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How the world sees Greece
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
IMF was originally split on the purpose of the Greek bailout
Nearly one in three member states of the International Monetary Fund (about 40 countries) expressed serious doubts about the point and the sustainability of the Greek bailout program in 2010, stressing the need for a reduction of the country’s public debt... ...
Plan for global expansion of the Korean Register
The Korean Register of Shipping, one of the world’s leading classification societies, reiterated its expansion course in the global shipping market and its confidence in Greek shipping during a meeting hosted at the Astir Palace hotel in Vouliagmeni, sout... ...
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HFSF benefits from the price rise of main lenders’ stocks
Just four months after the completion of the recapitalization of Greece’s four systemic banks, the Hellenic Financial Stability Fund (HFSF) has already recovered (at least on paper) a large part of the funds it placed on the lenders.
The intense investmen... ...
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Greece, Israel look to new era of cooperation
The promise of closer cooperation on energy issues, particularly the exploitation of possible Greek hydrocarbon reserves, was one of several encouraging developments for the coalition government to emerge from Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’s visit to Jer... ...
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Key troika decisions to be postponed
Eurozone policymakers have put off decisions on covering the funding gap of the Greek program until December and lightening the Greek debt load until after April, a senior European Union official confirmed on Tuesday.
The same official said that there are... ...
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Greece: Somali migrants found crammed into fake tour bus bound for Italy
Police in northern Greece say 19 Somali migrants have been found hidden under the roof of a fake tour bus headed to Italy, and 23 Greeks alleged to be posing as tourists were arrested.
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Tsochatzopoulos Won’t Accept Verdict
Former Greek defense minister Akis Tsochatzopoulos, who was found guilty on Oct. 7 of money laundering and corruption charges, was sentenced to 20 years in jail. Tsochatzopoulos claims that the court verdict was affected by secret interventions made by powerful figures. He said he does not recognize the decision and he is going to appeal […]
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Acquitted Journalist Vaxevanis Tried Again
Kostas Vaxevanis , the Greek whistleblower journalist who embarrassed a Greek government that hadn’t acted on a list of Greeks with secret Swiss bank accounts by publishing their names, went on trial again on Oct. 8 of violating their privacy even though he was acquitted of the charge earlier in the year. The government, unsatisfied […]
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Israeli officials commend Greek leader for battle to stamp out neo-Nazis at home
by
Associated Press
Israeli leaders commend Greek battle on neo-Nazis
Associated Press - 8 October 2013 14:34-04:00
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli leaders are commending the visiting Greek prime minister for his tough stance against neo-Nazis in his country.
Referring to the far-right Golden Dawn party, Antonis Samaras said Tuesday in Jerusalem he was "not going to allow neo-Nazism in the birthplace of democracy."
Golden Dawn has seen a surge in public support since financial crisis hit Greece four years ago. Five of its party's 18 lawmakers were arrested late last month following the stabbing death of a Greek rap singer and accused of being members of a criminal organization.
Golden Dawn insists it is not neo-Nazi, though leading members have expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler.
Israeli President Shimon Peres said he saluted Samaras for his stance against "violent, crazy organizations." Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also praised the "courageous steps."
News Topics: General news, Nazism, Neo-Nazism, Hate groups, Government and politics, Discrimination, Human rights and civil liberties, Social issues, Social affairsPeople, Places and Companies: Antonis Samaras, Shimon Peres, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel, Jerusalem, Greece, Middle East, Western Europe, Europe
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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History's Biggest Mistakes: Why You're Not Doomed To Repeat Them
History has been full of bad decisions. The Trojans brought the famous wooden horse inside their city walls, not realizing it was full of Greek soldiers. Napoleon decided to invade Russia and returned with just a fraction of his army. The Titanic was outfitted with only enough lifeboats for a third of the total passengers and crew.
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Watchdog withdraws music radio station’s permit
Greece’s broadcast watchdog on Tuesday withdrew the permit of music radio station Best 92.6.
The station had been off air for several months, prompting the National Council for Radio and Television (ESR) to revoke its license.... ...
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Members of migrant smuggling ring face Thessaloniki prosecutor
Five suspected members of a ring smuggling undocumented immigrants to other European Union countries from Greece in a specially-converted tourist bus faced a prosecutor in Thessaloniki on Tuesday along with 23 alleged associates.
Four of the suspects – ag... ...
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Vaxevanis trial moved to October 21
An Athens court hearing the retrial of magazine publisher Costas Vaxevanis, who faces privacy violation charges for publishing the Lagarde list of wealthy Greek savers, started on Tuesday and is to readjourn on October 21.
Vaxevanis was cleared last Novem... ...
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Special judge to take over Skouries arson attack probe
The prosecutor investigating an arson attack on the premises of Hellas Gold in Halkidiki, northern Greece, in February asked Tuesday for an investigating magistrate to be appointed to the case.
Appeals court prosecutor Panagis Giannakis said the importanc... ...
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Banksy 'Quotes' Plato In His 8th Work In New York City
For the eighth work in his month-long series "Better Out Than In," graffiti artist Banksy has painted a fake quote attributed to the Greek philosopher Plato on a blue door in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
The quote? "I have a theory that you can make any sentence seem profound by writing the name of a dead philosopher at the end of it."
The mural is located at 266-270 Freeman Street in Greenpoint, according to StreetArtNews.
Yesterday the artist unveiled a "broken hearted" balloon in Red Hook:
It was defaced within hours:
Banksy’s Heart Balloon destroyed within a few hours. #banksy #banksyny pic.twitter.com/1SxJMiK1LI
— StreetArtNews (@streetartnews) October 7, 2013Find the rest of the works in the artist's month-long "residency" on the streets of New York here.
