Nov 122016
 
 November 12, 2016  Posted by at 10:57 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,


Harris&Ewing National Press Club Building newssstand, Washington DC 1940

Escaping the Soulless Machine (Steen Jakobsen)
Moving Past Never Trump (NR)
Donald Trump Appears To Soften Stance On Range Of Pledges (G.)
The Clintons And Soros Launch America’s Purple Revolution (Madsen)
A Visit to Trump’s America (Speed)
Supporters To Trump: Break Campaign Promises At Your Peril (R.)
Trump Spells End of Normality for Europe (Spiegel)
Trump’s Rise Comes As No Surprise On England’s Disaffected East Coast (G.)
Oil Tankers Used to Store Millions of Barrels as Land Sites Fill (BBG)
Rupee Rage Grows In India as Property Prices Collapse Overnight (R.)
White House Gives Up On Passing TPP (Hill)
Obama To Speak In Favour Of Debt Relief During Nov 15 Visit to Greece (Amna)
President Obama Goes to Greece (TEI)
Financial Crisis Takes Huge Toll On Greeks’ Dental Hygiene (Kath.)
Greek Hospitals Scrounging For Cash (Kath.)

 

 

Excellent by the Danish banker, h/t Mish.

Escaping the Soulless Machine (Steen Jakobsen)

Like Brexit, the US vote was never about personalities or issues. Had the “issues” meant anything to US voters, neither Clinton nor Trump would have made it on to the ticket in November. The very fact that someone like Donald Trump could lead the Republican party into a presidential election is testament to how it had nothing to do with the person, nothing to do with policy, but everything to do with Americans’ perceived need to escape what one strategist called “a soulless political machine”. In the end, Hillary Clinton was simply unelectable. She ran a $1 billion campaign designed to cater to all manner of special interest groups, be they ethnically based, gender-specific, or concerned with very specific policy areas.

Trump’s campaign, conversely, consisted mainly of his Twitter account (and its many followers)! That’s right: his Twitter account. Conclusion number one, then, is very uplifting: spending more money does not buy you more votes, nor can it purchase integrity. It seems that Trump, despite his often inflammatory persona, managed to transform himself into a candidate who believed in America as a whole rather than in specific groups. Several newspapers, including the New York Times, ran page after page of facts detailing how Trump degraded, disparaged, and broadly ignored the norms of political correctness, yet he kept rising in the polls. If that won’t get the media and political strategists to think twice, what will?

Is the positive conclusion, then, that in future the “map to becoming president” has more to do with the desire, both spoken and implied, to be a president for all of America? A real person rather than a focus group-approved construct? Does it require concentrating on what makes America strong, and a decreased emphasis on the needs and grievances of specific sub-groups? If that indeed is the case, then US politics appear ready to rise from the ashes of destruction. If this is in turn the case, then it means that Americans need to be American first and a member of whatever minority or special interest group second, but for decades it has been the other way around.

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Too many are too emotionally invested to make that move.

Moving Past Never Trump (NR)

There were different reasons for being Never Trump. On the left, the meme that Trump supporters are all the deplorable “–ists” has taken hold. The idea is that this is all this election represents: a triumph of angry, racist misogynists lashing back at a black president and a potential female one. One has to conclude they haven’t actually met any Trump voters; otherwise, the inanity of their analysis is hard to sustain. In the middle and in the GOP “establishment,” when Trump was doing badly, some became Never Trump (or, more accurately, “Only If He Might Win Trump”) because they like to back a winner and flinch from association with a loser. Their support ebbed and flowed with the changing consensus that Trump might or couldn’t win, and so a number ended on the wrong side of the trade and even if nominally supporting Trump, they didn’t expect success.

Finally, on the right, there were many wonderful, dedicated, principled conservatives who were repelled by Trump personally and saw him as protectionist, isolationist, nativist, and possibly racist. They were concerned that he would do long-term harm to the brand of both their philosophy and their party, and they traveled in circles where everyone they knew and cared about felt similarly. The conviction that Trump not only should not but could not win was one in which they were deeply invested. Why so invested in that idea? Possibly because if they admitted that he could win (however awful they believed a Trump presidency would be), they would have to explain why a Trump presidency would be worse overall than a Clinton presidency. If Trump wasn’t going to win anyway, they didn’t need to justify not voting for Trump.

