Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

hils - on a global view you're no doubt correct, but for european markets, the short term outlook must surely be pretty bleak and no doubt usa will reflect this to a considerable degree

what political consequences a collapsed greece might bring in its wake is also uncomfortable - eg russian hegemonic(?) ambitions

Cyners,

Many brokers will move to 'close only' for the Asian session. Any moves before London opens will be on low volume. You won't get the true picture until after London dealers have been at their desk for an hour or so. There's also an old adage in the markets that "the Asians are always wrong".

There is some discussion of whether Monday and onwards for a few days could be a Bank Holiday in Greece. There are large numbers of ATMs now empty.

The IMF and the Euro group have said today that the deal being voted on at the referendum is no longer available.

Greece has said that there may be capital controls from tomorrow.

"This situation is entirely of their own making, it's nothing to do with irresponsible ECB and IMF lending,"


Who do you mean "their own making"?

The dumb waiter who serves you your beer and tapas or the maid who clears up after you.

But, just perhaps, it was some of the wheeler dealers and bankers who have now absconded to other tax dodging communities, hoping to repeat themselves.

UMMMMH.

The conditions of the loans initially set up and accepted by the "Right winged austerity government" seems to me to bear some responsibility.

Gave them a chance to transfer their "goodies" elsewhere".

The referendum hasn't been printed yet!

Mind a Greek island protected by the Russian Navy must have some attraction to a few oligarchs.

Perhaps, a holiday home for Putin!

fred takes his totally predictable stance

hilary is actually correct, though i accept it was not the "fault" of the ordinary chap in the street ...... the gov't of the time was totally irresponsible (even more profligate than the last labour gov't) for not facing up to the reality that you can't just keep spending and not have the consequences eventually coming home to roost

ECB/IMF were also culpable (in my eyes) fornot forcing the issue when they started ladling out further mountains of cheap dosh without imposing tough restrictions from the off

#61028 is spot on the money c, the ordinary joe on the street had little or no part in the madness.

And lets not forget those cuddly Germans with their nice shiny submarines at a billion a pop....on tick.

The land of €l Greco was number one for Porshe shiny car exports ..on tick.

Goldman Sucks cookin de books, whilst the €urobarons looked the other way.


So yes, the bloke in the street is entirely to blame, and should carry the can in to his dotage, serves him right!

Interesting summary!

"What happens on Monday when the banks open?
The Greek central bank has kept the main banks supplied with euro notes. Most branches that opened on Saturday were able to keep churning out notes with a few exceptions put down to administrative hiccups.

ATMs are also expected to be working on Monday, though it is likely that the long queues in some parts of Athens, Thessaloniki and other cities will have forced some of them to be closed.

Much depends on how united the government remains in the face of a backlash from Brussels, which forced the Papandreou government to abandon a similar referendum in 2011. A Northern Rock-style panic could see billions of euros withdrawn electronically by savers and businesses, as happened last week. This would force the ECB to supply further funds to the Greek central bank to cover the shortfall.

What happens on Tuesday when the current bailout expires?
At this point European Central Bank president Mario Draghi and the Frankfurt-based organisation’s board will need to decide if the decision to hold a referendum warrants an extension of its support.

The ECB has purchased Greek bank assets at a discount to maintain a flow of funds from Frankfurt to Athens. If the ECB freezes the operation, the Greek banks would soon run out of cash, forcing the government to impose capital controls.

Will the ECB maintain its funding operation?
Unlikely. Draghi has already made it known that he wants EU politicians – not the ECB – to decide on the fate of Greece. In the meantime Draghi will keep funds flowing to Athens. However, the agreement by EU finance ministers to cut off funding from Tuesday is expected to force his hand.

What about the repayment of €1.6bn to the IMF?
This payment will be missed. It is made up of three separate debt payments due this month rolled up by Athens and delayed until 30 June. A further delay puts Greece in arrears, the IMF said, but not default. Creditors know that calling repayment delays a default could allow private investors, holding about €100bn of debt, to demand their money back and push the country into bankruptcy.

