That ‘old’ cur­ren­cy quote by the GB for­eign sec­re­tary is absolute­ly absurd. Dave, as you’ve said for years the EU was forged to allow Ger­many to get done what they could­n’t get com­plete­ly done near­ly 70 years ago.Doesn’t mat­ter if plans exist for Greece to fail or not-
STILL we have vir­tu­al­ly unlim­it­ed lever­age via the shad­ow bank­ing sys­tem, in which there are prac­ti­cal­ly no hard assets back­ing the infi­nite lay­ers of debt cre­at­ed, and which when final­ly unwound, will cre­ate a cat­a­clysmic col­lapse of all finan­cial insti­tu­tions, where every bank is daisy-chained to each oth­er cour­tesy of mul­ti­ple lay­ers of “hypoth­e­ca­tion, and re-hypoth­e­ca­tion ” and who knows what else.

“She’s the queen of Europe”:

Ger­many finds itself back in pow­er in Europe
Ger­many is the unques­tioned boss amid Europe’s debt cri­sis and eco­nom­ic woes. But the turn­around has inspired dis­com­fort among its neigh­bors and among Ger­mans.

By Hen­ry Chu, Los Ange­les Times

Feb­ru­ary 27, 2012, 6:45 p.m.
Report­ing from Berlin—
For near­ly 70 years, Ger­many’s grand nation­al ambi­tion has basi­cal­ly been not to have one.

After los­ing two world wars and car­ry­ing out a hor­rif­ic geno­cide, the coun­try set to work­ing its way back into the Euro­pean fold, con­tent to focus on rebuild­ing its shat­tered econ­o­my while duti­ful­ly leav­ing con­ti­nen­tal lead­er­ship to the likes of France.

The plan has been a roar­ing suc­cess — so much so that, in one of his­to­ry’s great ironies, Ger­many today finds itself right back where it was­n’t sup­posed to be: dom­i­nat­ing Europe.

As the region’s rich­est, most pop­u­lous nation, with con­trol over purse strings rather than panz­ers, Ger­many is the unques­tioned boss amid Europe’s stub­born debt cri­sis and deep­en­ing eco­nom­ic malaise. But the turn­around has inspired a fair bit of dis­com­fort and unease, not just among some neigh­bor­ing nations but also among some Ger­mans.

“We have an ambiva­lent rela­tion­ship with pow­er,” said senior research fel­low Ulrike Guerot of the Euro­pean Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions in Berlin. “We’ve nev­er got­ten it right.”

Poten­tial­ly the fate of the glob­al econ­o­my now lies in Ger­many’s hands as it heads the effort to keep heav­i­ly indebt­ed Greece (where peo­ple mut­ter about a “Fourth Reich”) from going under and pulling down oth­er Euro­zone coun­tries with it. On Mon­day, Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel suc­cess­ful­ly steered approval for a $175-bil­lion Greek bailout through the Ger­man Par­lia­ment, a deeply divi­sive mea­sure for Ger­man tax­pay­ers who will foot more than half the bill.

Even so, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma and oth­er world lead­ers are urg­ing Ger­many to con­tribute even more to a per­ma­nent Euro­pean bailout fund that might stanch the debt cri­sis — pres­sure that Merkel has so far resist­ed.

The lead­er­ship role thrust onto Ger­many is turn­ing out to be a mine­field in many ways, com­pli­cat­ed by the nation’s past. Berlin is caught in a clas­sic damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t posi­tion, its every move fod­der for crit­ics eager to spot signs either of Teu­ton­ic bel­liger­ence or a fail­ure to exer­cise pow­er respon­si­bly.

...

The plan that Europe is pur­su­ing to save the euro cur­ren­cy bears an unmis­tak­ably Ger­man stamp, with its insis­tence on solemn pledges of fis­cal rec­ti­tude, stiff aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures and pun­ish­ment for coun­tries that stray. This week, near­ly all of the Euro­pean Union’s 27 nations are due to sign a pact on fis­cal dis­ci­pline that was large­ly writ­ten in Berlin.

Despite the grow­ing cho­rus of detrac­tors and indi­ca­tors show­ing that aus­ter­i­ty is stran­gling eco­nom­ic growth in ail­ing nations, Merkel has refused to yield, and no fel­low Euro­pean leader has been strong enough to over­rule her.

“She’s the queen of Europe,” said Josef Joffe, edi­tor of the news­pa­per Die Zeit.

...

Let them eat bakla­va.

Point­less pain rains in Spain:

Spain under pres­sure to enact more aus­ter­i­ty after 2011deficit comes in high­er than fore­cast

By Asso­ci­at­ed Press, Updat­ed: Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 28, 5:29 AM

MADRID — Spain government’s faced height­ened pres­sure Tues­day to enact fur­ther painful aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures, after fig­ures showed the pub­lic finances in 2011 were in even worse shape than its already pes­simistic pre­dic­tions.

