Saturday 28 February 2015

GREECE AND EUROPE’S DEBT:


LIES & MYTHS

The more laws and restrictions there are,
the poorer the people become.
The sharper men’s weapons,
The more trouble in the land.
The more ingenious and clever men are,
The more strange things happen. The more rules and regulations,
The more thieves and robbers.
Lao Tsu. “The Tao Te Ching” 6th century BCE


Executive Summary:

  • Myths are dangerous precisely because they rely more on cultural memory and prejudice than facts
  • The GREEK issue: In reality it was a bail out of some of the richest people in EUROPEAN society on the cost on some of the poorest
  • “Lazy” GREEKS work 600 hours more a year than GERMANS.
  • North versus South – ant versus lazy grasshopper
  • AMERICANS are certainly a lot more nervous about GREECE exiting the EUROZONE than GERMANY
  • GREECE: It was not the public sector but the private sector that went haywire
  • IRELAND, PORTUGAL, SPAIN and GREECE’S dept were moved by EU and US financial institutions from private sector to the public sector
  • EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK refused to intervene on currency speculators interest rates hikes in PORTUGAL
  • EUROPEAN countries spend more of their GDP on services than does ATHENS
  • After GREECE’S EU membership rejection in 1999 GOLDMAN SACHS essentially cooked the books to paved the way to make GREECE look like it cleared the bar
  • Troika bailout: GREEK government had to institute an austerity program that saw economic activity decline 25 percent and unemployment rise to 27 Percent
  • Virtually all of the “bailout”—89 percent—went to the banks that gambled in the 1999 to 2007 real estate casino
  • Public spending was not the cause of deficits - But what are those debts?
  • GERMANY’S stern move against Greece is to demoralize anti-austerity movements in SPAIN, PORTUGAL and IRELAND


MYTHS ARE DANGEROUS PRECISELY BECAUSE THEY RELY MORE ON CULTURAL MEMORY AND PREJUDICE THAN FACTS,

“Debt, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slave driver.” – Ambrose Bierce, Journalist & writer

“The history of an oppressed people is hidden in the lies and agreed myth of its conquerors.” – Meridel Le Suer, Author & activist

Myths are dangerous precisely because they rely more on cultural memory and prejudice than facts, and behind the current crisis between GREECE and the EUROPEAN UNION (EU) lays a fable that bears little relationship to why ATHENS and a number of other countries in the 28-member organization find themselves in deep distress.

NORTH VERSUS SOUTH – ANT VERSUS LAZY GRASSHOPPER

The tale is a variation of Aesop’s allegory of the industrious ant and the lazy, fun-loving grasshopper, with the “northern countries”—GERMANY, the NETHERLANDS, BRITAIN, FINLAND—playing the role of the ant, and GREECE, SPAIN, PORTUGAL, and IRELAND the part of the grasshopper.
The ants are sober and virtuous—lead by the frugal Swanbian house Frau, GERMAN Chancellor ANDREA MERKEL—the grasshoppers are spendthrift, corrupt lay-abouts who have spent themselves into trouble and now must pay the piper.

Background Information: NORTH VERSUS SOUTH

GERMAN ELITES VIEW SOUTHERN EUROPEANS AS INFERIOR

EROSION OF THE SOVEREIGNTY OF EUROPEAN COUNTRIES


The problem is that this myth bears almost no relationship to the actual roots of the crisis or what the solutions might be. And it perpetuates a fable that the debt is the fault of individual countries rather than a serious crisis at the very heart of the EU.

FIRST, A LITTLE MYTH BUSTING - IT WAS NOT THE PUBLIC SECTOR BUT THE PRIVATE SECTOR THAT WENT HAYWIRE

The EUROPEAN debt crisis goes back to the end of the roaring ‘90s when the banks were flushed with money and looking for ways to raise their bottom lines. One major strategy was to pour money into real estate, which had the effect of creating bubbles, particularly in SPAIN and IRELAND. In the latter, from 1999 to 2007, bank loans for IRISH real estate jumped 1,730 percent, from 5 million Euros to 96.2 million Euros, or more than half the GDP of the Republic. Housing prices increased 500 percent. “It was not the public sector but the private sector that went haywire in Ireland,” concludes Financial Times analyst MARTIN WOLF.

