How the world sees Greece
Greek Festival Kicks Off in Campbell WKBN/WYFX-TV Archangel Michael Greek Orthodox Church in Campbell is hosting the Greek Festival beginning on Friday. Admission is free for the event which runs until 9 p.m. tonight and from noon until 10 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Entertainment includes Greek ... Greek Festival returns to Fort Myers for 38th year New Greek Fest Promises Authentic Wine, Pastries Greek Fest entertains this weekend |
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 Bostonglobe | Three get life terms in Greek graft case Bostonglobe ATHENS — The former mayor of Thessaloniki, Greece's second-largest city, and two of his top aides were sentenced to life in prison Wednesday after being found guilty of embezzling almost $23.5 million in state funds, a rare conviction in a case ... |
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Giving Greek life a good rap Chicago Tribune (blog) Here's some heartwarming news heading into the weekend (depending on your politics). The AP reports that a fraternity in Boston has raised $17,000 to pay for gender transition surgery for one of its new pledges. Emerson College sophomore Donnie Collins ... |
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 Kathimerini | Lenders gave Greece option of 'velvet exit' from euro, says Venizelos Kathimerini Greeceís lenders offered the country a ìvelvet exitî from the euro in 2011, PASOK leader Evangelos Venizelos claimed during a speech at PASOKís congress in Athens Friday as he proposed that the Socialists combine forces with coalition partner ... Venizelos Says Troika Offered Grexit Greece: Ninth Congress of Pasok opens in Athens |
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Assemblyman Reilich to run for Greece town supervisor Rochester Business Journal “The people of Greece want, need and expect leadership that is as good as they are, and under Republican control they haven't had it,” said Joseph Morelle, chairman of the county Democratic Committee, in a statement following Reilich's announcement. |
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We have a negative balance of trade with the least competitive trading bloc in the world. Why would we want to stay part of it?
In deciding whether we want to be part of the EU we should ask ourselves whether or not it is advantageous to the UK to be part of that trading bloc. A trading bloc is advantageous if it enables us to access a larger free market for our goods and services. Economic theory from Adam Smith to David Ricardo shows that our prosperity is enhanced when we are able to focus on those goods and services that we are best at, and trade them with others who have different skills.
How is that going with our EU partners? Not very well judging by last year's Office for National Statistics figures. We have a negative balance of trade of £55.7bn with our EU partners: they sold us far more than we sold them. And it is clear from their actions in terms of regulation that they would like to snaffle and/or stifle our biggest industry – financial services – as the proposed curbs on bankers' bonuses demonstrates. For all its faults, this is our biggest sector for employment, exports and tax revenues, and the suggested curbs will place us at a disadvantage when competing with US and Asian banks and financial institutions.
And if we are part of a trading bloc, shouldn't we want to be part of a thriving trading bloc? The EU is hardly thriving. Leaving aside the obvious and overwhelming anecdotal evidence, the fact is the EU is the least competitive trading bloc in the world. If you look at the World Economic Forum's global competitiveness report for 2012-13 for labour market efficiency you see the following rankings out of 144 countries surveyed: UK, 5th; Netherlands, 17th; Germany, 53rd; France, 66th; Spain, 108th; Italy, 127th; Greece, 133rd.
You get similar results for other measures, such as pay and productivity, in which the UK is ranked 13th; Germany 41st; Italy 128th; and so on. The impact of the EU's dire performance shows in the fact that in 1980 it represented 31% of world GDP but in 2012 it was down to 19%, and by 2017 is forecast to fall to 17%.
Binding ourselves to the EU is like trying to run a race with a ball and chain as we are forced to import the labour practices and business regulation of countries that are the losers in global competitiveness. Given the choice, you would surely ally yourself to countries that are doing better, such as Singapore, which is second in the table of labour market efficiency; or the US, which is sixth. Do not be fooled into thinking that this is impossible, or that we have to be in a trading bloc with Europe because of our geographical proximity to it. Britain had successful trading relationships that spanned the globe over a century ago, when distance was a real obstacle to doing business. In a world increasingly dominated by the internet, digital business, and near universal access to jet travel, distance is irrelevant.