The high­er than antic­i­pat­ed bud­get deficit is like­ly to spell yet more bad news for a coun­try that’s expect­ed to slide back into reces­sion at a time when it’s already reel­ing from a sky-high unem­ploy­ment rate of near­ly one in four — it’s even worse for young peo­ple with around half out of work. Spain’s banks are also under pres­sure, hav­ing suf­fered big loss­es when a prop­er­ty boom implod­ed.

On Mon­day, the gov­ern­ment revealed that its bud­get deficit for 2011 came in at 8.5 per­cent of nation­al income. Though slight­ly low­er than 2010’s equiv­a­lent of 9.3 per­cent, it’s high­er than the 8 per­cent fore­cast the new con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment issued after tak­ing pow­er in Decem­ber. The con­ser­v­a­tives had already raised the fore­cast from the pre­vi­ous Social­ist government’s 6 per­cent.

The high­er than expect­ed 2011 out­come is like­ly to ratch­et up the pres­sure on the new gov­ern­ment to announce more deficit-cut­ting mea­sures if it’s to get the bud­get deficit down to the stat­ed goal of 4.4 per­cent of gross domes­tic prod­uct this year, unless it gets some relief from the EU in the form of an eas­i­er 2012 tar­get.

...

The gov­ern­ment recent­ly denied a news report that it had exag­ger­at­ed its unof­fi­cial esti­mate of the 2011 deficit so as to improve its chances of get­ting eas­i­er terms from the Euro­pean Union.

Finance Min­is­ter Cristo­bal Mon­toro said the fig­ures showed that the gov­ern­ment was “not exag­ger­at­ing” with its ini­tial 8 per­cent esti­mate.

The cen­ter-right Pop­u­lar Par­ty took pow­er in Decem­ber after scor­ing a land­slide win in Novem­ber elec­tions as Spaniards fed up with what is now a near 23 per­cent job­less rate pun­ished the pre­vi­ous Social­ist gov­ern­ment.

The new gov­ern­ment has said it will present a new full-blown 2012 bud­get by the end of March. It is there that Spaniards can almost cer­tain­ly expect some degree of fresh, sting­ing pain.

...

This is also a good point to note Krug­man’s con­stant reminder that it was a hous­ing bub­ble that wrecked Spain’s finances and, pre-cri­sis, Spain was con­sid­ered a mod­el coun­try in terms of bud­get dis­ci­pline. That’s some­thing most aus­ter­i­ty-addled econ­o­mists seem to for­get.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203833004577249831718108646.html

FEBRUARY 28, 2012
S&P Declares Greece in Default

BY STEPHEN L. BERNARD AND KATY BURNE
Greece became the first euro-zone mem­ber offi­cial­ly to be rat­ed in default, 13 years after the sin­gle Euro­pean cur­ren­cy was adopt­ed to strength­en the Euro­pean Union.

Stan­dard & Poor’s cut Greece’s long-term cred­it rat­ing to selec­tive default from double‑C. The move was expect­ed, as S&P said this month that it would con­sid­er Greece in default if it added “col­lec­tive-action” claus­es to its sov­er­eign debt, effec­tive­ly forc­ing all bond­hold­ers to accept a bond-swap offer­ing. ...

As always, Mr. Wil­son, when view­ing S & P’s pro­nounce­ments, we must remem­ber that the firm is owned by the McGraw fam­i­ly and they are long­stand­ing mem­bers of the Bush milieu.

With aus­ter­i­ty mania reigning–we might think of the com­pa­ny name as “the stan­dard is poor[er].”

@R. Wil­son and Dave: Well, the Greek default could be worse...for JP Mor­gan and the oth­er banks that sold bil­lions in cred­it default swaps on that Greek debt. Not only do they get a chance to avoid hav­ing to pay out on all that default-insur­ance they sold (because it’s a weird “selec­tive” default), it’s the bank­ing giants’ own rep­re­sen­ta­tives that get to secret­ly make this deci­sion:

How Greece Could Take Down Wall Street

Pol­i­tics / Glob­al Debt Cri­sis 2012 Feb 24, 2012 — 12:40 PM

By: Ellen_Brown

In an arti­cle titled “Still No End to ‘Too Big to Fail,’” William Grei­der wrote in The Nation on Feb­ru­ary 15th:

Finan­cial mar­ket cyn­ics have assumed all along that Dodd-Frank did not end “too big to fail” but instead cre­at­ed a charmed cir­cle of pro­tect­ed banks labeled “sys­tem­i­cal­ly impor­tant” that will not be allowed to fail, no mat­ter how bad­ly they behave.

That may be, but there is one bit of bad behav­ior that Uncle Sam him­self does not have the funds to under­write: the $32 tril­lion mar­ket in cred­it default swaps (CDS). Thir­ty-two tril­lion dol­lars is more than twice the U.S. GDP and more than twice the nation­al debt.