How will a referendum resolve the matter?
Live Greek crisis: ECB caps emergency funding lifeline - live updates
No more extra emergency funding to Greece’s banks, despite steady outflow of deposits since crisis escalated.
Read more
It won’t, unless voters accept the creditors’ terms. A vote to accept their demands will bring forward pension reforms (ending early retirement this week, not over a period of several years), higher VAT rates on medical supplies, catering and purchases made on Greek islands, while abandoning proposals to increase corporation tax rates.

Rejecting the demands will put Syriza back at the negotiating table to repeat its central demand – that expensive short-term loans with the ECB be swapped for cheaper long-term loans with the commission.

Would the creditors back down should voters reject their proposals?
Brussels and the IMF are likely to view the verdict as a preference for life outside the euro, where rules exist to borrow from a central fund and repay according to a negotiated timetable, just as the Irish and Portuguese have done.

The creditors have admitted mistakes in underestimating the damaging effects of previous demands for public spending cuts as the price of bigger loans.

However, it is now the view of most eurozone countries that pension reforms in particular are needed to stabilise Athens’ perilous finances, especially the need to prevent 400,000 people who currently qualify for an early retirement pension being able to somehow get under the wire and claim one."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/28/greek-crisis-what-will-happen-next-referendum

every time, the central plank required for reform and the most immediate way of putting a stop to much nonsense, is for the retirement age to be increased from a totally unsustainable 61 to at least 65

increasing VAT would provide additional instant cashflow but of course would effectively hit the lowest paid the worst
it would also surely encourage cash transactions below the radar of the taxman

It has been announced that the banks in Greece will be closed tomorrow.

If Greece leaves the Euro and probably the EU, it will strengthen Cameron's hand for treaty change. The last thing that Merkel and others will want is the UK leaving the EU as well as Greece.

early retirement in greece

it gets even worse .......
Yiannis Vroutsis presented data to the parliament, explaining that almost 75% of Greek pensioners are trying to secure their early retirement through legal provisions that allow them to stop working before the age of 61


uk can't support retirement at 65 and we have a much more healthy economy

Some civil servants in Greece can retire at 50. It is the same in Italy.

If you play a wind instruments such as a trombone you can retire at 50 because it is a hazardous job! The same applies to pastry cooks, hairdressers and a raft of other so called dangerous jobs.

This is from 2012

Even on a stiflingly hot summer's day, the Athens underground is a pleasure. It is air-conditioned, with plasma screens to entertain passengers relaxing in cool, cavernous departure halls - and the trains even run on time.

There is another bonus for users of this state-of-the-art rapid transport system: it is, in effect, free for the five million people of the Greek capital.

With no barriers to prevent free entry or exit to this impressive tube network, the good citizens of Athens are instead asked to 'validate' their tickets at honesty machines before boarding. Few bother.

This is not surprising: fiddling on a Herculean scale — from the owner of the smallest shop to the most powerful figures in business and politics — has become as much a part of Greek life as ouzo and olives.

Indeed, as well as not paying for their metro tickets, the people of Greece barely paid a penny of the underground’s £1.5 billion cost — a ‘sweetener’ from Brussels (and, therefore, the UK taxpayer) to help the country put on an impressive 2004 Olympics free of the city’s notorious traffic jams.

The transport perks are not confined to the customers. Incredibly, the average salary on Greece’s railways is £60,000, which includes cleaners and track workers - treble the earnings of the average private sector employee here.

The overground rail network is as big a racket as the EU-funded underground. While its annual income is only £80 million from ticket sales, the wage bill is more than £500m a year — prompting one Greek politician to famously remark that it would be cheaper to put all the commuters into private taxis.

‘We have a railroad company which is bankrupt beyond comprehension,’ says Stefans Manos, a former Greek finance minister. ‘And yet, there isn’t a single private company in Greece with that kind of average pay.’

