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How the world sees Greece
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Greek Cyprus' statements like foamy cappuccino: Turkey's Parliament Speaker
Hurriyet Daily NewsGreek Cyprus' statements like foamy cappuccino: Turkey's Parliament SpeakerHurriyet Daily NewsTurkey's Parliament Speaker Cemil Çiçek added yet another metaphor to the already rich literature on the half-century old Cyprus issue, likening the statements by the Greek Cypriot side to foamy cappuccino, attempting to highlight the ...and more »
'The Crisis' and Art in Greece (and NY)
The Greek economic crisis, is, among other things, a crisis of confidence. Investors, worried about the country's finances, pulled out their capital, and in doing so drove up interest rates and drove down the Greek economy to a near depression ...
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Greek appeals court finds journalist non-guilty over publication of "Lagarde list"
A Greek appeals court found on Wednesday non-guilty Greek journalist Costas Vaxevanis who was charged with violation of privacy rights laws over the publication of a copy of a list with major Greek depositors in Switzerland a year ago Vaxevanis, who ...
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Event honors Greece's socially-conscious NGOs
KathimeriniEvent honors Greece's socially-conscious NGOsKathimeriniTen initiatives aimed at helping a variety of social groups were honored on November 20 at the Nisides Piotitas awards, an institution launched by the NGO Citizens' Movement and the Greek Guiding Association. The awards, which were presented by Greek ...
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Taxes Hold'em: How Players can Mitigate Greek Daily Tax by Juggling ...
PokerfuseTaxes Hold'em: How Players can Mitigate Greek Daily Tax by Juggling ...PokerfusePokerStars has adopted a strategy of compliance with Greek legal requirements to withhold taxes on player winnings each day. It has temporarily removed all mid- to high-buyin tournaments, and has recommended to Greek players ways to minimize the daily ...PokerStars complies with Greek laws to go live on .GR websitesiGaming Businessall 2 news articles »
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Greece gains from demotion to emerging market status
Moneycontrol.comGreece gains from demotion to emerging market statusFinancial Times... only country to be demoted from developed country status earlier this year. MSCI, a major index provider, had classified Greece as a developed market since May 2001, but announced in June that it would relegate Greece back to its emerging market index.Greece's emerging market status: Good news really?Moneycontrol.comAs Greece Joins Emerging Markets Index, Some are WaryWall Street JournalGREECE - Factors to Watch on November 27ReutersCapital.gr (press release) -MSN Moneyall 42 news articles »
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UN Apologizes For Greek HIV/AIDS Report
UN Apologizes For Greek HIV/AIDS ReportDaily BeastCiting the Greek economic crisis and a payout of $1000 a month for HIV treatment, WHO charged that the reason the Greek HIV rates had increased so significantly was because people were desperate for government help and the HIV program remained one ...and more »
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WHO Retracts Claim Of Greeks Injecting Themselves With HIV To Receive Welfare Benefits
Blaming an “editing error” for the false claim, the WHO said that it would be revising its report, while apologising for the furore that had erupted across social media on Monday.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) was forced to issue an apology on Tuesday after one of their reports had claimed that Greeks were deliberately infecting themselves with HIV in order to claim welfare benefits of up to $950 per month.The World Health Organisation (WHO) was forced to issue an apology on Tuesday after one of their reports had claimed that Greeks were deliberately infecting themselves with HIV in order to claim welfare benefits of up to $950 per month.
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.economywatch.com |
The Beginning of Peace?
Co-authored by Kyong Mazzaro
If we ever find peace, will we know it when we see it?
The interim nuclear deal between Iran and the major powers is a hopeful step in the long ambiguous journey toward peace. However, in the 67 other conflict-prone regions of the world currently monitored by the International Crisis Group there is less reason for hope. In particular, the recent abandonment by Mozambique's former rebel group RENAMO of the 1992 peace treaty that ended the 15-year civil war there, and the continued exchange of fire by nuclear-armed India and Pakistan across the Line of Control in Kashmir despite an agreement by the countries' leaders in September to halt attacks, is cause for great pessimism and concern.
