@Dave: To me, it’s just another piece of proof of Voridis’ fas­cist sym­pa­thies. BTW, was this guy ever arrested for harass­ing peo­ple back then or did he just get off scot-free?

Who knows why the rat­ings agen­cies still have cred­i­bil­ity, but you have to give S&P credit for going against the “aus­ter­ity for­ever” group-think in their lat­est round of euro­zone down­grades. And I guess Merkel gets gold star for per­sis­tence in duplic­ity:

Jan­u­ary 14, 2012, 11:31 am
S&P On Europe
Paul Krugman

S&P’s down­grade of a bunch of Euro­pean sov­er­eigns was no sur­prise. What was some­what sur­pris­ing — and which went unmen­tioned in almost all the news sto­ries I’ve read — was why S&P has got­ten so pes­simistic. From their FAQs:

We also believe that the agree­ment [the lat­est euro res­cue plan] is pred­i­cated on only a par­tial recog­ni­tion of the source of the cri­sis: that the cur­rent finan­cial tur­moil stems pri­mar­ily from fis­cal profli­gacy at the periph­ery of the euro­zone. In our view, how­ever, the finan­cial prob­lems fac­ing the euro­zone are as much a con­se­quence of ris­ing exter­nal imbal­ances and diver­gences in com­pet­i­tive­ness between the EMU’s core and the so-called “periph­ery”. As such, we believe that a reform process based on a pil­lar of fis­cal aus­ter­ity alone risks becom­ing self-defeating, as domes­tic demand falls in line with con­sumers’ ris­ing con­cerns about job secu­rity and dis­pos­able incomes, erod­ing national tax rev­enues.

And today we read about the response:

Ger­man chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel has called on euro­zone gov­ern­ments speed­ily to imple­ment tough new fis­cal rules after Stan­dard & Poor’s down­graded the credit rat­ings of France and Aus­tria and seven other second-tier sovereigns.

Still bar­rel­ing down the road to nowhere.

ahh­hhh! need new shows!

@Mast: I’d like to see him back some­time, too. =)

Losses for Greek bond­hold­ers?! Oh the human­ity!

Hedge Funds May Sue Greece if It Tries to Force Loss
By LANDON THOMAS Jr.
Pub­lished: Jan­u­ary 18, 2012

LONDON — Hedge funds have been known to use hard­ball tac­tics to make money. Now they have come up with a new one: suing Greece in a human rights court to make good on its bond pay­ments.

The novel approach would have the funds argu­ing in the Euro­pean Court of Human Rights that Greece had vio­lated bond­holder rights, though that could be a mul­ti­year project with no guar­an­tee of a pay­off. And it would not be likely to pro­duce sym­pa­thy for these funds, which many blame for the lack of progress so far in the nego­ti­a­tions over restruc­tur­ing Greece’s debts.

The tac­tic has emerged in con­ver­sa­tions with lawyers and hedge funds as it became clear that Greece was con­sid­er­ing pass­ing leg­is­la­tion to force all pri­vate bond­hold­ers to take losses, while exempt­ing the Euro­pean Cen­tral Bank, which is the largest insti­tu­tional holder of Greek bonds with 50 bil­lion euros or so.

Legal experts sug­gest that the investors may have a case because if Greece changes the terms of its bonds so that investors receive less than they are owed, that could be viewed as a prop­erty rights vio­la­tion — and in Europe, prop­erty rights are human rights.

...

At the root of the dis­pute is a grow­ing insis­tence on the part of Ger­many and the Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund that as Greece’s econ­omy con­tin­ues to col­lapse, its debt — now about 140 per­cent of its gross domes­tic prod­uct — needs to be reduced as rapidly as possible.

Those two pow­er­ful actors — which con­trol the purse strings for cur­rent and future Greek bailouts — have pres­sured Greece to adopt a more aggres­sive tone toward its cred­i­tors. As a result, Greece has demanded that bond­hold­ers accept not only a 50 per­cent loss on their new bonds but also a lower inter­est rate on them. That is a tough pill for investors to swal­low, given the already steep losses they face, and one that would be likely to increase the cumu­la­tive hair­cut to between 60 and 70 percent.

...

But with their con­sid­er­able finan­cial resources, some funds may be will­ing to pur­sue such a route, and they point to sim­i­lar cases won by hedge funds in Latin Amer­ica. While the prospect of Greece pay­ing an investor any time soon is slim, the coun­try wants to avoid a parade of law­suits across Europe, which would restrict its abil­ity to raise money in inter­na­tional markets.