Join the conversation about this story »
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Greek reporter back on trial for publishing Swiss bank list
ATHENS (Reuters) - A Greek journalist who published the names of more than 2,000 wealthy Greeks with money in Swiss bank accounts appeared in court again on Tuesday for a retrial after being acquitted of violating privacy laws. The retrial of Costas Vaxevanis is likely to revive international outcry and accusations that the media is being muzzled. Vaxevanis was acquitted last year but a state ...
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Greece passes a new fee for solar PV producers; legislates new metering
The new bill also brings into force net metering ... be easily persuaded to invest in net metering under the current arrangements, HELAPCO says. Such a net metering debate has been discussed at length in Greece many times previously.
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Has George Osborne had the last laugh on growth and the IMF? Hardly
The chancellor could bask in promising IMF growth figures – but he'd be wiser to ask how it could have been better
Revenge, according to the old proverb, is a dish best served cold. Six months ago George Osborne was furious when the International Monetary Fund used its influential World Economic Outlook (WEO) to roast the government's austerity programme. Olivier Blanchard, the IMF's chief economist, said the UK was playing with fire in its refusal to ease the pace of budget cuts.
This was April, when the talk was of whether Britain would sink into an unprecedented triple-dip recession. Since then, fresh data has revised away the double-dip recession and economic growth has returned. The 0.7% expansion in the three months to June looks set to be at least equalled, if not bettered, in the third quarter. The debate in the City now is not about the long-forgotten triple dip but about whether Osborne is overcooking things with his Help to Buy scheme for the housing market.
So game, set and match to the chancellor, then? Not quite. In one important sense Osborne gets his pound of flesh from the IMF's latest WEO. The fund's growth forecasts for the UK have been revised up by 0.5 percentage points this year and by 0.4 percentage points in 2014 – comfortably the biggest increases for any developed country. What's more, the IMF predictions still look a bit low given recent developments in the economy. Further upgrades from the 1.4% and 1.9% pencilled in for this year and 2014 still look likely, unless the global economy nosedives in the coming months.
But Blanchard was quite right to say that the pick-up in activity in the UK during the summer does not settle the debate about how the economy might have fared under an alternative strategy. All recessions come to an end eventually, so the real question is whether the upturn in Britain was unecessarily delayed by VAT increases, cuts in capital spending and the chancellor's comparison of the UK with Greece. Academic research by the economist Alan Taylor suggests that UK GDP would be 3% higher today without austerity.
What's more, the fund makes the point that it will take many years for the UK to make good the output losses from the deep slump and sluggish recovery of the past five years. With borrowing costs at a historic low, it is still calling for the government to consider an increase in borrowing to fund much-needed improvements in infrastructure. This would help the economy's future growth potential and make the recovery better balanced.
There is a final reason Osborne may decide not to rub it in when he arrives in Washington for the IMF's annual meeting this weekend. The gathering of finance ministers and central bank governors takes place under the cloud of a possible US debt default and there are fears that this could provide the latest setback to a global economy that still bears the scars of the near financial meltdown of five years ago.
The IMF has some harsh things to say about the way the US is conducting its financial affairs in its latest WEO, published in Washington on Tuesday. It says, correctly, that crude indiscriminate spending cuts under the sequester programme are a bad way to repair public finances battered by the deep recession of 2008-09. It notes, again correctly, that the game of chicken over the debt ceiling could lead to more uncertainty and hence lower growth.
What concerns the fund is that American politics has the potential to destabilise the global economy at a particularly delicate moment. The big emerging market economies – China, India, Brazil, Russia and South Africa – are not growing as quickly as they were a couple of years back. The summer saw downward pressure on the currencies of developing countries as a result of anticipation that the US Federal Reserve would begin to taper away its $85bn-a-month stimulus programme from this autumn. Europe is only just emerging from a double-dip recession. These things also concern the chancellor. At the moment he has a nice little recovery going. But with an election little more than 18 months away, he cannot afford for it to falter.
International Monetary Fund (IMF)George OsborneEconomicsRecessionGlobal recessionGlobal economyEconomic growth (GDP)US economic growth and recessionLarry Elliotttheguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds |
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Skills Gap Among Europe's Workers Threatens Economic Recovery
PARIS — PARIS (AP) — Andrea Ortiz, a 24-year-old Spaniard, has degrees in law and business and works in a multinational clothing company — as a store clerk. She has little hope of advancement and fears that when finally she secures a job she wants, she'll have no idea how to do it well.
"You arrive in class, they give you a book and they ask you to learn it, that's it. The teachers are very educated and well trained but I think that on many occasions they do not know how to transmit that knowledge," said Ortiz, who sells clothes at Zara's. "The day will come when I have to join a company and I won't know the basics of how an office works." The Spaniard's fears may be well-founded, according to a study released Tuesday that shows many countries in the most dire economic trouble have workforces that lack the skills needed to get the recovery going.
In the first global study of adult skills, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development interviewed 166,000 people across 24 countries and regions — a rich sample of people from all walks of life who agreed to sit down for tests that could last up to 90 minutes. The results from mostly industrialized countries offered a snapshot into how people of different ages are educated, work and adapt to a changing world. It did not include China, India or Brazil, which are among the world's fastest developing countries.
"We're looking at decades of policy. We're looking across generations," said Stefano Scarpetta, the OECD's director for employment labor and social affairs.
Gong Juhui is the same age as Ortiz, but says the education and training she received in her native South Korea have given her a very different outlook. She graduated from a four-year college with a degree in social welfare. With about four hours of computing classes a week, she learned how to make websites and use complex graphics programs and felt confident and well prepared to start work.
