How the world sees Greece
Greek dog that hounded debt monitors is free again News & Observer The Associated Press. ATHENS, Greece — Ruby the anti-austerity dog is back on the streets of Athens - just in time for next week's visit by representatives of international creditors monitoring Greece's troubled finances. The male stray gained fame ... |
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Greek anti-austerity dog back on the streets after Athens officials deem him ... Fox News ATHENS, Greece – Ruby the anti-austerity dog is back on the streets of Athens — just in time for next week's visit by representatives of international creditors monitoring Greece's troubled finances. The male stray gained fame this month after barking ... Schaeuble: Greek austerity is working |
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 Yahoo!7 News | CORRECTED-Greece's Alpha Bank opts for 457 mln eur rights issue in ... Reuters ATHENS, March 29 (Reuters) - Greece's third-largest lender Alpha Bank said on Friday it would hold a shareholders' meeting on April 6 to seek approval for a 457.1 million euro rights offering as part of a 4.6 billion euro recapitalisation to boost its ... Greece's Piraeus Bank 2012 Net Loss EUR513 Million Greece's biggest bank turns a Q4 profit Greece's National Bank posts smaller 2012 loss |
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 abc40 | See Items Stolen from the Greek Orthodox Church in Watertown Patch.com Among the items stolen were: gold chalices and gold communion plates inscribed with Greek writing; gold Epistle books; a gold cross stolen from altar; a gold-plated bible stolen from altar; and a small drop safe containing an unknown amount of cash. Greek Orthodox church robbed in Watertown Watertown pastor prays for thieves who ransacked church Sacred items stolen from Watertown church |
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Greek Peak Preps for Easter Break WBGH Thanks to intensive snowmaking earlier in the season, Greek Peak still has a good depth of base. It expects to have the majority of its trails and all of its lifts open next week. Plus, it's remaining open until 10 pm Friday night and Saturday for ... After Facing Bankruptcy, Greek Peak Sold in Auction |
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 Greek Reporter | Greece arson condemned InCyprus ATHENS — Political parties in Greece have condemned an arson attack on the home of the government spokesman's brother. A small cooking gas canister exploded outside the central Athens home early Friday, causing minor damage and no injuries. Kedikoglou's Brother's Home Bomb Target Again |
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Bankrolled by resurgent Turkey, northern Cypriots have little sympathy for economic troubles in south of the island
From the street in front of his shop not far from the UN-patrolled "dead zone" that runs through Cyprus like a scar, Ozkan Zeki offers his opinion about the great economic crisis that has struck the island's Greek-controlled south.
At 76, the Turkish Cypriot is among the few who still have memories of mingling with Greeks before war entrenched the two ethnic communities behind a weed-infested no man's land in 1974. As such, he says, he feels like a Cypriot and doesn't want to gloat at his compatriots' financial woes.
"We don't want to laugh at them because this can happen to anyone," he insists, looking up from a wooden chair placed between rows of gaudy T-shirts at the entrance of his clothes store. "This is an ambush, in my view, an ambush aimed at giving them a lesson."
But in the next breath, he adds that he thinks his Cypriot brothers are not without fault. "I think they deserve it because their nose was too big. They were arrogant, always looking down at us, smiling like they love you but never from their heart."
Zeki is not alone in expressing a sense of schadenfreude at the fate that has befallen Greek Cypriots. Decades of international isolation for a rump state recognised only by Turkey has brought a hardening of views. Expat Britons who have settled in the northern republic – under economic embargo since it unilaterally declared independence in 1983 – are often unabashedly critical of Greek Cypriots.
Above the picturesque port of Kyrenia, in the jasmine-scented village of Bellapais – immortalised by Lawrence Durrell in Bitter Lemons, his autobiographical account of living in Cyprus in the 1950s – they openly evoke the divisions that have long wracked the island.
"They've made our life hell for the past 38 years," said Deirdre Guthrie, who was raised on the island and knew Durrell as a child. "They've had their come-uppance," continued Guthrie who runs a small garden cafe in the village. "I don't have much sympathy for them."
