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How the world sees Greece
Friday, December 28, 2012
N.Y. woman arrested in connection with firefighter slayings
Dawn Nguyen of Greece, N.Y., faces a state charge of filing a falsified business record.
Greece: Licences handed in as austerity hits car owners
 euronews | Greece: Licences handed in as austerity hits car owners euronews Second cars, and in some cases even the one and only vehicle, are the latest casualties of austerity in Greece – with cash-strapped owners unable to pay their car tax. With other more pressing bills, many can not afford the levy and are queueing up at ... |
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Wilbur Ross Sees Recession, Warns of 'Greek' Situation
Wilbur Ross Sees Recession, Warns of 'Greek' Situation Newsmax.com And, in the wake of news the U.S. will hit its debt limit earlier than expected, the billionaire financier warned that the United States could soon face its own “Greek” style debt situation. Failure to stop automatic tax increases set for Jan. 1 “would ... |
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Greek tax cheats list altered to hide names -court sources
 Kathimerini | Greek tax cheats list altered to hide names -court sources Reuters ATHENS, Dec 28 (Reuters) - A list of possible Greek tax cheats with Swiss bank accounts was tampered with to remove the names of relatives of the finance minister at the time, court officials said on Friday. George Papaconstantinou, 51, who negotiated ... Eurozone crisis live: Former Greek finance minister denies 'Lagarde List ... Greek prosecutors comb through Swiss bank account list Greek press says Lagarde list altered |
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List of Greeks with Swiss bank accounts found missing 3 names of minister's relatives
ATHENS, Greece - Three relatives of a Greek former Cabinet minister are missing from a list of Greeks with Swiss bank accounts that authorities are using to investigate possible tax evasion, court officials said Friday.
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GREECE: Top 4 banks will need 27.5 bln in recap funds
 Straits Times | GREECE: Top 4 banks will need 27.5 bln in recap funds Financial Mirror Greece's central bank said the country's four biggest banks needed 27.5 bln euros ($36.3 bln) of fresh capital to restore their solvency ratios, confirming disclosures by the lenders last week. Battered by the country's debt crisis and a protracted ... Greece says needs $44.4b to recapitalise 4 biggest banks Major Greek banks ask for 27.4 billion euro Greece's four biggest banks to receive 27.5bn euros |
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Greece Says E50 Billion Enough to Recapitalize Banks
Greece Says E50 Billion Enough to Recapitalize Banks NASDAQ ATHENS--Greece's central bank said Thursday that 50 billion euros earmarked to prop up ailing banks is enough, allaying some concerns that a deepening recession might create a need for more funds to support the sector. The Bank of Greece said the ... |
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Tsipras Says He's Greece's Hope Now
 The Guardian | Tsipras Says He's Greece's Hope Now Greek Reporter Head of Greece's radical leftist SYRIZA party Alexis Tsipras speaks during an interview with Reuters in After narrowly losing the elections earlier this year and settling for becoming the major opposition party, Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA ... Alexis Tsipras: 'We are the great hope for change' In Argentina, Tsipras urges fight against 'neoliberalism' |
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Eurozone crisis live: Former Greek finance minister denies 'Lagarde List' allegations
Mariano Rajoy has defended his austerity package at an end-of-year press conference, and reiterated that he's not planning to ask for a bailout
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Greece Producer Price Inflation Slows For Third Month
Greece Producer Price Inflation Slows For Third Month RTT News Greece's producer price inflation eased for the third consecutive month in November, data from the Hellenic Statistical Authority showed Friday. The producer price index for industry rose 2.4 percent year-on-year, after a 4 percent climb in October ... |
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Germany's far-flung pensioners living in care around the world
With elderly in homes from Hungary to Thailand as cost is too high at home, Germans divided over practice of 'oma export'
Hannelore Könnemann is delighted with her new retirement home, a three-room apartment in which she has managed to fit some of her favourite pieces of baroque furniture. "The first night I arrived I lay in bed saying 'thank God! I'm safe!'" said the 78-year-old former boutique owner. The best thing about it, she says, is that she was able to bring her great Dane, Julio.
But the most bizarre aspect of it is that she's living not in her native Gelsenkirchen in western Germany, but some 760 miles (1220 km) away on the banks of Lake Balaton in Hungary. Konnemann has been a resident for the past two months in SeniorCare Pflegeheim Balaton, and pays €2,100 (£1,725) a month for her apartment, meals and medical care included, which would cost her at least a third more in Germany.
