Tag Archives: Austerity

Portugal Throws Open Europe’s Them-And-Us Austerity Divide

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“Half way through his four-year term, Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho is trying to curb popular resentment over what opponents say is a widening gulf between private employees and about 600,000 public workers who have mostly stayed immune to mass job cuts. What’s bothering the Portuguese isn’t just that austerity helped prolong a recession and sent unemployment to a record 18 percent, it’s also that the government used taxation more than those in Greece and Ireland to try to narrow the budget deficit. Some workers on the state payrolls are perceived to have escaped the deterioration in living standards being felt by others.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-25/portugal-throws-open-europe-s-them-and-us-divide-over-austerity.html

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Euro Zone Grants Multibillion Euro Lifeline for Greece

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“Greece secured a 6.8 billion euro ($8.7 billion) lifeline from the euro zone but was told it must keep its promises on cutting public sector jobs and other reforms in order to get all the cash, officials said Monday.  The deal, which spares Greece defaulting on debt that falls due in August, will see Athens drip-fed support under close watch from its international creditors to drive through unpopular reforms.  Central banks in the Eurosystem will contribute 1.5 billion euros in July and 500 million euros in October, the officials said. The International Monetary Fund will give 1.8 billion euros in August.”

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100870772

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Currency Controls in Cyprus Increase Worry About Euro System

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“On a visit to Athens this year, Marios Loucaides, a Cypriot businessman, saw an apartment he liked in the heart of the Greek capital and decided to buy it.  However, Mr. Loucaides discovered that the euros he had on deposit here in Nicosia, the capital, could not be moved to Greece, even though the two countries share the same currency and, in theory at least, the same free movement of capital.The apartment deal collapsed. And so, too, did Mr. Loucaides’s belief that Europe has a common currency. Tangled in restrictions imposed in March as part of a bailout for the country’s ailing banks, a euro in Cyprus is no longer the same as one in France, Germany or Greece.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/10/world/europe/currency-controls-in-cyprus-increase-worry-about-euro-system.html?_r=1&&pagewanted=all

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Italy Confronts Germany, Adding Additional Euro Pressure

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“Greece has been relegated to the status of a Third World country, the complicity of German leaders with the ever-inflating ECB is due for a judicial hearing, British leaders are committed to a referendum on whether Britain should pull out of the EU entirely, Spain is broke, Portugal is busted … and Italian leaders are getting ready to square off with German bankers over ‘austerity.’ That the euro has not always suffered some breakdown is testimony to the power of its globalist backers. It has, however, bankrupted half of Europe and even the healthier northern half is not happy with what Europe has become and is continuing to become.”

http://www.thedailybell.com/29238/Italy-Confronts-Germany-Adding-Additional-Euro-Pressure

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Greek Stocks Fall After Failed Gas Company Sale

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“Greek stocks fell sharply after the country failed to attract a single bid for Depa, a natural-gas company it is selling, a significant setback to its effort to raise billions of euros from the sale of state assets this year.  A failure by Greece to meet its privatization targets would limit Athens’s ability to meet its debt targets and could require the government to take additional austerity measures that would hurt the economy. Greece’s bailout agreement requires the government to use additional spending cuts to cover 50% of any shortfall in raising funds via privatizations.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323495604578537370841768126.html

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Italian mayor turns into Mr. Fix-It to save money in town budget

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“An Italian mayor and his council members have decided to fight the economic crisis proactively, picking up paintbrushes and re-painting the walls of their offices themselves to spare the town budget. They worked overtime and even chipped in for the material themselves. ‘In a time of economic hardship, we managed to save 10,000 euros ($13,000). My colleagues, mayor Giovanni di Panegrazio and myself paid for the 470 euros of material necessary for the work,’ he said. Families of the council employees and other local residents have contributed with food and drink to reward the town managers for their sense of civic duty.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/07/08/italian-mayor-turns-into-mr-fix-it-to-save-money-in-town-budget/

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Families occupy unfinished homes in Spain

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“On the edge of a green field where horses graze, Juana and her neighbours found this mini estate of more than 70 elegantly painted three-bedroom houses, empty and partly plundered. She says about 70 families have moved into the estate in the past three weeks, into houses that are all but finished but lack water and electricity.  Like countless projects across Spain, the site was abandoned by property developers when the bank loans dried up in the 2008 financial crisis. Local authorities have remained silent on the status of the site. Unlike many of Spain’s so-called ‘ghost towns’, life has returned to this one, in the form of local families ruined by the crisis.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/06/18/families-occupy-unfinished-homes-in-spain/

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Portugal and Greece highlight eurozone fragility

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“Political turmoil in Portugal and concerns about the pace of reform in Greece have raised fears that the eurozone crisis may be about to reignite. Nervous markets pushed up borrowing costs in Portugal to a painful 8 percent Wednesday (3 July) after the governing coalition of Pedro Passos Coelho saw the resignation of its finance and foreign ministers over the social and economic costs of austerity measures. Coelho’s weakened position raises doubts about whether Lisbon – until recently routinely praised for putting into place a series of harsh budget-cutting measures – will be able to meet the terms of the its €78 billion bailout, agreed in 2011.”

http://euobserver.com/economic/120752

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel says no country will have to leave eurozone

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“Pushing her message of the need for greater fiscal discipline, structural reform and strengthened competitiveness, she said: ‘All of us have to jointly become better, and for that we need European unity.’  Merkel, who faces elections on September 22 in Europe’s biggest economy, has long championed fiscal discipline that has forced painful spending cuts in countries such as Greece and Spain.  More recently she has focussed on the need to help the victims of the crisis, almost six million jobless under-25-year-olds, and repeatedly said that ‘Germany will only do well if Europe does well’.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/07/05/german-chancellor-angela-merkel-says-no-country-will-have-to-leave-eurozone/

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Activists converge on Rahm Emanuel’s home for Fourth of July protest

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“As of Thursday afternoon, over 400 people had indicated on a Facebook event page that they would be attending the ‘Block Party to Fight Austerity at Rahm’s House.’ ‘Let’s gather at Chase Park (Ashland and Leland) at noon, then march over to Rahm Emanuel’s house for a street dance party to celebrate citywide resistance to budget cuts and other austerity measures that hurt poor and working people in order to make the super-rich even richer,’ the organizers wrote. ‘At a time when working people are already struggling to make ends meet, Mayor Emanuel is eliminating thousands of jobs across the city every year,’ organizer Greg Goodman explained to the station.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/07/04/activists-converge-on-rahm-emanuels-home-for-fourth-of-july-protest/

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