Greece Outside In: 06/14/13

Friday, June 14, 2013

Greek Bank Avoids Full State Control After Raising Capital

Greece's biggest lender, the National Bank of Greece, has completed its long-awaited capital increase, raising enough money from private investors to avoid a complete nationalization.

READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT online.wsj.com

Greek PM's offer does not satisfy coalition ally: party source

ATHENS (Reuters) - A proposal by Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras to hire a small number of workers to resume a public news broadcaster does not satisfy his junior socialist partner in the three-party coalition, a socialist Pasok party official said on Friday. "Pasok has clearly stated its position publicly. Mr. Samaras's statement does not address what Pasok has said," the official said. (Reporting by Harry Papachristou, writing by George Georgiopoulos; editing by Mike Collett-White)

READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT news.yahoo.com

Italian island jail hosts high-end vineyard

By Barry Moody GORGONA ISLAND, Italy (Reuters) - High on a hillside overlooking the azure sea on a small Mediterranean island, two brawny men toil under the sun in a vineyard that has just released a 50-euro ($66) wine destined for the tables of top restaurants. This is not an exclusive wine estate or secluded retreat for the rich, despite the tranquil beauty. It is, rather, the residence of men serving long sentences for some of Italy's most notorious and brutal crimes, on an island named after monstrous sisters in Greek mythology with snakes for hair. ...

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Greek PM offers to reinstate limited state TV broadcasts

Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras on Friday offered to partially reinstate state broadcaster ERT after its dramatic shutdown this week sparked protests in Greece and criticism across Europe.

READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT za.news.yahoo.com

The NSA's Prism: why we should care

Politicians tell us the innocent need fear nothing from involuntary disclosure, but their actions threaten privacy and more

The revelations about Prism and other forms of NSA dragnet surveillance has got some people wondering what all the fuss is. When William Hague tells us that the innocent have nothing to fear from involuntary disclosure, it raises questions about exactly what harms might come about from being spied upon. Here are some reasons you should care about privacy, disclosure and surveillance.

We're bad at privacy because the consequences of privacy disclosures are separated by a lot of time and space from the disclosures themselves. It's like trying to get good at cricket by swinging the bat, closing your eyes before you see where the ball is headed, and then being told, months later, somewhere else, where the ball went. So of course we're bad at privacy: almost all our privacy disclosures do no harm, and some of them cause grotesque harm, but when this happens, it happens so far away from the disclosure that we can't learn from it.

You should care about privacy because privacy isn't secrecy. I know what you do in the toilet, but that doesn't mean you don't want to close the door when you go in the stall.

You should care about privacy because if the data says you've done something wrong, then the person reading the data will interpret everything else you do through that light. Naked Citizens, a short, free documentary, documents several horrifying cases of police being told by computers that someone might be up to something suspicious, and thereafter interpreting everything they learn about that suspect as evidence of wrongdoing. For example, when a computer programmer named David Mery entered a tube station wearing a jacket in warm weather, an algorithm monitoring the CCTV brought him to the attention of a human operator as someone suspicious. When Mery let a train go by without boarding, the operator decided it was alarming behaviour. The police arrested him, searched him, asked him to explain every scrap of paper in his flat. A doodle consisting of random scribbles was characterised as a map of the tube station. Though he was never convicted of a crime, Mery is still on file as a potential terrorist eight years later, and can't get a visa to travel abroad. Once a computer ascribes suspiciousness to someone, everything else in that person's life becomes sinister and inexplicable.

You should care about dragnet surveillance because it gives cops bigger haystacks with proportionately fewer needles. The 9/11 Commission said that America's spooks had everything they needed to predict the attacks – but it was lost amid all the noise of overcollected data. Since then, the overcollection has gone into overdrive – the haystacks are enormous, but they still have the same number of needles in them. I want my skies safe, just like you – so I want my spooks doing their job well, not simply sucking up all the data in the hopes it it will be useful some day.

You should care about surveillance because you know people who can be compromised through disclosure: people who are gay and in the closet; people with terminal illnesses; people who are related to someone infamous for some awful crime. Those people are your friends, your neighbours, maybe your kids: they deserve a life that's as free from hassle as you are with your lucky, skeleton-free closet.

You should care about surveillance because once the system for surveillance is built into the networks and the phones, bad guys (or dirty cops) can use it to attack you. In Greece, someone used the police back door on the national phone company's switches to listen in on the prime minister during the 2005 Olympic bid. Chinese hackers used Google's lawful interception back door to hack Gmail and figure out who dissidents talked to. Our communications systems are more secure if they're designed to keep everyone out – and adding a single back door to them blows their security models up. You can't be a little bit pregnant, and the computers in your pocket and on your desk and in your walls can't be a little bit insecure. Once they're designed for surveillance, anyone who can bribe or impersonate a cop can access them.

