Spain Bankrupt

‘Bankrupt’ claim heightens Spanish debt fears




By Victor Mallet in Madrid
June 5 2011 17:49
Financial Times


The central Spanish region of Castilla-La Mancha is “totally bankrupt”, according to the incoming administration of the rightwing Popular party (PP), an accusation that will deepen concerns about Spain’s budget deficit.

The claim has prompted angry denials from the Socialist government.

Spain’s 17 autonomous regions and its more than 8,000 municipalities, with €150bn ($220bn) of accumulated debt between them, have become the latest worry for investors in Spain and its sovereign bonds.

Although the amount is less than a quarter of total public sector debt, regional debt has doubled since 2008. The 17 regions collectively exceeded official budget deficit limits in 2010, and appear likely to do so again this year despite repeated demands for compliance from the central government.

Catalonia, an economy the size of Portugal, says its deficit will be double the target.

Vicente Tirado, a senior PP politician in Castilla-La Mancha, said the region was “totally bankrupt”; owed suppliers such as pharmaceutical companies that provide drugs for hospitals a total of €2bn in unpaid bills; and would have trouble finding the money to pay the region’s 76,000 civil servants next month.

Marcial Marín, the PP’s economy co-ordinator in the region, accused the departing Socialist government of “the height of irresponsibility” and alleged that unpaid bills were being destroyed to hide the evidence.

“From the data that the PP has, Castilla-La Mancha is the Greece of Spanish regions,” he said, referring to the bail-out of the Greek economy by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

Mr Marín said the PP, which won the region from the Socialists in elections two weeks ago, would shut between half and three-quarters of Castilla-La Mancha’s 95 government owned companies because they duplicated the work of other organisations and were staffed mostly by Socialist party members.

The departing Socialist administration described the PP’s accusations as false and said PP leaders were scaremongering in order to prepare the way for cuts to public services.

[Either you cut public services or you fall off the cliff.  It has to happen or else ... so pretending will not fix anything.]


At the national level, Socialist leaders have accused the PP of undermining Spain’s credibility in financial markets for domestic political ends and have noted that several PP-run fiefdoms have also exceeded their deficit limits.

Official data show, however, that Socialist-run Castilla-La Mancha was the worst-performing region last year, recording a deficit of 6.5 per cent of gross domestic product, compared with the limit for that year of 2.4 per cent.

Spain was able to meet its overall public sector deficit target of 9.3 per cent of GDP in 2010 only because austerity at the centre compensated for regional overspending.

Two opinion polls published on Sunday, meanwhile, predicted that the PP, led by Mariano Rajoy, would win national elections with a 13.8 percentage point advantage over the Socialists, under their leader in waiting Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba.

Mr Rubalcaba is the hitherto unchallenged party candidate to replace José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the prime minister. A national election must be held within a year but the PP wants an early poll.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
spain

Greek Corruption

In the United States, I am certain we can find corruption within the various levels of government.  We can most certainly find waste - that seems to be everywhere, regardless of political party.  However, within our political system, we do not have a party system corrupt to the core.  Our structure does not allow for such a system - each party competes against the other, driving out the elements of corruption most readily noticed or blatantly evident.  Our laws stand in contrast to the idea of corruption - we do not support, condone, aide, aide, abet, or tolerate corruption.

In Europe, their systems are corrupt to the core - both sides equally corrupt, to the point when they campaign, neither side attacks the other vociferously about corruption.  It was said of former French President Chirac, by none other than yet another former president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing (paraphrased):  If he (Chirac) were caught with his hands in a honey pot, with honey dripping all over his hands and from his mouth, he would act surprised and say 'me, no, I did not take and eat any honey'.  And the French people agreed - they re-elected him despite several legal actions initiated against him.

Could not happen in the United States.  yes, we could have a congressman who hides his cash in the freezer, but the likes of Chirac - no.  Not in the US, because we simply do not have a system built upon corruption. 

The same with Greece.

No Virginia, we are not the same as all the rest.





Greece to start austerity drive as nation seethes




By George Georgiopoulos
Sun Jun 5, 6:51 pm ET
Reuters



ATHENS (Reuters) – Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou starts a campaign on Monday to secure a new international bailout by imposing years of austerity on a nation already seething over corruption and economic mismanagement.

Unease is growing within Papandreou's ranks about the consequences of waves of budget cuts demanded under successive deals with the European Union and IMF -- and this could turn into alarm after at least 80,000 Greeks crammed a central Athens square to vent their anger over the nation's dire state.

As the government struggles to prevent Greece from defaulting on its debt, the Socialist cabinet will discuss informally on Monday the medium-term economic plan which will impose 6.4 billion euros ($9.37 billion) of extra austerity this year alone.

This is just the first stage of a drive to turn the plan, agreed on Friday with the EU and IMF as the price of a new financial rescue, into law.

Papandreou will then present the plan to the political council of his PASOK party on Tuesday, before the cabinet clears it the following day and sends it to parliament.

Greece's international lenders have made clear that the new bailout package, which would replace a 110 billion euro deal agreed only a year ago, depends on Athens keeping to its promises for further austerity and accelerated privatizations.

But the government is under huge pressure, not from the hooded radicals who battled police in the early days of the austerity drive, but from ordinary Greeks who are suffering badly under pay and pension cuts and soaring unemployment.

On Sunday night people from Athens and far beyond the capital crammed into the city's Syntagma Square to show they are close to the limit of their endurance.

"Thieves - hustlers - bankers," read one banner raised above a sea of splayed hands waved at the parliament building which overlooks the square, an offensive gesture in Greek culture.

Turnout was the biggest so far in a series of 12 nightly rallies inspired originally by Spain's protest movement.

