Public Intelligence

A list of 2,059 names of Greek citizens that have Swiss bank accounts with HSBC. The list was originally published by a Greek magazine called Hot Doc on October 27, 2012 resulting in the arrest of its editor Kostas Vaxevanis for “breach of privacy”.

Three confidential draft copies of the European Financial Stability Facility’s guidelines on primary market purchases, secondary market interventions and precautionary programs dated October 19, 2011.

Since the fourth review, the situation in Greece has taken a turn for the worse, with the economy increasingly adjusting through recession and related wage-price channels, rather than through structural reform driven increases in productivity. The authorities have also struggled to meet their policy commitments against these headwinds. For the purpose of the debt sustainability assessment, a revised baseline has been specified, which takes into account the implications of these developments for future growth and for likely policy outcomes. It has been extended through 2030 to fully capture long term growth dynamics, and possible financing implications.

Flight manuals and flight crew checklist for F-16C/D part of a series for the Hellenic Air Force from June-December 2003.

A survey of news reports and eyewitness photos from the last six months indicates that tear gas grenades and canisters being used around the world to suppress peaceful demonstrations and prevent political change in despotic regimes are largely made and sold by U.S. companies, often with the consent of the U.S. government. Police and security forces in Egypt, Tunisia, Israel, Bahrain, Yemen and Greece have all utilized U.S.-made tear gas and often other “less lethal” munitions, such as rubber bullets.

linmtheu – http://www.flickr.com/photos/26040773@N07/
SekaRuis – http://www.flickr.com/photos/sekarius/
endiaferon – http://www.flickr.com/photos/endiaferon/
cortlinux – http://www.flickr.com/photos/cortlinux/

Fabrizio Terrezza – http://www.flickr.com/photos/fabriter1985/
Michele Massetani – http://www.flickr.com/photos/gigiomc/
Giacomo Cosua – http://www.flickr.com/photos/jacko83/
Andrea Veroni – http://www.flickr.com/photos/andreatm/
Alessandro – http://www.flickr.com/photos/diffaphoto/
makisraf – http://www.flickr.com/photos/efthymios-gourgouris/

French oil workers expanded a strike yesterday over government plans to raise the retirement age, while European discontent over belt-tightening measures flared up in Portugal, Italy, and Greece. All of France’s oil refineries were on strike after two more plants voted to join the protest yesterday. The government deployed police to force the reopening of several fuel depots that had been blocked, raising concerns of possible gas shortages. French students clashed with police and labor leaders planned more demonstrations today and Tuesday.

The bonds of so-called peripheral euro-region nations, including Greece, Ireland and Spain, fell relative to benchmark German bunds after Greece’s credit rating was cut to junk by Moody’s Investors Service. German government bonds rose as investors shunned all but the safest assets following the downgrade and Citigroup Inc. said Greek debt will now be removed from some indexes. The ranking was lowered four steps to Ba1 from A3 by Moody’s, which cited “substantial” risks to economic growth from austerity measures tied to a 110 billion-euro ($134.5 billion) aid package from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. The lower rating “incorporates a greater, albeit, low risk of default,” the ratings company said in a statement yesterday in London. The outlook is stable, it said.

Greece is considering taking legal action against U.S. investment banks that might have contributed to the country’s debt crisis, Prime Minister George Papandreou said. “I wouldn’t rule out that this may be a recourse,” Papandreou said, in response to questions about the role of U.S. banks in the crisis, in an interview on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS.” The program, scheduled for broadcast today, was taped on May 13. Neither Papandreou nor Zakaria mentioned any banks by name.

The Obama administration is pressing its European counterparts to act more quickly and decisively to contain the Greek financial crisis before its fallout undermines a recovery in Europe and spreads across the Atlantic to the U.S. After a Friday morning conference call among finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of Seven—the U.S., Canada, Japan, Germany, France, Britain and Italy—President Barack Obama spoke by phone with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to reinforce that message. “We agreed on the importance of a strong policy response by the affected countries and a strong financial response from the international community,” Mr. Obama told reporters.