You will of course hear from the pro- EU lobby that we cannot separate from the EU as it will then cease to trade with us on favourable terms. Remember that our EU partners sell us £56bn more than we sell them. Will they risk losing this?
The prominent members of this lobby, such as Ken Clarke, Peter Mandelson and Richard Branson, are the same cast of characters who campaigned for the UK to join the euro and who forecast disaster for the UK in general and the City in particular if we did not. How do their predictions look now?
Perhaps we should ask the people of Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain and soon France what they think of the merits of euro membership as they struggle with unemployment of over 25% in some cases and youth unemployment of over 50%. In fact, the Italian electorate was asked last weekend and the EU appointee Mario Monti came fourth behind a retired comedian and Silvio Berlusconi, which takes some doing. In any other walk of life, anyone with the pro-euro lobby's abysmal record of forecasting would be ignored – or be so ashamed that they would withdraw from the debate.
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Turkey to deliver note to UN, replying Greece Journal of Turkish Weekly Greek officials informed their Turkish counterparts before they submitted the verbal note to the U.N. However, Greece failed to respond to Ankara's warning to the Greek government to avoid taking such a step. The Greek initiative at the U.N., which ... Turkey, Greece talks focus on territorial waters |
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Reilich Announces Run for Greece Town Supervisor Rochester YNN New York State Assemblyman Bill Reilich is running for Greece Town Supervisor. He formally made the announcement Friday at a press conference at the Greece Town Hall. Reilich is the chair of the Monroe County Republican Committee and has been ... |
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 International Business Times | A Game Of Marbles: Will Britain Ever Return Parthenon Treasures To Greece? International Business Times UK Prime Minister David Cameron has fired another volley in a long-running ”culture war” by declaring that Britain will not return the famed “Elgin Marbles” back to their original owner, Greece. A Game Of Marbles: Will Britain Ever Return Parthenon ... Parthenon Marbles and Koh-i-Noor: Cameron opposes 'returnism' |
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Turkey, Greece talks focus on territorial waters Southeast European Times Greece Prime Minister Antonis Samaras will visit Turkey Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Ankara next week for a series of critical meetings, which are expected to include talks on the countries' differences on energy exploration in disputed ... Turkey to deliver note to UN, replying Greece |
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When Will the Federal Debt Cause a Greece-Like Crisis in the US? TIME Question: Given how fast the federal debt is growing relative to GDP, how long before the U.S. is forced into austerity measures by foreign creditors, as we see happening in Greece? Answer: You can hardly turn on the television these days without ... |
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Greek Festival returns to Fort Myers for 38th year Wink News Greek Festival returns to Fort Myers for 38th year. Story Created: Mar 01, 2013 at 8:52 AM America/New_York. FORT MYERS, Fla. - Everyone gets to be Greek this weekend at Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church's Greek Festival. The event returns to Fort ... New Greek Fest Promises Authentic Wine, Pastries Greek Fest entertains this weekend |
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Ask the Expert: When Will the Federal Debt Cause a Greece-Like Crisis in the US? TIME Question: Given how fast the federal debt is growing relative to GDP, how long before the U.S. is forced into austerity measures by foreign creditors, as we see happening in Greece? Answer: You can hardly turn on the television these days without ... |
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From Beppe Grillo's Five Star Movement in Italy to Ukip in Britain, minor parties are shaking up the political establishment
Holland's iconoclastic populist and Islam-baiter Geert Wilders is plotting a new campaign to rile the political establishment – a "resistance tour" of the Netherlands.
It is not difficult to discern where Wilders, who combines far-right anti-immigrant positions with leftist welfarism, is getting his inspiration from: Rome.
The barnstorming and highly effective campaign by Beppe Grillo and his Five Star Movement in Italy, combining the latest in social media and internet savvy with old-fashioned piazza-pounding up and down the country, has transformed Italian politics. It may yet amplify its effect across a Europe uncommonly volatile and vulnerable to a Grillo-style insurrection.