SPAIN, which had a budget surplus and a low debt ratio, went through much the same process, and saw an identical jump in housing prices: 500 percent.

In both countries there was corruption, but it wasn’t the penny ante variety of tax evasion or profit skimming. Politicians—eager for a piece of the action and generous “donations”—waved zoning rules, environmental regulations, and cut sweetheart tax deals. Hundreds of thousands of housing projects went up, many of them never to be occupied.

Then the AMERICAN banking crisis hit in 2008, and the bottom fell out. Suddenly, the ants were in trouble. But not really, because the ants have a trick: they gamble and the grasshoppers pay.

THE TRICK – DEPTS WERE MOVED FROM PRIVATE SECTOR TO THE PUBLIC SECTOR

The “trick,” as JOSEPH STIGLITZ, Nobel Laureate in economics, points out, is that EUROPE (and the U.S.) have moved those debts “from the private sector to the public sector—a well-established pattern over the past half-century.”

FINTAN O’TOOLE, author of SHIP OF FOOLS: How Stupidity and Corruption sank the Celtic Tiger, estimates that to save the IRISH-ANGLO Bank IRISH taxpayers shelled out $30 billion Euros, a sum that was the equivalent of the Island’s entire tax revenues for 2009. The EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK—which, along with the INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND (IMF) and the EUROPEAN COMMISSION, make up the “TROIKA”—strong-armed IRELAND into adopting austerity measures that tanked the country’s economy, doubled the unemployment rate, increased consumer taxes, and forced many of the country’s young people to emigrate. Almost half of IRELAND’S income tax now goes just to service the interest on its debts.



Background Information:

6 BILLION DOLLARS SUPPORT FOR YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT VERSUS 60 BILLION DOLLARS FOR SUPPORTING EUROPE’S BANKS



EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK REFUSED TO INTERVENE ON CURRENCY SPECULATORS INTEREST RATES HIKES IN PORTUGAL

Poor PORTUGAL. It had a solid economy and a low debt ratio, but currency speculators drove up interest rates on borrowing beyond what the government could afford, and the EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK REFUSED to intervene. The result was that LISBON was forced to swallow a “bailout” that was laden with austerity measures that, in turn, torpedoed its economy.

Background Information: GREECE AND THE AUSTERITY MEASURES

PERMANENT AUSTERITY - DEMOCRACY AT STAKE?

NIGEL FARAGE SPEAKS TO GREECE: YOU'RE BEING DESTROYED BY THE "ECONOMIC PRISON" OF THE EURO

WASHINGTON POST ADMITS AUSTERITY 'KILLING' GREECE

BANK RESCUES AS AN EXCUSE TO APPLY FURTHER AUSTERITY

WHO IS CONTINUALLY FORCING NEW ROUNDS OF AUSTERITY MEASURES ON SOUTHERN EU STATES? THE TROIKA?

EUROPE WAS A LEADER IN TERMS OF QUALITY INFRASTRUCTURE



EUROPEAN COUNTRIES SPEND MORE OF THEIR GDP ON SERVICES THAN DOES ATHENS



In GREECE’S case corruption was at the heart of the crisis, but not the popular version about armies of public workers and tax dodging oligarchs. There are rich tax dodgers aplenty in GREECE, but GERMANY, SWEDEN, and many other EUROPEAN countries spend more of their GDP on services than does ATHENS. GREECE spends 44.6 percent of its GDP on its citizens, less than the EU average and below GERMANY’S 46 percent and SWEDEN’S 55 percent.

And as for lazy: GREEKS work 600 hours more a year than GERMANS.

THE GREEK ISSUE: IN REALITY IT WAS A BAIL OUT OF SOME OF THE RICHEST PEOPLE IN EUROPEAN SOCIETY ON THE COST OF THE POOREST

According to economist MARK BLYTH, author of Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea, GREEK public spending through the 2000s is “really on track and quite average in comparison to everyone else’s,” and the so-called flood of “public sector jobs” consisted of “ 14,000 over two years.” All the talk of the profligate GREEK government is “a lot of nonsense” and just “political cover for the fact that what we’ve done is bail out some of the richest people in EUROPEAN society and put the cost on some of the poorest.”

