How the world sees Greece
Adding to a dismal Monday for the Greek economy, that has seen a stock market crash and significant revenue losses for Greek firms, financial information service company Markit released its July survey results on Greece’s Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index. The Manufacturing PMI denotes the well being of the manufacturing sector of an economy based on number of parameters including output, employment, new business, stock
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The Central Union of Municipalities and Communities of Greece (KEDE) has alerted the Greek Economy Minister, Giorgos Stathakis on the stoppages of ongoing construction in Greek municipalities. According to a KEDE press release, KEDE president George Patoulis informed Stathakis that National Strategic Reference Framework (ESPA) directed funds are not being provided from the Program for Public Investment to Greek municipalities, as had been
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As capital controls continue and clouds of economic uncertainty loom over Greece, many business owners opt to move their companies abroad. According to a CNBC report, Philip Ammerman, a Greek-born investment advisor who moved his business from Athens to London in 2010, said that the trend “is reaching epidemic proportions.” Ammerman told CNBC that he
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LONDON -- From blaming him for the renewed collapse of the Greek economy to accusing him of illegally plotting Greece's exit from the eurozone, it has become fashionable to disparage Yanis Varoufakis, the country's former finance minister. While I have never met or spoken to him, I believe that he is getting a bad rap (and increasingly so). In the process, attention is being diverted away from the issues that are central to Greece's ability to recover and prosper -- whether it stays in the eurozone or decides to leave. That is why it is important to take note of the ideas that Varoufakis continues to espouse. Greeks and others may fault him for pursuing his agenda with too little politesse while in office. But the essence of that agenda was -- and remains -- largely correct. Following an impressive election victory by his Syriza party in January, Greece's prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, appointed Varoufakis to lead the delicate negotiations with the country's creditors. His mandate was to recast the relationship in two important ways: render its terms more amenable to economic growth and job creation; and restore balance and dignity to the treatment of Greece by its European partners and the International Monetary Fund. These objectives reflected Greece's frustrating and disappointing experience under two previous bailout packages administered by "the institutions" (the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF). In pursuing them, Varoufakis felt empowered by the scale of Syriza's electoral win and compelled by economic logic to press three issues that many economists believe must be addressed if sustained growth is to be restored: less and more intelligent austerity; structural reforms that better meet social objectives; and debt reduction. These issues remain as relevant today, with Varoufakis out of government, as they were when he was tirelessly advocating for them during visits to European capitals and in tense late-night negotiations in Brussels. Indeed, many observers view the agreement on a third bailout program that Greece reached with its creditors -- barely a week after Varoufakis resigned -- as simply more of the same. At best, the deal will bring a respite -- one that is likely to prove both short and shallow. At best, the deal will bring a respite -- one that is likely to prove both short and shallow. In part, the criticism of Varoufakis reflects less the substance of his proposals than the manner in which he approached his interlocutors. Eschewing the traditional duality of frank private discussions and restrained public commentary, he aggressively advocated his case openly and bluntly, and did so in an increasingly personal manner. Whether deemed naive or belligerent, this approach undeniably upset and angered European politicians. Rather than modifying a policy framework that had failed for five years to deliver on its stated objectives, they dug in their heels, eventually resorting to the economic equivalent of gunboat diplomacy. And they evidently also made it clear to Varoufakis's boss, Tsipras, that the future of negotiations depended on him casting aside his unconventional minister -- which he did, first by assigning someone else to lead the negotiations and then by appointing a new finance minister altogether. Now that he is out of office, Varoufakis is being blamed for much more than failing to adapt his approach to political reality. Some hold him responsible for the renewed collapse of the Greek economy, the unprecedented shuttering of the banking system and the imposition of stifling capital controls. Others are calling for criminal investigations, characterizing the work he led on a Plan B (whereby Greece would introduce a new payments system either in parallel or instead of the euro) as tantamount to treason. But, love him or hate him (and, it seems, very few people who have encountered him feel indifferent), Varoufakis was never the arbiter of Greece's fate. Yes, he should have adopted a more conciliatory style and shown greater appreciation for the norms of European negotiations; and, yes, he overestimated Greece's bargaining power, wrongly assuming that pressing the threat of Grexit would compel his European partners to reconsider their long-entrenched positions. But, relative to the macro situation, these are minor issues. Varoufakis had no control over the economic mess that Syriza inherited when it came to power. Varoufakis had no control over the economic mess that Syriza inherited when it came to power, including an unemployment rate hovering around 25 percent and youth joblessness that had been running at more than 50 percent for a considerable period. He could not influence in any meaningful manner the national narratives that had sunk deep roots in other European countries and thus undermined those countries' ability to adapt. He could not counter the view among some of the region's politicians that success for Syriza would embolden and strengthen other non-traditional parties around Europe. It also would have been irresponsible for Varoufakis not to work behind closed doors on a Plan B. After all, Greece's eurozone destiny largely was -- and remains -- in the hands of others (particularly Germany, the ECB and the IMF). And it is yet to be established whether Varoufakis broke any laws in the way he and his colleagues worked on their contingency plan. When push came to shove, Varoufakis faced the difficult choice of going along with more of the same, despite knowing that it would fail, or trying to pivot to a new approach. He bravely opted for the latter. While his brash style undermined outcomes, it would be a real tragedy to lose sight of his arguments (which have been made by many others as well). If Greece is to have any realistic chance of long-term economic recovery and meeting its citizens' legitimate aspirations, policymakers must recast the country's austerity program, couple pro-growth reforms with greater social justice and secure additional debt relief. And if Greece is to remain in the eurozone (still a big if, even after the latest agreement), it must not only earn its peers' respect; it must be treated with greater respect by them as well. © Project Syndicate -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. 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A dip in the Aegean, some days of rest with family, and speaking with the “real” people of Greece was necessary and beneficial. The post The Greek Immigrant Story Was One of Hope appeared first on The National Herald.
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Greece lost 570 million euros in taxes in the first two weeks of capital controls with banks taking a 500-million euro hit. The post Capital Controls Curb Tax Revenues appeared first on The National Herald.
