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How the world sees Greece
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Ugly Politics Sparks Stock Sell-Off: Harry Reid Notes Little Progress On Fiscal Cliff Talks With GOP
Politics is an ugly thing. With ongoing negotiations surrounding the fiscal cliff in Washington, the top Democrat in the Senate, Harry Reid, sparked a risk-asset sell-off on Tuesday after noting “little progress” had been made between his party and the GOP. Stocks fell markedly despite good housing data from the Case-Shiller index and a deal on Greek debt that reduces uncertainty in Europe.
News Analysis: Debt Deal Doesn't Clear Cloud Over Greece's Future
Despite getting closer to the release of long-delayed emergency aid, Greece could still face a painful exit from the euro zone.
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Greek PM hails debt compromise, opposition skeptical
Greek PM hails debt compromise, opposition skeptical Reuters ATHENS (Reuters) - A bleary-eyed Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras welcomed on Tuesday an agreement by international lenders to help cut his country's debt and unblock bailout money to avert bankruptcy. The biggest opposition party, however, ... |
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Staying afloat: Europe releases more money for Greece
 Christian Science Monitor | Staying afloat: Europe releases more money for Greece Christian Science Monitor After weeks of struggling in marathon meetings, Eurogroup finance ministers have finally come up with another bailout package for Greece, removing from Athens the imminent threat of a state bankruptcy and a Greek exit from the common currency, the euro. Euro falls versus dollar, yen on doubts over Greece deal Eurozone reaches deal for third Greek bail-out New Greek Deal Solves Almost Nothing, and That's Just Fine for Stocks |
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The Other Greek Crisis
 Wall Street Journal | The Other Greek Crisis Wall Street Journal I recently attended a Greek-language class, which provided a window on a vibrant immigrant population: people of all ages, from Algeria, Bangladesh, Iran, Nigeria, the Congo, Tanzania, the Comoros Islands, Romania and Germany—hardly the downtrodden ... |
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Stocks slide; no help from consumer confidence
NEW YORK (AP) — Investors are taking little comfort from the latest deal to deliver financial aid to Greece and increases in U.S. consumer confidence and orders for machinery and equipment.
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Bernard-Henri Lévy: For a Revival of Philhellenism
What if, as is incessantly threatened, Greece ultimately ends up pulling out of Europe? Everyone can always get out of everything, naturally. The Greeks themselves, blinded by bad shepherds or by their own populist passion, can decide to take this headlong escape.
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Eurozone reaches deal for third Greek bail-out
Eurozone finance ministers finally reached a deal over Greece's debt burden, enabling the release of its latest tranche of rescue funds.
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Iran Tanker Cargo Investigated Off Greek Coast Amid EU Ban
Iran Tanker Cargo Investigated Off Greek Coast Amid EU Ban Businessweek The Baikal arrived at the Greek island yesterday and has the capacity to carry about 1 million barrels of oil or refined products, ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg show. The cargo of ship fuel hasn't been unloaded, Sekavin Operation Manager ... |
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Tony Koutsoumbos: Where Is the Greek Diaspora?
I want to make contact with all the unsung heroes throughout the global diaspora who are already doing their bit; most importantly though, I want to help bring out of the woodwork all the Greeks living in the UK who, like me, fear for their families and the future of their country.
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Greece hails rebirth of a nation as EU and IMF agree to release loans
Antonis Samaras says it is a 'new day for Greeks' after creditors agree to redraft package, free up funds and cut debt mountain by €40bn
After months of drama in the eurozone and its own solvency hanging by a thread, Greece reacted with euphoria on Tuesday at the news that international creditors had decided to not only revitalise its rescue programme, releasing long-overdue aid, but cut €40bn (£32bn) from its debt mountain.
Addressing the Greek nation, the prime minister, Antonis Samaras, said the landmark agreement opened the way to the country's "rebirth" after one of the darkest periods in its modern history. The deal had not only averted bankruptcy and secured Athens' position in the eurozone but placed it on a path of economic recovery.
"A very grey and very dark period for Greece closed definitively," said the prime minister, whose fragile coalition had put its future on the line by endorsing a fresh round of unpopular austerity measures and structural reforms in return for further assistance from the EU and IMF.
"Greece has managed to win its credibility again. It has managed to transform a programme of endless austerity into a programme that dares [to enact] reforms and will lead to growth," added a tired looking but visibly relieved Samaras.
Three years after Europe's economic crisis erupted in Athens, the foundations had finally been laid to ensure that Greece's "most tortuous and destabilising problem" – its massive pile of debt – would become sustainable, he said. From being the eurozone's most indebted nation, Greeks can now expect to see their debt load cut to 124% of GDP in 2020 from the projected 190% of national outlay in 2014, under a package of measure that include a bond buy-back and various interest rate cuts on official loans.
