the art of Luke Smalley

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Frank Auerbach

Head of J. M. II
Posted by Liam at 09:38

John Deakin

John Deakin

έχουμε μπλέξει big time

DEAN BAKER
Greece and Those Wild & Crazy Guys at the ECB

I have been following the European sovereign debt crisis since it first developed more than two years ago. It was evident from the beginning that the conditions on the debtor nations being demanded by the “troika” of the European Central Bank, the European Union, and the International Monetary Fund were both onerous and counterproductive.

This view has been confirmed by the fact that the debtor countries have missed target after target and that growth has consistently come in far below projections. (Actually, the crises countries have been contracting for much of the last two years.) This could leave analysts guessing as to what economic reasoning lies behind the troika’s conditions.

Last week I got the answer when I had occasion to meet with a high-level EU official. There is no economic reasoning behind the troika’s positions. For practical purposes, Greece and the other debt-burdened countries are dealing with crazy people. The pain being imposed is not a route to economic health; rather it is a gruesome bleeding process that will only leave the patient worse off. The economic doctors at the troika are clueless when it comes to understanding a modern economy.

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the humiliation of Greece

MIKE WHITNEY
The Humiliation of Greece

If Greece’s €130 billion loan was going to be used for fiscal stimulus, then it might be worth the commitment. Because that kind of money could put a lot people back to work and kick-start the economy fast. But the loan isn’t going to be used for stimulus. It’s going to be used to recapitalize the banks and pay off creditors, neither of which will do anything to boost activity or create jobs. So, why bother? Why dig an even deeper hole if it achieves nothing? If that’s the case, then Greece should just default now and start rebuilding the economy ASAP. There’s no point in putting it off any longer.

The troika (the European Central Bank, the European Union, and the International Monetary Fund) is demanding another €3 billion in spending cuts even though unemployment is tipping 20 percent and the economy shrank 7 percent in the last quarter. What sense does that make? You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that Greece won’t reach its budget targets if tax revenues continue to fall because everyone’s either been laid off or taking a pay-cut. It will just make a bad situation even worse. But the troika doesn’t worry about these type of things. They don’t care that their lamebrain economic theories have failed miserably so far, or that their austerity measures have been a complete flop. They just keep plugging along making the same mistakes over and over again, impervious to the criticism of reputable economists, oblivious to the abysmal results, they remain steadfast in their commitment to belt tightening, sure that a strict diet of breadcrumbs and water is the best way to nurse an ailing economy back to health. It doesn’t bother them that the facts prove otherwise.

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see

PHOTO BOOTH

Melanie Willhide’s Tribute to a Burglar

Posted by James Pomerantz

When life give you lemons, make lemonade. When someone breaks into your home and steals your computer, make a collaborative photo project. That’s what Melanie Willhide did.

Willhide dedicates “To Adrian Rodriguez, with Love” to the individual who broke into her home and stole various things. Her computer was recovered by the police, but the hard drive had been wiped clean. Willhide attempted to recover the erased data but found her digital photographs corrupted. Lemons! Rather than delete the images, Willhide considered these corrupted files a collaboration with her machine. She refined them and made additional ones inspired by the mess. Lemonade!

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Postscript: Marie Colvin, 1956-2012

Posted by David Remnick

Last night, after a long day and before a late dinner, I sat down with my wife to watch the news on CNN. Anderson Cooper was broadcasting from a studio in New York, but his tape was from Syria. He rightly demanded that we watch a two-year-old child in the besieged city of Homs die of shrapnel wounds inflicted by the regime of Bashar al-Assad. The camera stayed on the child until the last breath was out of him. His father cradled him and kept asking what his poor son had ever done to anyone to deserve it.