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NEW YORK (AP) — Yes, your mutual fund may own some Greek stocks. No, most likely not a lot.
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Waves of selling battered Greek stocks and made life miserable for equity traders Monday. It's a trauma that investors should get used to. Given their ...
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Haikalis sues them for archiving his bribery accusations
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The European Union just got some bad news from Standard & Poor's. The whole thing. In a release on Monday, S&P slashed its outlook on the European Union to "negative" from "stable." By the EU, S&P means the supranational organization that borrows in capital markets to lend to member states. This includes all 28 members of the EU, not just the 19 that use the euro. In its release, S&P said its downgraded outlook reflects 3 main points: S&P's expectation that the EU will provide first-loss guarantee support for financing connected to the Juncker Plan (Greece's latest bailout package) Further downward pressure on the average weighted rating on net budgetary contributors to the EU, as indicated by S&P's negative outlooks on the second- and third-most important sovereign contributors, the UK and France (Germany is the largest contributor) The EU's repeated use of its balance sheet to provide higher-risk financing to EU member states (most recently including Greece), without the member states' paying in capital. Cutting its outlook for the EU also reflects S&P's view that the EU's credit rating, which currently stands at AA+, has greater than 1-in-3 chance of being cut in the next 2 years. Read the full release from S&P here »SEE ALSO: The real reason everyone was worried about Greece is gone Join the conversation about this story »
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Tsipras in trouble says article
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Banks lose 30% as Athens stock market reopens for the first time since late June The full extent of the damage caused by the Greek crisis was laid bare when the first day of stock market trading after five weeks of economic paralysis saw shares lose one sixth of their value.Bank stocks bore the brunt of a wave of pent-up selling that eclipsed anything seen in the past three decades on the Athens stock market, with three of the leading Greek financial institutions losing the maximum 30% permitted in a single day’s trading. Related: Greece debt crisis: Athens stock market ends 16% lower as manufacturing plunges - as it happened Continue reading...
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Greece shares plunge as stock market re-opens Continue reading...
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Now the Greek stock market is at its lowest close since summer 2012, the last time the Greek debt crisis threatened to push Greece out of the ...
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If reports are true, Jorge Mendes, a sports agent who manages some of the worlds greatest soccer players, just became the owner of a Greek island….without spending a dime! According to Portuguese news website Move Noticias, professional soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo gave Mendes, who is his agent, a Greek island as a wedding gift. The name and price of the island
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The Athens Stock Exchange crashed at a 28-year low, closing at -16.23 percent on Monday. The Greek stock market had been closed for five weeks, after the Greek government imposed capital controls on June 28. But the re-opening of the Athens Stock Exchange was marked by plummeting stocks with figures reminding the sky-dive of almost
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A tiny part of a much bigger picture. Yoan Valat/EPAMuch of the media coverage and political rhetoric of recent weeks has implied that the UK is undergoing an uncontrollable invasion by migrants attempting to jump on moving lorries in Calais. To put this “crisis” in some perspective, it is useful to consider where most of residents of the “new jungle” at Calais come from and how they reached continental Europe. Many of the inhabitants of the new migrant camp in Calais are survivors of those dangerous Mediterranean boat journeys that until a few weeks ago seemed so distant from Dover. They come mostly from countries such as Syria, Eritrea, Afghanistan and Iraq devastated by years of civil war, repressive and dictatorial regimes, with no future to offer for their youth. This growing mobility across the Med is not surprising given we are witnessing the most severe refugee crisis since World War II, according to Amnesty International. But these incidents also indicate the scarcity of regular and safer migration routes in the region. Increased military and humanitarian presence at sea since April this year has meant that the number of migrant deaths in the Mediterranean has been significantly reduced, perhaps evidence that many of those deaths were avoidable if EU political will had been quicker to coalesce. A side effect of this otherwise positive result has been the reduction of public solidarity in the UK, and to different extent across Europe, for boat migrants. There has been a robust return of the “migrant invasion” rhetoric with its corollary of “swamp”, “swarm” and “tidal wave”. Compare the 500 daily attempts to jump on the back of lorries to the 137,000 migrants who reached Italy and Greece in the first half of 2015, and the numbers are far from huge. It is worth considering that they are often multiple attempts by the same people. While certainly enough to disrupt the Eurotunnel operation – combined with current disruption caused by prolonged strikes by ferry workers in France – these incidents and the surrounding rhetoric of invasion bolstered by journalists' easy access to Calais should not let us lose sense of the broader picture. Calais is not a local issue. It is one manifestation of the global refugee crisis, but not one of the acutest. Behind the numbers Circular and seasonal migrations in the region have a very long history, arguably as old as Western civilisation. However, much of the coverage in recent months has been about the irregular crossings of migrants crossing the Mediterranean to reach the EU. Rescued migrants arriving in Palermo, Sicily in July. Mike Palazzotto/EPA Traditional and social media have certainly played a central role in framing coverage of recent migration, but so have those who provided the figures that validate the invasion talk. One of the main sources is Frontex, the EU Border Agency. Leaving aside the consideration that Frontex resources in many ways depend upon the number of migrants that the agency is able to intercept and count, which may highlight a potential vested interest, there is a more structural point here. The organisation’s budget has rocketed from €6.3m (£4.4m) in 2005, to nearly €42m in 2007, topping €115m by 2015. Frontext figures, often repackaged by other agencies, count migrants that have been intercepted at sea or at land borders. The more resources and capacities to intercept Frontex has, the more migrants may be intercepted and counted by Frontex. In turn, if there are fewer Frontex officers patrolling a land crossing that means fewer migrants are likely to be intercepted. In other words, while hard to prove unequivocally, it may be at least useful to think that the “invasion” we are told about may be as much the result of the global refugee crisis as of the number of border officers we send to patrol specific stretches of the EU border. Not ‘typical’ undocumented migrants The migrants living in the new jungle in Calais are one of the most visible parts of the global refugee crisis. Yet of 625,000 asylum applications in the EU in 2014, 65,000 were lodged in France and 32,000 in the UK. While it can be argued that a country such as Italy is a port of entry and a place of transit, this is less so for France and most people who apply there are likely to wait for the decision of their case in France. It may be obvious for any readers outside the UK, but not all migrants and refugees in France want to come to the UK: taking the views of the minority of migrants who reside in the new jungle as representative of the views and intentions of all asylum seekers and migrants in France is misleading and only stirs public hysteria. To reassure the British public, new jungle residents contribute only in small part to the undocumented migrants in the UK. My own research shows that only a minority of undocumented migrants in the UK entered the country illegally – for example on the back of a lorry. Most undocumented migrants enter the country legally and overstay their visa. Despite the high profile accorded to Calais migrants, the “typical” undocumented migrant in the UK is more likely to be a white Australian, or a young Brazilian. Nando Sigona receives funding from ESRC for carrying out research on former unaccompanied minors in the UK.