CDS are a form of deriv­a­tive tak­en out by investors as insur­ance against default. Accord­ing to the Comp­trol­ler of the Cur­ren­cy, near­ly 95% of the bank­ing industry’s total expo­sure to deriv­a­tives con­tracts is held by the nation’s five largest banks: JPMor­gan Chase, Cit­i­group, Bank of Amer­i­ca, HSBC, and Gold­man Sachs. The CDS mar­ket is unreg­u­lat­ed, and there is no require­ment that the “insur­er” actu­al­ly have the funds to pay up. CDS are more like bets, and a mas­sive loss at the casi­no could bring the house down.

It could, at least, unless the casi­no is rigged. Whether a “cred­it event” is a “default” trig­ger­ing a pay­out is deter­mined by the Inter­na­tion­al Swaps and Deriv­a­tives Asso­ci­a­tion (ISDA), and it seems that the ISDA is owned by the world’s largest banks and hedge funds. That means the house deter­mines whether the house has to pay.

The Hous­es of Mor­gan, Gold­man and the oth­er Big Five are jus­ti­fi­ably wor­ried right now, because an “event of default” declared on Euro­pean sov­er­eign debt could jeop­ar­dize their $32 tril­lion deriv­a­tives scheme. Accord­ing to Rudy Aviz­ius in an arti­cle on The Mar­ket Ora­cle (UK) on Feb­ru­ary 15th, that explains what hap­pened at MF Glob­al, and why the 50% Greek bond write-down was not declared an event of default.

If you paid only 50% of your mort­gage every month, these same banks would quick­ly declare you in default. But the rules are quite dif­fer­ent when the banks are the insur­ers under­writ­ing the deal.

....

It’s good to be the King:

02/28/2012 | 04:36pm
ISDA Pan­el To Review Greek CDS Trig­ger Query

NEW YORK — A spe­cial com­mit­tee of the Inter­na­tion­al Swaps and Deriv­a­tives Asso­ci­a­tion has agreed to review recent devel­op­ments in Greece’s debt restruc­tur­ing as a poten­tial “cred­it event” that might trig­ger $3.2 bil­lion of cred­it-default swaps on Greece for pay­outs.

The move may result in the coun­try being offi­cial­ly declared in breach of its oblig­a­tions to bond­hold­ers some­what soon­er than expected–even though Greece has­n’t failed to hon­or pay­ments and its restruc­tur­ing deal with pri­vate cred­i­tors isn’t yet com­plete.

ISDA said in a state­ment Tues­day that, as sec­re­tary to the so-called Deter­mi­na­tions Com­mit­tee that decides such mat­ters for the CDS mar­ket, the com­mit­tee will hold a meet­ing at 1100 GMT Thurs­day to deter­mine whether to force pay­ers of CDS pro­tec­tion on Greek sov­er­eign bonds to com­pen­sate buy­ers.

The Deter­mi­na­tions Com­mit­tee said Mon­day it had until 1700 GMT Wednes­day to either take up the request sent by an anony­mous par­ty to the com­mit­tee or reject it.

The anony­mous request asked the com­mit­tee to con­sid­er whether moves that could force pri­vate investors to for­give 53.5% of the face val­ue of Greek debt, while the Euro­pean Cen­tral Bank got a bet­ter deal, con­sti­tutes manda­to­ry sub­or­di­na­tion that should allow hold­ers of CDS to col­lect com­pen­sa­tion.

The ECB and nation­al cen­tral banks “ben­e­fit­ed from a change in the pri­or­i­ty of pay­ments as a result of the Hel­lenic Repub­lic exclu­sive­ly offer­ing them the abil­i­ty to exchange out of their eli­gi­ble instru­ments pri­or to the [pri­vate cred­i­tor] exchange and [expect­ed] imple­men­ta­tion of” the col­lec­tive-action claus­es, the request read.

Under the 2003 Cred­it Deriv­a­tives def­i­n­i­tions pub­lished by ISDA, a change in the pay­ment pri­or­i­ty rank­ing of any oblig­a­tion, caus­ing its sub­or­di­na­tion, is one of the events in restruc­tur­ing that can trig­ger CDS for payouts–as long as it results from a dete­ri­o­ra­tion in cred­it­wor­thi­ness.

...

The deci­sion mak­ers’ iden­ti­ties and their cre­den­tials are a close­ly guard­ed secret of the firms those indi­vid­u­als rep­re­sent and of the Inter­na­tion­al Swaps and Deriv­a­tives Asso­ci­a­tion, a trade body for swaps that con­venes a 15-mem­ber com­mit­tee every time such a deter­mi­na­tion is request­ed of it.

ISDA’s Deter­mi­na­tions Com­mit­tee for Europe com­pris­es 10 vot­ing deal­er banks and five major invest­ment firms named by ISDA. A super­ma­jor­i­ty of 12 must agree for a deci­sion to be bind­ing on CDS held by par­ties who have signed up to be bound by ISDA pro­to­cols.