The good news is that the international community has gotten better at making peace. In a period between 1988 and 2003, more wars ended through negotiations than through military victory than had occurred in the previous two centuries. However, over 25 percent of the wars ending through negotiations relapse into violence within five years, and these failed-peace states can begin an unprecedented phase of downward spiral; states with civil wars in their history are far more likely to experience renewed violence and the longer such conflicts last, the greater the chances of recurrence of war.
The hard truth is that we know very little about sustaining peace. This is because for decades we have studied the pathologies of war, violence, aggression and conflict -- and peace in the context of those processes -- but few have studied peace directly.
To meet this need, in 2007 the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) launched its Global Peace Index. Before the GPI, there had been no specific set of metrics developed that focused on the overall level of peacefulness of nations. Envisioned as an instrument to aid governments, investors, and other relevant actors working in the international domain, today the GPI ranks 162 nations around the world according to their relative peacefulness. It has been endorsed by many including the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Despond Tutu, and former President Jimmy Carter, and has become the most widely cited peace index today.
Which is why the conceptual and methodological limits of the GPI must be recognized and addressed. The GPI provides a unique method for identifying, ranking and naming/shaming countries by levels of peacefulness, and also suggests a framework for setting and tracking Sustainable Peace Goals by the international community. This is an initiative that may very well set the conditions for the future of the world's development and peace discourse. Because the stakes are high, we must get this right.
However, the current version of the GPI has three major flaws: It is missing half the story, economizes peace, and measures peace from a crude top-down perspective.
First, the GPI primarily measures the absence of the negative. The original GPI was focused exclusively on measuring what is termed negative peace, or on assessing the absence of violence or the fear of violence. Recognized as insufficient, in 2012 the GPI introduced a Positive Peace Index (PPI), which was an attempt to measure attitudes, institutions and structures that, when strengthened, can improve a country's potential for positive peacefulness.
However, on most social dimensions the PPI still measures primarily the absence of problems. We coded the PPI Indices and found 73 percent of its measures to be of negative conditions with only 27 percent assessing positive conditions -- almost a 3:1 ratio. For example, the PPI's approach to measuring "good neighbor relations" and "acceptance of other's rights" uses indices on reported levels of crime victimisation, feelings of safety and security in one's neighbourhood, incidence of homicide, and risk reports on the likelihood of physical attack, extortion, or robbery. The PPI's measure of "intergroup cohesion" collects data on inter-group disparities, perceptions of being discriminated against, feelings of distrust against members of other groups, as well as reported incidents of riots, terrorist acts, assassinations, and kidnappings. When combining the GPI indices with the PPI, this totals a negative to positive ratio of 7:1.
However, decades of research has taught us that the predictors of positive outcomes such as constructive, peaceful relations and those of negative outcomes such as destructive encounters and violence are not opposites -- but are in fact fundamentally distinct. For example, for over a decade the noted psychologist John Gottman studied marital conflict and divorce, eventually developing a robust model for predicting divorce in married couples with 97% accuracy. The researchers felt satisfied until they realized that their model did not predict happiness in marriage. They had been able to isolate the basic conditions that predicted divorce, but the opposite of these conditions did not predict stable, happy marriages. When they realized this they set out to study marital happiness and stability for 16 years, discovering that the predictors of each, divorce versus happiness, were not opposites, but were in fact qualitatively different conditions.
We have found the same to be true for peace. In a recent set of studies we conducted in Israel and the Palestinian Territories investigating the motives that drive people to support negotiations to end the conflict versus those that motivate them to work actively for improved relations and peace, we found that the reasons Israelis and Palestinians are motivated to end conflict are fundamentally distinct from the reasons they are motivated to make and sustain peace. They are not opposites -- the drivers for peace and the drivers to end conflict conflict -- but are fundamentally different.
So while the absence of discrimination, injustice, threat and fear are good predictors of non-violent relations, they do not predict enduring peace. On the contrary, what is needed are better measures of incidence of intergroup cooperation, trust, pro-social acts, solidarity and moral inclusion in order to best predict sustainable peace. For instance, in Islands of Agreement: Managing Enduring Armed Rivalries (2007), Gabriella Blum describes the many instances of cooperation operating in the context of long-enduring armed rivalries such as between India and Pakistan, Greece and Turkey, and Israel and Lebanon. These pockets of interethnic cooperation reduce suffering and loss and allow mutually beneficial exchanges to take place. We need to know more about how to identify, measure and bolster these conditions.