"The agreement has secured the immediate disbursement of capital," Samaras told Greeks, emphasising that the installment would be bigger than the €31.5bn Greece had been on track to receive. "The recapitalisation of banks will protect the deposits of Greek people and primarily pave the way for liquidity to return to the Greek economy."
Following months of uncertainty over Athens' place in the 17-nation eurozone bloc – spawned to a great degree by debate over its ability to deliver reforms – officials described the deal as a major vote of confidence in Greece.
Until last week, the issue of reducing Greece's debt – a source of great friction between the EU and IMF – had not even been on the table. "It guarantees Greece's place in the hardcore of Europe," said the interior minister, Evripides Stylianides, a senior cadre in Samaras' centre-right New Democracy party.
"We got the maximum that we could have won," he told state-run TV, emphasising that Athens had not only succeeded in achieving the cash injection but an extra two years to meet fiscal targets.
But while there was universal consensus that the deal will go down as a defining point in the euro debt drama, party leaders on both the left and right also agreed that for a country that has constantly defied easy quick fixes the latest rescue formula was another case of foreign lenders – especially pre-election Germany – buying time. With austerity the price of continued assistance, analysts questioned the efficacy of a rescue that would once again preclude growth and development in a country whose economy is on course to contract by an unprecedented 25%, all a result of internationally mandated spending cuts.
"It does not include a viable plan [of growth and development] for Greece and that's why it's not a deal," said the main opposition leader, Alexis Tsipras, whose radical left Syriza party has argued that Greece's only hope is to reject the very policies that have prompted the economic death spiral. Economists, likewise, claimed that Athens' debt mountain would only become manageable once it had been reduced to 90% of GDP, in keeping with other eurozone member states.
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Oil Falls on Supply Forecast Amid Greek Concern
 AFP | Oil Falls on Supply Forecast Amid Greek Concern Businessweek Oil fell for a second day as U.S. crude inventories were forecast to increase and on concern that a deal for Greece to buy back its bonds may falter. Prices dropped as much as 1 percent as oil supplies probably grew 350,000 barrels last week, according ... Oil prices steady on Greek financial aid deal Brent climbs above $111 after Greek debt deal Oil Rises on Greek Debt Deal |
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Babylonian relic to visit US with historic message of tolerance
The 539BC Cyrus cylinder, owned by the British Museum, is seen by some as the first declaration of human rights
It is a deeply unimpressive looking object – about the size and shape of a rugby ball, made from hardened clay and incised all over with the stick-like characters of Babylonian cuneiform. And yet despite an unpromising appearance, it is hard to think of an artefact freighted with such significance for so many different peoples. Made shortly after Cyrus of Persia captured Babylon in 539BC, the Cyrus cylinder records how the ruler allowed deported peoples to return to their homelands and ushered in an era of religious tolerance in his new, multiethnic empire.
For Jews and Christians, it is the object that – along with passages of Isaiah – records the end of Jewish exile in Babylon. In Iran, it has by turns been used as a symbol of the shah's power and, most recently, when the cylinder toured to Tehran in 2010, was adopted as a rallying cry for Palestinian freedom by the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. For others, it is the first declaration of human rights, and an international symbol of religious tolerance. For Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, to which it belongs, it is the "first press release".
Next year, it will become clear how the Cyrus cylinder will be read in the US, when, for the first time, it is to be lent to museums across the Atlantic. The tour will begin in Washington in March, before the relic travels to museums including the Metropolitan in New York and the J Paul Getty in Los Angeles.
When relations between the US and Iran are at best fragile, the interpretation of this evidence of Persia's historic tolerance is an intriguing prospect. For MacGregor the point is about the "reasserting of the importance of the historical perspective. It is a reminder that the problems in the Middle East can be understood only in the context of the long historical framework."
According to John Curtis, keeper of special Middle East projects at the museum, "the Cyrus cylinder is important for the expatriate Iranian community in America, and it is important for the Jewish community". In its role as early human-rights declaration, a replica of the Cyrus cylinder is displayed in the UN headquarters, he pointed out.
But the importance of Cyrus as a figure in the US, he said, goes right back to the founding fathers. Thomas Jefferson, for examples, owned two copies of the Cyropaedia, the Greek author Xenophon's text on the ideal education of a ruler. MacGregor added: "What appealed to the founding fathers about Cyrus was the notion of a secular state that was not on the French model. In other words, a model of a state that was equidistant from all religions, rather than either adopting a state religion, or else being anticlerical. The relic asks the question: can a state be equidistant from all religion?"