The deal­er firms con­sti­tute some of the largest invest­ment banks in the world, and one com­mit­tee mem­ber rep­re­sents each. They are Bank of Amer­i­ca Mer­rill Lynch, Bar­clays Cap­i­tal, BNP Paribas, Cred­it Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Gold­man Sachs, J.P. Mor­gan Chase, Mor­gan Stan­ley, Soci­ete Gen­erale and UBS. Mean­while, the invest­ment firms are sim­i­lar­ly influ­en­tial: Blue­Moun­tain Cap­i­tal, Citadel, D.E. Shaw, Elliott Man­age­ment Corp. and Pacif­ic Invest­ment Man­age­ment Co.

@Pterrrafractyl–

Great work! When post­ing arti­cles, it would be a good guard against link decay to put the title of the work in the text on the site.

That way, if the record is expunged online, it’ll still be here.

@Dave: Good reminder. Link decay is an exam­ple of the 2nd law of inter­net ther­mo­dy­nam­ics. Infor­ma­tion gets lost for­ev­er. :-(

I’m sure they were being com­plete­ly objec­tive:

Greece Default SWAPS Don’t Have to Pay: ISDA
By Abi­gail Moses — Mar 1, 2012 9:01 AM CT
Bloomberg

Default insur­ance on Greek debt won’t be paid out, the Inter­na­tion­al Swaps & Deriv­a­tives Asso­ci­a­tion said after it was asked to rule whether part of the nation’s $170 bil­lion bailout was a cred­it event.

The group said the Euro­pean Cen­tral Bank’s exchange of Greek bonds for new secu­ri­ties exempt from loss­es being imposed on pri­vate investors hasn’t trig­gered $3.25 bil­lion of out­stand­ing cred­it-default swaps. ISDA’s deter­mi­na­tions com­mit­tee, includ­ing JPMor­gan Chase & Co. and Pacif­ic Invest­ment Man­age­ment Co., said the switch didn’t con­sti­tute sub­or­di­na­tion, one of the cri­te­ria for a pay­out under a restruc­tur­ing event.

“The sit­u­a­tion in the Hel­lenic Repub­lic is still evolv­ing” and today’s deci­sions “do not affect the right or abil­i­ty to sub­mit fur­ther ques­tions,” ISDA said in a state­ment. The deci­sion is not an expres­sion of the committee’s “view as to whether a cred­it event could occur at a lat­er date,” the asso­ci­a­tion said.

A swaps pay­out may still hap­pen if Greece uses col­lec­tive action claus­es on pri­vate investors who refuse to take so-called hair­cuts on their debt hold­ings, accord­ing to ISDA’s rules. Offi­cials includ­ing for­mer ECB Pres­i­dent Jean-Claude Trichet have opposed trig­ger­ing swaps because they’re con­cerned traders would be encour­aged to bet against fail­ing nations and wors­en Europe’s debt cri­sis.

...

Unex­pect­ed deficits = sanc­tions. The nEU nor­mal:

Spain Warns It Will Miss 2012 Deficit Tar­get

By DANIEL WOOLLS and GABRIELE STEINHAUSER Asso­ci­at­ed Press
MADRID March 2, 2012 (AP)

Spain’s prime min­is­ter said Fri­day that his reces­sion-rid­den coun­try will miss its deficit goal for this year, risk­ing sanc­tions from the Euro­pean Union.

The announce­ment came as the gov­ern­ment report­ed more grim eco­nom­ic news: a big rise in claims for job­less ben­e­fits last month and a new fore­cast that Span­ish eco­nom­ic out­put will fall 1.7 per­cent this year, worse than the 1 per­cent fore­cast recent­ly by the EU and the 1.5 per­cent pre­dict­ed just weeks ago the Bank of Spain.

Unem­ploy­ment — now at 22.9 per­cent — will hit an aver­age 24.3 per­cent this year, the gov­ern­ment said.

Spain’s gov­ern­ment deficit will reach 5.8 per­cent of eco­nom­ic out­put this year, Prime Min­is­ter Mar­i­ano Rajoy said after an EU sum­mit in Brus­sels. That is much high­er than the 4.4 per­cent Madrid had promised to the oth­er states in the 27-nation bloc.

How­ev­er, Rajoy said Spain still aims to cuts its deficit to 3 per­cent in 2013, which would bring the coun­try back in line with the bloc’s fis­cal rules. He did­n’t say how his EU coun­ter­parts react­ed to the high­er deficit, but insist­ed that he was com­mit­ted to aus­ter­i­ty.

Rajoy’s acknowl­edg­ment does­n’t come as a sur­prise, as Spain sailed far past last year’s deficit tar­get. Instead of 6 per­cent of gross domes­tic prod­uct, the 2011 deficit reached 8.5 per­cent.

How­ev­er, it puts Madrid on col­li­sion course with the EU and its part­ners in the euro cur­ren­cy union, which have focused on aus­ter­i­ty as the best way of fight­ing off a crip­pling debt cri­sis.