Argentina, which defaulted on its debts in 2002, still faces legal claims from investors that have made it nearly impos­si­ble for the coun­try to tap global debt markets.

“It can­not be Angela Merkel that decides who suf­fers losses,” said one aggrieved investor who was con­sid­er­ing legal action and did not want to be iden­ti­fied for that rea­son. “What Europe is for­get­ting is that there needs to be respect for con­tract rights.”

It is not just the legal cud­gel that investors are threat­en­ing to use. Some hedge funds have dis­cussed among them­selves the pos­si­bil­ity of demand­ing a side pay­ment, as they describe it, as a price Europe and Greece must pay if the two want the funds to par­tic­i­pate in the agreement.

...

[...] post by anti-fascist researcher and radio host Dave Emory is rem­i­nis­cent, as he points out, of the fas­cis, « a bun­dle of rods bound together with an axe head joined to it ». [...]

Regard­ing the recent wave arson in Athens amidst the anti-austerity protests, note that eye-witnesses are report­ing that it was crim­i­nal gangs try­ing to extort pro­tec­tion money from busi­ness, and not left-wing pro­tes­tors, that were start­ing the fires. Hmmmm...

Feb­ru­ary 17, 2012 6:04 pm
Grim effects of aus­ter­ity show on Greek streets

By Kerin Hope in Athens

Hud­dled in a sleep­ing bag under a porch, his few pos­ses­sions stashed in a black bin-liner, Rover­tos awaits a visit from a lawyer who man­ages the graffiti-covered build­ing in cen­tral Athens where he took refuge six weeks ago.

“He said maybe I could stay if the own­ers didn’t object. It might keep bur­glars away,” says the 38-year-old unem­ployed con­struc­tion worker, who started sleep­ing rough after he was evicted last year for unpaid rent.

Rover­tos is one of an esti­mated 20,000 Greeks in the cap­i­tal made home­less over the past year.

As Greece’s cri­sis deep­ens, the social fab­ric is show­ing signs of unrav­el­ling, rais­ing ques­tions about how much more aus­ter­ity the coun­try can take. Job losses, along with pen­sion cuts, have cre­ated a new class of urban poor.

...

Along with the home­less come the scav­engers. Shariq Aziz, an unem­ployed fac­tory worker from Pak­istan, wheels a bat­tered super­mar­ket trol­ley through an upmar­ket res­i­den­tial dis­trict, pick­ing through rub­bish con­tain­ers for use­ful mate­ri­als to sell.

“Any­thing made of metal is good, but leather and glass is also OK,” he says. “I sell what I find to a dealer from Alba­nia with a truck ... he pays enough money for me to get by.”

Immi­grants like Mr Aziz, who shares a room with six other Pak­ista­nis, face phys­i­cal threats as Greek far-right groups grow more assertive.

...

Vio­lence against prop­erty reached new heights dur­ing this week’s anti-austerity riots in the city cen­tre, in which almost 50 unpro­tected build­ings were set ablaze and loot­ing was widespread.

For many Athens res­i­dents, feel­ings of anger and out­rage over the arson attacks were mixed with fears that pub­lic order in the cap­i­tal was at risk of break­ing down.

While police rou­tinely detain dozens of pro­test­ers after vio­lent riots, only a hand­ful come to trial or face sen­tenc­ing for caus­ing dam­age to prop­erty, mainly because of lack of evidence.

Ange­los, who man­ages a cloth­ing store owned by an expa­tri­ate Greek that was dam­aged in the riots, said crim­i­nal gangs, not left­wing extrem­ists, were behind this week’s attacks.

“The guys in masks asked busi­nesses for money so that they wouldn’t get fire­bombed,” he said. “We had wire-mesh over the shopfront so we didn’t get looted but smoke and soot par­ti­cles ruined most of the stock on dis­play. My boss is ready to close the business.”

...

Anti-German sen­ti­ment over the eurozone’s treat­ment of Greece is lead­ing to a surge in Greek neo-Nazi sen­ti­ments. I think Pavlov­ian gulli­bil­ity just jumped to shark:

NYTimes
Hard Times Lift Greece’s Anti-Immigrant Fringe

By RACHEL DONADIO and DIMITRIS BOUNIAS
Pub­lished: April 12, 2012

ATHENS — On a recent morn­ing in the upper-middle-class neigh­bor­hood of Papagou here, mem­bers of the Greek ultra­na­tion­al­ist group Golden Dawn stood at an out­door veg­etable mar­ket cam­paign­ing for the com­ing national election.

...