Significantly, since entering Europe as part of an ill-fated dream by politicians of creating a European super-state, the wage bill of the Greek public sector has doubled in a decade. At the same time, perks and fiddles reminiscent of Britain in the union-controlled 1970s have flourished.

Take a short trip on the metro to the city’s cooler northern suburbs, and you will find an enclave of staggering opulence.

Here, in the suburb of Kifissia, amid clean, tree-lined streets full of designer boutiques and car showrooms selling luxury marques such as Porsche and Ferrari, live some of the richest men and women in the world.

With its streets paved with marble, and dotted with charming parks and cafes, this suburb is home to shipping tycoons such as Spiros Latsis, a billionaire and friend of Prince Charles, as well as countless other wealthy industrialists and politicians.

One of the reasons they are so rich is that rather than paying millions in tax to the Greek state, as they rightfully should, many of these residents are living entirely tax-free.

Along street after street of opulent mansions and villas, surrounded by high walls and with their own pools, most of the millionaires living here are, officially, virtually paupers.

How so? Simple: they are allowed to state their own earnings for tax purposes, figures which are rarely challenged. And rich Greeks take full advantage.

Astonishingly, only 5,000 people in a country of 12 million admit to earning more than £90,000 a year — a salary that would not be enough to buy a garden shed in Kifissia.

Yet studies have shown that more than 60,000 Greek homes each have investments worth more than £1m, let alone unknown quantities in overseas banks, prompting one economist to describe Greece as a ‘poor country full of rich people’.

Manipulating a corrupt tax system, many of the residents simply say that they earn below the basic tax threshold of around £10,000 a year, even though they own boats, second homes on Greek islands and properties overseas.

And, should the taxman rumble this common ruse, it can be dealt with using a ‘fakelaki’ — an envelope stuffed with cash. There is even a semi-official rate for bribes: passing a false tax return requires a payment of up to 10,000 euros (the average Greek family is reckoned to pay out £2,000 a year in fakelaki.)

Even more incredibly, Greek shipping magnates — the king of kings among the wealthy of Kifissia — are automatically exempt from tax, supposedly on account of the great benefits they bring the country.

Yet the shipyards are empty; once employing 15,000, they now have less than 500 to service the once-mighty Greek shipping lines which, like the rest of the country, are in terminal decline.

With Greek President George Papandreou calling for a crackdown on these tax dodgers — who are believed to cost the economy as much as £40bn a year — he is now resorting to bizarre means to identify the cheats. After issuing warnings last year, government officials say he is set to deploy helicopter snoopers, along with scrutiny of Google Earth satellite pictures, to show who has a swimming pool in the northern suburbs — an indicator, officials say, of the owner’s wealth.

Officially, just over 300 Kifissia residents admitted to having a pool. The true figure is believed to be 20,000. There is even a boom in sales of tarpaulins to cover pools and make them invisible to the aerial tax inspectors.

But faced with the threat of a crackdown, money is now pouring out of the country into overseas tax havens such as Liechtenstein, the Bahamas and Cyprus.

‘Other popular alternatives include setting up offshore companies in Cyprus or the British Virgin Islands, or the purchase of real estate abroad,’ says one doctor, who declares an income of less than £90,000 yet earns five times that amount.

There has also been a boom in London property purchases by Athens-based Greeks in an attempt to hide their true worth from their domestic tax authorities.

‘These anti-tax evasion measures by the government force us to resort to even more detailed tax evasion ploys,’ admits Petros Iliopoulos, a civil engineer.

Hotlines have been set up offering rewards for people who inform on tax dodgers. Last month, to show the government is serious, it named and shamed 68 high-earning doctors found guilty of tax evasion.

Perhaps if the Greeks themselves had shown more willingness to tighten their belts and pay taxes due to the state, voters across Europe might not now be feeling such anger towards them.

But having strolled the streets of Kifissia, and watched the Greek hordes stream past the honesty boxes on the underground, it does not take a degree in European economics to know when somebody is taking advantage — at our expense.

as the old story goes in greece ......
of course i don't pay tax; i pay the taxman

Meanwhile at Chequers.