Then Cooper spoke with a reporter—a very great and experienced reporter—who was on the scene, Marie Colvin, of the Sunday Times of London. The image of Colvin on the screen was instantly recognizable to anyone who has spent time reporting, as she had for a generation, from the Middle East, Africa, Chechnya, the Balkans, or South Asia; after losing an eye in the civil war in Sri Lanka, in 2001, she wore an eye patch. For decades, she has been a ubiquitous presence in the war zones of the world and her reports in the Times were admired in the close-knit world of foreign correspondents for their scrupulous and straightforward eloquence.

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η σωτηρία της δραχμής είναι πολύ μεγάλο πράγμα

No, This Is Not Mount Olympus...

...This is a chart of the Greek bank stock index, which has gone from an all out demented euphoria to suicidal depression in 5 days, as the rumor that Greece is "saved" has been replaced with the reality that Greece is still "completely broke" - if you bought on Monday like most momos, on the expectation that the torrid surge higher would continue, you have now lost 24%. We are awaiting the latest January deposit data from the Greek banking system eagerly, as something tells us Greek citizens, who are already congregating at Syntagma square for today's daily riot, did not follow Venizelos' advice to either "WORK, WORK, WORK" or for that matter "DEPOSIT, DEPOSIT, DEPOSIT."

Average:

5

βαζελίνη θα πουλάνε τα φαρμακεία?

"We had to choose between the certainty of disaster and the doubt of salvation. You can't be independent when you have to borrow €20m a day.”

Greece Throws in the Towel, Bows to German Jackboot

by PATRICK COCKBURN

Greeks expect to agree a deal with the Eurozone leaders today, Monday, that will cede much of their country’s independence. Greece will become an economic – and to a large extent a political – colony of Germany and its allies. Berlin will have a say in everything from the choice of prime minister to the types of medicines dispensed by pharmacies.

In return for €230bn, made up of €130bn in fresh loans and €100bn in write-downs on privately held Greek government bonds, Greece is relieved from its immediate debt burden. But the money does not go to the Greek government, still less to the Greek people. It simply leaves them to live off the money they earn.

For all the television pictures of rioting protesters, clouds of tear gas and burning buildings in central Athens over the last week, a striking feature of the political landscape is the lack of resistance to the German terms. The Greek political elite sound and look stunned, grudgingly surrendering to the demands of the Troika (EU, IMF and European Central Bank), but bereft of ideas about what else to do.

ΜΟRE

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oh boy

More Leaked Greece Details: Downside Case Sees Funding Needs Soar From €136 Billion To €245 Billion

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 02/20/2012 - 18:21 Eurozone Finland Germany Greece Netherlands Recession

The FT's Peter Spiegel has scoped up some additional details from the 10 page debt sustainability analysis that is at the basis of the latest Greek bailout talks. Some of the critical details:

• "even under the most optimistic scenario, the austerity measures being imposed on Athens risk a recession so deep that Greece will not be able to climb out of the debt hole over the course of the new €170bn bail-out."
• A German-led group of creditor countries – including the Netherlands and Finland – has expressed extreme reluctance since they received the report about the advisability of allowing the second rescue to go through.
• A “tailored downside scenario” prepared for eurozone leaders in the report suggests Greek debt could fall far more slowly than hoped, to only 160 per cent of economic output by 2020 – far below the target of 120 per cent set by the International Monetary Fund
  • Under such a scenario, Greece would need about €245bn in bail-out aid, nearly twice the €136bn under the “baseline” projections.
• “Prolonged financial support on appropriate terms by the official sector may be necessary,” the report said, a clear reference to the possibility that bail-out funds may be needed indefinitely.
• Even in best case scenario country will need at least €50 billion on top of €136 billion.
• A recapitalisation of the Greek banking sector, which originally was projected to cost €30bn, will now cost €50bn. A highly touted Greek privatisation plan, which originally hoped to raise €50bn, will now be delayed by five years and bring in only €30bn by the end of the decade.

Translated, this is yet another confirmation of what we have claimed all along - that Germany is no longer playing along.