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A brief history of the euro zone The introduction of the Euro in 2002 was a necessary decision in the pursuit of further European integration. The Euro was launched as an unfinished project, whose final purpose remained undefined. There was tension between monetarist / neoliberal ideas based on competition between Euro countries, particularly supported by the German government (and the Bundesbank) and the desire to use the common currency as a means of enforcing a common economic policy/government. It has always been an open secret that without further integration of economic and financial policies, the Euro stands on one leg only, waiting to be re-constructed as soon as the next economic crisis hit. The time for adjustments came with the outbreak of the financial crisis of 2008, which turned the debts of private banks into public debts of the states. The banks that had just been rescued seized this sudden and sharp rise of public debt as an opportunity to speculate against individual Euro countries. This endangered the alignment of interest rates for government bonds, which is indispensable for a functioning Euro system. Missed opportunity: Euro Bonds as a defence mechanism against speculators The introduction of Euro bonds could have set limits for speculators by ensuring a uniform interest rate on purchases of Euro-denominated bonds while allowing for internal interest variations for different Euro countries. This would have enabled Greece and other South European countries to continue refinancing their existing debt at sustainable interest rates and the current crisis would never have arisen. However, Germany refused this logical next step in the process of European unification in the assumption that speculation against Greek government bonds could enforce fiscal discipline. But, the interest rates of Greek bonds rose so rapidly that not even rigorous fiscal countermeasures could have stopped this process. Only when the Euro system was about to collapse in May 2010, was the German government willing to compromise. As Greece was unable to refinance its existing debt on the private financial markets at a sustainable interest rate, a troika consisting of the ECB, IMF and the EU Commission was established as an intermediary guarantor between the financial markets and the Greek Ministry of Finance. In the German media this intermediary role of the Troika was often wrongly interpreted as actual financial assistance, i.e. donations from the German budget, when in fact, the majority of these loans just replaced expiring debts with new loans. This concept of "revolving debt" is not only a well-established process, but is supported and frequently used by all industrialized countries, including Germany. Necessary reforms By assuming an intermediary position, the troika had already fulfilled its main mission to stabilize the Euro system. Its power could have easily been used to facilitate necessary reforms. To reduce the Greek budget deficit, it would have sufficed to reform the inefficient and inequitable tax system and to counter the alternating ruling parties' culture of clientelism with a transparent and efficient administration. However, the troika demanded the enforcement of massive wage and pension cuts and drastic cuts in social and educational budgets. In simple neo-liberal tradition, this was justified with the argument that austerity was the only way to recover competitiveness as a prerequisite for growth. Recurring warnings by renowned economists that such drastic austerity measures would not lead to growth but to economic collapse were ignored. Five years on, the consequences are well known: Economic performance has fallen by 25 per cent while unemployment has increased dramatically. Although wages have already plummeted so much that no competitive disadvantage remains, further wage cuts are demanded. When the left-wing Syriza party was elected to govern in January 2015, it questioned the austerity measures that the German dominated Euro zone had committed to. However, all other proposals were blocked. Alternatives to austerity were considered a sacrilege - mainly by the German Government. A search for alternatives would have exposed the faulty policies of the last five years. But it has become increasingly clear that the example of Greece is used as a warning to keep other states in the austerity community without protesting. Permanent competition instead of social Europe The monetarist-neoliberal fraction within the Euro zone wants to prevent the urgently needed further fiscal integration, which would require balancing economic and social transfers. Instead, they want to expand competition between Euro countries to maintain permanent fiscal pressure on parliaments. The deregulated financial markets that allow speculation against individual government bonds do not only provide additional earning opportunities but are also intended to discipline the spending of parliaments. A particularly absurd situation arose after the Lehman Brothers collapse. Failures of deregulated financial markets have been used to further disempower national parliaments by massively burdening public finances with costly bank bailouts and thereby restricting their ability to act. Clinging to the vision of permanent current account surpluses means running permanent austerity policies which contradict the promise of a social Europe for all. Against this backdrop, there is no hope for a democratic, social and just Europe. A democratically legitimate economic policy Europe should abandon the competition ideology of 'everyone against everyone'. This causes suffering for most people in the economically weaker countries and for many in the stronger ones. The EU must and can settle internal deficits and surpluses, as long as these remain within the euro zone. Therefore, a better integration of economic and fiscal policies and a significant increase in economic transfers within the euro zone are needed. The EU should focus on productivity-oriented growth for internal demand. This could be done through the targeted expansion of social services, increased spending on education and by investing in renewable energies. The list of necessary investments in Europe is long and the implementation of such investments would allow for new perspectives of a unified Europe. This would require power shifts to the European level. The primacy of democracy requires that, once a national parliament relinquishes regulatory powers, these must be fully transferred to the European Parliament as the next democratically legitimized authority. National parliaments must not be disempowered in favour of a post-democratic EU austerity-commissariat. -- 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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Greece’s stock exchange reopened Monday with a drop of more than 22 percent after a five-week shutdown imposed by the country’s debt crisis and capital controls, with the nation’s outflow-hit lenders leading the way.