Bankrolled exclusively by a resurgent Turkey, riding a wave of new-found confidence on the back of one of the world's fastest growing economies, the breakaway state has suddenly experienced a reversal of fortunes. In sharp contrast to the south, where trade has fallen sharply in recent years, the financial crisis is barely noticeable in the north, even if living standards still lag far behind and the presence of 45,000 mainland Turkish troops gives it the air of a garrison town.
But the breakaway state also stands to lose business in the maelstrom of the south's economic meltdown. Prolonged recession as a result of the collapse of the Greeks' oversized banking sector – the price of aid from international creditors – will inevitably effect the few areas of co-operation that have emerged since barriers on free movement were lifted between the two communities less than a decade ago. In the casinos that dot the north, owners rue the sudden dearth of Greek Cypriot customers.
And in the slick modern building that houses the territory's chamber of commerce in northern Nicosia, officials openly fret about the fallout from the crisis.
"I am not at all happy about it," said its president, Gunay Cerkez.
"Around 2,500 Turkish Cypriots work, on a daily basis, in all walks of life in the south and it is very likely that most will lose their jobs because of the economy's shrinkage. Trade in goods, currently worth around €5m, will also contract.
Cerkez now finds himself in the paradoxical position of calling Europe's treatment of the Greek Cypriot government – whose campaign has thwarted international recognition of the north – "totally unfair."
"We have estimated that between 9,000 and 10,000 Greek Cypriot companies will either go bankrupt or their business will be significantly reduced … so, no, we are not overjoyed by what is happening there," he adds. "The troika's model is totally unfair. In Greece they [EU and IMF] didn't make depositors cough up," he said, referring to the enforced losses on holders of deposits in excess of €100,000 (£84,450).
The divided island's membership of the EU – followed by its entry to the eurozone five years ago – was seen as a big victory for Greek Cypriots.
On Friday, six days after his insolvent country was forced to go cap in hand to the EU and IMF to avoid crashing out of the single currency, President Nicos Anastasiades said the €10bn bailout deal Cyprus had signed with its creditors had effectively contained the crisis.
"We have averted the risk of bankruptcy," he told a gathering of civil servants in the divided capital. "The situation, despite the tragedy of it all, is contained. We have no intention of leaving the euro."
But officials in the north are not so sure. Many fear that Anastasiades, a moderate in reconciliation efforts, will be sidetracked by the quagmire Cyprus now finds itself in and will be forced to delay reaching a solution.
"The fact that our southern neighbours have gone into this kind of crisis does not please us," said Dervis Eroglu, the north's president. "This may be one of the factors that is likely to delay a settlement. It may also force our good friend Mr Anastasiades to spend all his energy on economic problems and have less time to devote to the negotiation process."
On both sides of the "green line" that bisects Cyprus, memories of co-existence are fading fast. In the highly charged atmosphere of ethnic rivalry the rhetoric of hate is never far beneath the surface.
But among Greeks and Turks there are those who say the economic crisis should now be used to finally resolve the dispute.
"If the Greek Cypriots had agreed to reunite with us back in 2004," said bookstore owner Ali Rustem, invoking the last UN peace plan for the island, which the Turkish Cypriots supported but the Greeks did not, "commercially they would be much better off than they are today. They have to learn to forgive and forget the past."
Outside his shop, just meters away from the bullet-ridden sandbags and rusty gun ports of the barricades that are still a potent symbol of division, Ozkan Zeki agrees. "I often go to the other side to see my friends," he smiles. "I speak Greek. As a Cypriot, I want reunification."
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 Greek Reporter | Greece Launches Six Tenders for Marinas Greek Reporter marina Privatization agency of Greece (TAIPED) will launch six international tenders for Greek marinas by June to boost yacht tourism, it was announced on March 28, at a joint press conference of the agency and the Greek Tourism Ministry. The tender is ... |
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Nicos Anastasiades says crisis has been averted but blasts eurozone members for turning island into an 'experiment'
Cyprus's president on Friday insisted his country has a future in the euro in a speech that also criticised his eurozone partners for forcing the Mediterranean island to be an "experiment".
"We have no intention of leaving the euro. In no way will we experiment with the future of our country," Nicos Anastasiades said.
