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Greece bankrupt by July 2012
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Greece bankrupt by July 2012
Those darn guru's kept saying about Greece, the E U and, the Euro all failing. My thoughts on that was / is they didnt have a single clue and made stuff up to try and make themselves look good to the few who whould listen. Ok well this is about the real and the now. Greece is definately in trouble, We already knew that. Why should we be concerned? Because this "fail" will affect us here in the U S and many countries around the world. Sort of the shot heard around the world. Here is an article I saw today. Thanks and enjoy
Greece Warns of Going Broke as Tax Proceeds Dry Up
By LIZ ALDERMAN | New York Times – 8 hours ago
ATHENS — As European leaders grapple with how to preserve their monetary union, Greece is rapidly running out of money.
Government coffers could be empty as soon as July, shortly after this month’s pivotal elections. In the worst case, Athens might have to temporarily stop paying for salaries and pensions, along with imports of fuel, food and pharmaceuticals.
Officials,
scrambling for solutions, have considered dipping into funds that are
supposed to be for Greece’s troubled banks. Some are even suggesting
doling out i.o.u.’s.
Greek leaders said that despite their latest
bailout of 130 billion euros, or $161.7 billion, they face a shortfall
of 1.7 billion euros because tax revenue and other sources of potential
income are drying up. A wrenching recession and harsh budget cuts have
left businesses and individuals with less and less to give for taxes —
and growing incentive to avoid paying what they owe.
The budget gap is widening as the so-called troika of lenders — the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission — withholds 1 billion euros in bailout money earmarked for government financing while it waits to see whether new leaders elected June 17 will honor Greece’s commitments.
Even
if the troika delivers that money, Greece will struggle to cover its
obligations. It underscored a harsh reality that is playing out in other
troubled euro zone economies. Prolonged austerity is making it harder,
not easier, for governments like Greece to become self-reliant again.
A
top Spanish official acknowledged on Tuesday that Spain could not
readily return to the markets to raise money because investors are
demanding such high rates, highlighting how the debt crisis is spreading
to larger economies in Europe.
Chancellor Angela Merkel of
Germany said a day earlier that European leaders needed to find a way to
create the political union that the world is looking for to complement
their monetary union. European officials took a small step in that
direction Tuesday by proposing a central authority for banking
regulation, which would require countries to give up a bit of cherished
sovereignty.
An essential element of Greece’s recovery plan has
been to collect more taxes from a population that has long engaged in
tax avoidance. The government is owed 45 billion euros in back taxes,
tax officials in Athens said, only a fraction of which will ever be
recovered.
To understand the difficulty, just talk to Nikos Maitos, a longtime official in Greece’s financial crimes investigation unit.
When
he and a team of inspectors recently prowled the recession-hit island
of Naxos for tax evaders, a local radio station broadcast his license
plate number to warn residents.
“One repercussion of the crisis
is that people are harder to find,” Mr. Maitos, an imposing, burly man,
said last week in his sweltering office on the edge of Athens. “And when
you do find them, they don’t have money.”
Even tax collectors,
who have had to take large pay cuts, find that budget reductions make it
hard to pay for the gasoline needed to reach their targets.
“After
two and a half years of austerity, it’s really a difficult time to
bring in revenue,” said Harry Theoharis, a senior official in the Greek Finance Ministry who helps oversee the country’s tax payment system. “You can’t keep flogging a dead horse.”
Salaries
and pensions in the private and the public sectors have been cut by up
to 50 percent, leaving Greece 495 million euros short of its revenue
targets in the four months ended in April, according to the Greek
Finance Ministry. With less cash, consumers have curbed spending,
leading thousands of taxpaying businesses to fail.
Income
expected from a higher, 23 percent value-added tax required by the
bailout agreement has fallen short by around 800 million euros in the
first four months of 2012. That is partly because cash-short businesses
that were once law-abiding have started hiding money to stay afloat, tax
officials said.
Greece’s General Accounting Office said recently
that the state collected 25 percent less revenue in May than it did a
year earlier. And the state has had to slash its goal of raising 50
billion euros from privatizations to just 3 billion euros as foreign
investors lose interest.
That has left a caretaker government
scrambling for a Plan B. One thought is to take billions of euros
reserved for recapitalizing Greek banks, which have suffered from a
flight of deposits amid political uncertainty and fears that Greece may
abandon the euro for its own currency. But using that money would
require the troika’s approval. Other notions, like i.o.u.’s and scrip,
so far are only that — ideas.
To some extent, government
officials said the tax-avoiding mentality is starting to change amid an
aggressive enforcement campaign aimed at 500 wealthy individuals and
companies, including former ministers and heads of state agencies and
enterprises. People took notice in April when a former defense minister
was arrested on charges of corruption and making false declarations
related to his income and taxes.