στερνή μου γνώση

Europe's finance ministers plan to approve a second bailout for Greece on Monday but Hans-Werner Sinn, the head of Ifo, a top German economic think tank, warns that the money will only help international banks -- not the Greeks. He argues that Greece can only solve its crisis if it quits the euro.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The finance ministers of the euro zone want to approve a new bailout for Greece this Monday. Can the additional €130 billion ($172 billion) save Greece?

Sinn: No, and the politicians know it can't. They want to gain time until the next election. I think we're wasting time by doing this.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Why?

Sinn: Because Greece's external debt is rising with every year that passes until it leaves the currency union. We're getting ever further away from solving the problem. The basic problem is that Greece isn't competitive. The cheap loans that the euro brought the country artificially raised prices and wages -- and the country has to come back down from this high level.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: So the euro countries shouldn't approve the aid?

Sinn: They should give them the money to ease their exit from the currency union. The Greek government could use the money to nationalize the country's banks and prevent the state from collapsing. The state and the banks must continue to function through all the turmoil that an exit will entail.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: This turmoil would hit the population hard.

Sinn: Yes, undeniably. But the turmoil would only be temporary, it would last one to two years perhaps. This time would have to be bridged with the financial aid from the international community. But the drachma will immediately depreciate and the situation will stabilize very quickly. After a short thunderstorm, the sun will shine again.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: How would a euro exit help Greece in concrete terms?

Sinn: It would become competitive again. Because Greek products would rapidly become cheaper, demand would be redirected from imports towards domestically produced goods. The Greeks would no longer buy their tomatoes and olive oil from Holland or Italy but from their own farmers. And tourists for whom Greece has been too expensive in recent years would return. In addition, new capital would flow into the country. The rich Greeks who deposited so many billions, possibly hundreds of billions of euros, in Switzerland would see the falling property prices and wages and would have an incentive to start investing in their own country again.

'Restructuring Greece Within the Euro is Illusory'

magic

Music For Lap Dances by Dc Kostas on Mixcloud

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Germany, Greece Quietly Prepare For "Plan D"

For several weeks now we have been warning that while the conventional wisdom is that Europe will never let Greece slide into default, Germany has been quietly preparing for just that. This culminated on Friday when the schism between Merkel, who is of the persuasion that Greece should remain in the Eurozone, and her Finmin, Wolfgang "Dr. Strangle Schauble" Schauble, who isn't, made Goldman Sachs itself observe that there is: "Growing dissent between Chancellor Merkel and finance minister Schäuble regarding Greece." We now learn, courtesy of the Telegraph's Bruno Waterfield, that Germany is far deeper in Greece insolvency preparations than conventional wisdom thought possible (if not Zero Hedge, where we have been actively warning for over two weeks that Germany is perfectly eager and ready to roll the dice on a Greek default). Yet it is not only Germany that is getting ready for the inevitable. So is Greece.

From the Telegraph: "The German finance ministry is actively pushing for Greece to declare itself bankrupt and to agree a "haircut" on the bulk of its debts held by banks, a move that would be classed as a default by financial markets.Eurozone finance ministers meet on Monday to approve the next tranche of loans from the EU and the International Monetary Fund, designed to stave off national bankruptcy while the new Greek government puts the country's finances in order. But the severe austerity measures being demanded have caused such fury in Greece, and the cuts required are so deep, that Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, does not believe that any government would be able to implement them." Funny - it is as if Schauble almost knows that any self-respecting country would tell Germany to go to hell. Then again, this is Greece, whose puppet government is one which only answers to banker demands. And we hardly have to remind readers that of every dollar in bailout cash, Greece only sees 19 cents of it. Then again this is Greece, which is full of sound and fury for a day or two, then is happy to pick up the bar of vaseline for the next 6 months until the cycle repeats anew.

ο καπιταλισμός της καταστροφής

Krugman: Pain, No Gain

Last week the European Commission confirmed what everyone suspected: the economies it surveys are shrinking, not growing. It’s not an official recession yet, but the only real question is how deep the downturn will be.