Gong's first job, producing fundraising websites, required logic, planning and writing skills — all of which she learned at school and honed at work. She's since jumped to another career path, confident of what the future holds. Her country's 3 percent unemployment rate is among the world's lowest.
Literacy, facility with numbers, and ability to adapt to new technologies are among the strongest indicators of earning power; without those skills, economists say, workers will find themselves unable to compete in a globalized world. And they are skills learned not just in schools but in the workplace and during time off.
Adults in Spain and Italy, two of the countries to suffer the most from the European debt crisis and economic downturn, landed at the bottom of the list for proficiency in math and literacy among 16 to 65 year olds. They also were near the bottom in proportion of working-age adults with a minimal familiarity with computers. Both countries suffer from high unemployment — Spain has a 26.2 percent jobless rate, and over half of workers younger than 25 are without work. Italy's unemployment rate is just over 12 percent, with 40 percent of young people looking for work.
The survey found that about one in four Spanish adults scored at the lowest levels of literacy and one in three at the lowest levels in numeracy. Japanese and Dutch adults who were ages 25 to 34 and only completed high school easily outperformed Italian or Spanish university graduates of the same age. American workers fell well below average in all categories.
"That is the kind of thing that makes me question — what are the longer term prospects of these countries to improve, to really get back at a trajectory of long-term stable growth," said Jacob Kirkegaard, an economist with the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Veronica Martinez, who graduated with an education degree, does market studies for a company and essentially had to learn what she knows on the job.
"I wouldn't be able to compare the level with other countries, but the impression I have is that the education system is worse in Spain," said Martinez, 28.
She added: "I don't know if the crisis is to blame, but we*re not prepared for the labor market. I studied to be a teacher and here I am working in something I don't know about. I have had to recycle myself totally for work."
An example of basic familiarity with numbers required respondents to read a thermometer: If the temperature shown decreases by 30 degrees, what would the new temperature be? An example of basic problem solving: The respondent, looking at a simulated Internet environment, is asked to find job sites that do not require registration or a fee, bookmark the sites and then navigate between them.
Although Japan and Finland came out on top in the survey by all measures, South Korea was its major success story. Older workers in Korea reported low levels of literacy and facility with math, but young people ranked at the top of the list — reflecting the country's enormous support for universal education after the Korean War.
Jeong Yeon-ja, who is 69 and the grandmother of 24-year-old Gong, dropped out of elementary school in the southern city of Daejeon after just a year of studies. She knows how to read and write, but is sorry she could not learn more.
"Now that I am old, I have regrets. But I did not feel that way at the time ... Things were just difficult back then," Jeong said.
Gong, her granddaughter, said their different educational backgrounds present no intellectual barrier between her and her grandmother, but she sees it in the use of technology. "I feel a difference when I see my grandmother using bank machines or a smartphone," she said.
Kirkegaard said he hoped governments address the implications of the survey's sobering results, which were fairly dismal for Ireland and France as well — both countries that have suffered in the economic downturn. Figures for Greece were expected to be available next year.
"It's no longer enough to be smarter than your parents," he said. "If you want to have a job that earns more than minimum wage you have to have the skills that allow you to take advantage of technology ... because if you don't you're going to be in a situation where technology is going to replace you."
___
Sainz contributed from Madrid. Associated Press writer Eun-Young Jeong contributed from Seoul, South Korea.
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Online: http://skills.oecd.org/skillsoutlook.html
___
Follow Lori Hinnant at: https://twitter.com/lhinnant
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The left in Greece must rise up against Golden Dawn
The GuardianThe left in Greece must rise up against Golden DawnThe GuardianGreece – and the rise of Golden Dawn – is an extreme parable of what has happened to many developed countries since the global crisis broke out in 2007. The policies of the Greek "rescue" – where the Greek people had no inkling what was afoot until the ...
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French-themed festival at Vathis Square aims at cultural revamp
The Athens Art Network believes that the crisis cannot bring down the country’s art scene, as artistic expression is a form of capital that will yield fruit. The group, which a year ago launched a series of initiatives aimed at revamping the Greek capital... ...
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AEK sells more season tickets than any Super League team
AEK Athens may this season find itself in the third tier of Greek soccer, but has amazingly managed to sell more season tickets than any Super League team, including champion and Champions League contender Olympiakos.
The Yellow-and-Blacks of Athens got r... ...
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Number of indebted households turning to courts for a settlement with banks skyrockets
Some 80,000 applications have flooded Greece’s district courts in the past six months from individuals seeking to ease the terms of their bank loans, with court officials saying that they are assigning hearing dates all the way up to 2025 to deal with the... ...
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Greece still has some way to go to attract investments
While its economic outlook has recently improved, Greece is still in dire straits: By the end of this year gross domestic product (GDP) will have declined by 25 percent in cumulative terms and unemployment has already reached more than 27 percent. And the... ...
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Greece's anti-fascist struggle
Socialist Worker OnlineGreece's anti-fascist struggleSocialist Worker OnlineTHE STRUGGLE against the most pernicious and entrenched neo-Nazi force in Europe is at a critical moment. At stake in the dramatic arrests of Nikolaos Michaloliakos and other leaders of the Golden Dawn (GD) in Greece is not only the immediate future of ...
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Greece Bailout Rescue IMF insider throw Euro rescuers egoism Breaking News
Agree that international creditors this week on further debt reduction for Greece? Secret files show that was fought in the IMF by 2010 over the first ...
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Amsterdam Lowlanders Rugby Team Goes Nude For 2014 Calendar (NSFW)
Meet the Amsterdam Lowlanders: the only rugby club in the Netherlands organized by, though not exclusive to, gay men -- and what a way to meet them! These boys have provided The Huffington Post with an exclusive first look inside their 2014 promotional calendar, available in a slideshow below.