“They are awed when they see
inspectors now because of recent cases showing people will be prosecuted
or made to pay,” Mr. Maitos said.
Tax collectors got another
potential lift recently when the government started enforcing a 1995 law
that gives them access to bank accounts of suspected tax evaders.
But
Nikos Lekkas, a top official at the financial crimes agency where Mr.
Maitos works, said Greek banks had obstructed nearly 5,000 requests for
account data since 2010.
“The banks delay sending the information
for 8 to 12 months,” he said. “And when they do, they send huge stacks
of documents to make it confusing. By the time we can follow up, much of
the money has already fled.”
In the past two years, the agency
managed to assess back taxes worth 650 million euros on 210 of the
cases, he said. But only 65 percent could be collected.
One
challenge lies in what Mr. Lekkas calls the big fish — 18,300 offshore
businesses belonging to wealthy Greek individuals and companies.
Authorities are trying to trace the owners through property records, and
they recently seized several large properties linked to offshore
companies whose owners owe tens of millions of euros to the state.
That leaves collectors having to go after mostly smaller tax evaders, often with mixed results.
During
a surveillance trip on the resort island of Santorini, Mr. Maitos said
he and two colleagues observed a gas station owner insisting on
cash-only transactions to avoid declaring taxes. When confronted, the
man lashed at them with a bullwhip while cursing the state for taking
his money.
Officials said things might improve drastically once
Greece’s entire tax system is computerized, a move that is supposed to
be completed by the end of this year.
Charalambos
Nikolakopoulos, the head of the Greek tax collectors’ union, said there
was no need for outsiders to straighten things out.
“Yes, we need
change,” Mr. Nikolakopoulos said. “But things will only improve in
Greece when we get a stable government that will impose its political
will.”
Niki Kitsantonis contributed reporting from Athens and Paul Geitner from Brussels.
link
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/greece-warns-going-broke-tax-165803529.html
Greece Warns of Going Broke as Tax Proceeds Dry Up
By LIZ ALDERMAN | New York Times – 8 hours ago
ATHENS — As European leaders grapple with how to preserve their monetary union, Greece is rapidly running out of money.
Government coffers could be empty as soon as July, shortly after this month’s pivotal elections. In the worst case, Athens might have to temporarily stop paying for salaries and pensions, along with imports of fuel, food and pharmaceuticals.
Officials,
scrambling for solutions, have considered dipping into funds that are
supposed to be for Greece’s troubled banks. Some are even suggesting
doling out i.o.u.’s.
Greek leaders said that despite their latest
bailout of 130 billion euros, or $161.7 billion, they face a shortfall
of 1.7 billion euros because tax revenue and other sources of potential
income are drying up. A wrenching recession and harsh budget cuts have
left businesses and individuals with less and less to give for taxes —
and growing incentive to avoid paying what they owe.
The budget gap is widening as the so-called troika of lenders — the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission — withholds 1 billion euros in bailout money earmarked for government financing while it waits to see whether new leaders elected June 17 will honor Greece’s commitments.
Even
if the troika delivers that money, Greece will struggle to cover its
obligations. It underscored a harsh reality that is playing out in other
troubled euro zone economies. Prolonged austerity is making it harder,
not easier, for governments like Greece to become self-reliant again.
A
top Spanish official acknowledged on Tuesday that Spain could not
readily return to the markets to raise money because investors are
demanding such high rates, highlighting how the debt crisis is spreading
to larger economies in Europe.
Chancellor Angela Merkel of
Germany said a day earlier that European leaders needed to find a way to
create the political union that the world is looking for to complement
their monetary union. European officials took a small step in that
direction Tuesday by proposing a central authority for banking
regulation, which would require countries to give up a bit of cherished
sovereignty.
An essential element of Greece’s recovery plan has
been to collect more taxes from a population that has long engaged in
tax avoidance. The government is owed 45 billion euros in back taxes,
tax officials in Athens said, only a fraction of which will ever be
recovered.
To understand the difficulty, just talk to Nikos Maitos, a longtime official in Greece’s financial crimes investigation unit.
When
he and a team of inspectors recently prowled the recession-hit island
of Naxos for tax evaders, a local radio station broadcast his license
plate number to warn residents.
“One repercussion of the crisis
is that people are harder to find,” Mr. Maitos, an imposing, burly man,
said last week in his sweltering office on the edge of Athens. “And when
you do find them, they don’t have money.”
Even tax collectors,
who have had to take large pay cuts, find that budget reductions make it
hard to pay for the gasoline needed to reach their targets.
