, said a bid for gas fields would fit with Putin's strategy of using natural resources to boost Russia's influence. "I could see some potential deal around the natural gas fields – energy is something that Putin believes makes the country powerful," he said. "It would fit with his long-term agenda."
A deal on banks appeared less likely, he said, particularly considering Russian clients were now seeking to move funds out of Cyprus and its banks were looking less than healthy.
Teetering Cypriot banks have been crippled by their exposure to the financial crisis in neighbouring Greece, where the eurozone debt crisis began.
The uncertain situation in Cyprus is "very damaging" and needed to be addressed immediately, the EU Council president, Herman Van Rompuy, told the European parliament.
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said of Cyprus's banking section, which through foreign funds attracted by low tax deals has swelled to eight times the country's GDP, "the current banking sector is not sustainable".
The European Central Bank's chief negotiator on Cyprus, Jörg Asmussen, said the ECB would have to pull the plug on Cypriot banks unless the country took a bailout quickly. "We can provide emergency liquidity only to solvent banks and … the solvency of Cypriot banks cannot be assumed if an aid programme is not agreed on soon, which would allow for a quick recapitalisation of the banking sector," Asmussen told the German weekly Die Zeit in an interview on Tuesday.
Austria's chancellor, Werner Faymann, said he could not rule out Cyprus leaving the eurozone, although he hoped its leaders would find a solution for it to stay.
Earlier, Cyprus's Orthodox church said it was willing to mortgage its assets to invest in government bonds. The church has considerable wealth, including property, stakes in a bank and a brewery.
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NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Three top government officials in Cyprus say an alternate plan has been drawn up to raise funds needed for the country to qualify for an international bailout, and that it will be presented to political party leaders Thursday.
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Greece Has Plan B Regarding Cypriot Banks CRIENGLISH.com Greece has a Plan B regarding Cypriot banks operating in the country to minimize any repercussions from the Cyprus financial crisis, Greek Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras said on Wednesday in Athens. "Cypriot banks cannot remain closed for a long ... |
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The EU is bullying Cyprus, much as it did Greece. That tactic won't work when the EU and US negotiate more trade deals
What happens in Cyprus doesn't stay in Cyprus. It has implications for the EU, and, to the extent that it reveals how the EU works, it also has implications for the US. That's why the United States should take careful note of the Cyprus fiasco. It's an old Zen saying that how you do anything is how you do everything: that character, in people as in countries, is revealed in every action.
Cyprus very nearly had to grab money from the bank accounts of its citizens to pay for its bailouts. This was the grand plan of EU leaders who certainly should know better than to ask a country to rob its own citizens overnight. Cyprus has not been in good hands, and that bodes badly for future negotiations, including for America, which is going to start tightening its financial ties with the EU this year.
The days leading up to the Cyprus parliament vote were plagued with obnoxious swagger from EU finance ministers, including the overconfident and highly misplaced claim of French finance minister Pierre Moscovici that "there is no plan B." What's worse than a country proposing an overnight bank raid? A country calling off an overnight bank raid because it has no other plan.
Just to keep the record straight, plan A was shot down, and Cyprus is indeed currently looking for its plan B. As a measure of the country's desperate straits, its archbishop has suggested that the Orthodox Church itself could buy the country's bonds and pay off its creditors, which would perhaps be the definition of robbing (Saint) Peter to pay Paul, or perhaps taking the vow of poverty a little too literally.
The upshot is that Cyprus has become a cautionary tale in the European Union's most failed and yet most consistent negotiation policy: bullying.
Cyprus is small and largely unable to fight back, either politically or financially. Its shabby treatment is consistent with how the EU has treated other countries when it perceives it has the upper hand, including Greece and Portugal. In each of those cases, some members of the EU have relied on cultural stereotypes to explain why financial negotiations had to turn against a country. In the case of Greece, leaders including Germany's Angela Merkel painted the country as full of lazy, pension-reliant, sun-worshipping Mediterranean gadabouts to justify the need for austerity. It's not just that it's offensive, it's false: before the crisis raised unemployment rates, you'll find that Greeks, Italians and Spaniards all worked longer far hours than Germans every week. Somehow those inconvenient facts get lost in the economic finger-pointing.