He approached an older woman, who recounted how a rel­a­tive had been robbed of about $800. “They threw her on the ground, they took the 600 euros she had with­drawn from the bank to pay for her husband’s nurs­ing home,” the woman said. “She was even a Com­mu­nist, and she told me, ‘I’m going to Golden Dawn to report this.

The exchange was a telling sign of how the hard-core group — bet­ter known for its vio­lent tan­gles with immi­grants in down­town Athens and for the Nazi salutes that some mem­bers per­form at ral­lies — has been try­ing to broaden its appeal, cap­i­tal­iz­ing on fears that ille­gal immi­gra­tion has grown out of con­trol at a time when the econ­omy is bleed­ing jobs.

Many polls indi­cate that in the national elec­tions sched­uled for May 6, Golden Dawn may sur­pass the 3 per­cent thresh­old needed to enter Par­lia­ment. The group has been cam­paign­ing on the streets, some­thing that main­stream politi­cians have avoided for fear of angry reac­tions by vot­ers who blame them for Greece’s eco­nomic collapse.

But even if Golden Dawn fails to enter Par­lia­ment, it has already had an impact on the broader polit­i­cal debate. In response to the fears over immi­gra­tion and ris­ing crime, Greece’s two lead­ing par­ties — the Social­ist Party and the center-right New Democ­racy Party — have also tapped into nation­al­ist sen­ti­ment and are tack­ing hard right in a cam­paign in which immi­gra­tion has become as cen­tral as the economy.

Experts say the group is thriv­ing where the Greek state seems absent, the most vir­u­lent sign of how the eco­nomic col­lapse has empow­ered fringe groups while erod­ing the polit­i­cal main­stream, a sit­u­a­tion that some Greek news out­lets have begun com­par­ing to Weimar Germany.

“Greek soci­ety at this point is a lab­o­ra­tory of extreme-right-wing evo­lu­tion,” said Nicos Demertzis, a polit­i­cal sci­en­tist at the Uni­ver­sity of Athens. “We are going through an unprece­dented finan­cial cri­sis; we are a frag­mented soci­ety with­out strong civil asso­ci­a­tions” and with “gen­er­al­ized cor­rup­tion in all the admin­is­tra­tion levels.”

...

The Social­ists, who were in power when Greece asked for a for­eign bailout, have seen their pop­u­lar­ity plum­met, and they are des­per­ate for a way to recon­nect with vot­ers. This month, Greece’s pub­lic order min­is­ter, Michalis Chriso­choidis, a Social­ist in the interim gov­ern­ment of Prime Min­is­ter Lucas Papademos, said Greece would set up deten­tion cen­ters for ille­gal immi­grants. And the Social­ist health min­is­ter caused a stir when he said that Greece would require ille­gal immi­grants to undergo checks for infec­tious diseases.

But the estab­lished par­ties are also warn­ing of the dan­gers of extrem­ism. Last week, Evan­ge­los Venize­los, who is run­ning in the national elec­tions as Social­ist Party leader, warned that “Par­lia­ment can­not become a place for those nos­tal­gic for fas­cism and Nazism.”

Golden Dawn is unabashedly nos­tal­gic for both. Founded in the early 1980s by sym­pa­thiz­ers of the mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship that gov­erned Greece from 1967 to 1974, Golden Dawn has always espoused a neo-Nazi ide­ol­ogy. Its sym­bol clearly resem­bles the swastika, and copies of “Mein Kampf” and books on the racial supe­ri­or­ity of the Greeks are on promi­nent dis­play in its Athens headquarters.

In the early 1990s, it cap­i­tal­ized on wide­spread oppo­si­tion to the use of the name Mace­do­nia by a for­mer Yugoslav repub­lic; a Greek region shares that name. And in recent years, Golden Dawn has muted the neo-Nazi talk and focused on anti-immigrant actions in down­town Athens, where the num­ber of ille­gal immi­grants, most from South Asia, Alba­nia and Africa, has exploded.

The group has fos­tered grass-roots “cit­i­zens’ groups” that it says are intended to pro­tect Greek cit­i­zens from crime by immi­grants but that crit­ics say are just vig­i­lante squads.

I..

“Up to now, Golden Dawn was not polit­i­cally dan­ger­ous but actu­ally dan­ger­ous,” said Tas­sos Kostopou­los, an expert on Greek pol­i­tics. He and oth­ers said Golden Dawn had his­tor­i­cally had ties to the Greek state, espe­cially the police. In a tele­vi­sion inter­view last year, Mr. Chriso­choidis, the Social­ist pub­lic order min­is­ter, said that when he took office in 2009, “guys from Golden Dawn and a num­ber of fas­cist types were par­tic­i­pat­ing in actions that assisted the police.”