Filled with nude images of the players, funds raised through the sale of the calendar will enable the team to participate in the seventh edition of Bingham Cup, the world gay rugby tournament, in August 2014. Check out a behind the scenes video showcasing the making of the calendar above.
"What started off small is now a thriving Rugby Union team with a firm position within our home at the Amstelveense Rugby Club," the group notes in the calendar. "Besides the Netherlands, the nationalities present in the team include Lebanon, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Macedonia, Italy, US, UK, Ireland, Hungary, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Australia, Greece, Argentina, Romania, Spain and China."
Want to help the Amsterdam Lowlanders make it to the Bingham Cup next August? Head on over to their website to purchase a copy of the calendar -- and see an exclusive preview of some NSFW images from the publication below.
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Greece wrestles with corrupt past as ex-minister sentenced
Athens (AFP) - The heavy prison sentence handed to a founding member of Greece's socialist party is a welcome step in tackling a blight on its political culture, but some remain unconvinced the prosecution signals the sea change many Greeks wish to see.
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Martina Thomson obituary
I had just moved to Camden Town, north London, in 1956 when Martina Thomson, who has died aged 88 of pneumonia after suffering from bone cancer, and her husband, David, came to live in the house just behind my family home. We were separated only by a patch of back garden that we quickly decided to share. The Thomsons gradually filled their own early Victorian house with unsteady-looking piles of books and the walls with pictures – drawings done by her children and her friends and an enormous lithographed poster by Steinlen.
She was born Martina Schulhof in Berlin. Martina went to the Rudolf Steiner school there but the family left Berlin just before the second world war and came to London, where her uncle, Georg Hoellering, ran and chose the films for the Academy Cinema in Oxford Street. During the war, Martina was evacuated to the Cotswolds and learned how to milk cows; after that she trained as an actor at Rada in London.
In 1952 she met David Thomson, then working in Paris for Unesco and later a sound features producer at the BBC, and they married in 1964 after Martina's short first marriage had been dissolved. They had three boys and a quietly adventurous life.
David's BBC job allowed the family two six-month-long working trips to Greece; they also rented an old and remote schoolhouse in Norfolk. David later left the BBC to write full-time: his best-known books are three memoirs, Woodbrook (1974), In Camden Town (1983) and Nairn in Darkness and Light (1987). After his death in 1988 Martina became a tenacious guardian of his papers and his works.
Martina had unusually wide-ranging interests and skills. After Rada she went on to act under the stage name of Martina Mayne in radio plays that David produced, often playing foreign parts on the BBC and English ones on German radio. She could put on a very sexy voice; when these roles dried up she went on dubbing voices for erotic films.
She liked Paris, Ireland, Italy, films, Ulysses, Beckett and Proust. In the late 70s, she qualified as an art therapist and wrote On Art and Therapy (1989), and later worked for a while in an HIV ward. She also became an experimental ceramicist, inventive about the glazes for her bowls and creating tiny but vivid animals and symbolic figures in boats. But latterly she became most interested in poetry; writing (and when required reading aloud with an actor's skill) her own poems. Her work was published in poetry magazines and collected in Ferryboats (2008). In 2012 she published Panther and Gazelle, translations of the expressionist poems of Paula Ludwig, whom her parents had known in Berlin.
Martina was acute, well-read, funny, sympathetic and shrewd. She liked the now vanished Camden Town of the 1950s and 60s, when the pubs she and David liked were quiet enough to talk in; enjoyed retsina and a little whisky; wrote terse postcards in an individual but legible hand. In the 50s she had been called a "cracker" and she remained beautiful, with wild grey hair and an indomitable spirit. She made several trips alone to Nepal.
Despite her cancer she continued to savour life, going shopping with or without her Zimmer frame, or to the National Film theatre. Recently she flew to Italy for a few days, and she travelled across London by bus to see an exhibition only weeks before she died.
She is survived by her sons Tim, Luke and Ben and by eight grandchildren and a great-grandchild.
LondonGermanyRadioArtPoetrytheguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds |
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6 Greek Yogurt Nutrition Myths
Let's do a little word association here. When we say "Greek yogurt" what pops into your head? "Crazy-high protein"? "Super healthy"? "Superfood"? While those adjectives do apply to some Greek yogurts, unfortunately, not every strain is equally ...
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Greece, Israel envisage 'strategic cooperation'
Athens and Tel Aviv have agreed to strengthen bilateral ties, the leaders of the two Mediterranean countries said on Tuesday.
During an official visit by Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras in Israel on Tuesday, in which he is accompanied by several of h... ...
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Trying To Save Ancient Road From Subway
THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) ? When a brand-new subway system hits an ancient road, surely something has to give.
But in one northern Greek city, archaeologists are fighting to combine the two, against government plans to remove and display elsewhere a large section of an ancient Roman thoroughfare found on a planned subway station.
Some 200 people, including many state-employed archaeologists, on Oct. 7 formed a chain round the central Thessaloniki site, beating drums and holding a banner reading 'Culture is not business.'
The protest was organized by the Association of Greek Archaeologists, which wants the metro station re-designed to incorporate the ancient remains and has raised more than 12,000 signatures in an online petition to preserve the road.