These EU rationales are unflatteringly tribal, and ill befit a monetary union that is supposed to be sophisticated and rational. The German intelligence agency reportedly informed leaders that Cyprus was a haven for money-laundering, which was trotted out as a bizarre reason last week that taking money from Cypriot bank accounts was a perfectly legitimate option. Cyprus's banks have high interest rates on savings, and it is a tax haven, which has attracted "hot money" from Russia and other countries. No one in Europe complained about that when it was helping the Cypriot economy, but now that a bailout is required, the equation has changed.
The character of EU negotiations – sloppy, disaster-prone, often bullying – is important to the US, too. There will be several visible results.
You'll see the cost of the Cyprus debacle, for instance, in the fact that your interest rate on savings will stay exceptionally low. The US Federal Reserve, which sets the core US interest rate, is on alert to protect the American economy against Europe's continued willingness to risk a banking crisis. That will force the US central bank to do more to maintain economic stability here, including keeping interest rates low – perhaps well into 2016, according to some pundits. The Fed will also likely feel pressure to continue its stimulus to the bond markets. If you own savings bonds, which are U.S. Treasury bonds, you'll see the results there, too. Every time Europe has a financial problem, foreign investors flock to buy US Treasury bonds.
One final way that both the US and its citizens will see the impact of the Cyprus debacle is the kind of food you'll see at the supermarket and the cars you'll see on sale. This year, the EU and US will start work on a $613bn free-trade deal that will create closer financial ties over the next two years. This is an important deal. As The Guardian's Ian Traynor reported this month, "the US-EU's trading relationship is valued at €2bn a day, accounting for 30% of global trade, while the US and the EU make up almost half of the world's economic output." The US is a necessary part of this. As the EU points out in its 2012 analysis, its trade account with the US accounts for 14% of overall trade. It's also a growing relationship; the EU-US trade account rose 13% in a single year.
The main point of any trade deal is to work out the tariffs, or taxes, that each side charges on products coming into the country. Currently, there are tariffs on imports and exports that add up to about 3% to 5% on many products crossing the Atlantic, from cars to food. EU leaders, particularly trade commissioner Karel de Gucht, are so eager to have a larger American audience for their products that they have said there's no reason those tariffs can't go straight down to zero.
Gucht has said that he sees the trade deal as a necessary "stimulus" to the struggling European economy, and you can see why European leaders would be eager for the prospect. With more EU economics dipping into recession, at the moment, the EU have a lot more chance to benefit from it than than the US does. This is where wariness should kick in. Europe may be an important trading partner, but it is a subpar negotiating partner in times of crisis, if its kerfuffles with its own members are any measure (and they are). That's why we shouldn't be surprised if the warm-and-fuzzies of a EU-US free trade agreement don't live up to the promises in President Obama's state of the union speech, which vowed the agreement would provide Americans with jobs.
The biggest test for the EU and how it treats the US, for instance, will be agriculture. It is the element of a free-trade agreement that Europe will fight very hard; for instance, as Marcel Fratzcher, the head of think-tank DIW Berlin pointed out in an op-ed in the Financial Times, the US is a great exporter of agricultural products, and Europe depends heavily on its own agricultural economy. Agriculture is one of the few bright spots in the European economy, with "agricultural real income per labour unit," a measure of profitability, rising by 28.5% between 2005 and 2012. At the same time, the price for food production is rising rapidly, and the EU naturally won't want to compete with the US.
In addition, European food and safety regulations are very tight and institutionally opposed to American farming and food production practices: our chicken, washed in chlorine to kill bacteria, would not make the cut in Europe. The use of hormones in American meat production is likely to be another testing point.
These thorny issues are why some predict the EU-US trade deal could take up to two years to negotiate, even though there's already a robust history of trading across the Atlantic. Expect a similar pattern from Europe's own bailout negotiations: delay, and then when that doesn't work, rely on cultural stereotypes, and when that doesn't work, bully some more. Perhaps it can change, but the EU will have to work hard at showing it can build a track record of trustworthiness in its negotiating style.