Athana­sios Kokkalakis, the Greek police spokesman, acknowl­edged episodes of racist vio­lence in Athens but said that the police force had not ver­i­fied ties between its mem­bers and Golden Dawn.

Golden Dawn has been run­ning unsuc­cess­fully in national elec­tions since 1994, but it took a big step toward legit­imiza­tion in 2010, when its leader, Nikos Michalo­li­akos, was elected to the Athens City Coun­cil. In an inter­view, Mr. Michalo­li­akos called the group “national social­ists” and said it was con­cerned about crime and the finan­cial crisis.

He said that the group opposed Greece’s agree­ment with its for­eign lenders and that the country’s polit­i­cal lead­er­ship was too beholden to “inter­na­tional bankers.” The Nazi salutes by Golden Dawn mem­bers were not offi­cial pol­icy, he said, adding that “we can’t con­trol thou­sands” of peo­ple. (Soon after his elec­tion, Mr. Michalo­li­akos him­self was cap­tured on video doing a Nazi salute in the City Council.)

Asked if he believed that the Holo­caust had hap­pened, Mr. Michalo­li­akos said, “I think all his­tory is writ­ten by the winners.”

Another lead­ing Golden Dawn offi­cial, Ilias Kasidiaris, was more blunt. “The main view in Europe is that six mil­lion Jews were killed. His­tory has shown that this is a lie,” he said in an interview.

Mr. Kasidiaris added that he believed that all ille­gal immi­grants should be “deported imme­di­ately,” and that Greece should plant mine­fields along its bor­der with Turkey “Not to kill the immi­grants,” he said, “but to clearly define an area that would stop any­one from think­ing of access­ing the country.”

Although Golden Dawn is clearly still cozy with neo-Nazi ide­ol­ogy, it has also tapped into ris­ing Greek nation­al­ist sen­ti­ment, which is now anti-German. “It’s right to hate Ger­many, because it is still the leader of the banksters and the Euro­pean Union,” Mr. Michalo­li­akos, the group’s leader, said, using a deroga­tory term for bankers.

...

Let’s just hope the Greek youth can see through the Golden Dawn/Bankster unac­knowl­edged alliance, because the banksters seem to really hate the Greek youth:

UPDATE 1-One in five Greeks unem­ployed, half of all youth

Thu Apr 12, 2012 5:55am EDT

By Harry Papachristou

(Reuters) — Greece’s job­less rate rose to a record of 21.8 per­cent in Jan­u­ary, twice as high as the euro zone aver­age, sta­tis­tics ser­vice ELSTAT said on Thurs­day, as the debt cri­sis and aus­ter­ity mea­sures took their toll on the labour market.

Youth unem­ploy­ment remained at lev­els where more are job­less than in work.

Bud­get cuts imposed by the Euro­pean Union and the Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund as a con­di­tion for sav­ing the debt-laden coun­try from a chaotic default have caused a wave of cor­po­rate clo­sures and bankruptcies.

Greece’s aver­age annual unem­ploy­ment rate for 2011 jumped to 17.7 per­cent from 12.5 per­cent in the pre­vi­ous year, accord­ing to ELSTAT fig­ures. December’s rates was 21.2 percent.

For the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive month, those aged between 15–24 years were hit hard. Unem­ploy­ment in that age group stood at 50.8 per­cent, twice as high as three years ago.

Greece’s econ­omy is esti­mated to have shrunk by about a fifth since 2008, when it plunged into its deep­est and longest post-war reces­sion. About 600,000 jobs, more than one in 10, have been destroyed in the process.

A record 1.08 mil­lion peo­ple were with­out work in Jan­u­ary, 47 per­cent more than in the same month last year, accord­ing to ELSTAT fig­ures. The num­ber in work dropped 8.6 per­cent to a record low of 3.88 million.

As an increas­ing num­ber of peo­ple claim unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits, the gov­ern­ment is find­ing it increas­ingly dif­fi­cult to meet its bud­get targets.

...

Aaaand humanity’s case of con­gen­i­tal Stock­holm Syn­drome chugs along...

Full polit­i­cal rights for racially pure Greeks only? Well, at least there should be a thriv­ing sec­tor of the Greek econ­omy sell­ing racial purity test­ing kits. Sort of like 23andMe for fas­cists:

Fas­cist Salutes Return to Greece as Anti-Immigrants Chase Vot­ers
By Tom Stoukas — Apr 29, 2012 4:00 PM CT
Bloomberg

Theodore Couloumbis expe­ri­enced the Nazi occu­pa­tion of Greece as a boy and 70 years later he’s wor­ried he’ll wit­ness the return of stiff-armed salutes and fas­cist flags.