In other words, even with the addition of the PPI, the GPI is still missing half the story of peace.
The second major limitation of the GPI is it's dominant economic lens. One of the key objectives of the IEP, as declared by its director Steve Killelea, is to highlight the important role of businesses in promoting peace. In a 2008 discussion paper on the "Peace Industry" he wrote: "It seems intuitive that peace creates more economic benefits to a society than violence or war. It is also evident that in most circumstances businesses wish to invest in areas where there is minimal violence." The assumption is that when industries better realize the benefits of peace, they will become a pivotal actor in the pursuit of positive change, hence the GPI's focus on the correlation between peace and indicators such as economic growth, consumer spending, and a sound business environment.
In the particular case of the PPI, our analysis found that almost 50 percent of the indicators are directly related to the Institute's idea of a "Peace Industry". Although there is good evidence supporting the link between commercial liberalism and conflict reduction, findings on the limitations of economic openness or ease of business on peace promotion show that although peace and economic openness are positively correlated, openness does not significantly reduce internal conflict. In fact, there is mounting evidence that horizontal inequalities within societies, particularly when political, social and economic inequalities combine, are a better predictor of civil rebellion than income level. Today scholars argue that there is a growing need to explore both the pacifying effects of economic integration and freedom as well as its potentially negative consequences, the former being much less understood.
But even beyond concerns over the limits of liberal peace, are questions about the GPI's basic view of peace. All scholarly disciplines operate on a set of basic, often unquestioned assumptions about cause and effect, the nature of human motivation, and what constitutes ideal, positive states. In economics, a prevention-focused (avoiding harmful problems), pro-growth, economically rational form of logic prevails, which has been shown at times to be a poor predictor of much human behavior. The question this raises is should these assumptions dominate and drive the international community's understanding of peace? Or must we strive for a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding?
Finally, our third concern with the current version of the GPI is methodological. Its current iteration employs metrics from the national level of analysis to assess peacefulness, which is certainly the most feasible and efficient. However, this approach suffers from two opposing challenges. On the one hand, it neglects important differences in conditions that exist at lower-levels of analysis, such as between groups and communities in different regions within nations or even within cities. On the other hand, the current method is also constrained by the reality that many of the nations it measures lack the basic infrastructure to collect accurate data on the indices of interest. Both of these constraints severely impact the validity of the GPI's findings.
So where do we go from here? We recommend a few fundamental revisions to the GPI.
The first is definitional. Although important differences may exist between assessing different levels of sustainable peace (in homes, communities, regions, nations, and internationally), peace at all levels shares some basic qualities reflecting a relative absence of destructive intergroup tension, conflict, and violence, and a relative presence of constructive conflict, harmony and well-being. Accordingly, we define sustainable peace as existing in a state where the probability of using destructive means or violence to solve problems is so low that it does not enter into any party's strategy, while the probability of using cooperation and dialogue to promote justice and well-being is so high that it governs social organization and life.
The second is operational. We propose the development of an alternative framework for measuring probabilities for sustainable peace, based on empirical research on a wide-variety of factors associated with peaceful individuals, groups, and societies. It would organize these factors by level (micro, meso, and macro) and by orientation (prevention of destructive conflict or promotion of sustainable peace), and suggest that the measurement of the many conditions associated sustainable peace are best understood in the context of their relative effects on 1) decreasing probabilities of injustice, destructive conflict and violence, and 2) increasing probabilities of fairness, cooperation and lasting peace. As considerable research has shown, when the ratio of positive dynamics to negative dynamics in social systems is high (somewhere between 3:1 and 5:1), the odds of healthier, thriving relations and societies tend to increase markedly. When the positivity/negativity ratio is lower, the relatively stronger effects of negativity will drive the system into either a sustained state of hostilities or lead to its disintegration.
With international dialogue on the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals in high gear, the time is ripe for broadening and enhancing our understanding and measurement of peace. But what we have learned from research on complex systems and path dependency is that the first steps in new initiatives are defining and formative. That means that this stage in the development of the GPI is crucial. Measuring peace is too important to get it half-right.