Wilders promised to take to the bike paths, squares and shopping malls of small-town Holland later this year to mobilise resistance to Europe, immigration and bailing out Greece with Dutch taxpayers' money.
That's an agenda that fits squarely with Nigel Farage's, following Ukip's triumph coming second and beating the Tories in Eastleigh, leaving the party leader relishing next year's elections for the European parliament.
Next door to Holland in the Belgian region of Flanders, the national political establishment is running scared of, while closing ranks to try to stop, the new mayor of Antwerp, Bart De Wever, who hopes to "confederalise" Belgium en route to killing the country off altogether.
De Wever, leading his New Flemish Alliance, is regarded as the most popular politician in Belgium.
Separatism, in Antwerp or Barcelona, is one grassroots response to the financial and economic crisis that now appears to be raising much more fundamental questions about political legitimacy across Europe.
But the backlash against tight fiscal one-shape-fits-all orthodoxy, spearheaded by Germany and orchestrated by Brussels, takes various forms across Europe. In Greece it is the hard-left Syriza movement that has prospered, along with the neo-fascist Golden Dawn, which has added violence to the list of instruments deployed in the backlash of the new politics.
To the north in Denmark, the reaction has been the more common one of Ukip-style protest politics, with opinion polls this week showing that the nationalist, anti-immigrant, rightwing Danish People's party has overtaken the governing social democrats in support.
The suddenness with which Grillo has emerged and taken one in four of Italian votes may have shocked the traditional governing elite across the EU, but it shows little sign of knowing how to respond or adjusting to the message being sent by voters who have sent incumbents tumbling one after the other from Greece to Finland over the past three years.
Where voters have not "kicked out the bums", the big EU rulers have acted instead, with Berlin, Paris, Brussels, and the European Central Bank in Frankfurt conspiring to bring down elected prime ministers Silvio Berlusconi in Italy and George Papandreou in Greece.
The message to the Italians from the German government this week was "you may have kicked out our politicians, but you must not kick out their policies". That was echoed by the European commission in Brussels, while the German opposition social democrat leader, Peer Steinbrück, ventured to suggest that the Italians had voted for "clowns" .
On Thursday the outgoing Italian prime minister, Mario Monti, comprehensively trounced in the election, attended a European commission conference in Brussels where he enjoyed a standing ovation almost as if he had been the victor. The mismatch between the popular and elite verdicts was striking.
Monti said that in his 15 months in office he deliberately never told Italians that his programme of austerity, structural reforms, and tax rises was being implemented because of EU orders. Then he added: "Although of course it was true that the European Union was asking for them."
Given his failure, there may now be a slight shift to soften the edges of German-prescribed austerity while EU leaders also harp on, but do nothing, about repairing the vast gap opening up between the more integrationist policies they are pursuing and democratic accountability and legitimacy to underpin them.
Asked this week about this discrepancy and whether growth could be generated by austerity, a former European prime minister who also served as a senior EU official told the Guardian: "there is no growth, there won't be any growth".
"Voters now associate structural reforms with slump, rising unemployment and social stress," said Charles Grant and Simon Tilford of the Centre for European Reform in a paper published on Friday. "The Berlin-Brussels-Frankfurt consensus on austerity that Monti's government [pursued] has discredited the very reforms that are needed to boost the Italian economy."
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 Kathimerini | HP, Cosco reach deal on Greek hub GlobalPost Hewlett Packard on Friday sealed a deal with Chinese shipping giant Cosco to move a key part of its regional supplies through the main Greek port of Piraeus, officials said. According to the Greek development ministry, HP will base in Piraeus its ... Greece inaugurated the key connection of the Greek railway network to Piraeus ... No VAT For Shipping Through Piraeus |
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 Press TV | Greece, France to ink defense agreement: French defense minister Press TV On January 16, 2013 the International Monetary Fund approved a $4.31-billion (3.24-billion euro) loan installment to Greece on the condition that the country imposes spending cuts and other austerity measures. Tough austerity measures adopted by the ... Improve tax collection to avoid further cuts, IMF tells Greece Greece misses revenue-raising targets IMF Tells Greece: Collect Taxes Or Raise Them |
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