"And for that, daily fitness classes, twice-monthly house visits from a hairdresser and a fish pedicure are all thrown in," she said. She is one of an increasing number of Germans who are moving to overseas retirement homes. She is possibly, one of the lucky ones, having chosen to live abroad. "I've always been adventurous, and I have learnt some Hungarian," she said.
Many elderly people have been forced to move miles away from home to foreign shores, simply to offset the costs of care homes in Germany which have spiralled. One of Könnemann's neighbour Ilse Puderbach, 84, pays €1,500 a month to live at SeniorCare, less than half of what she'd have had to pay in Germay. "At least there's a bit of life here," she said, describing the gym classes and the folk singing sessions. "But it's not what I'd have chosen."
Her son Udo said the family was forced to make the decision to take Ilse hundreds of miles from her home, saying the state would have demanded his contribution to the costs of her care in Germany, which he says as a small businessman he could have ill afforded. "I got the idea from a magazine article," he says, which gave him the contact details to Wohnen-Im-Alter (living in old age), Germany's largest internet portal for age-related services.
"For me it came down not so much as to where but how – here someone comes to check up on my mother every hour at least, and they all speak German and have more time for her than they would in Germany," he said. He too mentions the perks – a massage whenever she wants, regular haircuts, and manicures.
Such stories have flooded the German media in recent months following the revelations that thousands of Germans are being sent to live in overseas nursing homes. News of the practice has stoked much anger to the extent that comparisons have been drawn with the often brutal expulsion of ethnic Germans from parts of what is now Poland and the Czech Republic, after the second world war.
Ulrike Mascher, president of the VdK, a socio-political advocacy organisation founded in 1917 to give assistance to German veterans of the first world war, and a vociferous critic of the overseas transfer of the elderly, said: "I'd have my difficulties living in a country where I couldn't speak the language in my old age". She said the local folk songs with which the residents were regularly serenaded, "may well be very pretty, but the fact remains, they are not my folk songs".
The common thread running through most of the thousands of column inches of angry commentary which have been dedicated to the practice, is how can Germany take such a pragmatic and cold approach to the provision of its elderly? Nicknaming the trend "oma export" ("granny export"), Heribert Prantl of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, wrote of his shame that "a country that is capable of building the best machines in the world has not yet been able to develop a proper and intelligent care concept when in a generation from now every 15th German will be in need of care". He added that Germans, who prided themselves in being Exportweltmeisters (great exporters), had extended the practice to everything that it was useful to be rid of. "Rubbish is exported, atomic waste, old medicines … are deposited wherever it is cheapest to dispose of them … and now we're exporting our infirm and elderly. Gerontological colonialism sounds like something invented in a madhouse, but it's for real. Will we also start exporting our children when the kindergartens become too expensive?" he asked, in an excoriating editorial.
But Jan Rycl, a strategy and human resources adviser who is leading a project to open a 200-bed care home for German clients in Prosecnice, about 20 miles outside Prague, by next autumn, calls oma export descriptions irresponsible, saying it was simply a fact that there was huge demand for cheaper and high quality care. "We've had extensive enquiries from people all over Germany," he said.
"Their main motivation for wanting to move in with us are financial reasons. You cannot assume this is an easy decision for anyone to make, especially not the relatives, who feel guilty, but it is one we will all be confronted with at some point." Costs at his care home, a converted sanatorium, will be between 30 and 50% cheaper than in Germany, he says, largely due to lower labour costs.
That was the main reason that the Swiss nurse Anita Somaini was able to open a nursing and rehabilitation centre on the Thai island of Phuket, called Baan Tschuai Duu Laa (House of Help and Care), specialising in the care of people suffering from dementia and Alzheimers. "Nurses here cost between €350 – €500," she said. "So we're able to provide 24 hours a day one-on-one care with three nurses for each guest. That would just not be possible in Europe."
One of her patients, a 52 year-old Munich banker called Georg, who did not want to give his surname, appears to be an example of how living in an overseas care home can be the right choice for some. He came to live at the home almost a year ago after suffering a serious brain injury following a fall down the stars of his cellar. "I got quite aggressive in my German care home – I didn't like the way they treated me, but here, I have my peace and quiet, a shop where I can buy my cigarettes, I can literally roll into the swimming pool which is right outside my window which looks out onto a lush garden and I can Skype with my family in Munich every day."
