How the world sees Greece
Greece lifted the daily limit on how much money businesses can get under capital controls, a move to unblock held-up imports. The post Bank Curbs Eased on Business appeared first on The National Herald.
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By Vasilis Papoutsis LOS ANGELES, CA – The World Summer Games, the flagship event for the Special Olympic movement, will take place in Los Angeles July 25-August 2. It will be the largest sporting and humanitarian event in the world in 2015, with 6,500 athletes from 165 countries and more than 2,000 coaches who […] The post LA Greeks Welcome Special Olympics Flame of Hope Coming to LA July 25 appeared first on The National Herald.
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You can't write a story about the Greek debt crisis without mentioning German Chancellor Angela Merkel's name or influence. The post World Press View: Merkel’s Imprint All Over Greece Now appeared first on The National Herald.
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Greece has invited the IMF to join its negotiations with European creditors over a vital third bailout — talks delayed by security worries, but expected to finish before Greece faces another big repayment Aug. 20. The post Greece Invites IMF To Join Tough Bailout Talks appeared first on The National Herald.
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Negotiations between the Greek government and the country’s EU creditors on a third bailout have been delayed, the BBC reported on Friday. The talks on a new EUR 86 B between Greece and top officials from the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the European Stability Mechanism were expected to start in Athens on Friday. A European Commission spokeswoman said that the European representatives would arrive "in the coming days", according to the BBC. Reuters quoted a European Commission official as saying that there were “some logistical issues to solve, notably security-wise." "Several options are on the table," the official said, without giving more details.
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Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras joined leaders from other mainstream political parties at a lunch hosted by the President of the Hellenic Republic, ...
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While unknown Greek artists made most of the statues, we are able to see them today thanks in large part to Roman Empire plunderers, says Getty ...
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The tens of millions of Minecraft players on the Xbox One, Xbox 360 and other console systems have a new add-on to try out. The Greek Mythology ...
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"Die Zeit" creates illustration based on the "Game of Thrones" revolving around the euro crisis
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London, July 24, 2015/ Independent Balkan News Agency By Thanasis Gavos It has been identified as one of the most concerning effects of the long economic crisis in Greece; the ‘brain drain’, the thousands of predominantly young workers, professionals and scientists leaving the country in pursuit of jobs and a brighter future. The United Kingdom […]
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The extraordinary political and economic turbulence of the Greek debt crisis has prompted widespread speculation that other European countries will now think twice before joining the 19-nation eurozone. To assess these claims, The WorldPost took a closer look at reactions in Romania, the only European Union member nation that's announced a target year for joining the currency area. Greece’s experience has heightened concerns in Romania about joining the eurozone prematurely, experts told The WorldPost-- but it hasn't extinguished Romania’s interest altogether. Romania does not have the disdain for Greece common in the Baltic states and Slovakia, and in fact shares some of the Greek public’s wariness of austerity policies. But Romania’s emergence from communism and rapid transition to capitalism since the 1990s, and its more recent economic interdependence with German industry, have made eurozone membership a goal for the country’s political class. After Greece, Romania plans to delay euro entry European Union member nations are officially required to join the eurozone once they have met the criteria for integration, including stable inflation, low budget deficits and sustainable debt. Denmark and the United Kingdom have permission to remain outside the currency union. Sweden, which has been a member of the EU since the inception of the euro, has yet to meet the fiscal and monetary criteria for joining. Romania declared at one point that it intended to join the eurozone in 2019. But even before the latest stage of the Greek crisis had come to a head, Romania’s central bank chief, Mugur Isarescu, was trying to manage expectations that the country would meet the 2019 deadline. As the Greek bailout deal was being negotiated earlier this month, Isarescu doubled down, suggesting that Romania actually might not be ready to enter the eurozone until a decade later than that. It's not hard to see why. Romania may be close to eurozone eligibility on purely fiscal