“After
two and a half years of austerity, it’s really a difficult time to
bring in revenue,” said Harry Theoharis, a senior official in the Greek Finance Ministry who helps oversee the country’s tax payment system. “You can’t keep flogging a dead horse.”
Salaries
and pensions in the private and the public sectors have been cut by up
to 50 percent, leaving Greece 495 million euros short of its revenue
targets in the four months ended in April, according to the Greek
Finance Ministry. With less cash, consumers have curbed spending,
leading thousands of taxpaying businesses to fail.
Income
expected from a higher, 23 percent value-added tax required by the
bailout agreement has fallen short by around 800 million euros in the
first four months of 2012. That is partly because cash-short businesses
that were once law-abiding have started hiding money to stay afloat, tax
officials said.
Greece’s General Accounting Office said recently
that the state collected 25 percent less revenue in May than it did a
year earlier. And the state has had to slash its goal of raising 50
billion euros from privatizations to just 3 billion euros as foreign
investors lose interest.
That has left a caretaker government
scrambling for a Plan B. One thought is to take billions of euros
reserved for recapitalizing Greek banks, which have suffered from a
flight of deposits amid political uncertainty and fears that Greece may
abandon the euro for its own currency. But using that money would
require the troika’s approval. Other notions, like i.o.u.’s and scrip,
so far are only that — ideas.
To some extent, government
officials said the tax-avoiding mentality is starting to change amid an
aggressive enforcement campaign aimed at 500 wealthy individuals and
companies, including former ministers and heads of state agencies and
enterprises. People took notice in April when a former defense minister
was arrested on charges of corruption and making false declarations
related to his income and taxes.
“They are awed when they see
inspectors now because of recent cases showing people will be prosecuted
or made to pay,” Mr. Maitos said.
Tax collectors got another
potential lift recently when the government started enforcing a 1995 law
that gives them access to bank accounts of suspected tax evaders.
But
Nikos Lekkas, a top official at the financial crimes agency where Mr.
Maitos works, said Greek banks had obstructed nearly 5,000 requests for
account data since 2010.
“The banks delay sending the information
for 8 to 12 months,” he said. “And when they do, they send huge stacks
of documents to make it confusing. By the time we can follow up, much of
the money has already fled.”
In the past two years, the agency
managed to assess back taxes worth 650 million euros on 210 of the
cases, he said. But only 65 percent could be collected.
One
challenge lies in what Mr. Lekkas calls the big fish — 18,300 offshore
businesses belonging to wealthy Greek individuals and companies.
Authorities are trying to trace the owners through property records, and
they recently seized several large properties linked to offshore
companies whose owners owe tens of millions of euros to the state.
That leaves collectors having to go after mostly smaller tax evaders, often with mixed results.
During
a surveillance trip on the resort island of Santorini, Mr. Maitos said
he and two colleagues observed a gas station owner insisting on
cash-only transactions to avoid declaring taxes. When confronted, the
man lashed at them with a bullwhip while cursing the state for taking
his money.
Officials said things might improve drastically once
Greece’s entire tax system is computerized, a move that is supposed to
be completed by the end of this year.
Charalambos
Nikolakopoulos, the head of the Greek tax collectors’ union, said there
was no need for outsiders to straighten things out.
“Yes, we need
change,” Mr. Nikolakopoulos said. “But things will only improve in
Greece when we get a stable government that will impose its political
will.”
Niki Kitsantonis contributed reporting from Athens and Paul Geitner from Brussels.
link
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/greece-warns-going-broke-tax-165803529.html
rick152- VIP Member
- Posts : 2574
Join date : 2011-06-19
Age : 66
Location : Eastern Ohio
Re: Greece bankrupt by July 2012
What a surprise .... NOT! Spain is right behind them ... until they change their entitlement system the hole is just gonna keep getting deeper ... USA take note!
Kevind53- Super Moderator
- Posts : 27254
Join date : 2011-08-09
Age : 25
Location : Umm right here!
Re: Greece bankrupt by July 2012
Greece,
Spain
Italy,
Cyprus,
Then who knows, but by then the EU is gone, as well as the value of the Euro, which was only made up to defeat the USD back in the '90's
Spain
Italy,
Cyprus,
Then who knows, but by then the EU is gone, as well as the value of the Euro, which was only made up to defeat the USD back in the '90's
1alaskan- Elite Member
- Posts : 4668
Join date : 2011-06-21
Age : 41
Location : Planet far far away
Re: Greece bankrupt by July 2012
Yep ... The UK is looking smarter and smarter for refusing to adopt the Euro. I',m betting Ireland is wishing that had followed suit.
Kevind53- Super Moderator
- Posts : 27254
Join date : 2011-08-09
Age : 25
Location : Umm right here!
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