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The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership may sound boring, but it could affect everything from your income to the food you eat and the state of the NHS. Here is a beginners’ guide to the controversial trade deal“Sometimes,” says a character in David Foster Wallace’s novel The Pale King, “what’s important is dull. Sometimes it’s work. Sometimes the important things aren’t works of art for your entertainment.” It is worth bearing that in mind as we consider TTIP, the most boring thing we’re supposed to get angry about since – ooh … was it PFI schemes that nobbled hospitals, eviscerated schools and left Britain £222bn in debt? Or was it the asymmetrical constitutional ramifications inherent in the West Lothian question? Or George Osborne’s incomprehensible pension changes involving auto-enrolment annuities, tax wrappers, pots and draw-downs? Christine Lagarde’s last press conference about the Greek debt crisis? Maybe it was your last mobile phone bill.Add up the boredom you experienced on each of those occasions, multiply the result by the international coefficient of tedium (which, as you know, is 27.5) and that’s how bored the international trade deal known as TTIP will make you. Continue reading...
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An employee of the Athens Stock Exchange speaks on the phone in the reception hall in Athens (AP) The Athens Stock Exchange has been closed for more than a month Greece's top companies lost billions in market value in a matter of minutes when the stock ...
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Athens, August 3, 2015/ Independent Balkan News Agency By Zacharias Petrou The Athens stock market closed sharply lower on its first day of trading for five weeks. It finished 16.23% lower at 668.06 having initially lost almost 23% in the first few hours of trading. The country’s four largest banks – National Bank, Piraeus Bank, […]
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Greek markets suffered a bloodbath on Monday, falling by a record 23pc within minutes of the opening bell as investors rushed to sell off stocks during ...
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Ronaldo was given the honour of being best man and reports in Spain suggest he lived up to the billing by buying Mendes his own Greek island as a ...
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Investors were shaken as talks between Greece and its negotiators stalled, once again. A special Eurogroup meeting was held on Wednesday, but ...
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Greece's stock market opened for business today after five weeks of suspended trading. As was to be expected, shares fell—a lot—because Greece's ...
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Math, statistics, empirical analysis, and data visualization are all incredibly powerful tools for understanding the world. Unfortunately, these tools are misused and abused in many ways that, to greater or lesser degrees, lead to confusion rather than clarification and make the world just a slightly worse place. Here are 10 such things that aggravate me. 1. Misleading vertical axes There are a few ways in which graphs can have badly misleading y-axes. Column or bar charts are a great way to compare values, since the lengths of the columns or bars should be proportional to the values being displayed. But things can go horribly wrong if the base of the vertical axis is not set at zero. A classic example was a chart shown on Fox News last year comparing Obamacare enrollment numbers just before the enrollment deadline to the administration's goal: As Media Matters pointed out in its post on the chart, the actual enrollment figure of 6 million was about 85% of the goal of a little over 7 million, while the column representing the current enrollment was about a third the height of the column representing the goal. This is a deeply misleading way to represent these figures. Fortunately, Fox News later presented a corrected and more responsible version of the chart: The "start at zero" rule applies mostly to column and bar charts. For line charts, it's fine to use whatever axis boundaries you need to show the trend in which you're most interested. This chart from FRED shows the decline in the labor-force participation rate, or the percentage of adults either employed or looking for work, since 2007. It has an axis ranging only from 62.5% to 66.5%: That roughly 3% drop in labor-force participation, however, represents millions of Americans who have stopped working or looking for work, and it is one of the biggest mysteries of our current economic situation. The downward trend is the main story here, and so it's fine to choose axis bounds that clearly tell that story. 2. Multiple vertical axis scales Another unfortunately common abuse of axes is putting multiple scales on a graph. This is usually done to show some kind of relationship or correlation between two time series. But because one can basically choose any scale one wants for the two axes, it's very easy to insinuate relationships that may not actually exist or matter. Further, even if there is a valid relationship between the two series, the dual y-axis design can still be visually confusing, making it difficult to see the nuances of that relationship. Scatter plots are usually a better option for showing the relationship between two sets of values. One of the most egregious examples of a misleading multiple scale graph is this chart combining the Dow Jones Industrial Average in the run-up to the 1929 stock market crash with more recent stock market movements: The implication is that the vague similarities between the two time periods means that a 1929-like stock crash is imminent. This, of course, makes no sense, because this apparent pattern emerges only with a very selective choice of vertical axis scales and because two lines looking somewhat alike tell us nothing about the similarities and differences between the underlying market and economic situations — the things that actually matter when trying to figure out the likelihood of a crash — during the two time periods. 3. Horizontal axis disasters Things can go wrong with the horizontal axis as well. One of the biggest problems is a missing horizontal axis on a time series chart. Showing how a quantity changes over time is a lot less useful if the actual time period being analyzed is unclear: Having an x-axis for a time series graph still doesn't necessarily mean you're in the clear, though. Business Insider deputy editor Sam Ro tweeted out this intriguing chart from a Bank of America research note, ostensibly showing technological development and population growth over time: The time scale is uneven and appears to have no actual relationship with the data being presented. Apparently Greece and Rome peaked in about A.D. 1000, and the industrial revolution, moon landing, and invention of railroads all occurred in the past 15 years. When big events happen, Twitter will frequently visualize activity on the social network related to those events. Unfortunately, its charts usually lack both an x-axis and a y-axis, making it rather difficult to get any insight: 4. The lottery Taking a break from aggravating things in charts, I am not a huge fan of playing the lottery. Buying a lottery ticket is almost always a losing proposition. Even in the case of immensely large jackpots, the probability of winning is so low that the expected value of a lottery ticket will almost certainly be negative. Of course, this is a matter of personal taste. I'd rather not waste a dollar, but other people can certainly enjoy buying a ticket for non-monetary reasons like fear of missing out on a jackpot, or the simple rush of taking the gamble. 