criteria, but its economy remains relatively small -- about half the size of the current EU average. After Bulgaria, Romania is the second poorest country in the European Union. Alina Bargaoanu, dean of the faculty of communications at Romania's National School of Political Studies and Public Administration, which has educated many of the country’s politicians and civil servants, said that Romanian leaders are interpreting the Greek crisis as a warning that the country should not enter the eurozone until it is more economically developed. “The monetary union is good for countries which are very, very competitive,” Bargaoanu said. “One of the root causes of the crisis is the disparity in competitiveness. It is good for Germany and a straitjacket for Greece and the whole South of Europe. We are not that competitive and ready to join this elite club.” Cornel Ban, an international finance expert at Boston University who was born and raised in Romania, said that Romania often follows the lead of Poland, a larger and wealthier country. He said Poland’s recent public skepticism about joining the eurozone after the Greek ordeal makes it less likely that Romania will be joining soon. “It is going to be very hard to explain to people after the Greek crisis what the cost of joining the eurozone would be,” Ban said. “I think in 2009 we would have gone in without the debate... A lot of people are looking at Greece, saying this is a situation we would be in too.” Some observers believe that common currencies can be a handicap no matter how big a country's economy is, because they take away the option of devaluing a country’s currency when its economy slows down. Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, for example, has pointed out that since 2008, Finland, one of the eurozone’s wealthiest nations and a hard-line negotiator with Greece, has had a harder time recovering than its non-eurozone neighbor Sweden, which otherwise has a similar economy. For now, though, Bargaoanu believes that this kind of outright euro-skepticism is rare among Romanian decision-makers, even if it may be on the rise among ordinary Romanians. How does Romania’s own history of austerity shape what its citizens think? When it comes to issues like the eurozone and the Greek crisis, public opinion in Romania is to some extent colored by the country's own long, tortured experience of austerity. On the one hand, Romania survived austerity under communism, making it less sympathetic, Ban says, to the modern-day austerity undergone by Greeks. In the 1980s, the Communist dictator Nicolae CeauÈ™escu forced state industries to ramp up exports to pay off foreign debts. These policies led to massive domestic shortages in food and consumer goods, and Romanian standards of living plummeted. Ban’s research highlights the ways in which anger over years of austerity contributed to the political mobilization that deposed CeauÈ™escu in 1989. CeauÈ™escu was ultimately the only Communist bloc leader to be executed by his own citizens during the fall of the Warsaw Pact countries in the late '80s and early '90s. “We have this memory of, ‘Holy cow, the Greeks are complaining about what?!’” Ban said, referring to the public outcry over Greece's austerity measures. “We had the biggest recession in history under communism -- more than during World War II. That is part of this Eastern European mentality: history.” On the other hand, Romania’s experience with austerity since the 2008 financial crisis may make it more sympathetic to Greece, Ban and Bargaoanu argue. Despite its frugal fiscal policies, Romania needed an international bailout package that imposed major budget austerity in 2010. The most dramatic of these measures was a 25 percent across-the-board pay cut for Romanian government workers. The measures prompted thousands of Romanians to take to the streets in protest, and ultimately forced then-Prime Minister Emil Boc to resign in February 2012. Still, if Romania’s dramatic austerity experience has made it more sympathetic to Greece, Bargaoanu said it's unlikely to have actually turned Romanians against the eurozone. Romania's main creditor was the International Monetary Fund, so it's the IMF that received much of the blame for the accompanying austerity. What about Romanians living in austerity-stricken Spain and Italy? The greatest contributor to Romanian euro-skepticism may not be the effects of austerity in Greece, or even in Romania itself. Rather, Ban says, it's the effects of austerity on Spain and Italy that have given many Romanians pause. As of January 2014, Romanians were the largest group of foreigners living in both Spain and Italy, where they numbered more than 728,000 and 1 million, respectively. And Spain in particular has suffered greatly under eurozone austerity policies. Spain’s unemployment rate is now 22.4 percent -- the lowest it's been since 2011, but still high enough to give the new left-populist, anti-austerity party Podemos a fighting chance in the upcoming national elections. Romanian families are often large and sprawling, and Ban believes that Romanians living in the home country have heard a great deal about austerity from their relatives in Spain and Italy -- none of it good. Ban’s own family is a case in point. His brother Mihai worked for