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Chinese Like Crete For Investments
With more Chinese businesses eying opportunities in Greece, attention has turned to scooping up island properties and tourism, with the buyout of a luxury residential village, Vamos, in the area of Chania on Crete signed and sealed. The complex belonged to a well-known businessman who could no longer financially afford the operation because Greek banks have […]
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Greek Tourism Breaks Another Record
After the very good course of the Greek tourism in the period January to September, there were ─in comparison with last year─ around 1 million more tourists who visited Greece by air. According to data released by the Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises (SETE), this year Greece broke all the records regarding tourism with 17.5 […]
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Niarchos Foundation Creating Central Park of Athens
In what is the biggest private venture in Greece, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Foundation is planning to build a “Central Park” in Athens to surround its cultural center, a 566 million euros ($768.46 million) project that government officials said would give an important business and psychological boost during a crushing economic crisis. It is expected […]
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Bartholomew to be Declared Honorary Citizen of Thessaloniki
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew will be declared honorary citizen of Thessaloniki, northern Greece, on Oct 26, after the decision of the city’s municipal council. The formal City Council meeting will be held at 12:30 on the feast day of Saint Demetrius, Thessaloniki’s patron saint. The event will take place right after the liturgy has been conducted […]
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Retrial of Greek journalist who leaked Lagarde list of suspected tax evaders begins in Athens
Kostas Vaxevanis was acquitted almost a year ago for leaking the 'Lagarde list' in his investigative magazine Hot Doc/ Photograph: Orestis ...
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Prominent Greek journalist on trial again over 'Lagarde list'
ATHENS (Reuters) - A Greek investigative journalist who published the names of more than 2,000 wealthy Greeks with Swiss bank accounts appeared in court on Tuesday to stand trial again for violating privacy laws. The unusually speedy arrest, trial and ...
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When skills matter most for recovery, Spain and Italy show largest gaps in developed world
by
Associated Press
Lack of worker skills threatens European recovery
by JORGE SAINZ and LORI HINNANT, Associated Press - 8 October 2013 08:28-04:00
PARIS (AP) — Andrea Ortiz, a 24-year-old Spaniard, has degrees in law and business and works in a multinational clothing company — as a store clerk. She has little hope of advancement and fears that when finally she secures a job she wants, she'll have no idea how to do it well.
"You arrive in class, they give you a book and they ask you to learn it, that's it. The teachers are very educated and well trained but I think that on many occasions they do not know how to transmit that knowledge," said Ortiz, who sells clothes at Zara's. "The day will come when I have to join a company and I won't know the basics of how an office works."
The Spaniard's fears may be well-founded, according to a study released Tuesday that shows many countries in the most dire economic trouble have workforces that lack the skills needed to get the recovery going.
In the first global study of adult skills, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development interviewed 166,000 people across 24 countries and regions — a rich sample of people from all walks of life who agreed to sit down for tests that could last up to 90 minutes. The results from mostly industrialized countries offered a snapshot into how people of different ages are educated, work and adapt to a changing world. It did not include China, India or Brazil, which are among the world's fastest developing countries.
"We're looking at decades of policy. We're looking across generations," said Stefano Scarpetta, the OECD's director for employment labor and social affairs.
Gong Juhui is the same age as Ortiz, but says the education and training she received in her native South Korea have given her a very different outlook. She graduated from a four-year college with a degree in social welfare. With about four hours of computing classes a week, she learned how to make websites and use complex graphics programs and felt confident and well prepared to start work.
Gong's first job, producing fundraising websites, required logic, planning and writing skills — all of which she learned at school and honed at work. She's since jumped to another career path, confident of what the future holds. Her country's 3 percent unemployment rate is among the world's lowest.
Literacy, facility with numbers, and ability to adapt to new technologies are among the strongest indicators of earning power; without those skills, economists say, workers will find themselves unable to compete in a globalized world. And they are skills learned not just in schools but in the workplace and during time off.
Adults in Spain and Italy, two of the countries to suffer the most from the European debt crisis and economic downturn, landed at the bottom of the list for proficiency in math and literacy among 16 to 65 year olds. They also were near the bottom in proportion of working-age adults with a minimal familiarity with computers. Both countries suffer from high unemployment — Spain has a 26.2 percent jobless rate, and over half of workers younger than 25 are without work. Italy's unemployment rate is just over 12 percent, with 40 percent of young people looking for work.
The survey found that about one in four Spanish adults scored at the lowest levels of literacy and one in three at the lowest levels in numeracy. Japanese and Dutch adults who were ages 25 to 34 and only completed high school easily outperformed Italian or Spanish university graduates of the same age. American workers fell well below average in all categories.
"That is the kind of thing that makes me question — what are the longer term prospects of these countries to improve, to really get back at a trajectory of long-term stable growth," said Jacob Kirkegaard, an economist with the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Veronica Martinez, who graduated with an education degree, does market studies for a company and essentially had to learn what she knows on the job.
"I wouldn't be able to compare the level with other countries, but the impression I have is that the education system is worse in Spain," said Martinez, 28.
She added: "I don't know if the crisis is to blame, but we*re not prepared for the labor market. I studied to be a teacher and here I am working in something I don't know about. I have had to recycle myself totally for work."
An example of basic familiarity with numbers required respondents to read a thermometer: If the temperature shown decreases by 30 degrees, what would the new temperature be? An example of basic problem solving: The respondent, looking at a simulated Internet environment, is asked to find job sites that do not require registration or a fee, bookmark the sites and then navigate between them.
Although Japan and Finland came out on top in the survey by all measures, South Korea was its major success story. Older workers in Korea reported low levels of literacy and facility with math, but young people ranked at the top of the list — reflecting the country's enormous support for universal education after the Korean War.
Jeong Yeon-ja, who is 69 and the grandmother of 24-year-old Gong, dropped out of elementary school in the southern city of Daejeon after just a year of studies. She knows how to read and write, but is sorry she could not learn more.
"Now that I am old, I have regrets. But I did not feel that way at the time ... Things were just difficult back then," Jeong said.