The cylinder is also, said MacGregor, a "reminder of the intricacy of Middle-Eastern politics". The object is far from straightforward: it is not itself Persian, but Babylonian: it was found in a dig in the city, in modern Iraq, in 1879 by British Museum archaeologists, who legally acquired it from the Ottomans. There are no Persian inscriptions relating to the event at all; this is a description of events as seen from a Babylonian perspective, and describes Cyrus as having been guided by the Babylonian deity Marduk. The biblical account, meanwhile, which has strikingly similar wording, gives the credit for guiding Cyrus to Jehovah.
"Our role is to represent this as an object in the history of culture," said MacGregor, "but what is fascinating is the reading of the objects by others". Curtis added: "In a way, it doesn't matter so much what the document actually says, so much as what people think it says."
The tour – on which the cylinder will be accompanied by other treasures from the ancient near east – is part of the British Museum's policy of making the collection available as widely as possible "either online or on loan", said MacGregor. An exhibition of Egyptian artefacts recently opened in Mumbai; the museum is also working with institutions in China, Hong Kong and Australia. After its tour to the US, the Cyrus cylinder will itself head to Mumbai where it has significance for the city's community of Zoroastrians. The origins of this religion, whose adherents now number about a quarter of a million, go back to the Persian empire and, if not to Cyrus himself, then certainly to his immediate successors.
The museum also supports permanent displays and touring exhibitions in regional institutions in Britain. MacGregor spoke of his fears for Britain's museums in a time of public spending cuts, saying that it was a "very worrying" situation and emphasising the importance of museums up and down Britain as "keepers of civic space and the public realm, and of huge importance in the economic life of their towns and cities".
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Kipper Williams on Greece
Greek deal: 'There's just one thing missing'
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Greece is a sad story, but painful reforms are necessary, says EU ambassador
Greece is a sad story, but painful reforms are necessary, says EU ambassador Ottawa Citizen The gala opening of the 27th European Union Film Festival took place Nov. 14 with the Irish film Silence. From left, Irish Ambassador John Raymond Bassett, his wife, Patricia, Madeleine Brinkmann and her husband EU Ambassador Matthias Brinkmann. |
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Housing Gives Stock Market Lift, Greece And Fiscal Cliff Weigh It Down
Last Friday, November 16, we got a compelling reversal, then got follow-through the next day to validate the reversal. The following two days we got healthy rest and digestion before putting in another leg higher on Black Friday.
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Oil little changed after retail sales, Greece deal
 Moneycontrol.com | Oil little changed after retail sales, Greece deal KTAR.com (AP) - Oil prices fell Tuesday as traders remained unsure whether positive U.S. economic news signals an increase in fuel demand. Traders weighed news that might have been expected to push oil prices higher. U.S. holiday spending and consumer ... Oil futures reclaim $88 after Greece debt deal Oil lower despite brisk retail sales, Greece deal Crude Oil Rises on Greek Deal |
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Why Greek Debt is Going Long
Why Greek Debt is Going Long Daily Beast That allows the Germans and others to say that they aren't forgiving any debt; it also means that no national parliament needs to ratify a bill writing off any Greek debt. On the other hand, the official sector is happy to term out maturities until, as ... |
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European shares boosted by Greek deal
 Kathimerini | European shares boosted by Greek deal Reuters The accord, reached by the lenders late Monday, will cut Greek debt by 40 billion euros, bringing it down to a more manageable 124 percent of gross domestic product by 2020. The FTSEurofirst 300 was 0.5 percent higher at 1,109.78 by 1246 GMT, after a 0 ... European Markets Respond Cautiously to Greek Deal |
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Forex: Greece buys time; Will EUR/USD buy into Greece?
 FXstreet.com | Forex: Greece buys time; Will EUR/USD buy into Greece? NASDAQ FXstreet.com (Barcelona) - A new chapter in Greece's financial agony has come to an end after EU finance ministers finally reached a debt deal which will see the country, if the respective EU's national parliaments approve it, to be funded with an ... Mid-Day Report: EUR/USD Limited by 1.3 as Greece Boost Faded |
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Greek Deal's Impossible Terms Cannot Restore Debt Solvency By 2020
Greek Deal's Impossible Terms Cannot Restore Debt Solvency By 2020 Forbes While the troika and the IMF managed to bridge the gap and avoid a new Greek default, and probable EMU exit in the medium-term, the terms of the latest deal are by no means enough to put Athens on track to solvency by 2020 or 2022, according to ... |
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Greece Readies Plan to Buy Back Debt
Greece set to unveil plans as soon as Monday to comply with demands of international creditors.
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