And this downturn is hitting nations that have never recovered from the last recession. For all America’s troubles, its gross domestic product has finally surpassed its pre-crisis peak; Europe’s has not. And some nations are suffering Great Depression-level pain: Greece and Ireland have had double-digit declines in output, Spain has 23 percent unemployment, Britain’s slump has now gone on longer than its slump in the 1930s.

Worse yet, European leaders — and quite a few influential players here — are still wedded to the economic doctrine responsible for this disaster.

For things didn’t have to be this bad. Greece would have been in deep trouble no matter what policy decisions were taken, and the same is true, to a lesser extent, of other nations around Europe’s periphery. But matters were made far worse than necessary by the way Europe’s leaders, and more broadly its policy elite, substituted moralizing for analysis, fantasies for the lessons of history.

Specifically, in early 2010 austerity economics — the insistence that governments should slash spending even in the face of high unemployment — became all the rage in European capitals. The doctrine asserted that the direct negative effects of spending cuts on employment would be offset by changes in “confidence,” that savage spending cuts would lead to a surge in consumer and business spending, while nations failing to make such cuts would see capital flight and soaring interest rates. If this sounds to you like something Herbert Hoover might have said, you’re right: It does and he did.

3D spils

Acrylic on paper

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FROM THE MAGAZINE

How Companies Learn Your Secrets

By CHARLES DUHIGG 5:01 AM ET

The exhaustive rendering of our patterns into algorithms has revolutionized what retailers know about us.

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όλο και χειρότερα

A Pound Of Flesh, An Aapl A Day, Cheap HYG Vol

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 02/16/2012 - 07:00

Europe has moved into the “pound of flesh” stage of negotiations. Everyone just wants to make their point and the probability of a deal is dropping by the day. Europe is running out of time, and is just clueless. Yesterday has to confirm that even for the most optimistic person out there. They decided they should wait until the elections. Then they realized they had to deal with the March 20th bonds. Then they came up with a “bridge loan”. Clearly they didn’t bother to look up the definition of a bridge loan. A bridge loan is a loan that is meant to be temporary and has such punitive rates over time that the borrower is heavily encouraged to pay it back with new debt. This is just a “small” loan but one that is permanent and probably never getting paid back. I’m not sure if they asked the contributors whether they wanted to put up €16 billion which is somehow now “small”. Then noise came out that maybe Greece just shouldn’t have elections. The Troika and Greece have been negotiating all this time and no effort was spent on figuring out a plan in the event of default. They are scrambling to come up with one. I remain convinced that Greece could do well in default if it is managed properly, but the chances of them doing anything properly is low.

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μα τι συνέβη στον j95?

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Βλέπω καταβασμένα ρολά και στεναχωριέμαι


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the art of Lillian Bassman

"Blowing Kiss"

( Estate of Lillian Bassman / Peter Fetterman Gallery ) "Barbara Mullen, Blowing Kiss," silver gelatin print circa 1950 by Lillian Bassman.

Lillian Bassman was born June 15, 1917, in New York City, the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants who allowed her to live a bohemian life from a young age. She met her future husband, photographer and psychotherapist Paul Himmel, at Coney Island when she was 6 and he was 9 and began living with him at age 15 with her parents' blessing. In her youth she reportedly danced with Martha Graham, posed nude at the Art Students' League and, with Himmel, spent many hours at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she studied the great painters and began to formulate her distinctive vision and style. El Greco was a favorite.