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Cypriot banks' Greek units to remain shut this week Fox Business Cypriot banks' Greek units to remain shut this week. Published March 20, 2013. Reuters. ATHENS – Cypriot banks' units in Greece will remain shut on Thursday and Friday in line with an extended bank holiday in the island nation, Greece's finance ... |
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NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Banks in Cyprus will not open before Tuesday at the earliest as government officials try to find a new plan to stave off financial ruin, the central bank's spokeswoman said Wednesday.
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By Peter Apps and Henning Gloystein LONDON (Reuters) - As it tries to play Russia off against Europe to salvage its economy, Cyprus has embarked on a high-stakes poker game that could see almost everyone lose. Its banks shattered by exposure to Greek debt, the island state urgently needs a way of bailing out its financial system. Cypriot policymakers hope they can begin to monetise as yet undeveloped offshore gas fields and position themselves as a vital source of energy for Europe. ...
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Greece says received interest in units of Cypriot lenders Reuters His comments confirm a Reuters report on Tuesday that said at least two of Greece's biggest lenders had shown interest in acquiring the local units of the three Cypriot banks present in Greece - Bank of Cyprus, Cyprus Popular Bank (CPB) and Hellenic ... |
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The main demand of this week's 'parliamentary revolt' was that Cyprus remain an offshore tax haven
Watching the drama unfolding in Cyprus over the last few days has been anything if not surreal. The far left and the Eurosceptic right alike have rejoiced at the Cypriot parliament's "valiant no" to a deal that would have ensured the financing of the cash-strapped economy from the eurozone and the IMF.
The detail they seem to miss is that Cypriots did not reject harsh austerity measures. These measures had already been agreed by the previous – supposedly communist – government of the island, and were approved by the current administration. It did not even revolt against an unjust levy on retail deposits. The eurozone had already signalled its agreement to spare small savers, on condition that assets belonging to foreign oligarchs and tycoons were subjected to a significant haircut (15.6%).
Indeed, it was the Cypriot government that rejected this option, in a dramatic 10-hour meeting of eurozone finance ministers last Friday, because it would damage the sprawling financial sector of the country. So the main demand of this "parliamentary revolt" was that Cyprus remain an offshore haven. In exchange, the Cypriot government seemed willing to offer so many concessions to Moscow as to effectively turn the island into a Russian overseas territory. Why anyone would celebrate this development is not clear.
In Brussels, meanwhile, the people managing the world's second largest economy showed once again a ridiculous lack of leadership. First, they concluded and defended a deal that would violate the sanctity of retail deposits. When the catastrophic consequences of this were pointed out to them, they started pointing the finger at one another. When they decided to backtrack, it was already too late.
It is true that the deal has so far caused chaos only in Cyprus – a small country that, according to Berlin, is "not systemically important". But markets and people know already that next time there is a crisis in Italy, Spain or elsewhere, the eurozone is willing to cross the Rubicon. This is a disaster of unimaginable proportions.
All this should not come as a surprise to anyone who follows the Brussels bubble. Suffice to say that the only reason that Jeroen Dijsselbloem was chosen to run the all-powerful Eurogroup (the council of finance ministers of the eurozone), is not his expertise, nor his ministerial experience, but the fact that he is Dutch. All other, more reliable, options were excluded because of their nationality.
So, how could the Cypriot crisis have been resolved? First of all, by allowing a bit more time: there was no reason whatsoever to ask a small nation to deliver almost 30% of its GDP upfront in cash in the space of three days. Such an outrageous request had not previously been made to any bailed-out country – it made a laughing stock of the island's pro-European government. Second, it was not Cypriot national debt that was unsustainable, but that of the country's banks. And there was a solution to that: after wiping out shareholders and junior bondholders, and imposing a haircut on senior bondholders, the European stability mechanism could have taken over the Cypriot banks. It could have then gradually shrunk them and put them on a resolution course, while giving Cyprus the time to recalibrate its finance-based economy. This option theoretically exists – it was decided by an EU summit last June – but the legal modalities are not there yet to implement it, because Germany has since changed its mind. Cyprus could, in exchange for this arrangement, securitise future revenues from its gas reserves and offer them as guarantees, together with a strict fiscal consolidation programme.