Rajoy spoke in Brus­sels after a sum­mit of Euro­pean lead­ers. On the new deficit goal, he said “I did not con­sult oth­er Euro­pean lead­ers and I will inform the Com­mis­sion in April,” he said. “This is a sov­er­eign deci­sion by Spain.”

In Madrid, Econ­o­my Min­is­ter Luis de Guin­dos announced the 1.7 per­cent GDP con­trac­tion fore­cast and said the econ­o­my will shrink in the first two quar­ters of this year and pos­si­bly in the third too, before start­ing to pick up. He blamed sub­dued domes­tic con­sump­tion, high­er oil prices and a slow­er world econ­o­my.

He said unem­ploy­ment will rise over the short term as labor mar­ket reforms passed by the new gov­ern­ment take time to kick in and encour­age employ­ers to hire.

...

“There is an issue of con­fi­dence at stake here,” Altafaj Tar­dio said. He added that the Com­mis­sion still wants Madrid to pro­vide details on why last year’s deficit was so much high­er than expect­ed — and what it plans to do about it this year — before the end of the month.

The Com­mis­sion’s reluc­tance to give Spain more lee­way means the coun­try risks being slapped with finan­cial penal­ties of up to 0.2 per­cent of GDP.

German-Foreign-Policy.com has as recent piece on the ongo­ing pri­va­ti­za­tion push in the fina­cial­ly dis­tressed euro­zone areas. It looks like Deutsche Bank and Ger­man gov­ern­ment agen­cies are lead­ing the devel­op­ment of that push and the push is build­ing. This is get­ting absurd. It is once again worth point­ing out that cur­ren­cy unions (or any oth­er type of sove­r­ieng­ty-shar­ing agree­ment) just will not func­tion when the most pow­er­ful mem­bers can can­ni­bal­ize the economies of the weak­est mem­bers when they fall on hard times. It’s a seri­ous sys­temic moral haz­ard. To some extent this is a meta-crit­i­cism that applies to vir­tu­al­ly all of the eco­nom­ic sys­tems we’ve seen humans flail about with his­tor­i­cal­ly. But the for­mal­iza­tion of an inter­na­tion­al debtor’s prison — one that rewards inter­na­tion­al loan-shark­ing where the cred­i­tor makes mon­ey on both the debt bub­ble export splurge and the post-bub­ble-burst asset-seizures — has to be one of the more moral­ly haz­ardous eco­nom­ic par­a­digms we’ve seen. Legal­ized inter­na­tion­al loan-shark­ing is appar­ent­ly going to become an even big­ger part of the bat­tle­field glob­al com­mu­ni­ty of tomor­row.