There was a “score” in GREECE. However, it had nothing to do with free spending, but was a scheme dreamed up by GREEK politicians, bankers, and the AMERICAN finance corporation, GOLDMAN SACHS.

Background Information: GREEK DEFAULT? 

GREECE’S LOOMING DEFAULT - A SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM

ONE HAND FEEDS THE OTHER


AFTER GREECE’S EU MEMBERSHIP REJECTION IN 1999 GOLDMAN SACHS ESSENTIALLY COOKED THE BOOKS TO PAVED THE WAY TO MAKE GREECE LOOK LIKE IT CLEARED THE BAR

GREECE’S application for EU membership in 1999 was rejected because its budget deficit in relation to its GDP was over 3 percent, the cutoff line for joining. That’s where GOLDMAN SACHS came in. For a fee rumored to be $200 million (some say three times that), the multinational giant essentially cooked the books to make GREECE look like it cleared the bar. Then GREECE’S political and economic establishment hid the scheme until the 2008 crash shattered the illusion.

Background Information: GOLDMAN SACHS AND THE FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS

GREECE AND THE FINGERPRINTS OF GOLDMAN SACHS

GREECE’S LOOMING DEFAULT - A SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM

ONE HAND FEEDS THE OTHER

  





IT WAS THE BUSY LITTLE ANTS, NOT THE FIDDLING GRASSHOPPERS THAT BROUGHT ON THE EUROPEAN DEBT CRISIS.

AMERICAN, GERMAN, FRENCH, and DUTCH banks had to know that they were creating an unstable real estate bubble—a 500 percent jump in housing prices is the very definition of the beast—but kept right on lending because they were making out like bandits.



TROIKA BAILOUT: GREEK GOVERNMENT HAD TO INSTITUTE AN AUSTERITY PROGRAM THAT SAW ECONOMIC ACTIVITY DECLINE 25 PERCENT AND UNEMPLOYMENT RISE TO 27 PERCENT

When the bubble popped and EUROPE went into recession, GREECE was forced to apply for a “bailout” from the TROIKA. In exchange for 172 billion Euros, the GREEK government instituted an austerity program that saw economic activity decline 25 percent, unemployment rise to 27 Percent (and over 50 percent for young GREEKS). The cutbacks slashed pensions, wages, and social services, and drove 44 percent of the population into poverty.

Virtually all of the “bailout”—89 percent—went to the banks that gambled in the 1999 to 2007 real estate casino. What the GREEK—as well as SPANIARDS, PORTUGUESE, and IRISH—got was misery.

There are other EU countries, including ITALY and FRANCE that, while not in quite the same boat as the “distressed four,” are under pressure to bring down their debt ratios.

PUBLIC SPENDING WAS NOT THE CAUSE OF DEFICITS - BUT WHAT ARE THOSE DEBTS?

This past summer, the Committee for a Citizen’s Audit on the Public Debt issued a report on FRANCE, a country that is currently instituting austerity measures to bring its debt in line with the magic “3 percent” ratio. What the Committee concluded was that 60 percent of the FRENCH public debt was “illegitimate.”

More than 18 other countries, including BRAZIL, PORTUGAL, ECUADOR, GREECE and SPAIN, have done the same “audit,” and, in each case, found that increased public spending was not the cause of deficits. From 1978 to 2012, FRENCH public spending actually declined by two GDP points.

The main culprit in the debt crisis was a fall in tax revenues resulting from massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. According to RAZMIG KEUCHEYAN, sociologist and author of THE LEFT HEMISPHERE, this “NEOLIBERAL MANTRA” that was supposed to increase investment and employment did the opposite.

According to the study, the second major reason was the increase in interest rates that benefits creditors and speculators. Had interest rates remained stable during the 1990s, debt would be significantly lower.

KEUCHEYAN argues that tax reductions and interest rates are “political decisions” and that “public deficits do not grow naturally out of the normal course of social life. They are deliberately inflicted on society by the dominant classes to legitimize austerity policies that will allow the transfer of value from the working classes to the wealthy ones.”

The INTERNATIONAL LABOR ORGANIZATION recently found that wages have, indeed, stalled or declined throughout the EU over the past decade.

GERMANY’S STERN MOVE AGAINST GREECE IS TO DEMORALIZE ANTI-AUSTERITY MOVEMENTS IN SPAIN, PORTUGAL AND IRELAND.