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UPDATE 1-Greece's NBG cuts bad loan provisions as economy improves
NBG also continued to benefit from lower funding costs in the third quarter after cuts in deposit rates and reduced borrowing from the Greek central bank's liquidity facility (ELA), which is costlier than European Central Bank funds.
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Football
having coached some of the country's top clubs in AEK Athens, Panathinaikos and PAOK Salonica. Santos lives permanently in Greece and spends most of his time watching matches and checking on young talent both at home an on the continent. He also relies ...
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Greece's NBG Posts Third Quarter Loss
ATHENS--National Bank of Greece SA (NBG) reported a net loss in the third quarter as provisions for bad loans and the costs associated with a failed merger last year weighed on earnings. Greece's largest lender by assets said it swung to a net ...
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Greece's NBG bank reports 9M profit
Greece's top lender NBG on Wednesday reported a 262-million-euro ($356 million) group net profit for the first nine months of 2013, compared to 2.5-billion-euro losses in the same period last year. "It is notable that these results were achieved despite ...
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Europe Must Take ‘Hard’ Look at Greek Debt Level, OECD Head Says
Greece may fall into an economic trap by continuing to narrow its budget deficit and reduce domestic prices without winning extra debt relief, said Angel Gurria, secretary-general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
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Greek banks leak reporter acquitted
A Greek reporter is acquitted of breaching privacy over the publishing of a list of Greeks with Swiss bank accounts, with some suspected of tax evasion.
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT www.bbc.co.uk |
Greece's National Bank posts profit for January-September period
ATHENS (Reuters) - National Bank (NBG) , Greece's largest lender by assets, reported on Wednesday a nine-month profit for the first nine months of the year, helped by its Turkish subsidiary Finansbank as well as lower funding costs and loan-loss provisions. The group posted net earnings of 262 million euros (217 million pounds) from a loss of 2.45 billion euros in the same period last year. NBG ...
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| READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT en-maktoob.news.yahoo.com |
Damien Hirst, Rihanna and Medusa: the latest plagiarism row
Jim Starr claims Hirst's GQ shoot featuring a snake-haired Rihanna is ripping him off, but artists have been depicting Medusa for millennia – often far better than either of them
The artist Jim Starr has accused Damien Hirst of plagiarism. Hirst has put a picture of Rihanna as the snaked-headed monster Medusa on the cover of GQ. Hey, wait a minute, says Starr – I was the first to portray sexy snake-haired women.
It's always fun to take a pop at Hirst, but hang on. Haven't I seen images of Medusa before that far outdate Hirst and Starr? I suspect plagiarism claims are redundant when artists have been depicting something for more than 2,500 years.
Medusa was, in ancient Greek myth, one of the Gorgons, three monstrous sisters with magical powers. She was so malevolent that just looking at her turned people to stone. How can you kill such a being? The Greek hero Perseus used a shiny shield as a mirror so he only saw a reflection as he sliced off her serpent-swathed head and stuffed it in a sack. Later, at his wedding, he fought off a violent mob by unveiling the head and turning his enemies to stone.
This is the moment Luca Giordano chose to show in the 1680s in a baroque painting whose fascination lies in the way flesh turns to stone before our eyes. As he holds forth the head of Medusa at the heart of this spectacular picture in London's National Gallery, Perseus averts his gaze.
Artists had already been imagining Medusa for millennia when this powerful scene was painted. An archaic-period Greek bowl in the British Museum, from 600BC or earlier, has an image of Medusa glaring outwards, as if about to turn you to stone: it must have been quite a talking point when the bowl was emptied of olives at a banquet, only to reveal this hideous face.
Medusa was popular right through the ancient Greek world, appearing on everything from temples to pots. Yet the most potent images of her were to be painted and sculpted in the 17th century, when this bizarre being became an icon of baroque art.
For that we probably have to thank Caravaggio, who created an unforgettable "portrait" of Medusa on a painted shield. Today it's in the Uffizi. Caravaggio's Medusa is one of the most incisive images of myth ever created. This is because it takes a legend and makes it all too real – this is a viscerally, uncannily alive Medusa.
In the wake of Caravaggio, great artists of the 17th century all wanted to have a pop at making Medusa real. Bernini made her look like an ordinary woman who happens to have snakes for hair. Rubens depicted her severed head on the ground, a mass of reptilian horror.