Gong, her granddaughter, said their different educational backgrounds present no intellectual barrier between her and her grandmother, but she sees it in the use of technology. "I feel a difference when I see my grandmother using bank machines or a smartphone," she said.
Kirkegaard said he hoped governments address the implications of the survey's sobering results, which were fairly dismal for Ireland and France as well — both countries that have suffered in the economic downturn. Figures for Greece were expected to be available next year.
"It's no longer enough to be smarter than your parents," he said. "If you want to have a job that earns more than minimum wage you have to have the skills that allow you to take advantage of technology ... because if you don't you're going to be in a situation where technology is going to replace you."
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Sainz contributed from Madrid. Associated Press writer Eun-Young Jeong contributed from Seoul, South Korea.
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Online: http://skills.oecd.org/skillsoutlook.html
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Follow Lori Hinnant at: https://twitter.com/lhinnant
News Topics: Business, General news, Labor economy, Financial crisis, Economy, Technology, Employment figures, Financial markets, Leading economic indicatorsPeople, Places and Companies: France, Spain, Italy, South Korea, East Asia, Europe, Western Europe, Asia
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Krugtron the Invincible, Part 1
It's an ill wind that blows no one any good. The financial crisis that came to a head five years ago with the failure of Lehman Brothers has been especially beneficial to the economist Paul Krugman. In his widely read New York Times column and blog, Krugman regularly boasts that he has been "right" about the crisis and its consequences. "I (and those of like mind)," he wrote in June last year, "have been right about everything." Those who dare to disagree with him -- myself included -- he denounces as members of the "Always-Wrong Club." Readers of his blog have just been treated to another such sneer.
"Maybe I actually am right," Krugman wrote back in April, "and maybe the other side actually does contain a remarkable number of knaves and fools. ... Look at the results: again and again, people on the opposite side prove to have used bad logic, bad data, the wrong historical analogies, or all of the above. I'm Krugtron the Invincible!" That last allusion is to the 1980s science fiction superhero, Voltron. The resemblance between Krugman and Voltron was suggested by one of the gaggle of bloggers who are to Krugman what Egyptian plovers are to crocodiles. Yesterday one of these thought, wrongly, that he had caught me out. Unwisely, the crocodile snapped its jaws shut.
As a Princeton professor and Nobel Prize winner, Krugman is indeed widely believed to be intellectually invincible. He himself acknowledges having made only two mistakes, both predating the crisis: the impact of information technology on productivity, which he underestimated, and the significance of the federal deficits of the Bush administration, which he overestimated. "In the Great Recession and aftermath, however, I went with [my] models -- and they worked!"
"Let those who are without error cast the first stone," Krugman wrote back in 2010. Unfortunately, this is not an injunction he himself has heeded. Repeatedly, over the last five years, he has heaped opprobrium on others. His latest performance is characteristic; perhaps not quite intentionally he even refers to "my own unpleasantness with Ferguson".
Let us leave -- for the moment -- the question of the future size of the federal debt, which I have dealt with elsewhere and shall return to in a subsequent article. My purpose here is simply to challenge Krugman's right to behave in this way. Even if he were nearly always right, there would be no justification for his lack of civility. But he is not nearly always right. There is therefore no justification for his unshakeable certainty either.
Krugman reserves a special contempt for people who, in his words, "take a position and refuse to alter that position no matter how strongly the evidence refutes it, who continue to insist that they have The Truth despite being wrong again and again." He calls this "derping." The awkward thing for Krugman is that "being wrong again and again" perfectly characterizes his own commentary on what proved to be one of the crucial issues of the financial crisis: whether or not Europe's monetary union would survive it.
To begin with, Krugman was blithely confident that Europe would weather the economic storm better than the United States. On January 11, 2008, he hailed it as "The Comeback Continent":
... Since 2000, employment has actually grown a bit faster in Europe than in the United States ... If you think Europe is a place where lots of able-bodied adults just sit at home collecting welfare checks, think again. ... Europe's economy looks a lot better now - both in absolute terms and compared with our economy - than it did a decade ago.Krugman explained Europe's comeback in terms of "deregulation", a more competitive broadband market than the U.S., "strong social safety nets" and "very high taxes." On May 19, 2008, after a visit to Berlin, he even told his faithful readers: "I have seen the future, and it works ... in the heart of 'old Europe'." (Admittedly this column was a standard "peak oil" piece, exhorting to Americans to have German-style cars and public transport, as opposed to, say, developing new technology to unlock hitherto inaccessible domestic supplies of oil and natural gas.)
Finally, in December 2008, Krugman woke up to the fact that the "Comeback Continent" was in fact an "economic mess." But what kind of mess? No, not the mess of excessively leveraged and effectively insolvent banks that had maxed out on CDOs, bubbly real estate and Club Med government bonds. The mess Krugman discerned was the failure of the German government to see "the need for a large, pan-European fiscal stimulus." The main thing, he wrote in March 2009, was not to make the mistake of thinking that "big welfare states are ... the cause of Europe's current crisis. In fact ... they're actually a mitigating factor." It was a theme he returned to when he and I debated the crisis in New York three months later, when he argued that "the human suffering [was] going to be much greater on this side of the Atlantic" because of Europe's "strong social safety net." Even in January 2010 he was still insisting that:
The real lesson from Europe is actually the opposite of what conservatives claim: Europe is an economic success, and that success shows that social democracy works. ... taking the longer view, the European economy works; it grows; it's as dynamic, all in all, as our own.All of this sheds (to say the least) interesting light on Krugman's boast in an interview in March of this year to have been one of the few commentators who had "predicted the unfolding economic disaster in Europe." This is by no means the only retrospective prediction Krugman has ever made, but it is surely the most shameless.