Two years ago, the European Central Bank could have decided to guarantee all sovereign bonds in the eurozone, like it did with its co-called "outright monetary transactions" programme last September, subject to the implementation of a stabilisation policy by the beneficiary countries. Instead, Greece's private debt was transferred to European taxpayers, causing animosity between the peoples of Europe. The country essentially defaulted, thus increasing uncertainty across the continent.
One thing is for certain: the eurozone, an aspiring global player, is offering up a Mediterranean outpost of strategic significance as a present to the Russians. It is just up to Moscow to decide whether it will accept it. And the Cypriot no will ridicule pro-European elites in Greece and elsewhere, as it will make it look as if there was an ideal solution that was simply ignored by "Merkel's puppets". By the time that people realise that this alternative is far from ideal, it may already be too late.
The question remains as to why all this is happening. Why are northern European countries acting as if they are set on destroying the eurozone, instead of fixing it? I don't believe in a sinister conspiracy at the heart of all this, but there does seem to be an unthinking, subconscious racism at play – which is just as destructive. The current political discourse implies that all wealth accumulated in northern Europe is the fair reward of a protestant work ethic, while wealth accumulated in the south is a product of corruption (Greece, Italy), tax evasion (Cyprus), or unsustainable business models (Spain). That is why southern European countries are being asked to change their economic models not through a gradual convergence process, but by violent shock.
The inconvenient truth, of course, is that it was not too long ago that Finland was almost bankrupt, and there are still people old enough to remember Germany's own debt restructuring. "Our finest and blondest friends" (as Blackadder put it) in the north should realise that not all depositors in their own bailed-out banks had paid their taxes. Most importantly, there is not a single academic study that denies that northern Europe has gained at least as much from the euro as the south. If politicians don't start to communicate this soon, then the eurozone will not only collapse, but the ghosts of the past will come to life.
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Credit Agricole to Challenge Tax Decision on Greek Losses -Report Fox Business Credit Agricole SA (ACA.FR) may challenge in court a decision by tax authorities to deny the French bank a tax deduction worth nearly 1 billion euros ($1.29 billion) that it sought for 2012 on the losses it made in Greece, reported French daily Le ... |
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 New York Daily News | First there was Greek yogurt -- now Greek COFFEE could be the key to great health New York Daily News The elderly inhabitants of the Greek island Ikaria boast some of the highest rates of longevity in the world, and now scientists believe that the secret may lie not just in their heart-healthy Mediterranean diet but in their daily caffeine fix. In a ... Boiled Greek coffee may be the secret to a longer life Greek coffee may be the key to a long, healthy life The Greek Island Where People Live to Be 90 – Is it the Coffee? |
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 The Atlantic Wire | It's Greek Yogurt's World Now, We're Just Living in It The Atlantic Wire Since August of 2012 we've been predicting that people were going to unleash a world of hate against Greek yogurt. The Wire's Rebecca Greenfield wrote back then, "Greek yogurt, that tarter, thicker cousin of the standard cultured milk product, has just ... |
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George Osborne is using world events to fit his rhetoric of doom. But the real lesson from Cyprus is about banking, not debt
As the chorus of voices demanding a change of course from our chancellor continues to grow, in both size and intensity, Treasury sources are preparing the nation for yet another round of the familiar refrain "we are having to make difficult decisions"; the implication being that the difficulty of a decision is a self-evident indication of its virtue.
In this climate, George Osborne is increasingly looking for straws to grasp; the latest is the situation in Cyprus. "That is an example in Cyprus of what happens if you don't show the world that you can pay your way," he declared on The Andrew Marr Show on Sunday morning. The comments were described as "sheer nonsense" by Business Insider.
Cyprus could not be more different to the UK, in every conceivable way, even putting aside the manifest disparities in size, mix and nature of economic activity. Cyprus boasts a GDP more than 100 times smaller than the UK; its economy is heavily reliant on tourism and so naturally more susceptible to instability in the Middle East; it is also a net importer by a factor of one to four.
While Cyprus's debt to GDP ratio is broadly comparable to that of the UK, in absolute terms this translates to under £12,000 per citizen in Cyprus compared to over £18,500 in the UK. Cyprus is also running a much lower deficit than the UK, both budget and structural. Therefore, the debt in the UK is growing at a faster rate.