The audit movement calls for repudiating debt that results from “the service of private interests” as opposed to the “wellbeing of the people.” In 2008, ECUADOR canceled 70 percent of its debt as “illegitimate.”

How this plays out in the current GREEK-EU crisis is not clear. The SYRIZA government is not asking to cancel the debt—though it would certainly like a write down—but only that it be given time to let the economy grow. The recent four-month deal may give ATHENS some breathing room, but the ants are still demanding austerity and tensions are high.

What seems clear is that GERMANY and its allies are trying to force SYRIZA into accepting conditions that will undermine its support in GREECE and demoralize anti-austerity movements in other countries.

Background Information: GERMAN POLICIES

AUSTERITY POLICIES ADVOCATED BY THE EUROPEAN UNION - PROMOTED PRIMARILY BY GERMANY’S ANGELA MERKEL

WHAT IS GERMANY'S REAL ROLL IN ALL THIS?

TROIKA IS BURDENING THE MIDDLE AND LOWER ECONOMIC STRATA OF SOCIETY WITH EXCESSIVE TAXES, LEADING DIRECTLY TO STARVATION





AMERICANS ARE CERTAINLY A LOT MORE NERVOUS ABOUT GREECE EXITING THE EUROZONE THAN GERMANY

The U.S. can play a role in this—President OBAMA has already called for easing the austerity policies—through its domination of the IMF. By itself WASHINGTON can outvote GERMANY, the NETHERLANDS, and FINLAND, and could exert pressure on the two other TROIKA members to compromise. Will it? Hard to say, but the AMERICANS are certainly a lot more nervous about GREECE exiting the EUROZONE than GERMANY.
But the key to a solution is exploding the myth.



That has already begun. Over the past few weeks, demonstrators in GREECE, SPAIN, ITALY, GERMANY, PORTUGAL, GREAT BRITAIN, BELGIUM and AUSTRIA have poured into the streets to support SYRIZA’S stand against the Troika. “The Left has to work together having as its common goal the elimination of predatory capitalism” says MAITE MOLA, vice-president of the EUROPEAN Left organization and member of the PORTUGUESE parliament. “And the solution should be EUROPEAN.”

In the end, the grasshoppers might just turn Aesop’s fable upside down.


Friday 27 February 2015

GREECE AND GERMANY


ALL QUIET NOW, BUT CAN GREECE REALLY THRIVE INSIDE THE EURO?

Despite a deal being provisionally cut with GREECE, a new chapter of EUROPEAN instability is only just starting.
After a lot of hubbub, in the end the GREEK government submitted a list of policy proposals that elicited a positive response from BRUSSELS, judging them to be “sufficiently comprehensive” to permit the four-month extension of the existing loan arrangements until June.
The responses from the IMF and the ECB were rather more circumspect, indicating strongly that the next four months of negotiations to determine GREECE’S relationship with the EUROSYSTEM will be tough and most probably tense.
The IMF noted that the GREEK government’s “policy parameters” didn’t go far or weren’t detailed enough, especially about VAT and pension reforms, privatizations and policies to open up closed sectors, including the labor market.
The ECB urged the GREEK authorities to act swiftly to “stabilize the payments culture and refrain from any unilateral action to the contrary.” This is believed to refer to matters such as GREEK regulations on mortgage foreclosures and to tax and payments arrears in public policy.

EUROZONE’S MISTRUST BETWEEN NORTH AND SOUTH STILL PERSISTS

What’s the big “deal?”

The “deal” between GREECE and its EURO group partners has been widely welcomed, and spun according to what people thought would or should happen.
It appears that the current “deal” is just Act I in a play with an unpredictable, but very likely bad, ending — where “bad” equals EURO system fragmentation, or GREXIT, if you prefer. (Or the even tonier “GREXIDENT.”)
It’s fair to say that however people judge the deal and what they think is good or positive about it from GREECE’S point of view is really about one thing only: relief that the integrity of the EURO system has been preserved.

GERMAN ORTHODOX FINANCIAL ESTABLISHMENT

That is some achievement, given that it looked as though it might not happen. Now, the hope (rather than conviction) prevails that the upcoming negotiations will see a realignment of interests and trust between GREECE and its creditors.
Well, who wouldn’t wish for such an outcome?