Speaking the day after Cypriot banks reopened after a two-week closure to stave off financial collapse, the Conservative head of state said the threat of bankruptcy had been averted.
He also promised that restrictions on banking transactions – the first ever to be imposed on a eurozone member state – would be gradually lifted, but did not specify when.
Cash withdrawals from banks have been limited to €300 (£253) a day, while only €1,000 in cash can be taken out of the country, and there are restrictions on the use of credit cards abroad. Cypriot authorities loosened some restrictions on using cheques on Friday – but only to allow payments to government agencies of up to €5,000.
In another turnaround of capital controls placed on a euro member state, the finance ministry announced that debit and credit card transactions with the borders of the country could also be unlimited.
Cyprus's Central Bank has also imposed limits on the money that can be taken "beyond the control of the Cypriot authorities" – a reference to the northern part of the island under Turkish control.
After an initial estimate that the capital controls would be in place for a matter of days, the government then warned later in the week they could last for "about a month".
Anastasiades, who was elected in a landslide victory on a pro-bailout platform last month, has faced a backlash over the terms of the rescue. On Friday he accused eurozone leaders of making "unprecedented demands that forced Cyprus to become an experiment". He also criticised European banking authorities for allowing money to flood into Laiki, the island's second biggest bank, which had racked up billions of debt in bad loans and is now being wound up as part of the rescue deal.
"How serious were those authorities that permitted the financing of a bankrupt bank to the highest possible amount?" Anastasiades said.
Barely a month in power, the government has appointed an investigating committee of former supreme and international criminal court judges to probe possible criminal misconduct in the collapse of the Cypriot economy. With shocked Greek Cypriots now facing years of economic pain, there are mounting calls for punishment to be meted out to the politicians and bankers found to be responsible for the dire straits in which the island now finds itself.
The Swedish foreign minister, Carl Bildt, who flew into Cyprus to hold talks with Anastasiades, said Cyprus was heading for years of economic recession. "It is going to go into recession, a big slump," he told the Guardian. "A lot could have been done to stop it reaching this point. I cannot say I am optimistic, but I am also not alarmed."
Cyprus secured a €10bn (£8.4bn) bailout from the "troika" of lenders – the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund – to avert financial collapse. As well as the winding up of Laiki, the island had to agree to an unprecedented levy on bank savings of more than $100,000 to fund the bailout. Earlier plans to raid the accounts of small depositors were abandoned amid fury from ordinary savers.
Cypriot banks were calm on Friday, with no big queues reported. "The situation, despite all its tragedy, has been contained," said Anastasiades.
The Cypriot president's attempt to draw a line under the crisis that has gripped the eurozone came as Slovenia, another minnow of the currency union, insisted it did not need the eurozone to rescue its troubled banks.
"We will need no bailout this year," said the Slovenian finance minister, Uros Cufer. "I am calm." Borrowing costs for the former Yugoslav republic, which has a population of two million, have jumped as investors look for the next weak link in the single currency.
The Cypriot crisis has sent shudders throughout the eurozone, where the outlook remains gloomy and unemployment rises to record levels.
Figures released on Friday showed that France failed to meet its budget deficit target in 2012 and will miss it again this year. The country's public debt has also risen to a record level.
The latest bad news came only hours after French president François Hollande had gone on live television to reassure the nation of his ability to lead it out of the economic mire.
INSEE, France's national statistics agency reported that public debt rose to €1.8 trillion, a record 90.2 per cent of GDP, in 2012, up from 85.8 per cent in 2011. France's Socialist government has already admitted it will not be able to keep a pledge to bring the deficit down to 3 per cent by the end of 2013 as agreed with the European Commission. The figure is now expected to be around 3.7 per cent, and France has asked for an extension to the deadline for reaching the target. France has not balanced its books since 1974 under successive governments of different political hue.
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The botched scheme to bail out the Cypriot banks is not so much a template for future debt crises as a hypocritical fudge
At one level the eurozone debt crisis has always been about how losses will be divided. It was good news of a sort, then, that Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the new head of the eurogroup, declared this week that the game would be played in future by easy-to-understand rules. There is now a batting order, announced Dijsselbloem: shareholders in insolvent banks in countries in need of financial rescue will get wiped out first; bondholders will follow; and then uninsured depositors will have to chip in.