Police put the turnout at 80,000, but many were stuck in side streets, unable to squeeze into the square, and protesters accuse authorities of routinely underestimating their numbers.

TAX FURY

Greeks on modest salaries are furious that they have to pay ever higher taxes in the drive to reduce a towering budget deficit, while they believe the self-employed such as doctors and lawyers are guilty of flagrant tax evasion.

"Instead of going after tax cheats, they are raising taxes and cutting working people's pay," said Yannis Mylonakos, 34, who lost his job at an advertising agency and joined Greece's army of unemployed, which has hit 15.9 percent of the workforce.

No relief is in sight. The medium-term plan aims for a further 22 billion euros in austerity steps in 2012-15.

On Sunday, some banners evoked the Arab Spring movement to oust authoritarian rule. "From Tahrir Square to Syntagma Square, we support you!" read one banner.

Others showed helicopters in an apparent reference to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's flight from Cairo in February after weeks of popular protests on the city's Tahrir Square.

Papandreou has used his parliamentary majority to ram through successive rounds of austerity. But faced with the popular anger, some PASOK lawmakers are becoming uneasy.

A group of 16 wrote to the prime minister on Thursday demanding a full party debate on the medium-term plan as "a matter of patriotism and democracy."

But Interior minister Yannis Ragousis warned that rocking the boat could lead to early elections. Opinion polls suggest this would produce a political stalemate, raising the risk that the new bailout deal with the EU and IMF might unravel.

"Anyone who drives the nation toward elections now will be effectively giving it the last push over the cliff," Ragousis told Sunday's edition of the Realnews newspaper.

[Well, let's see if anyone does stand up and deny the IMF their share, and in effect, undermines the government, causing it to fall and with it a new election.  We'll know about that cliff then!]


Greece's first, 110 billion-euro, bailout assumed that it could resume borrowing commercially early next year. This now appears inconceivable, meaning a new package is vital.

Jean-Claude Juncker, who chairs meetings of euro zone finance ministers, indicated that commercial creditors must share some of the cost of Greece's huge funding needs.

The ECB opposes any attempt to cut the overall value of creditors' bond holdings, known as a haircut, fearing this would badly hurt banks which hold Greek debt and provoke a violent reaction on international financial markets.

However, creditors may be asked to buy new Greek bonds when old ones mature, to avoid Athens having to produce more money.











Greece

French Socialist IMF: Rape and Assault and an attempt to flee

You can't make this stuff up.

Of course there will be people who claim this was all set up by Sarkozy, but sometimes people just stumble into their own mess.


- he has had 3 wives (which in itself means nothing except)
- he admitted to an indiscretion last year (which does not indicate guilt of a crime)
- he has a special relationship with Air France to get on any of their planes at any time in First Class, which he did (odd for a socialist isn't it - to expect such perks from a capitalist enterprise).
- he left without his phone and other personal items





IMF boss Strauss-Kahn pulled off plane, arrested in sodomy probe



By PHILIP MESSING, JAMIE SCHRAM, LARRY CELONA and BILL SANDERSON
May 14, 2011
New York Post




The French political bigshot who heads the International Monetary Fund was arrested for allegedly sodomizing a Manhattan hotel maid today — hauled off an Air France flight just moments before takeoff from Kennedy Airport, police said.

Three Port Authority detectives pulled Dominique Strauss-Kahn from the plane’s first-class cabin just two minutes before it was due to depart for Paris, according to police sources said.

Strauss-Kahn, 62 — who was expected to challenge Nicholas Sarkozy in the 2012 French presidential election — was turned over to NYPD officers and brought to the Special Victims Unit’s uptown squadroom.

The trouble began around noon, when a 32-year-old housekeeper entered Strauss-Kahn’s room at the Sofitel on West 44th Street — apparently unaware he was still inside.

The married Strauss-Kahn was in his bathroom, said sources. He emerged naked, grabbed her and "he jumps her," a source said.

Then, Strauss-Kahn allegedly threw the housekeeper on the room’s bed and forced her to perform oral sex on him, said the sources.

The maid managed to break free and ran to a hotel worker to tell what happened, said a source. Soon afterward, Strauss-Kahn got dressed and headed off to Kennedy Airport for his flight to Paris.

When he was approached on the plane by Port Authority cops, he said, "What is this about?" sources said. He was then taken off without handcuffs.

Two law enforcement sources said Strauss-Kahn was trying to flee the US. Police said he left his cellphone and other personal items in the room.

Strauss-Kahn, who had a meeting planned for today with German chancellor Angela Merkel, has a special arrangement with Air France that allows him to get on any flight and sit in first class, the sources said. He was traveling alone.

The NYPD’s Special Victims Unit is investigating the case, the sources said.

The victim was taken to Roosevelt Hospital, where she was being treated for trauma.

Strauss-Kahn, a leader of France’s Socialist Party, is a longtime rival to Sarkozy, who was said in a news report today to have kicked off a smear campaign that focused on his lavish lifestyle. It included Strauss-Kahn’s purchase of suits from the same tailor who clothes President Obama.

But Strauss-Kahn seems able to find trouble on his own. In 2008, he publicly admitted to "an error of judgment" for having an affair with an IMF subordinate.

In France’s 2007 vote, Strauss-Kahn lost the Socialist Party nomination to Segolene Royal, who in turn fell to defeat against Sarkozy, leader of the right-wing Union for a Popular Movement.

But Sarkozy, who still sees Strauss-Kahn as his likeliest electoral rival, is believed to have maneuvered him out of France by backing him to head the Washington-based International Monetary Fund.

Strauss-Kahn is married to New York-born Anne Sinclair, a leading French TV journalist. She is his third wife; he has four children from two prior marriages.

A spokeswoman for the US State Department had no immediate comment. IMF did not immediately return calls.





 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
elitists