The Golden Dawn party may enter the par­lia­ment in Athens for the first time after May 6 elec­tions, cur­rent polls show, as ris­ing anti-immigrant sen­ti­ment among austerity-hit Greeks spurs sup­port for groups for­merly on the polit­i­cal fringes. Ninety per­cent of peo­ple sur­veyed for a To Vima news­pa­per poll pub­lished on April 9 said immi­grants are respon­si­ble for an increase in vio­lence and crime.

“The last thing I would want to see in the Greek par­lia­ment is a bunch of peo­ple who give the Hitler salute,” said Couloumbis, 76, a pro­fes­sor of inter­na­tional rela­tions at the Uni­ver­sity of Athens. “I’m old enough to remem­ber the absolute ugli­ness of that par­tic­u­lar occupation.”

The group is known for its vio­lent clashes in immi­grant neigh­bor­hoods and for a red and black party logo resem­bling a dis­en­tan­gled swastika. Mem­bers of the group have said it’s not Nazi or fas­cist and they reject any con­nec­tion of its logo to a swastika, say­ing it’s an ancient Greek sym­bol. A video of Golden Dawn leader Niko­laos Michalo­li­akos shows him giv­ing the fas­cist salute.

Golden Dawn’s char­ter says its “main ideal and belief is the nation-tribe” and that “only men and women of Greek descent and con­scious­ness should have full polit­i­cal rights.” Michalo­li­akos declined to com­ment for this story when called on his mobile phone.

Land Mines

The party wants land mines placed on the Greek-Turkish bor­der to stop ille­gal immi­grants enter­ing the coun­try and can­cel­la­tion of Greek loan accords with the Euro­pean Union and Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund.

It also calls for wip­ing out debt accu­mu­lated since 1974 that’s deemed “ille­gal and bur­den­some.” Greek banks that get state funds should be nation­al­ized, as should all nat­ural resources, the party’s pro­gram says.

Golden Dawn is bol­ster­ing sup­port by orga­niz­ing secu­rity patrols in immigrant-heavy neigh­bor­hoods and by run­ning food banks for Greeks suf­fer­ing from five years of reces­sion and unem­ploy­ment of almost 22 per­cent.

“I’m vot­ing for Golden Dawn because I want all the immi­grants to leave,” Maria Papa­geor­giou, 52, said in an inter­view in the Athens neigh­bor­hood where she has lived all her life. “There’s a high crime rate, it’s a mis­er­able sit­u­a­tion. They should leave and go back to their coun­tries. Or maybe the Ger­mans can take them.“
Euro Status

At stake in the elec­tion is whether the next Greek gov­ern­ment can imple­ment the aus­ter­ity mea­sures on which bailout funds and euro mem­ber­ship depend.

The Athens Stock Exchange has lost 61 per­cent of its value over the last two years. An index of Greek banks dropped 73 per­cent in the last 12 months. Greek gov­ern­ment bonds matur­ing in Feb­ru­ary 2023 are yield­ing 20.55 per­cent com­pared with 18.28 per­cent on March 14, the day after the country’s credit rat­ing was lifted out of the default cat­e­gory by Fitch Rat­ings fol­low­ing the agree­ment of a debt swap.

Polls show Golden Dawn win­ning as much as 5 per­cent of the vote, enough to enter par­lia­ment for the first time. The party, which was founded two decades ago, won its first seat on the Athens city coun­cil in 2010.

Golden Dawn’s rise comes as far-right or nation­al­ist par­ties are surg­ing in a num­ber of Euro­pean coun­tries includ­ing Hun­gary, Aus­tria, the Nether­lands and France, where anti– immi­grant National Front leader Marine Le Pen won 17.9 per­cent in the first round of pres­i­den­tial elec­tions on April 22.

...

In addi­tion to Golden Dawn, the Inde­pen­dent Greeks party has polled near 10 per­cent. It was set up on Feb. 24 by Panos Kam­menos after he was expelled from New Democ­racy for cast­ing a vote against the interim Papademos government.

Laos, a nation­al­ist party that wants immi­grants to be shipped to unin­hab­ited Greek islands before being deported, is also vying for anti-foreigner vot­ers. Polls show as many as 10 polit­i­cal par­ties could enter Greece’s parliament.

...