The European crisis had in fact begun in December 2009, while Krugman was still celebrating Europe's economic success, when the newly elected Socialist government in Greece revealed the full extent of the country's fiscal crisis. The Invincible Krugtron was on the scene in a flash -- well, two months later: "Lack of fiscal discipline isn't the whole, or even the main, source of Europe's troubles -- not even in Greece. ... The real story behind the euromess lies not in the profligacy of politicians but in the arrogance of elites ..."
Wait, what about the Comeback Continent, where social democracy was the future that worked? Never mind about that, there's a crisis and Krugtron's help is urgently needed! And boy did he help.
The question of whether the euro was going to blow up imminently was surely the biggest call of the last few years. Fear of another Lehman-style shock froze credit markets and paralyzed policymakers. Was this just an outside risk over the long term, or a disaster that was almost upon us? Faithful readers of Krugman's New York Times column knew the answer.
By my reckoning, Krugman wrote about the imminent break-up of the euro at least eleven times between April 2010 and July 2012:
1. April 29, 2010: "Is the euro itself in danger? In a word, yes. If European leaders don't start acting much more forcefully, providing Greece with enough help to avoid the worst, a chain reaction that starts with a Greek default and ends up wreaking much wider havoc looks all too possible."
2. May 6, 2010: "Many observers now expect the Greek tragedy to end in default; I'm increasingly convinced that they're too optimistic, that default will be accompanied or followed by departure from the euro."
3. September 11, 2011: "the euro is now at risk of collapse. ... the common European currency itself is under existential threat."
4. October 23, 2011: "[the] monetary system ... has turned into a deadly trap. ... it's looking more and more as if the euro system is doomed."
5. November 10, 2011: "This is the way the euro ends ... Not long ago, European leaders were insisting that Greece could and should stay on the euro while paying its debts in full. Now, with Italy falling off a cliff, it's hard to see how the euro can survive at all."
6. March 11, 2012: "Greece and Ireland ... had and have no good alternatives short of leaving the euro, an extreme step that, realistically, their leaders cannot take until all other options have failed - a state of affairs that, if you ask me, Greece is rapidly approaching."
7. April 15, 2012: "What is the alternative? ... Exit from the euro, and restoration of national currencies. You may say that this is inconceivable, and it would indeed be a hugely disruptive event both economically and politically. But continuing on the present course, imposing ever-harsher austerity on countries that are already suffering Depression-era unemployment, is what's truly inconceivable."
8. May 6, 2012: "One answer - an answer that makes more sense than almost anyone in Europe is willing to admit - would be to break up the euro, Europe's common currency. Europe wouldn't be in this fix if Greece still had its drachma, Spain its peseta, Ireland its punt, and so on, because Greece and Spain would have what they now lack: a quick way to restore cost-competitiveness and boost exports, namely devaluation."
9. May 17, 2012: "Apocalypse Fairly Soon ... Suddenly, it has become easy to see how the euro - that grand, flawed experiment in monetary union without political union - could come apart at the seams. We're not talking about a distant prospect, either. Things could fall apart with stunning speed, in a matter of months."
10. June 10, 2012: "utter catastrophe may be just around the corner."
11. July 29, 2012: "Will the euro really be saved? That remains very much in doubt."
His most recent wrong call was that it was "a real possibility" that Cyprus would be "forced off the euro in the next few days." That was in March of this year -- shortly before a new Cypriot government reached an agreement for yet another bailout that kept it in the Eurozone.
True, Krugman was rarely unequivocal in predicting a euro breakup. Especially at the beginning of the crisis, he hedged, sometimes assigning "more or less even odds" to "a breakup of the euro, with major players, not just Greece, being forced out." That was in an interview with Playboy (seriously) back in February 2012. By May, however, he was more certain. While conceding to the Washington Post (presumably in jest) that his view of the euro's survival "depends on my mood," he stated: "As a matter of substantive economics? It's doomed." His confidence growing, he told the Belgian paper De Tijd: "I think Greece is too far-gone. I don't see a realistic possibility of making the euro work for them now." Radio Free Europe listeners were told that same month that a Greek exit was "probably something that will take place in months." "Mr. Krugman, does Greece have to leave the euro zone?" he was asked by Der Spiegel. "Yes," he replied. "I don't see too much alternative now." "I don't think they can save Greece," he told the Financial Times.
By now the Invincible Krugtron was on a roll. "Something has to happen and in the end it does have to be a Greek exit," he told a reporter from the Independent. "I'd be astonished if they can go more than two years without leaving. I'd be astonished if they could go even one year." Viewers of the BBC were next:
Krugman: I believe Greece will and must leave the euro. I think there is no alternative.
BBC: When do you think it will happen?
Krugman: It could happen in a few weeks in the next election of Greece [which was on June 17].
On more than one occasion -- on PBS in June last year for example, and in an interview the following month with Business Insider -- the formulation was conditional: if the Germans did not tolerate higher inflation, "then the euro will break up." But by September it was back to inevitable Greek exit: "I cannot see how this country can remain in the euro," he told L'Express. "It is practically impossible."
In all, I count a total of twenty-two statements of this sort, attaching probabilities of 50 percent and above to the scenario of one or more countries leaving the euro.
Now, I happen to be rather a euro-skeptic myself. I opposed the creation of the euro and predicted at the outset that the experiment of monetary union without fiscal integration would ultimately degenerate. But today, as you may have noticed, the euro is still intact. Indeed, the Eurozone has two more members than when the crisis began and in January will acquire yet another, Latvia. That is not to say that it won't fall apart eventually. But for the foreseeable future that remains a much lower probability scenario than its survival. I don't know which particular model Paul Krugman was using in the summer of 2012, but it certainly did rather a bad job of predicting what would happen. I laughed out loud at his recent lame excuse that his model couldn't have been expected to predict the action of the European Central Bank. What an awesome model: one that predicts everything about a monetary union except the action of the monetary authority.