The problem though, is that the economic and social policy agenda on which SYRIZA scored such a stunning electoral victory is entirely appropriate for GREECE, but wholly incompatible with a EURO system that I call colloquially, TEUTONIA. While TEUTONIA normally refers to the geography of GERMANY or parts of NORTHERN EUROPE, I use it to connote a GERMAN culture in economics and finance.

In TEUTONIA, GERMANY doesn’t always win all the arguments, nor does it or can it impose a policy agenda by diktat. But in the absence of political and fiscal union – of which none of the major countries is in favor – the terms of the (narrow) monetary union will always reflect largely the interests of GERMANY and a relatively orthodox financial establishment viscerally opposed to the establishment of a genuine transfer, joint liability union.

CAN TEUTONIA BE APPEASED?

That’s a fact I can’t see changing — no matter how mutual trust relations between GREECE and GERMANY might heal after the early year impasse.
And if it doesn’t change, then SYRIZA’S economic policy agenda will never really get off the ground. And if it doesn’t, then what next for SYRIZA and for GREECE?
I have no doubt that TEUTONIA can accommodate a compliant and subservient GREECE subject to the will of the latter’s citizens. But SYRIZA’S election victory was about not being compliant and subservient.

That’s why I’m not confident that the new status quo can hold. At the same time, there is no question that the EURO group did cut GREECE some slack, but in terms of policy freedom, far less than is sometimes suggested.

In the end, the “deal” came down not so much to economic argument and reasoning, as to the intervention of ANGELA MERKEL and FRANCOIS HOLLANDE, who have much bigger fish to fry currently with RUSSIA and the UKRAINE – and, closer to home, religious, ethnic and migrant tensions.

The prospect of a Eurozone crisis — with potentially unpredictable knock-on effects following GREEK capital controls, default and exit — was a bridge too far at this particular juncture. For the time being, at least, geopolitics trumps all else.
But reflecting on the last four weeks and looking ahead to the next four months, the EUROZONE’S narrative of mistrust between north and south has not really been patched up. A new chapter of EUROPEAN instability is only just starting.


By George Magnus

Tuesday 24 February 2015

GERMANY AND GREECE

Sunday, 14 April 2013 we wrote:

GERMAN ELITES VIEW SOUTHERN EUROPEANS AS INFERIOR



AS LONG AS GERMANS VIEW THE CURRENT CRISIS AS A “SOUTHERN” PROBLEM, RECOVERY CAN'T HAPPEN 

GREEK elections are over and many are looking at GERMANY for a solution to the Euro’s woes. Unfortunately, the chances that GREECE’S northern neighbor will assume responsibility for the financial messes of its southern partners are slim. The reason GERMANY continues to tout austerity rather than growth to save the Euro lies largely in GERMANY’S skewed view of history and of itself, which is based on two false assumptions.
First, most GERMANS view southern EUROPEANS as “different” from themselves. They assume that GERMANY enjoys great economic power primarily because its citizens have saved and been industrious, in contrast to, say, the GREEKS, SPANISH, or ITALIANS. Bailing out GREECE, according to this view, would encourage it and other countries like it to continue their lazy and licentious ways. Second, GERMANS (and many others) view EUROPE’S predicament as a currency or debt crisis rather than what it truly is: a current-account and balance-of-trade problem. GERMANS export more to their EUROPEAN partners than they consume, benefiting from this asymmetrical situation even as they expect everyone else to be exporters and savers like them.

See: WHICH CRUEL RULER IS CONTINUALLY FORCING NEW ROUNDS OF AUSTERITY MEASURES ON SOUTHERN EU STATES? – NOT GERMANY - BUT THE  EUROZONE’S SHADOW STATES? 

While much reporting and commentary has focused on GERMANY’S moral disdain for its flailing E.U. partners, most GERMAN leaders view the GREEK case differently. They rightly point out that key institutions of democracy and civil society are not sufficiently embedded in GREECE, making it difficult to collect taxes and resolve distribution conflicts.
But GERMANY and GREECE have had very different experiences in making their institutions work. In the post-World War II era, GERMANY was initially an occupied nation, whereas GREECE had to contend with a communist threat and successive rightwing military dictatorships. The “embeddedness” of GERMAN institutions derives from the West’s imposition of democracy and the lack of viable alternatives to it. The same cannot be said for GREECE.