Why was voting for Trump a problem? Because they asked the question “What does my vote say about me?” And their answer was that voting for Trump was tantamount to endorsing his beliefs and behavior, which put them on the wrong side of how they wanted to see themselves, and wanted their friends and colleagues to see them, too. But those who voted for Trump answered that question differently: How they voted was not about endorsing the worst of Trump but about the future of the country. Indeed, in focus groups we did this year, as well as anecdotally, Trump voters were better versed and more keenly aware of Trump’s warts than repelled and consequently undecided voters were.

And while most had not favored Trump at the beginning of the election season, they were convinced that the gravity of this turning point for our country superseded their concerns about Trump’s flaws. Now that Trump is in fact the president-elect, most Never Trumpers will complete the last of the stages of grief — acceptance — that many of their compatriots traveled through just a little faster. They are coming to terms, many with relief and even some exhilaration, that Hillary won’t be president, that the Senate majority has been retained, that we might in fact start to undo the damage of the last eight-plus years.

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Of course he does.

Donald Trump Appears To Soften Stance On Range Of Pledges (G.)

Donald Trump has appeared to soften his stance on a range of sweeping campaign pledges, saying in his first interview since being elected US president that he might not repeal Obamacare and admitting the prosecution of Hillary Clinton over confidential emails was not a priority. The president-elect, who said he would “immediately repeal and replace” Obamacare after taking office, told the Wall Street Journal he might instead seek to reform the policy, keeping the ban on insurers denying coverage for pre-existing conditions. He said he would also look to retain the provision that allowed young adults to be insured on their parents’ policies, adding that he had been convinced of the virtues of the two points in his meeting with outgoing president, Barack Obama, on Thursday.

Trump and his family also filmed an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes to be broadcast on Sunday. The president-elect said he would amend or repeal and replace Obamacare without any gaps in healthcare provision. “It will be just fine. It’s what I do: I do a good job and I know how to do this stuff,” he told Lesley Stahl. Having called Hillary Clinton a “nasty woman” and “crooked” during the campaign, Trump struck a conciliatory tone towards his former opponent in both interviews. The Wall Street Journal asked about campaign promises to appoint a special prosecutor to pursue criminal charges against his Democratic rival over her use of a private email server to conduct official business as secretary of state. “It’s not something I’ve given a lot of thought, because I want to solve healthcare, jobs, border control, tax reform,” Trump said.

The statement is likely to anger the president-elect’s core supporters, many of whom chanted: “Lock her up, lock her up,” at rallies during the campaign. He told 60 Minutes the call in which Clinton conceded the election was “lovely”, adding: “It was a tough call for her, I can imagine… She couldn’t have been nicer. She just said, congratulations Donald, well done.” He praised his former opponent: “She’s very strong and very smart.” Her husband, former president Bill Clinton, had also called. “He couldn’t have been more gracious. He said it was an amazing run – one of the most amazing he had ever seen,” Trump said.

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Trump should kick out the Soros NGOs the same way Putin did.

The Clintons And Soros Launch America’s Purple Revolution (Madsen)

Defeated Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton is not about to «go quietly into that good night». On the morning after her surprising and unanticipated defeat at the hands of Republican Party upstart Donald Trump, Mrs. Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, entered the ball room of the art-deco New Yorker hotel in midtown Manhattan and were both adorned in purple attire. The press immediately noticed the color and asked what it represented. Clinton spokespeople claimed it was to represent the coming together of Democratic «Blue America» and Republican «Red America» into a united purple blend.

This statement was a complete ruse as is known by citizens of countries targeted in the past by the vile political operations of international hedge fund tycoon George Soros. The Clintons, who both have received millions of dollars in campaign contributions and Clinton Foundation donations from Soros, were, in fact, helping to launch Soros’s «Purple Revolution» in America. The Purple Revolution will resist all efforts by the Trump administration to push back against the globalist policies of the Clintons and soon-to-be ex-President Barack Obama. The Purple Revolution will also seek to make the Trump administration a short one through Soros-style street protests and political disruption.