Greek legislators have defied public outrage at a draconian austerity plan, approving cutbacks as police battled hundreds of protesters outside Parliament. Amid new global market turmoil, Parliament approved the plan – needed in exchange for a mass EU-IMF bail-out – a day after three bank workers died in a firebomb attack on the sidelines of huge protest marches in Athens.

Photos by blackhalos and Verani Federico.

The euro zone’s decision to include the International Monetary Fund in any Greek rescue plan extends the Fund’s influence to a large swath of the world economy—and gives a political boost to its managing director. Over the past two years, the IMF has worked with the European Union to bail out EU members, including Latvia and Hungary. Now it is clear that the IMF mandate reaches also to Portugal, Spain and other troubled members of the 16-nation euro zone, said Domenico Lombardi, a Brookings Institution expert on the IMF. “Any possible (economic) contagion to Portugal and Spain (from Greece) should be under control,” because of IMF and euro-zone involvement, he said.

Greece should consider selling some of its islands as one option to reduce debt, two members of the German parliament in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre-right coalition said. Josef Schlarmann, a senior member of Merkel’s Christian Democrats, and Frank Schaeffler, a finance policy expert in the Free Democrats, were quoted on Thursday as saying that selling islands and other assets could help Greece out of its crisis.

The contentious role played by Goldman Sachs in Greece’s debt-saddled financial crisis is under scrutiny by financial regulators in the US, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, revealed yesterday. Goldman has come under fire for helping the Greek government to structure complex derivatives deals early in the decade and “borrow” billions of dollars in exchange rate swaps, which did not officially count as debt under eurozone rules. Critics say such conduct contributed to unsustainable public finances which have destabilised the euro.

Tens of thousands of Greeks took to the streets Wednesday as much of the country went on a 24-hour strike against government austerity measures. A small group of youths threw Molotov cocktails at police, who responded with tear gas. However, the 20,000 people who filed through downtown Athens—a relatively large crowd for a Greek strike—mostly limited themselves to chanting anti-government slogans. Public- and private-sector unions called the strike to protest a range of measures aimed at reducing Greece’s budget deficit. The government has announced a freeze on civil-service wages, cuts in public-sector entitlements and the closing of tax loopholes for certain professions, including some civil servants. It has also announced a fuel-tax increase.

Addressing the influential Treasury Select Committee, Gerald Corrigan, a Goldman Sachs managing director, accepted that the investment bank had “enabled politicians to mask borrowings” through a complex currency transaction in 2001. The so-called “swap” allowed Greece to conceal some of its debts and meet eurozone limits on government borrowing. Goldman made an estimated £192m in fees on the deal. “With the benefit of hindsight, it seems very clear that standards of transparency could have been and should have been higher,” Mr Corrigan said

Masked youths hurled firebombs and chunks of marble at police during a march in Athens on Sunday to mark the first anniversary of the police shooting of a teenager whose death sparked massive riots. Police fired volleys of tear gas to disperse the youths in running street battles in the center of the capital as several thousand demonstrators commemorated the death of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos. The teenager’s death sent youths rampaging through cities for two weeks last December. On Sunday, the rioters smashed bank windows, overturned trash bins and set them alight as they hurled rocks and fire crackers at riot police. Authorities said 177 people were detained for public order offenses in Athens and another 103 in the northern city of Thessaloniki, where a similar demonstration turned violent. Police also clashed with protesters in the southern city of Patras and the northwestern city of Ioannina.

Community fora in the Single Euro Payments Area, including in Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Éire/Ireland, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain.

The 57′h Bilderberg Meeting will be held in Vouliagmeni, Greece 14 – 17 May 2009. The Conference will deal mainly with the financial crisis, governments and markets, role of institutions, market economies and democracies, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, US and the World, cyberterrorism, new imperialisms, protectionism, post-Kyoto challenges.