years as a truck driver in Spain before leaving in 2013 because of the bad economy. Now back in Romania, Mihai does not like the idea of Romania suffering Spain’s fate, let alone that of Greece. “When Spain changed money to the euro, it was a big mistake,” he said. What about Germany’s trade surplus? Doesn’t that scare Romania? When people like Bargaoanu argue that Romania just needs to become more economically competitive to avoid the risks of eurozone monetary rigidity, there's some evidence to support that. Romania is already a major trading partner with Germany, integrated into the wealthier country's industrial supply chain. As a result, Romania may not have the same concerns about German exports crowding out its domestic industries as some other European countries. Germany is both Romania’s largest export destination and its largest source of imports, according to data compiled by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. One testament to Romania’s interdependence with Germany is its growing participation in the German automobile industry. Cars and car parts are now Romania’s largest export. Germany’s Daimler AG, for example, which makes Mercedes-Benz vehicles, announced in April that it was expanding its transmission plant in Sebes, Romania, bringing the number of plant employees up to 1,700. Smaller firms in the German Mittelstand, the sector of medium-sized car part and machinery tool manufacturers, have also set up shop in Romania in recent years. And since most of the materials used in Romanian manufacturing are imported from eurozone countries, the multinational companies investing in Romania don't have as much of an interest in cheaper currency. Ban and others suggest that if Romania converted to the euro, it would shield the companies investing in Romania from fluctuations in exchange rates. Bargaoanu said that foreign investment in Romanian industry has been growing since the 2008 financial crisis, and has contributed to Romania’s robust economic recovery. Since bottoming out in 2010, Romania’s economy has rebounded to reach $199 billion in the first quarter of 2015, nearing its 2008 peak of $204 billion. source: tradingeconomics.com “It is better than being a service economy like Greece’s, which is hard to tax,” Ban said. “The stabilization of the currency is a positive in the long run from a business perspective,” said Jay McCrensky, executive director of the Romanian-American Chamber of Commerce. “You can’t finance a major infrastructure policy in Romania unless it’s tied to the euro. From an individual consumer perspective in Romania and from a government perspective, that’s a whole other question.” McCrensky notes that concerns about inflexibility in the eurozone’s structure are rooted in disagreements with the German government’s treatment of Greece, rather than issues with the structure of the eurozone overall. By the time Romania would join the eurozone, McCrensky said, Merkel and her austerity-minded government would no longer be in power. A German-oriented president looks west Romania’s official politics are also promoting greater integration with Europe, which will move it closer to eurozone membership. Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, of the center-right National Liberal Party, has made joining the European Union’s Schengen Area a top priority for his government. The Schengen Area, which currently includes 26 European countries, allows people to move freely within the zone for purposes of travel, work or residence. Iohannis is Romania’s first ethnic German president, and he has close personal and professional ties to the country. Iohannis has appealed to Germany for support in his bid to enter the Schengen Area. Despite her concerns, Bargaoanu applauds these efforts and hopes they eventually lead to membership in the eurozone. She believes that it is still the only true path to equal status in Europe. With eurozone leaders turning inward after the Greek crisis to work on developing greater fiscal and political unity within the eurozone, she worries that EU member nations outside the currency area will receive less attention and investment -- leading to what she calls a “two-speed Europe.” “I do not see it just as a monetary union,” Bargaoanu said. “The currency was a great achievement -- it created some sense of belonging. It was one of the bigger steps toward political integration as such.” And although Romania, a former Soviet satellite, does not share the same militancy toward Russia as the Baltic states or Poland, its fear of Russian intimidation is part of what's motivating its pivot to Europe. “There is some sensitivity in Eastern Europe that the process [of European integration] could be reversible,” said Bargaoanu, referring to the expansion of the Russian sphere of influence. “Becoming part of the eurozone could mitigate these concerns.” Also on The WorldPost: -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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Athens places restrictions on negotiators as discussions over €86bn financial help is delayed
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Olga Gerovasili The Greek government will not go to elections on the last minute, government spokeswoman Olga Gerovasili said on Friday during an ...