So the charge against Hirst is not plagiarism – it is sheer artistic ordinariness. Neither he nor Starr have added anything original to the image of Medusa. The GQ cover is as insipid as some late Victorian mythic erotica. Compared with the great Medusas of the classical and baroque ages, Rihanna with snaky hair is just plain dull.
It goes to show that Caravaggio could take Hirst in a fight, any day.
Damien HirstPhotographySculptureArtRihannaGreeceEuropeMagazinesNewspapers & magazinesJonathan Jonestheguardian.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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Greek court acquits editor who leaked 'Lagarde list' of suspected tax evaders
Retrial finds Kostas Vaxevanis did not infringe privacy laws by publishing list of 2,000 rich Greeks with Swiss bank accounts
The journalist who caused uproar in Greece by revealing the names of thousands of suspected tax evaders has emerged triumphant from his clash with the country's justice system after a court acquitted him of breaking privacy laws.
After sitting for more than five hours, the three-member tribunal unanimously declared today that Kostas Vaxevanis had not infringed privacy laws by publishing the personal data of those named on the so-called Lagarde list.
"It is a great day for press freedom," said the 47-year-old editor, who published the list in his bimonthly investigative magazine Hot Doc 13 months ago.
"With this unanimous decision, we have emerged totally victorious today," he told the Guardian. "Our opponents are all those who wanted to cover up the system of corruption and vested interests that governs this country."
More than 2,000 wealthy Greeks who held secret bank accounts in the Geneva branch of HSBC were named on the list. Many belonged to the country's elite, with politicians, businessmen, oligarchs and shipping families among those revealed.
Christine Lagarde, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief after whom the infamous file is named, handed the list to her then Greek counterpart, the finance minister Giorgos Papaconstantinou, in the hope that the authorities in Athens would carry out an audit of those on it.
A supreme court prosecutor proposed last week that Papaconstantinou, the architect of debt-stricken Greece's first EU-IMF sponsored bailout, be tried for dereliction of duty in his handling of the list. The former minister, who was expelled by his own centre-left Pasok party, has been accused of tampering with the list to remove the names of three of his relatives.
"What we did was in the public interest," Vaxevanis insisted outside the courtroom. "Greece, to this day, remains the only European state not to have made even one euro in reclaimed tax by pursuing those whose names were on the Lagarde list. Other countries, such as Portugal and Germany, made millions."
Vaxevanis had originally been acquitted last year but in an unprecedented step a public prosecutor overturned the verdict, claiming that it had been made in haste, and he was retried for the same crime. The case had been a bizarre footnote to the crisis that has enveloped the country since its descent into bankruptcy four years ago.
GreeceTax avoidanceInternational Monetary Fund (IMF)EuropeEuropean UnionEconomicsAusterityChristine LagardeGlobal recessionGlobal economyPress freedomPrivacy & the mediaHelena Smiththeguardian.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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OECD takes aim at Greek red tape to boost growth
Thinktank wants Greece to tackle 555 regulations hindering growth in retail, food processing, building materials and tourism sectors
Shops in Greece must be free to offer buy-one-get-one-free deals and determine their own product sell-by dates as part of wide ranging reforms to regulations that have prevented the debt-stricken country from recovering after the financial crash, according to a leading thinktank.
The Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said a bonfire of harmful regulations restricting trade and investment in four key industries was needed to create a more vibrant economy and foster growth.
The Paris-based thinktank wants Greece to tackle 555 regulations hindering growth in the retail trade, food processing industry, building materials sector and tourism.
It said the industries, which account for more than one-fifth of the economy, would generate €5.2bn (£4.3bn) in extra activity once the measures were implemented.
The report came as the OECD predicted Greece's debt would stay above 160% of GDP until 2020, almost 35 percentage points above the level forecast by its EU/IMF lenders in July.
A steep fall in prices is behind much of the country's deepening debt problem. A forecast 12% fall in prices more than previously predicted would hurt growth and push the debt to GDP ratio higher.
"About two-thirds of this difference reflects the assumed larger deflation," the OECD said. "Deflation pressure may be stronger and last longer than expected."
Greece is in its sixth year of a recession exacerbated by the austerity measures attached to its multibillion euro bailouts Prices moved into deflationary territory for the first time in over four decades this year.