5. The concept of wind chill Wind chill combines temperature and wind speed into a single index value, represented as an adjusted temperature. The goal is to capture the interaction between wind and cold — wind blowing over exposed skin will pull heat away more quickly than still air of the same temperature. This measure, however, is flawed. First, several other factors affect a person's perception of weather: Is it raining? Is it sunny, or overcast? What time of day is it? Wind chill, while bringing together two important parts of weather, ignores others. Second, representing the combination of temperature and wind as another temperature is odd. A 35 degree Fahrenheit (1.7 degrees Celsius) day with 25 mph (40 kph) winds doesn't really "feel like" a 23° F (-5° C) day. Most immediately, a glass of water left outside on a windy 35° F day will never freeze, as the actual temperature is still above the freezing point, while a glass left outside on a still 23° F day will eventually freeze. Temperature is temperature, and wind speed is wind speed. That said, wind speed (and other factors) are still very important! In conditions of extreme cold, exposed skin will suffer from frostbite faster in windy situations than in still situations, all other things being equal. I just find the representation of a combined temperature and wind speed as a new "temperature" somewhat odd. 6. Pie charts Pie charts are intended to show how some whole is broken into component parts. In most cases, they fail at that goal. When we're breaking a big circle into many pieces, it can be hard to directly compare the sizes of those pieces and thus the proportions of interest. Here's a chart breaking down the popularity of various pizza toppings. Note that each pie wedge needs to be labeled with its percentage, because otherwise it would be hard to tell, say, whether sausage or mushrooms are more popular, given the similar size of the two wedges: Bar or column charts tend to do a better job of representing these kinds of breakdowns for a large number of subcategories. On the flip side, pie charts can be somewhat clearer when looking at just a small number of categories with large differences between the percentages: Of course, given that the relevant information from this pie chart is directly printed as text, and we're basically just looking at a single number — the proportion of climate scientists who reject human-caused global warming — one might wonder why we'd bother with the chart at all. 7. Bad map-coloring schemes Maps can be an incredibly useful way to display geographically varying information. However, they must be designed carefully to clearly convey their data. One somewhat frequent problem in creating maps is using arbitrarily chosen colors to display data. This map, from Imgur via @BeautifulMaps on Twitter, uses a very unintuitive color scheme to show speed limits around the world: There isn't a natural flow in the color scheme to go along with the naturally increasing scale of speed limits. I have no idea, at a glance, whether Texas' blue speed limit is higher or lower than neighboring Mexico's light green speed limit. I have to refer to the key every time I look at a different country to have any idea what that country's color means. A better option is to stick with one color, but vary the saturation, brightness, or intensity of that color. This map from the Census Bureau showing the minority proportion of each state's population in 2000 has a scale from light blue to dark blue, making regional patterns immediately apparent: We can clearly see, even without looking at the key, that minorities tend to be a larger percentage of the population in the South and in more urban states, while the less densely populated states of the Midwest and Great Plains tend to have smaller proportions. Two colors, varying by intensity, can be helpful in situations in which there is a natural midpoint. Comparing Democratic votes with Republican votes in an election, seeing where incomes are above the national average or below the national average, or seeing where populations increased and declined in a given year are all cases in which a two-color scheme can work well. As an example of the last case, here is a map we made using Census data showing which US counties had population growth or loss between 2013 and 2014. Growing counties are in blue, with darker shades indicating faster growth; shrinking counties are in red, with darker shades indicating faster loss: 8. Questionable psychological measures The human mind is an incredibly complex thing, and we know very little about how it works. This does not stop us from making often clumsy attempts to measure and compare people based on intelligence or personality. One of the worst offenders is the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory, which attempts to assign a personality "type" to test-takers. The test sorts people into 16 categories, based on four binary personality trait variables: introverted versus extroverted, intuitive versus sensing, thinking versus feeling, and judging versus perceiving. The test has numerous problems. First off is the dichotomous nature of the four trait scales: A person who takes the test and scores just slightly more extroverted than introverted is placed solidly in the "extrovert" bucket, despite having a mixture of traits. Related to this problem is the reliability of the test: It's not uncommon for people who take the test and then retake it a few weeks later to end up assigned to a completely different personality type. Because the test is supposed to be measuring something fundamental about a person's psyche, that variability is problematic. The MBTI also has somewhat questionable origins. It was developed by a mother-daughter team in the 1940s, neither of whom had any formal psychological training. The test also has come under strong criticism from social scientists for its lack of empirical validity or theoretical justification in the decades since its development. 9. General bad chart design In addition to the sins of axes, pie charts, and map colors mentioned above, charts and infographics can fail at their task of conveying data in plenty of other ways. In his seminal 1983 book "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information," data visualization pioneer Edward Tufte coined the word "chartjunk" to describe unnecessary and distracting elements of a graph that either add nothing to the reader's understanding of the information being presented or even actively detract from that understanding. Chartjunk can take on many forms. Some common forms include poorly chosen shading, background, or border options that draw the eye away from the information being presented, excessively distracting decorative elements, and the use of poorly scaled 3D and related design effects that distort the reader's perception of the data. Tufte includes the chart to the left of the age breakdown of college students in his book, writing, "This may well be the worst graphic ever to find its way into print." The chart essentially displays only five numbers: the proportions of college students 25 and older over a five-year period. To do this, the chart has four brightly colored regions, two of which are there just to provide an off-center 3D perspective effect that is both distracting and makes the graph harder to read. Like the misleading y-axis of the initial Fox News Obamacare chart above, the blue region draws the reader's eye up, confusingly suggesting that the earlier years' proportions are higher than they actually are. Further, the top half of the chart, showing the proportions of college students under the age of 25, is redundant: This is just the mirror image of the lower half of the chart, because the percentage of students under age 25 is just 100% minus the percentage of students over age 25. The chart and charts like it that have poor chartjunk-laden design decisions take very simple data sets and present them in an almost incomprehensibly overcomplicated and ugly way. Former Business Insider reporter Walt Hickey found several examples of extremely poor chart design and compiled them here. 10. The number 10, and other big round numbers On December 23, 2014, the Dow Jones Industrial Average crossed 18,000 for the first time in the index's history, and the headline on that morning's Business Insider market update post reflected this "milestone." Several of my friends will be turning 30 this year, which seems somewhat more momentous and important than my coming 29th birthday. Privately held tech startups that raise money at a valuation of at least $1 billion are labeled "unicorns," while presumably an app developer worth only $990 million on paper would just be a run-of-the-mill horse. There are 10 items on this list, not nine or 11, either of which would easily have been possible by removing an item or finding more things that annoy me. In each of these cases, and in several other everyday situations, multiples of powers of 10 are favored over other numbers as important cutoffs or milestones. But this is an essentially arbitrary thing: The big round numbers we view as important are seen as such only because the most common number system in the modern world is the base 10 decimal system. The most likely reason we use decimal rather than a different number system is because human beings generally tend to have 10 fingers. This itself is an arbitrary side effect of human evolution. This arbitrary nature of big round numbers, and of related decimal-biased numerical events, is a thing that annoys me. Sigh.SEE ALSO: Everything about the way we teach math is wrong Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: 14 things you didn't know your iPhone headphones could do
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Will manager give it away in turn?