Το μνημόνιο στα ελληνικά

Το μνημόνιο στα ελληνικά

Το μνημόνιο στα αγγλικά

Τεχνικό μνημόνιο συνεννόησης

Η αιτιολογική έκθεση

Σχέδιο νόμου

Σύμβαση χρηματικής διευκόλυνσης

Ειδική έκθεση

Εκθεση Γενικού λογιστηρίου του Κράτους

Συνοπτική έκθεση αξιολόγησης

The Troika Blackmails Greece

MIKE WHITNEY
The Troika Blackmails Greece

While EU banks have borrowed more than $600 billion at rock bottom rates (1 percent) for up to 3 years with no-strings-attached, eurozone finance ministers are threatening to push member-state Greece into default over a paltry 325 million euros. A German-led coalition within the Eurogroup has set a 6-day deadline for Greece to agree to additional budget cuts or the struggling country will be denied 130 billion euro loan. Absent the bailout, the Greek government will run out of money sometime in late March and default. This appears to be what many in Berlin secretly seek.

Aside from the 325 million euros of cuts, Greek coalition party leaders will also be forced to make a written commitment that the terms of the agreement will be followed whether general elections are held or not. The troika (The European Commission, the IMF, and the ECB) wants to be sure that it is repaid regardless of a change in government.

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PHOTO BOOTH

Portraits of sexual identity.

surfasing

Oil on canvas

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so lovely

STRANGELY FAMILIAR, YET UNKNOWN by Dc Kostas on Mixcloud

ξανά στο σημείο μηδέν

A Shift In European Sentiment - Is Germany Prepared To Let Greece Default?

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 02/06/2012 07:28 -0500

Something quite notable has shifted in recent weeks in Europe, and it originates at the European paymaster - Germany. While in the past it was of utmost importance to define any Greek default as voluntary (if one even dared whisper about it), and that the money allocated to keep the Eurozone whole would be virtually limitless, this is no longer the case. In fact, reading between the headlines in the past week, it becomes increasingly obvious that Greece will very soon become a new Lehman, i.e., a case study where the leaders are overly confident they can predict the outcomes of letting a critical entity default, and manage the consequences. Alas, this only proves they have learned nothing from the Lehman case, and the aftermath is still not only unpredictable but uncontrollable. But that's a bridge that Europe will cross very shortly. In the meantime, here is UBS summarizing the palpable change in European outlook over Greece, and over the entire "Firewall" protocol.

The German government seems uneasy about the firewall discussion. Some German media recently carried stories that a 'super rescue umbrella' would be agreed at the next summit on 1 March, amounting to €1.5 trillion, a number arrived at by adding up the €500bn of the ESM, the €440bn of the EFSF (though only about €250bn remain available) and the $500bn that managing director Lagarde has been seeking in additional financing for the IMF. There is a sense that trying to impress the market with a large number may once again backfire as analysts would quickly shoot down in any such attempt, for example by arguing that the IMF money would not actually be earmarked for the Eurozone, or more seriously maybe, that countries such as Spain and quite possibly France may come to be seen as unable to contribute ever more rescue funds. Instead, it is felt that the preferable option may be to point out that the ESM will be a much better designed and effective instrument than the EFSF, and that €500bn is enough for the problems at hand.

One gets the sense that the German government is not a priori unwilling to commit more financing to crisis management, but not now and only if it becomes clear that really the existing funds are insufficient. Also, there is a view that the government may at times have listened too much to advice from market sides, which then led to initial positions that subsequently needed to be revised. For example, bank recapitalisation was mentioned as something that ultimately seems to have done more harm than good and is now widely criticised for accelerating deleveraging. Also, the insistence that any Greek restructuring had to be 'voluntary' initially stemmed from fear of upsetting markets, but has now come to be criticised as having serious adverse implications such as undermining the sovereign CDS market. As a result, the German government may now be more inclined to stay firm on the firewall discussion and insist that €500bn for the ESM is sufficient for now.

While this step was inevitable from the beginning, what also was inevitable was the fact that leaders would be forced to exude confidence over what happens next. The truth is that they have no idea. Because if Paulson was proven 100% wrong in under 5 days following the Lehman default, when the money markets broke and the Fed has to literally force a bailout of the global financial system, what can one say about two bit second tier politicians from Europe, who have never even seen a DCF model?

Dimitris Alexandrou

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colour waves

Acrylic on paper

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