"If negative inflation risks materialise, assistance from Greece's euro area partners may need to be considered," the OECD said.
The thinktank is the only major international organisation forecasting a seventh consecutive year of recession for Greece in 2014 – it forecasts the economy shrinking by 0.4%.
Athens and its lenders expect GDP growth of 0.6% next year. The slump has shaved about a quarter off economic output.
Risks to real growth are "still on the downside" even if the country fully implements all the reforms imposed by its lenders, the OECD said.
Reform measures could also drag prices lower, but the overall effect would be expansionary as new entrants into sclerotic industries, increase overall activity, it said.
Kostis Hatzidakis, Greece's minister for development and competitiveness, said that while the Greek economy has stabilised, there was widespread agreement that the country's "dwindling competitiveness" was restricting the recovery.
"It is true that our economy has been plagued by bureaucracy, protectionism and market distortions for a long time," he said. "Our efforts have focused on generating growth by implementing and enhancing structural reforms, and not just by fiscal consolidation.
"Two necessary conditions for these structural reforms are to improve our competitiveness and to build a new, investment friendly, business environment."
Horst Reichenbach, the head of the taskforce sent by Brussels to oversee Athens' use of EU loans, said he wanted Greece to press ahead quickly to remove obstacles "that will have significant effects".
At the moment shops must gain clearance from public officials to offer discount deals. Sell-by dates on milk and other foodstuffs are also set by the Greek authorities.
Among 329 recommendations, the OECD report said price restrictions also hampered competition in the tourism industry, which must submit cuts in nightly room charges to local public officials or trade associations. Licensing requirements that prevent new entrants to all four iundustries must be repealed to allow greater competition, it said.
The report, which said the recommendations needed to be implemented in full to reap the benefits, said: "Such benefits generally take the form of lower prices and greater choice and variety for consumers. Often this will result from entry of new, more efficient firms, or from existing suppliers finding more efficient forms of production under competitive pressure."
OECDGlobal economyGreeceEuropeEurozone crisisEuropean UnionEconomicsRetail industryThinktanksPhillip Inmantheguardian.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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Greek journalist acquitted in retrial over leaked Swiss data
Greek journalist acquitted in retrial over leaked Swiss dataGlobalPostA Greek appeals court on Monday confirmed the acquittal of a journalist over the publication of leaked Swiss bank account data in a case that has deeply embarrassed the government. "The decision was to acquit," Costas Vaxevanis, the publisher of ...and more »
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Mikis Theodorakis: New Honorary Member of Athens Academy
The internationally renowned composer Mikis Theodorakis will officially become an honorary member of the Athens Academy on December 3. The president of the Academy, Spyros A. Evagelatos and the General Secretary Vasilios Petrakis will talk about the personality and the contribution of Greece’s best-known living composer at the ceremony dedicated to Mikis Theodorakis. The ceremony […]
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HRADF Says 4 Parties Interested for Astir Palace
Greek HRADF announced that four investment entities comprised of both Greek and international investors submitted binding offers for the acquisition of a majority stake in Astir Palace Vouliagmeni S.A., in Greece. At its next BoD, the HRADF and NBG, owner of 83.5% of Astir, will decide on the validity of the offers and the opening […]
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Political Foes Gang Up Against SYRIZA
The PASOK Socialists who are in a power-sharing agreement with Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’ New Democracy Conservative-led government have joined the Democratic Left (DIMAR) and the new Agreement for New Greece have joined forces to oppose a motion by the major opposition SYRIZA party to probe the role of PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos in overseeing […]
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Coca-Cola, Nokia and Delhaize Invest in Greece
On Tuesday it was announced that three multinational companies will be investing in Greece, thus helping the growth of the Greek economy and opening new job positions. The decision for Coca Cola to establish a Consumer Interaction Network was taken after an event organized by the Hellenic Initiative in New York, where Coca-Cola Chairman, Muhtar […]
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Greece is the World Champion of Low Property Prices
At a time when there is an increase in the value of homes worldwide, the Greek housing market is going in the exact opposite direction — a huge drop. According to IMF research, the indicator of global housing values increased to 127.4 units in the second quarter that ended in June 30, showing a rise […]
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Gavalas Charged 4-Time Tax Cheat
For a fourth time – after getting off easy on three previous charges – Greek fashion entrepreneur and designer Lakis Gavalas on Nov. 27 was back in court, facing a prosecutor over charges that this time he didn’t pay 700,000 ($951,600) in unpaid taxes. Gavalas was handed suspended prison sentences twice this year: five years […]
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A look at New York’s booming Greek yogurt industry
New York’s Greek yogurt industry has taken off, helping propel it to the top yogurt-producing state in the country. Can it keep hold of its reign or will other states take the lead?