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Stocks are lower, with the blue-chip Dow losing up to 125 points in trading on Monday and crude oil falling to new lows. Near 12:43 p.m. ET, the Dow was down 123 points, the S&P 500 was down 8 points, and the Nasdaq was down 14 points. It was much uglier in Greece, where the Athens Stock Exchange (ASE) index, which reopened after a five-week closure, fell 23%. Crude oil is sliding to new lows. Brent crude, the international benchmark, fell below $50 per barrel for the first time since January. West Texas Intermediate crude fell below $45 per barrel, the lowest level since mid-March. It's a busy month for US economic data in what's the crucial period before the Fed possibly raises rates in September, as many in the market expect. To start off, we got manufacturing data this morning. The Institue of Supply Management's manufacturing report leaked, coming in at 52.7 for July versus the consensus forecast, June print, and year-to-date high of 53.5. US auto sales crushed it last month. The data is rolling in throughout the day and we're keeping track here. It's been a beat on expectations all around so far. GM sales rose 6.4% (0.4% estimated), and Ford sales jumped 4.9% (1.8) forecast). Twitter shares fell more than 6% to a fresh low of around $28.91.SEE ALSO: IT'S A HUGE WEEK FOR THE US ECONOMY: Here's your complete preview Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: The 13 best features coming to the next iPhone
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Puerto Rico bailed out large scale than Greece
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The Danish government is warning migrants not to apply for asylum – but we are not a xenophobic nation, in fact, there are compelling reasons to come hereArriving safely in Italy or Greece after risking your life in the desert and on the sea leaves you with an important decision: which country in Europe should you go to in order to ask for asylum?The countries at the top of the list are Sweden, Germany and the UK. You want to go there, but you might be caught by the authorities on the way and have your fingerprints taken. The Dublin trap closes, forcing you to stay for ever in a country you don’t want to be in. But are you sure that you want to live in Germany? Why would you try so hard going from Calais to Dover? Do you need to go so far north as Sweden? Continue reading...
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The Greek government closed its stock market and banks on June 29, along with citizen cash withdrawal limits, during tense discussions about ...
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Greece's main stock index, the Anthex Composite, and Greek banks were closed in early July in anticipation of the referendum to accept terms for ...
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Greece's stock exchange closed Monday with a record drop of 16.23 percent on the first day it was reopened after the five-week shutdown caused by the country's debt crisis and capital controls.
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When it came to Greek equities, investors could have skipped the tea leaves and focused on an exchange-traded fund listed on the New York Stock ...
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Greece and its lenders agreed last month to open talks for a third bailout to keep the cash-strapped country afloat and in the euro zone. Greece ...
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Greece's stock market plunged nearly 23 per cent at the open on Monday, after a five-week shutdown brought on by fears the country was about to be ...
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ATHENS Aug 3 (Reuters) - Greece and its lenders discussing a third multi-billion-euro bailout deal have agreed that pension reforms will affect only ...
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Two years ago this August, I predicted in The Mediterranean Quarterly Review that one of the following scenarios would come to pass in Greece by 2016. Scenario 1: Stimulated by an event in Greece -- a Syriza victory, a dramatic increase in Golden Dawn's representation, or the outbreak of conflict in the streets, or all three -- Germany would adopt a more accommodating position and relax its demands for austerity. Suddenly, the element of illusion would drop out of the European political dialogue. Instead of being a family in name only, the EU would begin to act as one.... Scenario 2: Germany would refuse to relax its position on austerity no matter how bad conditions in Greece might become. Greece would edge ever closer to default. Civil unrest would grow to the point that a protest party defeated the then ruling coalition and destabilized the relationship between Greece and Europe. Voices in the rich countries -- Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands --would call for Greece's expulsion from the Eurozone. Greece would be expelled, or obliged to leave... Scenario 3: Greece would break the taboo of thinking the unthinkable and openly reflect on the effects of an exit from the Eurozone while remaining in the EU. Even if the Greek government did not pursue such a course, the fact that it could seriously consider it would bring the increased respect of its citizens. At the same time, witnessing a willingness on the part of Greeks to choose between alternatives, Greece's creditors could be induced to offer better terms. This in turn would increase the government's stature in the eyes of its people. The downward spiral would be reversed and transformed into an upward one...To take such action, Greece would have to break its centuries-long habit of looking to others for its salvation, but in doing so, it would lay the groundwork for a reform of the Eurozone.* (*Elias Kulukundis, "Greece -- The Open Circle," Mediterranean Quarterly Review, Summer 2014.) The Syriza government set its sights on achieving Scenario Three, but its vacillations nearly brought about Scenario Two. After Greece missed its payment to the International Monetary Fund earlier this spring, the European Central Bank limited the liquidity it provided to Greece's banks, the Greek banks shut their doors, and Greece was nearly forced to leave the Eurozone. The main obstacle in the way of Scenario Three has been that Germany and its allies wanted to punish Syriza for its insurrection against the doctrine of austerity and were determined not to let it be seen to have any reward for its conduct. To give Scenario Three a chance of success, the Greek Government would have had to keep to its strategy to the ultimate conclusion and be prepared to call the Eurozone's bluff. Instead, at the crucial moment, Tsipras vacillated. As we learned recently, Yanis Varoufakis, while still the Greek Finance Minister, had prepared a plan to issue an alternative currency based on a form of government IOU. Varoufakis's strategy was to avert the liquidity crisis and prevent the long lines at the ATM machines in spite of the capital controls which had been imposed. Prime Minister Tsipras would have been in a strong position to carry out such a move, in spite of predictable domestic opposition, because 61% of the voters in the referendum had voted to reject the creditors' terms. To anyone who opposed the plan, Tsipras