Posted on 02/03/2012 5:02:41 AM PST by blam
In Case You Hadn't Noticed, Everything Is Going Wrong In Greece Right Now
Simone Foxman
Febuary 3, 2012
Markets haven't been paying much attention to Greece lately, as multiple sets of negotiations drag on between the Greek government, representatives of its private creditors, troika officials, and even the European Central Bank.
In case you hadn't noticed, they're not going anywhere. After more than three months of bickering about the scale of a Greek debt restructuring, officials still keep pushing back the date at which they expect to have a deal.
According to sources cited by Bloomberg, a deal to impose more than a 70 percent haircut on privately held Greek bonds and to expand the €130 billion ($171 billion) in loans from the EU/ECB/IMF troika is on the table right now.
That expansion in funding might be caused by a new €15 billion ($19.8 billion) debt hole that inspectors have found in Greece's finances, according to the Irish Independent. At the same time, creditors are said to have drastically toned down their demands, requesting only a 3.6 percent coupon on new bonds issued as part of the swap.
The main issue with the deal, however, appears to be that representatives of the banking sector won't come to an agreement with the Greek government without assurance that the ECB will take losses on its €50 billion ($65.8 billion) holdings of Greek bonds. At the same time, the ECB--which appears to be considering haircuts now despite previous rejections--won't come to any sort of decision on their losses until the private sector has made a deal.
What a catch-22.
Even so, the deal probably won't work anyway. Not to mention the fact that rampant poverty is just starting to set in.
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
My O My.
If it’s Greece, I wouldn’t expect anything otherwise.
I’ll be interested to see if the EU actually decides to flush another 20 billion into that financial black hole.
The EU’s insistance on bailing out Greece (along with Italy, Portugal and Spain) will bring down the entire Eurozone. The only sane entity over there is the UK who has finally recognized how bad the situation is and is trying to extricate itself from that mess.
The EU will implode in very slow motion...possibly over 2 or 3 years but when the implosion is complete the entire Eurozone will be economically irrelevant to the rest of the world.
That's not a haircut, it's an amputation of everything above the hips.
Why don't they just say 'Default' and get it over with..
Only Greece?
How do you separate the men from the boys in Greece?
Coming soon to your neighborhood.
It is only that Greece is so much smaller than the United States, that the action seems so much more intense and pronounced. We have been having a similar upheaval in Oakland, and to a lesser degree, almost everywhere the #Occupy movement has been active.
And The Won owns just about all of it. Right down to the abandonment issues.
This is no longer a demonstration for democracy, this is a mob.
With a crowbar?
With a crowbar.
The socialists in Brussels, on the verge of achieving their dream, will not hesitate to order the use of military force to occupy and compel errant member states. Military force they would never consider using against tyrannies. Whether the militaries of France and Germany will be willing to follow the orders of EU puppets in their own governments is another matter - but there are many old scores remaining unsettled in Europe.
But, that isn't the real impact.
When this becomes common knowledge in the markets I fully expect both private and institutional investors to abandon the first the Greek markets, then the rest of the European markets and then the US markets.
The loss of 70% of your money isn't sustainable and any institution that stands still (stays in such a market) for can expect to lose all of their private money ASAP!
People have forgotten that what caused the Great Depression wasn't the market but the run on the banks! Walk into your local bank and see what it looks like - they have cut back everywhere in an attempt to stay open. They don't have any reserve to ride out a serious “run” on them.
Sorry, but ignoring the storm clouds on the horizon doesn't make the storm ago away - it just makes your personal loses worse.
Vulture politicians doing to the USA what vulture capitalists do to companies? There should be a bounty on their heads.
Greece has mostly a service and Tourist economy. They are getting hit hard and might not recover. The U.S is way behind them but catching up fast.
A little proof: Andy (the candy man) Cuomo walks into Buffalo the other day and promises 1 Billion dollars to the area. NY is in debt, but the candy man don't care, borrow it. No plan to spend it, but the candy man knows the unions will get a chunk of it, that will go right back to the candy mans coffers. Maybe they will build a monument to the candy man with it.
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REFERENCE Cuomo's Social Engineering as HUD Chief Contributed to Subprime Crisis / originally published on Examiner.com
Have those New Yorkers, residents of one of the highest taxed states in the union, voting for Andrew Cuomo to be their next governor allowed their ideology to trump sound reasoning? As many Americans across this great land continue to struggle with the loss of their homes, savings and retirement resources, those that were complicit in not regulating the government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) in the second market namely Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac causing the subprime loans to detonate are jockeying for power.
Sadly, we are giving those same culprits the honor of office through our votes. Note: the use of the term 'we' and 'our' is a reference to the electorate and not suggestive of the voting record of the author.
In 1993 President Bill Clinton appointed Andrew Cuomo to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as Assistant Secretary. In 1997 Cuomo took over as HUD chief replacing Clinton appointee Henry Cisneros. During Cisneros tenure he championed Clinton's goal of social engineering within the housing market forcing lenders to issue loans to those that would not financially qualify for the lending.
Cisneros left office in a scandal involving lying to the FBI over payouts to a mistress, Cisneros subsequently pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and though never sent to prison received a pardon from Bill Clinton in 2001.
Andrew Cuomo took the HUD reins and not only furthered Cisneros and Clinton's policies but greatly expanded them.
Henry Cisneros moved the GSEs toward a requirement that 42 percent of their mortgages serve low and moderate income families. Andrew Cuomo raised that number to 50 percent and dramatically hiked GSE mandates to buy mortgages for the "very-low-income."
These bad loans were purchased and sold throughout the secondary market and the pyramid grew and the bottom collapsed resulting in the subprime crisis we are still reeling from today.
In 2008, the Village Voice published a compelling report detailing Andrew Cuomo's policy decisions "that gave birth to the country's current crisis."
The report touched on how Cuomo's 187-page rules "opened the door to abuse." The rules explicitly rejected the idea of imposing any new reporting requirements on the GSEs. In other words, HUD wanted Fannie and Freddie to buy risky loans, but the department didn't want to hear just how risky they were.
Many New York voters have been distracted by the gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino's racist joke email forwards, what some are failing to see is the actual harm to the minority community directly caused by Cuomo's policies...and that is no laughing matter.
Cuomo's top aide said, "We believe that there are a lot of loans to black Americans that could be safely purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac if these companies were more flexible." Andrew Cuomo doubled down and had this to say about his HUD standards, "GSE presence in the subprime market could be of significant benefit to lower-income families, minorities, and families living in underserved areas."
How's that working out for the minority community, where foreclosures and unemployment rates have hit the hardest as a result of such failed policies and blatant social engineering?
SOURCE http://voices.yahoo.com/cuomos-social-engineering-as-hud-chief-contributed- 7077218.html
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