As for Hague: if the innocent have nothing to fear from disclosure, then why did his own government demand an unprecedented system of secret courts in which evidence of UK intelligence complicity in illegal kidnapping and torture can be heard? Privacy, it appears, is totally essential for the powerful and completely worthless for the rest of us.

Cory Doctorow

READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.guardian.co.uk

Will Greek Broadcaster ERT Get Reprieve?; News Back On, Prime Minister ...

Will Greek Broadcaster ERT Get Reprieve?; News Back On, Prime Minister ...
Deadline.com
A State Council decision on whether to grant a temporary injunction freezing the order to shutter Greek state broadcaster ERT is expected this afternoon, the Kathimerini website reports. The news comes as broadcast chiefs from around Europe have called ...

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Why closing Greek broadcaster is make or break moment

Why closing Greek broadcaster is make or break moment
CNN International
(CNN) -- The irony was not lost on most viewers of the Greek Prime Minister's statements as he replied to the public outcry over the hasty shutdown of ERT, the country's national broadcaster, with the immediate layoff of over 2,600 employees. Like a ...

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Merkel tells Europe's youth to move for work

Author(s):

NEOnline

German Chancellor Angela Merkel told the BBC that the eurozone's 3.6 million plus unemployed young people should be reado to move for work.

The Chancellor, who has come under fire by politician's and citizens alike in eurozone countries with troubled economies like Greece and Spain told the British Broadcasting Corporation that their level of joblessness represents a "huge crisis".

However Merkel defended austerity policies implemented throughout the eurozone.

READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.neurope.eu

And The Azeri Gas Goes To... The Envelope, Please!

Author(s):

Kostis Geropoulos

ANAVYSSOS, Greece – After intense preparation, Nabucco West and the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) are waiting for Azerbaijan to announce its decision about the pipeline to carry natural gas to Europe on 28 June. The BP-led consortium, developing Azerbaijan’s Shah Deniz field, is expected to choose between the two projects to transport 10 billion cubic metres of gas annually to Europe.

READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.neurope.eu

FTSE 100 ends another volatile week on a calmer note

Leading shares edge higher but worries about an end to central bank stimulus measures continue

A volatile week of failed and new bids, banking resignations and fears that central banks would switch off the money taps supporting the markets ended on a calm note.

The FTSE 100 finished at 6308.26, up just 3.63 points on the day but down 103 points since Monday's open.

One of the week's biggest fallers was Severn Trent, down another 25p on Friday to £17.60 after a proposed £22 a share bid from the LongRiver consortium fell through. LongRiver, comprising Canada's Borealis, a Kuwait sovereign wealth fund and the UK Universities Superannuation Scheme, walked away just before a deadline on Tuesday after failing to persuade the water company to open talks.

Severn fell more than £3 over the week to well below the £18.25 level prevailing before the consortium's approach was revealed.

Still with takeovers, Vodafone confirmed long standing reports that it was interested in Germany's Kabel Deutschland, allowing it to offer customers television, broadband and fixed line services as well as mobile. After the German group reportedly rejected a €7.2bn (£6.1bn) approach, Vodafone was said to be preparing to increase its offer, perhaps early next week. Vodafone added 1.35p to 180.05p.

Meanwhile Royal Bank of Scotland was on the slide immediately after the surprise resignation of chief executive Stephen Hester, amid concerns of political interference at the state-controlled bank. But following a 3% fall on Thursday it edged up 1p to 316p on Friday.

Overall, the week was dominated by growing concerns that central banks would begin withdrawing their financial stimulus packages, which have been designed to boost global economic growth. With central banks pumping an estimated $12trn of extra liquidity into the system since the financial crisis of 2008, the prospect of this ending has unsettled investors, particularly in emerging markets, which have been major beneficiaries of this policy.

The Bank of Japan set the tone, disappointing traders by failing to unveil new measures after its meeting on Tuesday. With worries that the government's economic plan would not be enough, the Nikkei 225 went into a tailspin and slumped firmly into bear market territory - a 20% decline from its recent peak. Comments on Friday from Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe promising no let up in his drive to improve growth helped to undo a little of the damage.