Pat­terned after the Treu­hand
2012/04/17

BERLIN/ATHENS
(Own report) — Ger­man gov­ern­ment agen­cies and the Deutsche Bank are push­ing for the pri­va­ti­za­tion of pub­lic prop­er­ty in the south­ern Euro­pean cri­sis coun­tries. In Greece, the state-owned for­eign trade pro­mo­tion agency “Ger­many Trade and Invest” (GTAI) acts as a “con­sul­tant” for the “Hel­lenic Repub­lic Asset Devel­op­ment Fund” (HRADF) which, since the end of March, has all the prop­er­ty titles on Greek state assets and is prepar­ing their sales. The HRADF is pat­terned after the Ger­man Treu­hand (Trust Fund), which is accused of hav­ing squan­dered the nation­al wealth of the Ger­man Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic (GDR) in the after­math of 1990. It is ben­e­fit­ing from the “Ger­man expe­ri­ence in the pri­va­ti­za­tion and restruc­tur­ing process of the new­ly formed Ger­man states,” accord­ing to the Ger­man Min­istry of Eco­nom­ics. The GTAI agency, which, in the search for new investors, is col­lab­o­rat­ing with its Greek coun­ter­part “Invest­ment in Greece” sees “attrac­tive invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties” in real estate and nat­ur­al resources, in water sup­ply, in infra­struc­ture and in the OPAP, the largest bet­ting and gam­bling com­pa­ny in Europe and Greece’s third largest enter­prise. The Deutsche Bank is par­tic­i­pat­ing in OPA­P’s pri­va­ti­za­tion. The bank has assist­ed in sim­i­lar process­es in oth­er coun­tries and accord­ing to its research team, com­pre­hen­sive pri­va­ti­za­tions need to be car­ried out all over Europe.
Pri­va­ti­za­tion Expe­ri­ence
The Deutsche Bank has par­tic­i­pat­ed in pri­va­ti­za­tions, imposed with­in the frame­work of the Euro cri­sis, also in Por­tu­gal. To receive finan­cial aid, Por­tu­gal, like Greece, was com­pelled to relin­quish pub­lic assets under Ger­man pres­sure. The Deutsche Bank was involved in the re-pri­va­ti­za­tion of the BPN, the Por­tuguese bank, nation­al­ized in the course of the cri­sis. The Deutsche Bank also served as a con­sul­tant for the ener­gy group Chi­na State Grid in its acqui­si­tion of the Por­tuguese REN pow­er grid group, as well as for the Chi­nese enter­prise, Three Gorges, in its acqui­si­tion of the Por­tuguese elec­tric­i­ty sup­pli­er, EDP. The Bank has also been active in pri­va­ti­za­tions in Great Britain. It assist­ed in the sale of the North­ern Rock Bank, nation­al­ized in 2008 when it was threat­ened with col­lapse, to the Vir­gin Mon­ey bank.
Con­sid­er­able Poten­tial
The Deutsche Bank con­sid­ers its involve­ment, as a con­sul­tant for the pri­va­ti­za­tion of state assets, as a lucra­tive busi­ness “Even though the top­ic has been on the eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy agen­da for at least twen­ty years, there is still con­sid­er­able pri­va­ti­za­tion poten­tial in a num­ber of EU coun­tries,” accord­ing to its recent­ly pub­lished “Rev­enue, com­pe­ti­tion, growth” report.[1] That pub­li­ca­tion details the “poten­tial for pri­va­ti­za­tion in the Euro area,” apprais­es Euro­pean nation­al economies coun­try by coun­try and sec­tor by sec­tor hard­ly miss­ing poten­tials for pri­va­ti­za­tions: “In prin­ci­ple, there are also ben­e­fits to be had from the pri­va­ti­za­tion of gov­ern­ment ser­vices of gen­er­al inter­est, e.g. water sup­ply and water dis­pos­al, health­care facil­i­ties and non-sov­er­eign admin­is­tra­tive tasks.” The paper also pro­vides con­crete num­bers. It lists poten­tial rev­enues from the sale of Ital­ian state assets and from grant­i­ng con­ces­sions to be between 150 and 210 bil­lion Euros.
Con­flict­ing Bal­ance Sheet
How­ev­er, the ambi­tious Ger­man expec­ta­tions have not been ful­filled every­where. In Feb­ru­ary, Greece revised its fore­cast and is now expect­ing pri­va­ti­za­tion rev­enues worth only 19 rather than 50 bil­lion Euros by 2015. Berlin is react­ing with more pres­sure on this slow­down of Greek pri­va­ti­za­tions. Gen­er­al­ly, Athens is not res­olute­ly remov­ing alleged “obsta­cles” to invest­ment projects, accord­ing to a memo leaked to the press in March to expose the Greek government.[2] Eco­nom­ic Min­is­ter Philipp Rösler has recent­ly con­firmed that Berlin is demand­ing a speedup of privatizations.[3] Last year, how­ev­er, the Span­ish gov­ern­ment had also stopped sell­ing shares of its Madrid and Barcelona air­ports, for which the Ger­man com­pa­nies Fra­port and Siemens had been bid­ding. The Span­ish gov­ern­ment hopes to achieve high­er rev­enues with­in an improved eco­nom­ic cli­mate, rather than in the cur­rent cri­sis. It will not sell its nation­al lot­tery for the time being. Accord­ing to the EU, IMF and Euro­pean Cen­tral Bank troi­ka, Por­tu­gal and Ire­land are ful­fill­ing the pri­va­ti­za­tion plan with a vol­ume of five and three bil­lion Euros respec­tive­ly.

...

Awwww...look at the thugs nice fel­lows help­ing the old peo­ple cross the street. What a ray of sun­shine these Gold­en Dawn folks are with all that char­i­ty. And their calls for send­ing ille­gal immi­grants to forced labor camps, well that’s just warms my heart. How gen­er­ous must these Gold­en Dawn fel­lows be, what with Greece act­ing as the entry point for ~9 out of 10 of the ille­gal immi­grants enter­ing the EU...a forced labor pro­gram that gives those pre­cious jobs to pris­on­ers demon­strates a pro­found lev­el of com­pas­sion. It’s always dark­est before the dawn, espe­cial­ly when it’s mourn­ing morn­ing in Athens:

Analy­sis: Secre­tive far-right par­ty taps into Greeks’ anger, fear

By Renee Mal­te­zou

PIRAEUS, Greece | Wed Apr 25, 2012 12:15pm EDT

(Reuters) — In the port of Piraeus, dozens of young men with shaven heads and black t‑shirts packed a small room one evening to hear Gold­en Dawn’s dream of a Greece purged of for­eign­ers, its bor­ders sealed with land­mines.

“We want all ille­gal immi­grants out, we want to take their stench out of this place,” said Frangis­cos Pori­his, an elec­tion can­di­date for the ultra-nation­al­ist and high­ly secre­tive par­ty.

“They should­n’t be here and they will leave one way or the oth­er — the good or the bad way,” he told the Piraeus meet­ing.

With Greece deep in eco­nom­ic and social cri­sis, the par­ty is promis­ing vot­ers in next mon­th’s elec­tions to start by expelling ille­gal immi­grants — before mov­ing on to the legal ones.