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Greece to stay in recession in 2014, may need rescue: OECD
ATHENS: Greece will remain mired in recession in 2014 for a seventh straight year, and is likely to need more financial assistance, the OECD said on Wednesday, in contrast to forecasts by Athens.
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Angel Gurria hails Greek efforts, says 'there is life after debt'
KathimeriniAngel Gurria hails Greek efforts, says 'there is life after debt'KathimeriniThe OECD head congratulated the Greek premier and noted that Greece topped the global list with regard to structural reforms. Earlier in the day Gurria met with PASOK chief and Deputy Prime Minister Evangelos Venizelos. During the meeting Gurria ...and more »
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Falling prices may pose risks to Greece's bailout: OECD
The StateFalling prices may pose risks to Greece's bailout: OECDGlobalPostATHENS (Reuters) - Falling prices could pose a new threat to Greece's bailout, the OECD warned on Wednesday, highlighting risks faced by the indebted nation as it rejoined MSCI's emerging market index after a 12-year gap. Greek prices might fall 12 ...Greece to stay in recession in 2014, may need rescue: OECDEconomic TimesGreece Stifled by Overregulation, Says OECDWall Street JournalGreek economy seen shrinking further next yearThe Stateall 6 news articles »
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Greece Stifled by Overregulation, Says OECD
ATHENS—Overregulation in Greece costs businesses and consumers billions of euros each year, a new report said Wednesday, urging the government to sweep away hundreds of rules that hobble the country's private sector and undermine competition.
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The Truth About HIV In Greece Is Already Very Depressing
Earlier this week a meme spread around the internet that half of new HIV infections in Greece were the result of people purposely trying to get infected to get more government benefits.
That turned out to be total nonsense, and the result of a badly worded statement from the World Health Organization, which they apologized for yesterday.
But the truth about HIV in Greece is actually depressing. Thanks to the crisis and an increase in drug use, there has been a surge in HIV cases in recent years.
Macropolis has the charts showing the rise in reported cases.
So no, this is not some case of people purposely trying to get sick to get government money. But the connection between the economic crisis and a crisis of people's health is very real.
Join the conversation about this story »
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EMERGING MARKETS-Greek stocks rise on first day of EM trade
A strong U.S. housing report on Tuesday again ignited speculation that the U.S. Federal Reserve could start reducing bond-buying before March. The Thai baht fell up to 0.5 percent to the dollar after the central bank unexpectedly cut interest ...
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GUE/NGL leader says Greek press distorted her words
by
Elena Ralli
Gabi Zimmer, President of the GUE/NGL said that the Greek press has distorted her words in a meeting with members of the Greek Cabinet. She also stressed that there were no journalists present during the meeting that took place in the context of the Conference of Presidents of the European Parliament with the Greek government.
The GUE/NGL leader said in a statement: “I was surprised and irritated to see this morning's press reports in two pro-government newspapers, namely “Ta Nea” and “Ethnos”, full of distortions regarding what I said in a meeting with members of the Greek Cabinet… I actually made a specific reference to Greece’s public debt exactly in the opposite direction than the two newspapers describe. I said that a debt audit is necessary for Greece so as to sort out the immoral and illegitimate part of it, which should not be repaid… I never could have – and didn’t – oppose the Greek to the German citizen. Even to think of it is an offense to me. I also criticized the Greek government for presenting a rosy and misleading picture of the economic and social situation in the country.”
According to Greek media reports, the Greek Foreign Minister, Evangelos Venizelos responded to Mrs. Zimmer’s alleged remarks regarding the Greek debt by saying that German citizens have not been burdened with providing financial help to Greece and that the loans come from different sources.
In her statement, Zimmer also added that she didn’t want to assume that Venizelos is responsible for the two false press reports.
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