could have answered, "But you voted no." Why else would he have called the referendum if not to prepare that argument? Varoufakis claims that Tsipras gave him the green light for the alternative currency but lost his nerve at the last moment. Swayed by the predictions of catastrophe if Greece left the Eurozone (although you could say the catastrophe had already happened,) Tsipras succumbed to Eurozone pressure and fired Varoufakis, in effect ceding the initiative back to the creditors. Now the only one left working for Scenario Three is Panayiotis Lafazanis, the former Energy and Environment minister and leader of Syriza's Left Platform. An unregenerate Marxist who names his newspaper Iskra (meaning spark in Russian) after Lenin's paper in the last days of Tsardom, Lafazanis is mounting a rear-guard movement of opposition to Tsipras within his own party with the intention of undermining the government's latest round of negotiations with the Eurozone before it starts. The difference is that Lafazanis is not working to improve Greece's bargaining position within the Eurozone but actually to take Greece out. The situation is further clouded by reports emanating from the International Monetary Fund that the Fund cannot participate in a third bailout because Greece does not meet the criterion of having a sustainable debt. That is more or less like the Vichy police chief in the film "Casablanca," declaring that he is "shocked, shocked" to find that gambling is going on in Rick's bar. The IMF had known since 2010 that the Greek debt was unsustainable but winked at the requirement because at that time Germany was afraid the Eurozone could not survive a Greek exit. Now apparently, Germany and the Eurozone are more confident. It may be that the IMF's recent announcement is the first indication that Grexit is a stronger possibility, and the scenario that comes to pass will be Scenario Two. At any rate, it is clear that the chance to achieve Scenario Three has now been lost. Tsipras missed his moment to change history. After he had destabilized negotiations with the Eurozone throughout the spring, all that remained was for him to approve the alternative currency to call Germany's bluff. If it is true, as Varoufakis maintains, that at the last minute Tsipras back-tracked, it is as though Tsipras had planned a prison break, in which all the factors for success were set, but at the last moment he was not willing to run across the open ground to the wall. He called off the break after it had already started, and in the process left Varoufakis, his lieutenant in charge of the logistics, stranded. To use another analogy, one former Minister Lafazanis might well appreciate, it was as though in October 1917, Lenin had called the Bolsheviks off the streets, left Trotsky and the Red Guards to be arrested, and gone back to the Provisional Government to negotiate a solution. Tsipras now talks of a party-wide referendum on the Eurozone's demands which may be a prelude to elections in September. We will see what the results will be, but it appears that whatever the pulse of the public may be at any given time, the long-range judgment of history should be hard on the Prime Minister. Tsipras is a clever politician who was able to ride the wave of protest a long way, but in the end he was not able to find a coherent destination, and at the present moment he is being buffeted by the waves, struggling to keep his board afloat. -- 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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"Niki of Xanthi" is my first "sun" sculpture. It's an amorphous bas-relief on the wall of "the House of Shadow" in Xanthi, Greece. Next to the raised section of the wall there is a painted flowerpot... Now since the flowers need water all summer long, a woman, "Niki of Xanthi," will come out at 10:23 every morning to water them. This woman will appear as the shadow of the "amorphous sculpture," which will be produced by the sunlight. The period of time during which the shadow assumes its perfect form lasts about three to four minutes, while it is recognizable for about 20 minutes, with its features changing with the passage of time after 10:23 a.m. Another peculiarity I would mention is that the perfect shadow takes place at 10:23 a.m. on July 19. Each day preceding and following July 19, the angle of the sun is only minimally different (in summer the sun is higher than in winter), and this contributes to the shadow's negligible diurnal change. Niki of Xathi looks for your company every morning... This post originally appeared on HuffPost Greece and was translated into English. -- 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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Deputy Citizen Protection Minister Yiannis Panousis said that only elections can solve the dividing disputes within the Greek government. The deputy spoke to Parapoloitika radio and said that there is a paradox within the ruling SYRIZA party as about 40 of its lawmakers vote against laws the government tries to pass. At the same time,
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According to a survey by the Institute of Small Businesses (IME) of the Hellenic Confederation of Professionals, Craftsmen & Merchants (GSEVEE), 9 out of 10 businesses in Greece lost revenue due to capital controls imposed on Greek banks. The survey, conducted between July 21 and 27, found that the weighted average reduction in revenue for Greek firms was about 48%, while 31.8%
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On Monday morning, Greek authorities found the body of a 28-year-old man in the Corinth Canal, the 21 meter wide sea passage that separates the Peloponnese from Mainland Greece. According to the coast guard, the deceased man did not show signs that he was alive when he was first found and he was officially announced dead at the hospital. Authorities
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Europe's still missing vision of Greece reasonably explains today why the great potential for economic growth of this southernmost member-state of the eurozone has been squandered in the past five years by disoriented technocrats. Mainly flourishing in Berlin, but directly mirrored in Brussels as well, they have been stubbornly persisting all along with a flawed policy of blind austerity. Showing in effect a deep aversion to government spending as a valid tool to fight economic slumps -- and, in a clear break with Europe's prosperous past, placing total faith instead in austerity-based policies of deregulated labor markets. Albeit downgrading mainstream -- core -- western economic thinking in favor of poorly researched beliefs long ago proved anathema to sustaining aggregate effective demand in the Greek economy, the life-blood for any economy to grow. As Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman has succinctly put it, "those supposed technocrats are in fact fantasists who have disregarded everything we know about macroeconomics, and have been wrong every step of the way. This isn't about analysis, it's about power -- the power of the creditors to pull the plug on the Greek economy" (International NYT, 30 June 2015). Consistent, too, with Einstein's apt definition of insanity, repeating the same (wrong) move expecting it to yield