Besides its wrongness, the other striking feature of Krugman's commentary on the euro is the vitriol he has directed against those struggling to cope with the crisis. In December 2011, he called the then Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti "delusional." In March of this year, incredibly, he appeared to liken the Finnish Vice President of the European Commission, Olli Rehn, to a cockroach. Some people, I have come to realize, are intimidated by this lack of civility. But I am with Dilbert. It's simply absurd for this man to accuse others of "derping," a childish neologism meaning -- in case you've forgotten -- to "take a position and refuse to alter that position ... despite being wrong again and again."
"I like to think," Krugman wrote on August 14, "that if I had been proved ... utterly wrong ... I'd have had the strength of character to admit it and question my premises. But I don't know for sure, and with some luck I'll never find out." Now that I have shown Krugtron the Invincible to have been utterly and repeatedly wrong about the euro, I look forward to reading his admission of error.
To be precise, I would like to see him admit that he got the biggest call of the last several years dead wrong, again and again and again. Not only should he admit his mistake, but he should also apologize to the millions of people who have suffered as a result of it. Or does he believe that his numerous, widely read predictions of imminent currency break-up had no impact whatever on the expectations of European investors and consumers?
Niall Ferguson's latest book is The Great Degeneration (Penguin Press).
© Niall Ferguson 2013
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Taxpayers who failed to give clarifications will lose rebates, face penalties
Greek taxpayers who were contacted by authorities and asked to provide additional clarifications in connection with their income tax declarations by September 30 but failed to do so risk losing out on any rebate they might be entitled to as well as facing... ...
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Greece Re-Tries Whistleblower Journalist
ATHENS - The journalist who caused uproar in Greece by publishing the so-called ?Lagarde List of suspected tax evaders with bank accounts in Switzerland, is due in court on Oct. 8 on charges of infringing privacy laws.
Almost a year after he was acquitted of the crime, Kostas Vaxevanis will be in the dock again after a public prosecutor took the unusual step of demanding he be retried for revealing the identities of more than 2,000 wealthy Greeks with cash deposits in Geneva.
'What is at stake is the ability of a journalist to exercise his duty as a public watchdog in a case of major public interest,' his lawyer, Harris Ikonomopoulos said.
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Soros Says Greece EU Taboo Victim
Legendary investor George Soros previously said the euro crisis is over, while Europe's nightmare is getting worse. This is because of many 'misconceptions and taboos that sustain it.'
In a new Project Syndicate column, Soros writes that Greece has been a victim of such taboos and misconceptions.
'Greece, too, is a victim of its creditors? misconceptions and taboos. Everyone knows that it can never pay back its debt, most of which is held by the official sector: the ECB, Eurozone member states, or the International Monetary Fund. After undergoing a lot of pain and suffering, Greece is close to posting a primary budget surplus.
?If the official sector could forgo repayment as long as Greece meets the conditions imposed by the Troika (the ECB, the European Commission, and the IMF), private capital would return and the economy could recover rapidly.
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Secret IMF Report Shows Greek Bailout Worries
Even while the International Monetary Fund in 2010 was agreeing to dubious plans to bail out the faltering Greek economy – a joint effort with the European Union and European Central Bank in what became known as the Troika – secret documents at the agency showed there was deep worry and anger over whether the […]
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Golden Dawn, politicians or criminals?
Golden Dawn's leaders are in jail accused of running a criminal organization, after the killing of a left-wing musician. CNN charts the rise of the right-wing group in Greece.
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The Greek Recovery from Left Field
The Greek Recovery from Left Field24/7 Wall St.Greece and its banks may have found a friend in billionaire investor John Paulson. A report from Reuters has said that Paulson now favors the recapitalized banking sector as a bet on Greece's recovery. After a six-year decline in the nation, Greece's ...Paulson hedge funds backing recovery in Greek banksReutersPaulson leads charge into Greek banksCNBC.comHedgies' Greek bank trade sweet enough as it isBreakingviewsInvestment Week -Reuters UK -FXstreet.comall 40 news articles »
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Don't bet on Greece's exit from recession: Business leader
Greece might be confident that it will exit six years of recession in 2014, but the president of the Athens Chamber of Commerce warned the country's economic outlook remained worrying.
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Secret IMF documents reveal extent of concern about 2010 Greek bailout
Minutes of International Monetary Fund board meetings held in May 2010 and published by the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday have highlighted the concern of many country representatives that the Greek bailout was not sustainable.
One of the key criticisms e... ...
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Key decisions on Greece to come later this year, says eurozone official
Brussels - The eurozone will take a decision on how to cover Greece’s funding gap shortly before the end of the year, a senior official told journalists in Brussels on Tuesday.
The official also said that the issue of further debt relief will only be disc... ...
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Past Rifts Cloud Greek Rescue Talks
The International Monetary Fund proceeded with its record 2010 bailout of Greece despite deep internal divisions over whether it would work, according to confidential documents that contradict the fund's public statements.
The new details of the rift come as the crisis lender is now pressing European governments to forgive some of the country's debt in a fresh round of difficult talks.
The idea is unpopular with Germany and other European nations because their taxpayers would take the hit. But it stands a chance because the IMF is now making future support conditional on significantly reducing Greece's debt burden.
The topic will be high on the agenda when finance ministers from around the world gather in Washington this week for the IMF's annual meeting.
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