Cyprus-Forum.com

[Londonrake]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/0 ... austerity/

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[Lordo]

where else does the winning party get 50 bonus seats. what kind of democracy is this?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-48902766
it seems little takis's party has won the election and wil get the 50 extra seat which will give him an outright majority. now is that going to make a blind bit of difference to the griiiks, not bloody likely. it was the right wing that brought the country to its knees. it just seems people have very short memories.

[erolz66]

Bye bye to Golden Dawn's presence in the Greek parliament.

[supporttheunderdog]

Bye bye to Golden Dawn's presence in the Greek parliament.

You beat me to it. That to me is the best bit of news to come out of the Greek elections.

One of Greeks I know (Greeks not Cypriots) otherwise thinks the result is positive and hopes that featherbedding of certain "entitled" groups just to buy votes with tax-payer's money (as opposed to based on public needs/benefits) will come to an end.

[B25]

Organisations like Golden Dawn do no just disappear, instead of hearing them in Government you will hear and see them on the streets. I think it was better whilst they were within. Being on the streets is going to be so much worst.

I wonder when the Grey Wolves will go the same way, oh, but, wait, the TCs need these criminals to do their bidding and they have the audacity to complain about Golden Dawn in another country. F hypocrites.

[Londonrake]

Organisations like Golden Dawn do no just disappear, instead of hearing them in Government you will hear and see them on the streets. I think it was better whilst they were within. Being on the streets is going to be so much worst.

"Better to have him inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in". LBJ (on J Edgar Hoover I think).

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[miltiades]

Organisations like Golden Dawn do no just disappear, instead of hearing them in Government you will hear and see them on the streets. I think it was better whilst they were within. Being on the streets is going to be so much worst.

"Better to have him inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in". LBJ (on J Edgar Hoover I think).

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Better to give him a glass of wine than having your bottle ...pinched !!
By miltiades

[Lordo]

more importantly people have learn nothing from the last government. they also came in claiming they will do something about the austerity imposed on them by the eu for their financial situation and got nothing. in fact these swines created the problem in the first place. golden dawn can only benefit from this, but thankfully they vote never reaches high enough to have a presence in parliament.

[Londonrake]

What I thought was an interesting (paywalled) article. Another glowing testimony to EU membership:

"Trapped in the euro, debt-ridden Greece will sputter along until it gets up and leaves.

It has the best performing stock market in Europe this year. Its bonds have been soaring. And now it has a new pro-business, centre-Right government committed to tax cuts and market reforms. Plenty of people might be tempted to argue that, after years of pain, the Greek economy is now on the path to a sustainable recovery. Investors are certainly buying into that story – and if Greece is finally fixed then perhaps almost a decade on we can finally declare the eurozone crisis officially over.

The trouble is, it isn’t quite true. Sure, the new government is a lot better than the populist, left-wing firebrands it will replace. And Greece is starting to recover from the longest and deepest recession since records began. Yet demand is still being sucked out of its economy by a dysfunctional monetary system, it is being punished by an over-valued euro and it is crippled by towering debts. The best it can hope for is to become the new Italy – and that isn’t really any kind of fix at all.

After a landslide victory, Greece’s Kyriakos Mitsotakis, leader of the centre-Right New Democracy party, will start forming his government this week. A one-time McKinsey consultant and son of a former prime minister, he has far more convincing credentials than Alexis Tsipras, the radical Syriza leader swept into power during the worst of the debt crisis.

Tsipras was elected to fight against the austerity imposed by the European Union and the IMF, but after a bruising confrontation with Brussels ended up meekly accepting it and imposing budget cuts and tax increases to satisfy his creditors. He will be little missed. The election of Mitsotakis will be taken as a sign that Greece is inally getting back to normal.

He is certainly talking the right language. New Democracy is promising to clamp down on endemic corruption, sweep away red tape, privatise stateassets and finally cut some taxes. It is a pro-business, pro-enterprise, supply-side agenda. That is certainly needed. For much of the last decade, Greece has suffered from swinging austerity and rising taxes, making it less competitive with every year. Demand and supply were hammered at the same time, a toxic mix that made it impossible to recover.

Investors certainly seem to think the country is about to do a lot better. The Athens stock market has been on a tear during 2019, rising by 45pc.

The bond market is even better. In the wake of the election, the yield on 10-year bonds dropped to an all-time low of 2.016pc. That compares with 4pc just a year ago. At the peak of the debt crisis in 2012, when there seemed a very real possibility the country might default, it was more than 30pc.

At this rate, it might be only a few more months before Greece has negative yields on its debt. There is a recovery underway and plenty of investors are looking for a share of it.

In truth, Greece was always likely to grow again at some point. Even in the worst possible circumstances, no economy is ever completely dead. After what even the IMF admitted was the worst recession since records began – output shrank by close on 30pc, comfortably beating both the depth and duration of the Great Depression of the Thirties – it was always going to stabilise and then start to claw back some lost ground one day.

GDP expanded by 1.9pc last year, and the forecast is for it to grow by slightly more than 2pc this year and next. The election of a pro-business government, and tax cuts, will help accelerate that.

And yet to describe that as dead cat bounce would be unfair to recently deceased furry pets. In truth, Greece remains in deep trouble so long as it is trapped inside the euro. Why? There are three big reasons.

First, the currency remains cruelly over-valued for a country still struggling to recover from a deep, deep recession. With its own currency, Greece would have massively devalued in 2011 and 2012 and been rewarded with a surge in tourism and a rise in basic manufacturing as its factories became far more competitive. Instead, brutal wage cuts – known in the dry language of economists as internal devaluation – allowed it to restore only a fraction of its lost output.

It is a slow, painful process. In fairness, Greek exports reached a record in 2018, rising 10pc with oil products excluded. The trouble is the country still runs a trade deficit, and it is a long way from the kind of export-led boom that usually bails out an economy in that kind of trouble. That isn’t going to change any time soon.

Next, the EU is still imposing punishing austerity. The country is forecast to run a primary budget surplus of 2.9pc of GDP this year according to the Bank of Greece. But its creditors, principally the EU and the IMF – which under the stewardship of Christine Lagarde amount to the same thing – are demanding a surplus of 3.5pc of GDP this year. One of the first things Mitsotakis will have to do is find a way of meeting the demands of the bail-out. It is impossible to implement a supply side reform package and run a surplus. You cut taxes, wait for the economy to revive and use that extra cash to bring the budget deficit back under control. The new government is fighting with one hand, possibly both, tied behind its back.

Finally debts are crippling. Greece’s debt to GDP ratio has climbed to 176pc of GDP, close on double the level a decade ago. The country has taken on vast borrowing, but instead of using it to re-build its infrastructure and boost competitiveness it has just about kept itself afloat and paid the interest owed. That debt burden will crush the life out of the economy for decades, and even then will never be repaid in full.

The best Greece can hope for is to be the new Italy. The two have almost identical economic performance since the euro was launched: Greece is at 107pc of 1999 GDP, Italy on 109pc (the UK is 145pc). It will splutter along with tepid growth and perpetual debts just like Italy until either the euro is completely reformed, with a central budget that can distribute growth, or else it becomes fed up and leaves.

Investors hoping to cash in on a sustained recovery will be disappointed, while the destruction of Greek living standards will remain an indictment of the failure of the single currency."

Cue Hood. To dust off his notes and probably tell us how this came about and is all easily solved. If only people would listen.

[Lordo]

the griiik economy is like no other. they not only have not eough workers to support old age pensioners and the unemployed but also their wealthy are just not paying the taxes they are supposed to pay. even if they did pay, the country will be in only a slightly less mess.