a different result, the latest 'agreement' between Greece and its creditors -- EC, ECB, IMF -- fully reflects this prevailing German-inspired orientation. Particularly during the critical summit meeting of European leaders on 11-12 July in Brussels that proposed a controversial new (third) Greek bailout, this time close to €90 billion. Awaiting now eventual approval from 18 parliaments in the eurozone, it is expected to be finalized by Tuesday August 18th subject to the preliminary mid-ranked technical negotiations that are currently inching along in Athens. Of course, this is the same genre of exercise we have seen before and so likely to offer yet again a damaging deal for Greece. The entire effort does not correctly target the country's bulging debt and consequently does not help the Greek economy to recover. With the greater part of the Greek economy's painful adjustment already implemented, as eminently pointed out by Klaus Regling, chief of the European Financial Stability Facility, it seems truly fanciful to introduce at this stage heavier austerity measures bound to have a stifling effect on aggregate demand in the system -- and thus probably causing the economy to collapse by (externally imposed) asphyxiation in the end. Perhaps even before the first tranche of aid under the new program becomes available. This, in a nutshell, is the contradiction in the creditors' latest insistence that the Greek authorities must again legislate for deeper structural reforms in terms of yet more stringent measures cutting down government expenditure. It is worth noting, too, that this EU's third-time-round initiative -- doomed to success as it might be -- has been the unpromising offspring of the 17-hour negotiating session in question. One that hardly displayed so much as a semblance of consensus between presumed partners and fellow members of the European Union. Singularly memorable, alas, for the multi-dimensional acrimony that reigned supreme throughout its proceedings, laying bare divisions between Greece and European leaders, between Germany and France, between north and south -- but also between the German finance minister and the head of the European Central Bank. What is missing? Quite simply, European leaders lack a creative approach that would stimulate growth within a specifically Greek context. First, they trample the time-honored principle in elementary economics that you can only grow -- not shrink -- an economy out of recession. Second, rather than professionally scaling down, in the context of restructuring even at this late stage, the Greek sovereign debt of €350+ billion reflecting the massive financial, economic and social damage Greece has so far endured under blind austerity, they present great plans for manipulative financial engineering that merely reshape mountains of debt: but do nothing to change the commercial landscape and prepare the way for a new economy. Where is the program that taps into the iconic entrepreneurial heritage of remarkably profitable ventures from, say, Stavros Niarchos, John Latsis or Aristotle Onassis, flourishing to this day in Greece and abroad? Where are the plans for development with rising employment and an enlightened business acumen that are key to an honest recovery in Greece? As, for example, the already approved (but now stalled) high-profile redevelopment venture next door to Athens, at Ellinikon-by-the-sea, meant to transform into a unique paradise destination the derelict sprawling area where Greece's main airport used to be? It was scheduled to create 50,000 jobs requiring skilled labor. Pilot models for an alternative approach to the trio of Greece's creditors' total emphasis on 'austerity regardless' do exist. In Greece repressed high-profile ventures abound designed to stimulate the economy consistent with a variety of American, Chinese, or even Arab financial and economic aspirations in Europe as a whole. To be sure, any austerity plan imposed on the country will not be successful if it does not also embrace a complementary option that is manifestly available to provide hope to ordinary people in Greece whose mounting distress is real and must be taken into account. This would reassure international markets as well and more realistically keep Greece's lenders happy. To put it bluntly, rather than using Greece as a scapegoat for failings that also are to be shared more widely in Europe, euro-bureau-technocrats in Brussels could have saved billions. If, instead, the eurozone had formulated a development plan that actively helped turn Greece into our continent's Palm Springs or Florida, as it were. A dozen or two 'forward' pilot projects, both conceived and intelligently financed so as to prove profitable in the long-term, would have sufficed. Directly capitalizing on the country's beautiful climate, diverse mineral resources and highly competent but so far fatally underemployed labor force -- and, above all, decisively, considering the strategic geopolitical position of Greece. Unelected eurozone officials, unfortunately unaware of what everyday economic activity is all about, are also taking sides in today's standoff. Amazingly, they predict catastrophe if Greece is ultimately prevented from acceding to the creditors' demands that invariably lead to yet deeper depression -- but for which they alone would be to blame. ______________ Nicos E. Devletoglou, Emeritus Professor of Economics, University of Athens, is author of the books Academia in Anarchy: An Economic Diagnosis (Basic Books) written jointly with Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics James Buchanan; and Consumer Behaviour: An Experiment in Analytical Economics (Harper and Row). -- 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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High school student Hanks admits he is ‘not built like a Greek God’ but says he hopes to one day call Robert Redford ‘Bob’ in 1974 letter to George Roy Hill A 1974 letter from a pre-fame, teenage Tom Hanks asking the Oscar-winning director of The Sting, George Roy Hill, to “discover” him has been unveiled by Hollywood archivists. In it, the high school student describes a number of scenarios via which he can achieve stardom, despite admitting that his “looks are not stunning” and he “cannot even grow a mustache”.Two-time Oscar-winner Hanks wrote the letter as an 18-year-old at Skyline high school in Oakland, California. Hill, whose 1973 con artist caper starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman won seven Oscars, kept the letter and it was recently unveiled by the Margaret Herrick Library of the Motion Picture Academy in Beverly Hills. Continue reading...
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Political battles with international lenders are costing Greece as the uncertainty drove manufacturing levels to record lows. The post Greek Economy Going …. Going … appeared first on The National Herald.
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The post Solarizing Greece House-by-House appeared first on The National Herald.
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Reuters reported that Greek banking stocks fell 30 percent, hitting the bourse's daily volatility limit, with sellers lining up and no buyers. Earlier, the ...
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