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The Greek government officially requested a new three-year aid package from the International Monetary Fund on Friday. In a letter to the ...
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The data, compiled by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), shows that between January 1 and July 17, about 101,000 migrants arrived in Greece by sea, The Guardian reported. According to the UNHCR, nearly 60,000 of the migrants are Syrian who arrived in Greece by boat. Recommended: Think you know Europe?
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Greece, the birthplace of democracy, philosophy and ethics, has managed to overcome tremendous difficulties in history by retaining the fundamental ...
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Ministry of culture contract employees protest the delay in their salaries, some up to six month Protesters stand next to a banner readin ' NO ' during a demonstration outside the parliament in Athens Officials say talks cannot begin until the right ...
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#economy
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Greece's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras speaks with a journalist during a meeting with the Greek President and other political party leaders, ahead of a ...
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FTSE Russell has decided to retain Greek securities in its FTSE Indexes for another 10 business days to see if the Athens Stock Exchange reopens, ...
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The internet colossus Google has decided there is no point in hiding its light under a bushel. For the company’s latest high-powered executive team-building dinner it is said to have hired out a space in Sicily’s Valley of the Temples, where the most important Greek deities were worshipped.
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By Angeliki Koutantou and Francesco Canepa ATHENS/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Greece is preparing to reopen its stock exchange and allow international investors to take their money out of the country's listed companies after a one-month shutdown. The Greek economy is slowly regaining some semblance of normality after the government secured a 7.2 billion euro bridging loan to pay its debt obligations last week, allowing it to reopen banks, albeit with a cap on withdrawals, and loosen restrictions on foreign transfers. A spokesman for the Athens Stock Exchange said on Friday a proposal to reopen the bourse had been submitted to the European Central Bank for an opinion before a decision on the matter is made by the Greek finance ministry.
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… start to talks over awarding Greece a third bailout, international officials … the table.” Related: The great Greece fire sale The leftwing government … in a hotel outside the Greek capital. “A lot of trust …
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The ongoing economic crisis in Greece jumped ferociously back into the world's headlines this summer, when Greek residents voted to reject ...
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… will be further visits to Greece to speak to other people … officers "will be visiting Greece over the coming months… with his family on the Greek Island of Kos. On the … Office granted funding to the Greek authorities to help them continue …
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Athens places restrictions on negotiators as discussions over €86bn financial help delayed
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Greece needs to sell off €50bn worth of state assets such as airports and marinas quickly as part of its third bailout deal. But is such a plan realistic?
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Labour needs to learn from left-wing movements such as Greece's Syriza, Spain's Podemos and Scotland's SNP to spread a message of anti-austerity ...
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The United Nations refugee agency today expressed great apprehension over the refugee situation in Greece – where more than 100,000 people have sought shelter so far in 2015 – saying that notwithstanding its difficulties, Greece, with assistance from wider Europe, has a duty to assist them.
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A pro-European protester holds European Union and Greek flags during a rally outside the parliament building in Athens, Greece, July 9, 2015.
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After the rancorous third Greek bailout last week—and torrents of recrimination heaped on Germany from around the world—the weather front hit the ...