THE EURO HAS BENEFITED GERMANY GREATLY

Furthermore, GERMANY occupied and plundered countries like GREECE before 1945, stealing and destroying both public and private wealth. Yet it was not asked to pay reparations. The Allies even forgave GERMANY’S World War I reparations. So GERMANY’S insistence that GREECE pay all of its debts is not just hypocritical, it’s a complete misunderstanding of one of the key sources of post-1945 GERMAN economic success: massive debt forgiveness and free money—the exact opposite of austerity.

Main Architect of German austerity measures, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble
Although most GERMANS find it difficult to remember, the Euro has benefited them greatly. The EUROPEAN currency has not only reduced GERMANY’S transaction costs with its biggest trading partners, but also made its exports more competitive because they are priced in a currency that is less valuable than the DEUTSCHE Mark was. Thanks to the euro zone’s inclusion of countries (such as GREECE) where wages and prices are much lower than in GERMANY, GERMAN exports are sold relatively cheaply. The so-called sovereign-debt crisis, therefore, is really a question of trade and capital-payment asymmetries for which the GERMANS bear some responsibility, since they built an export-driven economy. GERMANY’S surpluses are the flip side of GREECE’S deficits.
But if GERMAN policymakers persist in demanding austerity, the crisis will finally hit GERMANS in their pocketbooks. Refusing to extend to GREECE the debt relief that GERMANY once enjoyed only increases the probability that GREECE will be forced to abandon the Euro, and the shock waves extending from a GREEK exit would hit GERMAN capital markets hard. So far the crisis has affected only the stock market, which most GERMAN private investors avoid, viewing it (with good reason) as a speculators’ market. But once it hits bonds and other forms of commercial paper, which are broadly held by individual investors, GERMANS will start to realize that fiscal austerity is not equivalent to growing one’s way out of a downturn.

GERMANY'S’ STRUCTURAL REFORMS DURING THE 1990S, TO REGAIN A COMPETITIVE EDGE ON WORLD MARKETS, WERE IMPLEMENTED DURING A PERIOD OF ECONOMIC GROWTH

It might also remind GERMANS that the structural reforms they undertook during the 1990s to regain their competitive edge on world markets were implemented during a period of economic growth. In contrast, they are asking their southern neighbors to make much more painful cuts during a severe global downturn. That is a recipe for further contraction not just in GREECE, but GERMANY as well. After all, once its EUROPEAN trading partners fall into a deeper recession, GERMANY won’t be able to rely on exports to sustain economic growth and GERMANS will have less money to be austere about.
While commentators are hailing the GREEK elections as a first step forward, the results of that vote have done nothing to change the forces that brought about this EUROPEAN crisis. GREEK voters expressed a desire to retain the Euro, but the country’s basic problem – how to build responsible fiscal institutions while undermining its ability to pay for them – remains as intractable as ever.

THE EXPORTING NORTHERN EUROPE IS REWARDED FOR THE SURPLUSES IT REFUSES TO REDISTRIBUTE TO HELP SOUTHERN EUROPE

For austerity: IMF and Germany
Meanwhile, the problem has spread to SPAIN, PORTUGAL, and ITALY because investors fear that the same contradictory mix of budget-cutting and institution-building threatens their solvency. This “contagion” has raised the cost of reform for these countries, further imperiling the EUROPEAN project. Worse, the GERMAN emphasis on austerity has reordered the single EUROPEAN capital market along national lines, as the exporting north is rewarded for the surpluses it refuses to redistribute to help the south. Precisely because there is no redistribution mechanism to help bail out the south– something that GERMAN policymakers vehemently oppose — the emergence of large interest rate differentials among national bond markets seriously endangers the Euro’s integrity.

Related articles on EUROPE:

As long as GERMANS view the current crisis as a “southern” problem rather than a shared EUROPEAN one – as a one-sided coin – and persist in the belief that pursuing austerity and reform during an economic slowdown is the answer to the problem, GERMANS will continue to look for solutions in all the wrong places.

By Jonathan Zatlin and Louis Ferleger via Salon News

1 comment:

  1. Well if this will continue, I'm sure that more and more European countries will suffer in this economic crisis.

    economic outlook
    ReplyDelete