The UK shares none of the key catalysts which have exposed Cyprus to the banking crisis either. Cypriot banks were heavily exposed to Greek debt – they were essentially the very next domino in that row. Over a quarter of the country's exports are to Greece. Finally, Cyprus suffered a massive economic shock in the summer of 2011 (a key point on the Greek timeline of events) – the explosion at Evangelos Florakis naval base, which destroyed an important port, as well as the biggest power station on the island. This is estimated to have cost the country over 13% of its GDP.
In addition, Cyprus has recently discovered enough gas reserves to sustain the country's energy needs for over two centuries. Some believe the battle over rights for these reserves is really at the centre of the EU-Russia standoff. This is in sharp contrast to the situation in the UK, where depleting North Sea oil will increasingly expose the UK to rising energy prices.
Most importantly, perhaps, Cyprus is part of the eurozone and so does not have access to the monetary levers which the UK does. Recently both Paul Krugman and Martin Wolf have thoroughly demolished the idea that the UK enjoys low interest rates because of its policy of austerity and have identified precisely that being in charge of those levers is the key to market confidence.
This is yet another symptom of a lack of evidence-based policy. There is a pick-and-mix approach to both domestic and international events in order to justify ideologically predetermined policies. The AAA rating is vital while we have it and irrelevant when we lose it. Any economic woes from 2008 to 2010 are entirely the fault of the previous administration, while any since then are exclusively down to international events. Growth may be stagnant, but questionable employment figures prove that we are heading in the right direction. Iceland, which nationalised problem banks, prosecuted some of the people responsible and wrote down private debt, thus injecting money into its economy, is too small and too different to point to solutions. But Cyprus – equally small and different – is a cautionary tale to justify further austerity.
This is the paradox at the core of Osborne's approach. At a time when the central issue causing economic stagnation continues to be the lack of demand, which is directly related to confidence, he persists with the rhetoric of doom, declaring we are but a step away from becoming Greece, Spain or Cyprus, which can only have the effect of scaring the economy stiff.
If there is a general lesson to be learned from Cyprus, it is that an overdeveloped, dominant finance sector exposes a country to volatility. If anything Cyprus is now a microcosm of what happened in the UK in 2008. And, considering Osborne's rejection of a financial transaction tax and his defence of bankers' bonuses in Brussels, this is a lesson which he does not want to learn. Instead the government boasts about turning the UK into a tax haven and we lurch as a nation, blindfolded, toward the next crisis.
"Is any of you impressed by George Osborne?" asked Jeremy Paxman of the Newsnight panel of economic experts, assembled to discuss policy on the eve of the budget. An awkward silence followed as economists and business leaders looked at each other mutely. "I feel sorry for him in a sense," eventually the FT's Gillian Tett offered.
I feel sorry for us.
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Sprouts & Shutters: Daphne's Greek Cafe Closed in San Ramon Patch.com A restaurant specializing in Greek cuisine has closed in San Ramon. Daphne's Greek Cafe, 3121 Crow Canyon Place, shut its doors about a week ago. Erin Peacock, a spokeswoman for Daphne's, said the San Ramon restaurant's lease expired and the ... |
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 www.worldbulletin.net | EU insists on deposit tax after Greek parliament rejection www.worldbulletin.net European Union's finance ministers have reiterated their insistence on a one-off tax on bank deposits after on Tuesday Greek Cypriot lawmakers unanimously rejected a bailout plan. Finance leaders from the European Union insisted on imposing a one-off ... Want to Speculate on Cyprus? Try Greek Stocks But Be Careful (NBG & ALBKY) Tom Burroughes Cyprus branches set for absorption |
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 Washington Times | Greek coffee may be the key to a long, healthy life Washington Times WASHINGTON, DC, March 19, 2013 – The residents of Ikaria, a Greek island on the Aegean Sea, live significantly longer than people living in most other communities. In a study published in Vascular Medicine, researchers concluded that drinking boiled ... Boiled Greek coffee may be the secret to a longer life The Greek Island Where People Live to Be 90 – Is it the Coffee? A daily cup of Greek coffee could be key to longevity |
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