Nev­er­the­less, Gold­en Dawn denies it is neo-Nazi, although its leader Niko­laos Mihalo­li­akos did intro­duce him­self to Athens city coun­cil last year with a Nazi salute.

With its anti-for­eign­er mes­sage plus some wel­fare parcels for a few of Greece’s many needy, Gold­en Dawn has emerged from obscu­ri­ty in the last few months and now seems cer­tain to enter par­lia­ment com­fort­ably when the nation votes on May 6.

Flanked by book­shelves lined with books on Aryan suprema­cy and nation­al­ism, the Piraeus audi­ence lis­tened in rapt atten­tion. Leaflets declar­ing “Not a sin­gle unem­ployed Greek, not a sin­gle ille­gal immi­grant in Greece” lay on tables, along­side man­i­festos pro­claim­ing “Greece belongs to Greeks”.

...

MESSAGE TO THE SYSTEM

Gold­en Dawn’s rhetoric res­onates with Greeks who blame ris­ing crime on the hun­dreds of thou­sands of ille­gal immi­grants flock­ing to the coun­try’s porous bor­ders.

Nine out of 10 ille­gal immi­grants enter­ing the Euro­pean Union in 2010 arrived in Greece, large­ly from Turkey by land or sea. Last year Italy took the top spot due to a jump in arrivals of peo­ple flee­ing the Arab Spring upheaval.

Nev­er­the­less, Greece has more than one mil­lion immi­grants, legal and ille­gal, in a coun­try of 11 mil­lion peo­ple.

...

“It’s not that Greeks became right-wing overnight,” said Thomas Ger­akis, head of the Marc poll­ster group. “They just want to send a mes­sage to the polit­i­cal sys­tem as a whole.”

Gold­en Dawn’s can­di­dates are not career politi­cians; they include farm­ers, shep­herds, work­ers and retired army offi­cers.

The par­ty has no rec­og­niz­able names apart from its leader Mihalo­li­akos, who served in the Greek spe­cial forces and was elect­ed to the Athens city coun­cil in 2010 — giv­ing the Nazi salute on his first appear­ance there last year.

“Gold­en Dawn has the advan­tage of being invis­i­ble,” said a polit­i­cal ana­lyst, who declined to be named. “Apart from Mihalo­li­akos, even I don’t know any of the oth­er faces in the par­ty and I’m in the busi­ness. That works as a pro­tec­tive shield for them.”

Polls show the par­ty tak­ing between 4.1 and 5.7 per­cent next month. Much of that has come at the expense of the nation­al­ist LAOS par­ty, whose rat­ings plum­met­ed after it joined the out­go­ing coali­tion gov­ern­ment last year. It lat­er quit after refus­ing to accept the aus­ter­i­ty con­di­tions of Greece’s lat­est bailout.

...

“RACISM AGAINST GREEKS”

Gold­en Dawn’s man­i­festo is less benev­o­lent than the good-neigh­bor image its food dri­ve has helped to cul­ti­vate. Ille­gal immi­grants must be imme­di­ate­ly arrest­ed and deport­ed, and legal immi­grants even­tu­al­ly expelled as well, the group says.

It wants crimes com­mit­ted by immi­grants to fall under a spe­cial cat­e­go­ry, with their sen­tences car­ried out in spe­cial deten­tion cen­ters where the immi­grants are put to work.

“There are peo­ple who have been liv­ing in a build­ing for 40–50 years and they sud­den­ly real­ize that it’s only them and maybe anoth­er fam­i­ly and that the rest are third-world for­eign­ers who live in groups of 30–40 in one apart­ment,” said Pana­gio­taros.

The group has lit­tle sym­pa­thy for the polit­i­cal class. Politi­cians behind Greece’s cri­sis must be hauled before a spe­cial court, jailed and their prop­er­ty seized, the group says, while any Greek refus­ing to join the con­script army will be stripped of their cit­i­zen­ship and exiled.

Despite the com­par­isons with neo-Nazism, Gold­en Dawn has para­dox­i­cal­ly tapped into anti-Ger­man sen­ti­ment by attack­ing the bailout pack­age from the EU and Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund and what it calls Ger­man dom­i­na­tion of Europe.

Set up in 1992 and relaunched in 2007, the par­ty admires Greek dic­ta­tor Ioan­nis Metaxas, who refused to sur­ren­der to the Axis pow­ers in 1940.

...

Mem­bers say dis­ci­pline and years of unwa­ver­ing ded­i­ca­tion are required to win accep­tance. One said it can take up to three years to become a mem­ber — start­ing first as a sup­port­er, then as tri­al-mem­bers before join­ing the “fam­i­ly”.

“For the Com­mu­nists we are Nazis, for the Social­ists we are fas­cists and for the con­ser­v­a­tives we are extreme right,” said Nas, a Gold­en Dawn mem­ber who declined to give his last name. “Let them call me what they want. I do what I do with hon­or.”