The US Federal Reserve's future plans also came into focus, with talk it might consider reining in its bond buying programme at next week's scheduled meeting, although some reports overnight suggested this was unlikely. Mixed US economic data, including unchanged industrial production in May and disappointing consumer sentiment figures, gave little clue to the Fed's likely intentions.

Michael Hewson, senior market analyst at CMC Markets, said:

Despite the fact that it remains unlikely that either the Fed or the Bank of Japan are likely to start reining back on their stimulus measures any time soon, investors appear to have decided that the mere prospect of an exit strategy is enough of a reason to look at pulling money off the table on a fairly comprehensive scale.

Political tensions in Greece, where the government made the controversial decision to close state broadcaster ERT, and in Turkey added to the general uncertainty.

Mining shares recovered ground yesterday on Friday, helped by analysts at Citigroup changing their view on the sector from bearish to neutral given recent share price falls. Glencore Xstrata ended 9.8p better at 315.9p after it signed a new $17.4bn credit facility, while Randgold Resources rose 122p to £48.81.

Property groups were among the risers, with Hammerson up 10.5p to 507p and British Land climbing 12p to 595.5p. Great Portland Estates added 20.5p to 548p after UBS moved from neutral to buy:

Recent acquisitions should deliver short-term income streams which will boost earnings but these also form the longer-term development pipeline. Management sees more opportunities to exploit within, rather than outside, its portfolio and has facilities of nearly £300m to fund it, more than enough for the next two years.

Tullow Oil added 15p to £10.48 despite a sell note from Investec. Analyst Brian Gallagher said:

On the 3 July Tullow will release a trading and operational update. Ahead of the event, we take the opportunity to highlight pending catalysts and reiterate our bearish stance. We continue to view the FTSE 100 explorer as overvalued, with a suboptimum balance between [exploration and production]. This dynamic, in our view, has the potential to put continued upward pressure on net debt as Tullow seeks to negotiate farmdowns at capex heavy projects in Ghana and Uganda. We reiterate our sell and 930p sum of the parts derived target price.

Compass slipped 1p to 839.5p even though the City gave a positive reaction to its first investor day in five years, with analysts suggesting it could do a £1.5bn buyback over the next three years. Compass gave presentations on Thursday about its global operations and their growth prospects. At Morgan Stanley, Jamie Rollo kept his equal-weight rating but raised his target price from 810p to 830p. He said:

Compass hosted an impressive investor seminar yesterday. While it gave no targets, we were very encouraged by its assessment of the structural outsourcing opportunity, the scope for further efficiencies, and the various case studies, which all gave us a feeling for the depth of management.

Among the mid-caps Unite, the student accommodation specialist, rose 18.8p to 353.9p in the wake of this week's £51m placing at 320p a share. Espirito Santo said:

The placing proceeds will be used to part-fund the development of around 2,500 new beds in regional markets with exposure to Russell Group or 'rising star' universities suffering from a lack of purpose-built student accommodation. Unite has delivered around 34,000 beds over the past decade meaning we are relaxed over its ability to source and deliver 2,500 beds in 2015/16. We have increased our fair value by 10p to 381p and remain buyers.

Finally WH Smith edged up 1p to 716p as a weak performance from its high street stores revived talk of a possible break-up of the retailer. In chief executive Kate Swann's last trading update on Thursday, the group reported a 7% decline in high street sales with a 4% fall in sales at its travel business, which covers airports, railway stations and motorway service stations. Analyst Nick Bubb said:

[New chief executive] Steve Clarke will no doubt have to... listen to all the hard-working investment bankers from the City anxious to secure the mandate to demerge the travel Division. Conventional wisdom has it that if you spin off the good bit of the group, nobody would want the bad bit and that shareholders would be no better off if the high street [division] was de-rated, undermining the re-rating from travel. Well, arguably, the implicit rating of the high street part of WH Smith is so low anyway, despite its free cash flow generation, that nothing might be lost if it was demerged/or sold off. And maybe a private equity company (who wouldn't have to keep reporting its like for like sales every few months) might be a good owner for WH Smith high street. The great irony here, of course, is that Kate Swann has pursued a classic private equity approach to running WH Smith in the high street in recent years and highly successful it has been too, even if it has offended the retail purists.

Nick Fletcher

READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.guardian.co.uk

IMF Stands By Its Mistakes

IMF Spokesman Gerry Rice Days after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) admitted vastly underestimating the effects of austerity in Greece it demanded as part of a Troika of lenders putting up bailouts, an agency spokesman said officials there would still have done what they did, even knowing what it wrought for the country. During a media briefing IMF spokesman Gerry Rice accepted a barrage ...