Naturally, the eurozone powerhouses arrived at this position in Cyprus in shambolic fashion. Version A, rejected by the Cypriot parliament, would have imposed losses on small depositors, in breach of past promises that sums of up to €100,000 would be sacrosanct. But the final version definitely resembled a textbook formula: small depositors were protected and the financial pain was apportioned according to where a creditor stood in the traditional pecking order of capital.
So tough luck if you are a Cypriot small business, a university or a citizen with a large deposit at Laiki or Bank of Cyprus. You have just been hit by a whacking great levy on your cash. Apparently you should have concentrated less on your day job and spent more time monitoring the health and capital position of your bank.
But does anybody really believe the Dijsselbloem philosophy will be adopted consistently? Of course not. Within a couple of hours an official statement said Cyprus was not a template for anything. The country was a "one-off", said German finance minister Wolfgang Shäuble.
What's the true position? It seems the new approach of hitting bondholders and depositors in order to protect taxpayers is really an aspiration. It applies except when it doesn't. More fudge, in other words.
Viewed from Cyprus and many other countries, it will taste like fudge with added hypocrisy. The euro banking system couldn't cope with the collapse of a large bank in, say, Spain, in which losses were imposed on bondholders and uninsured depositors. And, as solvency often lies in the eye of the beholder (meaning the European Central Bank), there will always be scope to contain the pain while labelling the operation a liquidity programme.
Whacking depositors in Cyprus, and imposing capital controls, has major consequences. Nobody has clarified why Cyprus is a one-off. Was it the presence of unsavoury Russians? Or was it that rescuing the banks would have made the country's debt burden unmanageable, even under the usual heroic assumptions about growth and recovery? Nobody knows, but the eurozone leaders have provoked alarm across the continent. Luxembourg, with a bigger banking system than Cyprus, is in a flap over Dijsselbloem's remarks. Slovenia is suddenly top of the banking worry-list. It is small enough, like Cyprus, to be considered a safe case for bailing in bondholders and depositors if necessary; on the other hand, there's no Russian angle. Would Slovenia receive a Cypriot solution or not? Then there's the towering question of what would happen in Italy if Silvio Berlusconi had a role in government.
One fact depositors know for certain is that the euro authorities are prepared to impose capital controls. It is a significant moment; and the longer controls remain in place, the more confidence could be undermined elsewhere.
A year ago, before Mario Draghi at the ECB doused the flames in the sovereign bond market, it was said that no fund manager would ever get fired for buying German bunds. Will the same logic now apply among corporate treasurers in Portugal, Spain, Italy and elsewhere? Will they calculate that nobody will ever get fired for switching deposits to a German bank? If so, the eurozone financial system will become even more unbalanced.
And it would be rational for businesses and wealthy individuals to go German. Whatever it says in the textbooks, pushing depositors into the same pecking order as shareholders and bondholders, albeit in third place, is radical stuff. Investors are seeking profit. Most depositors are seeking a safe home and it's the bank, through the workings of fractional reserve banking, that is trying to make money. But if this is the new regime in euroland – as suddenly advertised in Cyprus – large depositors need to wake up.
A near-certainty is that another banking crisis will arrive sooner or later. The handling is now critical. The eurozone has tried making taxpayers, as in Ireland, pay for bail-outs. If the new idea is to make investors and then depositors carry the can, the market will demand to know how far politicians are prepared to go. At what point would leaders perform a U-turn on their U-turn?
Almost three years after the first Greek bail-out, the euro's route to stability and growth looks as uncertain as ever. Apart from Ireland, the periphery countries are hardly any closer to making their economies more competitive and unemployment across the 17 countries stands at almost 12%. If this was a company, the owners would be demanding a break-up just to make the problem easier to manage.
How many more crises can the euro survive? Never underestimate the political will to keep the project alive, they say. Even so, two more small crises or one big one feels about the limit.