Greek exit polls May 6th 2012, show greek neo nazi par­ty gain­ing seats
“The Greek neo-Nazi Gold­en Dawn par­ty will enter par­lia­ment for the first time in near­ly 40 years, exit polls showed on Sun­day as bal­lots closed in an ear­ly elec­tion that could derail the country’s reforms.

The par­ty is cal­cu­lat­ed to win between six and eight per­cent of the vote on ris­ing immi­gra­tion and crime con­cerns, com­fort­ably above the three-per­cent thresh­old required for to enter par­lia­ment.

The group react­ed jubi­lant­ly and claimed the result would trans­late into more than 25 deputies in the 300-seat par­lia­ment, a stun­ning blow to main­stream par­ties.

“A new nation­al­ist move­ment dawns,” Gold­en Dawn said on its web­site.

“Hun­dreds of thou­sands of Greeks have dynam­i­cal­ly joined the nation­al cause for a great, free Greece,” it said.

Once part of the country’s polit­i­cal fringe, the Hrys­si Avgi (Gold­en Dawn) had already made head­lines in 2010 by elect­ing its leader to the Athens city coun­cil on a wave of anti-immi­gra­tion ten­sion in the capital’s poor­er dis­tricts.

In the two years that fol­lowed, with Greece sink­ing deep­er into reces­sion and over a mil­lion peo­ple out of job, Gold­en Dawn’s strength grew fur­ther.

Now they appear to have mul­ti­plied their sup­port ten­fold.

With Greece the main entry-point for irreg­u­lar migra­tion to Europe, thou­sands of migrants unable to cross to oth­er EU states due to legal con­straints have cre­at­ed urban ghet­tos in Athens, Patras and oth­er cities.

Hos­til­i­ty from local res­i­dents has spiked in recent months with the dete­ri­o­ra­tion of an eco­nom­ic cri­sis that has brought reces­sion and hun­dreds of thou­sands of job loss­es in Greece.

Migrants are also blamed for increased mug­gings, car thefts and break-ins”

http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/05/06/212525.html

and from the AFP
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/voting-begins-greek-general-election-044821544.html

When Wolf­gang Schauble is play­ing the ‘good cop’, you know you’re in a bad spot:

Greek Reporter
Merkel Rules Out More Greek Aid

by Andy Dabilis — Feb 16, 2014

Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel, whose coun­try is the biggest con­trib­u­tor to $325 bil­lion in two bailouts to save Greece, has ruled out a third, although Prime Min­is­ter Anto­nis Sama­ras said that with a 1.5 bil­lion euro ($2.05 bil­lion) pri­ma­ry sur­plus that his coun­try now doesn’t one any­way.

Merkel over­ruled her Finance Min­is­ter, Wolf­gang Schaeu­ble, who had said Greece might need anoth­er 10–20 bil­lion euros ($13.63-$27.26 bil­lion) before the May elec­tions held for Greek munic­i­pal offices and the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment, the news­pa­per der Spiegel report­ed.

Sama­ras’ New Democ­ra­cy Con­ser­v­a­tives and his coali­tion part­ner, the PASOK Social­ists, are trail­ing the major oppo­si­tion Coali­tion of the Rad­i­cal Left (SYRIZA) whose leader, Alex­is Tsipras, has pre­dict­ed will win and even­tu­al­ly come to pow­er.

He is opposed to the terms of $325 bil­lion in two bailouts imposed by the gov­ern­ment on the orders of inter­na­tion­al lenders, the Troi­ka of the Euro­pean Union-Inter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund-Euro­pean Cen­tral Bank (EU-IMF-ECB) and said he wouldn’t repay the mon­ey.

Schaeu­ble had want­ed to give the ail­ing Greek gov­ern­ment a “demon­stra­tion of sol­i­dar­i­ty” by com­mit­ting this spring to fur­ther sup­port from Europe after the May 25 poll.

“He sees the dan­ger that with­out the prospect of fur­ther aid, rad­i­cal par­ties in Greece could make big gains in the elec­tion,” lead­ing the gov­ern­ment in Athens to col­lapse, the mag­a­zine report­ed.

Besides SYRIZA, the anti-aus­ter­i­ty ultra-extrem­ist far-right Gold­en Dawn par­ty is a sol­id third in polls even though its lead­ers have been jailed on charges of oper­at­ing a crim­i­nal gang.

It said Merkel’s own domes­tic polit­i­cal con­cerns led her to veto the move over fears that the Euroscep­tic Alter­na­tive for Ger­many (AfD) could ben­e­fit from a fresh debate about aid for Greece.

The AfD, which wants to aban­don the euro and return to the deutschmark, was formed last year and failed to win any seats in September’s gen­er­al elec­tion but scored sev­en per­cent in a recent poll, far above the three-per­cent hur­dle for seats in the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment.

...

We prob­a­bly should­n’t be sur­prised that the pro-aus­ter­i­ty ‘bad cop’ poli­cies pushed by lead­ers like Merkel are also pro-vig­i­lante. We also prob­a­bly should­n’t be sur­prised if some of those vig­i­lantes end up in office.