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A new public opinion poll produced results that would reshape the Greek Parliament in the next elections. According to the poll, if elections were to be held next Sunday, the ruling SYRIZA party would still be leading with 33.6% of the vote ahead of New Democracy τηατ follows with 17.8%. However, SYRIZA’s junior coalition partner Independent Greeks (ANEL) would
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Former Greek Minister Yanis Varoufakis gave one more media interview, this time to German news magazine Focus, in which he assessed his six-month tenure at the helm of Greece’s Finance Ministry. “Even if God and the angels descended on earth to take over the Greek government’s duties in order to prevent any mistakes -because God does not make
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Former Greek Minister Yanis Varoufakis gave one more media interview, this time to German news magazine Focus, in which he assessed his six-month tenure at the helm of Greece’s Finance Ministry. “Even if God and the angels descended on earth to take over the Greek government’s duties in order to prevent any mistakes -because God does not make
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Bank of France Governor and European Central Bank (ECB) Governing Council member Christian Noyer estimates that a first “injection” of capital into Greek banks would be “desirable to stabilize the sector” before the end of the summer, rather than after the results of a series of tests to be carried out by the ECB during the fall. In
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A new public opinion poll produced results that would reshape the Greek Parliament in the next elections. According to the poll, if elections were to be held next Sunday, the ruling SYRIZA party would still be leading with 33.6% of the vote ahead of New Democracy τηατ follows with 17.8%. However, SYRIZA’s junior coalition partner Independent Greeks (ANEL) would
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In a meeting on Friday, the Bank of Greece (BoG) along with Greek government representatives agreed to give businesses a breath of air. Many imports to Greece have been held up as Greek businesses have been unable to pay them due to capital controls on money transactions. Capital controls have cost the Greek economy an estimated
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Evangelos Meimarakis is officially the President of Greek main opposition New Democracy, at least until the spring of 2016. On Friday, Meimarakis, who had taken over as the party’s interim President since Antonis Samaras resigned, addressed the party’s Political Committee where he spoke about the current Greek government and accused it of having severely damaged the country in the six
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On Friday afternoon, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras rushed out of his meeting with political party leaders. According to reports, the reason behind the sudden exit was an urgent phone call with French President Francois Hollande. The conversation had to do with the current hold-up in the visit of creditors’ representatives, according to government sources. The technical teams of the European
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Let's take a break from the blow-by-blow coverage of negotiations between Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras and his creditors at the EU and the IMF. Presented without further comment, are three headlines from today's news as published by Ekathimerini, a local service that publishes in English. Blame who you want for the debt crisis, but here's the human cost. Those kids didn't run up that debt: Yep. They're running out of food in some places: The number of small and medium-sized business in Greece has dropped by 27% since 2008. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: This animated map shows how the states voted in every presidential election since the Civil War
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In a stinging concession by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who had vowed to bar them, negotiators are to arrive in the capital for bailout negotiations next week.
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Greeks may be fleeing their crisis-ridden country in droves, but it is still a favorite destination for luxury tourists. Greece accounted for 20 percent of the ...
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LONDON: National Bank of Greece bondholders are nervous that they will suffer heavy losses if authorities decide to siphon off all of the bank's ...
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Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras reacts during a parliamentary session in Athens, on July 16. The Greek parliament passed a sweeping package of ...
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German finance chief Wolfgang Schäuble’s blunt skepticism on Greece and his differences with Chancellor Angela Merkel underscore the fragility of a tentative bailout deal.
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This month’s agreements on the Greek crisis and Iran’s nuclear program are undoubtedly important achievements. But the comparisons that have accompanied both deals have tended toward hyperbole, impeding rational discussion of their implications for Europe, the Middle East, and the prospects for international diplomacy. The deal between Greece and its creditors, for example, has been [...]
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"Exports to Greece round to 0% of the US total (vs. 15% for the Eurozone and 26% for Europe as a whole), while holdings of Greek financial ...