Let's have more competition in UK banking. An excellent idea, and we shouldn't grumble about the regulators' effort to give new entrants a leg-up by allowing them to operate with lower levels of capital. It's just that this reform doesn't feel as if it will shift the dial very far. Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland hardly generated a stampede of interest when, under EU orders, they each put a few hundred branches up for sale.
If there's to be a revolution in banking it will probably come from left-field and via new technology and business models. Peer-to-peer lending over the internet is the place to look. The model is gloriously simple: make the middleman thinner and allow both lender and borrower to enjoy better rates.
The obvious worry is the rate of default. But credit officers at the likes of Zopa and RateSetter can use the same credit-checking agencies as the banks. In practice, default rates have been low – 0.37%, reports RateSetter, which operates a central provision fund to cover shortfalls. And, at the moment, the firm is spoilt for choice of borrower: it did £6m in loans this month out of applications to borrow £75m. A car purchase is the most common reason to borrow.
The sector is still tiny. Zopa has lent £288m in total, and RateSetter £63m. But the model is working smoothly. Note, too, that Jacob Rothschild, one of the UK's most successful investors, bought a stake in Zopa last year. That's a reasonable indication that the peer-to-peer pioneers have started something significant.
Companies can publish their annual reports, complete with disclosures on pay, whenever they wish. So what sort of two-bit outfit slips out its report at 6.15pm on the day before Good Friday as if it's got something it would rather nobody noticed? It's UK Asset Resolution. Never heard of 'em? They're the crew running down the mortgage books of the "bad" parts of nationalised Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley.
The work may be unexciting, but it does indeed pay well. Chief executive Richard Banks earned £643,000, up 7.7% on a year ago. OK, that won't win many bragging rights in banker-land, but it's not bad for a publicly owned body that says it is trying to apply restraint on remuneration.
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 The Times of Israel | Greek Jews get sudden boost in neo-Nazi fight The Times of Israel THESSALONIKI, Greece (JTA) — Antonis Samaras stood in the pale morning light coming through the stained glass windows of the only Thessaloniki synagogue to survive World War II and vowed, “Never again.” For Greek Jews marking the 70th anniversary ... Greek Jews Get Some Overdue Support |
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 Haaretz | Greece Nixes Turkish Bid On Cyprus Greek Reporter In an interview published in the daily Haberturk and the Hurriyet Daily News, Davutoglu said Ankara wants “negotiations to start between both sides on the island and between Turkey and Greece.” If Nicosia insists on claiming any reserves as its own ... Greece, Turkey divided on how to solve Cyprus division |
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 Haaretz | Greek neo-Nazi party: Boycott Estee Lauder Jerusalem Post ATHENS, Greece - The Greek Golden Dawn party called for a boycott of Estee Lauder cosmetic products after World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder urged Greece to ban the neo-Nazi group. Due to the “hostile attack on Greek sovereignty, ... Golden Dawn Boycotts Estee Lauder |
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 Wall Street Journal | To Predict Cyprus's Impact On Euro, Look To Greece Wall Street Journal Greece's problems first came to light when the EU ordered a drastic upward revision to fiscal deficit estimates in November 2009. At that time the euro was at its peak for the year at $1.5145. From then on, the currency followed a seven-month decline, ... |
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Interview: China, Greece boast huge potential in tourism cooperation: Athens ... Shanghai Daily (subscription) Kaminis, who is in Beijing on his maiden trip to China, said his main purpose is to seek approval from the Chinese side for the opening of a direct air route to Athens so as to attract more Chinese tourists to Greece, where tourism industry serves as a ... |
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 Kathimerini | Greece Girds For Troika's Return Greek Reporter Greece is scrambling to ready its arguments to inspectors of international lenders who are due to return to Athens next week to check progress on long-delayed reforms before giving the go-ahead for a 2.8 billion euros ($3.5 billion) installment that ... Samaras meets Stournaras as Greece prepares for new troika visit |
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Greece: Home of government spokesman's brother attacked amid spike in ... Montreal Gazette ATHENS, Greece - Political parties in Greece have condemned an arson attack on the home of the government spokesman's brother. A small cooking gas canister exploded outside the central Athens home early Friday, causing minor damage and no injuries. |
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