A family member comes to visit once every few months, his brother Peter said. "He is genuinely happier here. When we speak to him on Skype we can make sure he's being taken care of and he's also saving around €1,000 a month," he said.
At the Pflegeheim Haus Koroneos in the north of Athens, the Guardian finds 85-year old Edeltraut Papaeleopoulus, who bemoans the fact that she is not living in a retirement home in Germany. "I got stuck in Greece after the war," she said. "I and my German mother were in Alexandria and on our way back to Germany but because I had a piano we had to go via Athens. I met my husband here and have never managed to leave."
She is sharing the home in the district of Ambelokipi, with seven other Germans who have advanced dementia. "We sing German songs, have coffee and cake together every Thursday, and talk about what happened 80 years ago". She had intended to retire in Germany, "having heard about the marvellous facilities there," bur her pension has been cut twice by the bankrupt Greek state, and another cut is expected in January, dashing such hopes. "So I've put some money to one side so that at least I can afford to be taken there to be buried," she said.
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ECB's Nowotny cautiously optimistic about 2013
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Major Greek banks ask for 27.4 billion euro
 RT | Major Greek banks ask for 27.4 billion euro RT Greece's four largest banks need an additional €27.4 billion to overcome the losses from the country's 200bn euro debt restructuring earlier this year. On Friday the National Bank of Greece said it will need a €9.7bn capital boost while Eurobank ... Top four Greek banks need €27.5bn by May Greek Central Bank Says EUR50 Billion Enough to Recap Banks Greek Bank Capital Needs at EU27.5 Billion, Bank of Greece Says |
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Three Quakes Near Patras, Florina
 Greek Reporter | Three Quakes Near Patras, Florina Greek Reporter A third tremor with magnitude of 3.8 degrees was recorded at 7:50am in Florina, in north-western Greece, AlphaFM radio reported. There have been no reports of damage to people or things. Lying on a large fault, Greece is Europe's most seismic country ... |
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Greece given tax cheat list — again
 Greek Reporter | Greece given tax cheat list — again BDlive Given to Greece for a second time by French authorities last Friday, the list contains hundreds of names of Greek account holders at global bank HSBC in Switzerland, which authorities want to investigate over suspected tax evasion. The affair has ... First Lagarde List Missing 600 Names The 'Lagarde List' Is Back, And Things Could Get Really Explosive In Greece Again PM focuses on task ahead as Parliament waits for Lagarde list |
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Greek Crisis Harms Nation's Mental Health
 CNBC.com | Greek Crisis Harms Nation's Mental Health CNBC.com Nonetheless, there is increasing evidence of the psychological strain on Greek society - from increased diagnoses of depression to an uptick in suicides - and the human wreckage it may leave behind long after the economy has been mended. "All types of ... |
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Greece gets list of Swiss bank depositors _ again
Greece gets list of Swiss bank depositors _ again WWLP 22News ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greece's finance ministry says French authorities have once again given it details of Greeks with bank accounts in Switzerland for use in investigating possible tax evasion, after an original list was ignored, misplaced and ... |
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Greece says needs $44.4b to recapitalise 4 biggest banks
Straits Times | Greece says needs $44.4b to recapitalise 4 biggest banks Straits Times Christmas market stalls are set up outside the headquarters of the National Bank of Greece in central Athens, on Friday, Dec 21, 2012. Greece's four biggest banks - National Bank of Greece (NBG), Alpha, Eurobank, and Piraeus - need 27.5 billion euros ... Greek Bank Capital Needs at EU27.5 Billion, Bank of Greece Says Greece Says EUR50 Billion Enough to Recapitalize Banks Greece says needs 27.5 bn euros to recapitalise 4 banks |
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Detained Greek Ship, Crew Released in Nigeria
Detained Greek Ship, Crew Released in Nigeria Greek Reporter 14_08_07 05 The Greek ship Aegean Horizon and its 23-man crew, who had been held in detention in Nigeria, were released after Greek officials, including Foreign Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos and President Karolos Papoulias apppealed to the Nigerian ... |
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