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BERLIN -- During the long night of negotiations over Greece on July 12-13, something fundamental to the European Union cracked. Since then, Europeans have been living in a different kind of EU. What changed that night was the Germany that Europeans have known since the end of World War II. On the surface, the negotiations were about averting a Greek exit from the eurozone (or "Grexit") and the dire consequences that would follow for Greece and the monetary union. At a deeper level, however, what was at stake was the role in Europe of its most populous and economically most powerful country. Germany's resurgence after World War II, and its reestablishment of the world's trust (culminating in consent to German reunification four and a half decades later), was built on sturdy domestic and foreign policy pillars. At home, a stable democracy based on the rule of law quickly emerged. The economic success of Germany's welfare state proved a model for Europe. And Germans' willingness to face up to the Nazis' crimes, without reservation, sustained a deep-rooted skepticism toward all things military. In terms of foreign policy, Germany rebuilt trust by embracing Western integration and Europeanization. The power at the center of Europe should never again become a threat to the continent or itself. Thus, the Western Allies' aim after 1945 -- unlike after World War I -- was not to isolate Germany and weaken it economically, but to protect it militarily and firmly embed it politically in the West. Indeed, Germany's reconciliation with its arch-enemy, France, remains the foundation of today's European Union, helping to incorporate Germany into the common European market, with a view to the eventual political unification of Europe. But in today's Germany, such ideas are considered hopelessly "Euro-romantic"; their time has passed. Where Europe is concerned, from now on Germany will primarily pursue its national interests, just like everybody else. "At its core, the criticism articulates an astute awareness of Germany's break with its entire post-WWII European policy." But such thinking is based on a false premise. The path that Germany will pursue in the 21st century -- toward a "European Germany" or a "German Europe" -- has been the fundamental, historical question at the heart of German foreign policy for two centuries. And it was answered during that long night in Brussels, with German Europe prevailing over European Germany. This was a fateful decision for both Germany and Europe. One wonders whether Chancellor Angela Merkel and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble knew what they were doing. To dismiss the fierce criticism of Germany and its leading players that erupted after the diktat on Greece, as many Germans do, is to don rose-tinted glasses. Certainly, there was nonsensical propaganda about a Fourth Reich and asinine references to the Führer. But, at its core, the criticism articulates an astute awareness of Germany's break with its entire post-WWII European policy. For the first time, Germany didn't want more Europe; it wanted less. Germany's stance on the night of July 12-13 announced its desire to transform the eurozone from a European project into a kind of sphere of influence. Merkel was forced to choose between Schäuble and France (and Italy). "Germany's stance on the night of July 12-13 announced its desire to transform the eurozone from a European project into a kind of sphere of influence." The issue was fundamental: Her finance minister wanted to compel a eurozone member to leave "voluntarily" by exerting massive pressure. Greece could either exit (in full knowledge of the disastrous consequences for the country and Europe) or accept a program that effectively makes it a European protectorate, without any hope of economic improvement. Greece is now subject to a cure -- further austerity -- that has not worked in the past and that was prescribed solely to address Germany's domestic political needs. But the massive conflict with France and Italy, the eurozone's second and third largest economies, is not over, because, for Schäuble, Grexit remains an option. By claiming that debt relief is "legally" possible only outside the eurozone, he wants to turn the issue into the lever for bringing about a "voluntary" Grexit. Schäuble's position has thrown into sharp relief the fundamental question of the relationship between Europe's south and north, his approach threatens to stretch the eurozone to the breaking point. The belief that the euro can be used to bring about the economic "re-education" of Europe's south will prove a dangerous fallacy - and not just in Greece. As the French and Italians well know, such a view jeopardizes the entire European project, which has been built on diversity and solidarity. "Greece is now subject to a cure -- further austerity -- that has not worked in the past and that was prescribed solely to address Germany's domestic political needs." Germany has been the big winner of European unification, both economically and politically. Just compare Germany's history in the first and second halves of the 20th century. Bismarck's unification of Germany in the nineteenth century occurred at the high-water mark of European nationalism. In German thinking, power became inextricably associated with nationalism and militarism. As a result, unlike France, Great Britain or the United States, which legitimized their foreign policy in terms of a "civilizing mission," Germany understood its power in terms of raw military force. The foundation of the second, unified German nation-state in 1989 was based on Germany's irrevocable Western orientation and Europeanization. And the Europeanization of Germany's politics filled -- and still fills -- the civilization gap embodied in German statehood. To allow this pillar to erode -- or, worse, to tear it down -- is a folly of the highest order. That is why, in the EU that emerged on the morning of July 13, Germany and Europe both stand to lose. © Project Syndicate -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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People identifying themselves as Syrian refugees issued temporary 1-month residence permits
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The Greek Mythology Mash-up Pack is available now from the Xbox Store for the Xbox One and Xbox 360. The pack costs $3.99 and brings mythical ...
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