[..] President-elect Trump is facing a two-pronged attack by his opponents. One, led by entrenched neo-con bureaucrats, including former Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency director Michael Hayden, former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, and Bush family loyalists are seeking to call the shots on who Trump appoints to senior national security, intelligence, foreign policy, and defense positions in his administration. These neo-Cold Warriors are trying to convince Trump that he must maintain the Obama aggressiveness and militancy toward Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and other countries. The second front arrayed against Trump is from Soros-funded political groups and media. This second line of attack is a propaganda war, utilizing hundreds of anti-Trump newspapers, web sites, and broadcasters, that will seek to undermine public confidence in the Trump administration from its outset.

One of Trump’s political advertisements, released just prior to Election Day, stated that George Soros, Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen, and Goldman Sachs chief executive officer Lloyd Blankfein, are all part of «a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities». Soros and his minions immediately and ridiculously attacked the ad as «anti-Semitic». President Trump should be on guard against those who his campaign called out in the ad and their colleagues. Soros’s son, Alexander Soros, called on Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, and her husband Jared Kushner, to publicly disavow Trump. Soros’s tactics not only seek to split apart nations but also families. Trump must be on guard against the current and future machinations of George Soros, including his Purple Revolution.

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More like: a visit to the America everyone else ignored. It became Trump’s be default.

A Visit to Trump’s America (Speed)

Two months ago, when I was in Ohio visiting my daughter, I was given an insight into the early indicators of a Trump victory. The clues were there, but I didn’t fully understand what I was seeing. At that time, I had no inkling of the depth and breadth of rural dissatisfaction that would elect a Donald Trump as President. I’m a photographer and the coordinator of The Texas Farm and Ranch Photography Project, photographing the daily lives of farm and ranch families, their work, meals, worship, and family life. In September, I drove almost 300 miles up and down the rural roads east of Dayton and south of Columbus, Ohio, to add some farm images to my portfolio. Mile after mile, farm after farm, town after town, ag business after ag business, I saw only Trump signs.

It was obvious that if Ohio was going to block Trump, it would have to be in the cities because agricultural Ohio was overwhelmingly Trump country. This mirrored the same Trump support that I saw in the agricultural communities I have been photographing across Texas for the past year. As I engaged in countless conversations in both rural Ohio and Texas, I tried to understand how any farming or ranching family could even remotely identify with a brash, thrice-married, womanizing, bankruptcy-declaring, New York billionaire. What I learned is that agricultural America felt not only ignored and forgotten, it felt rejected and despised by America’s political elite, and that any candidate who could hurt that elite was worth their vote.

No story brought this home to me more powerfully than a grandfather who spoke of national news stories about what he described as the whining and crying on elite college campuses by those who demanded “safe places” and “safe zones” where they will be sheltered from anything that remotely offends them. He spoke of ingrates wanting special “only me” safe places where they do not have to do anything, hear anything, see anything, or be around anyone or anything they don’t like. In that farmer’s mind, while the safe-space crowd whined about its “offendedness” and demanded entitlements, children of agricultural families were up early in the morning working on their chores and projects, followed by a full day at school, coming home to more work – all while being part of a family, a community, and a nation.

He described watching youngsters at county fairs and livestock shows hauling feed, cleaning stalls, washing and grooming livestock, shoveling manure, unloading and loading their family trucks and trailers, and trying to sleep in uncomfortable chairs – all while ungrateful elite college students failed to appreciate their pampered lives. In this gentleman’s world view, it was not black versus white, rich versus poor, feminism versus patriarchy, illegal versus citizen; rather, it was those who produce nothing believing themselves entitled, without appreciation, to the goods produced by others versus those who actually produce. Although this grandfather did not use the exact words, he pretty much described a political elite and liberal establishment as thinking of American agriculture families as nothing more than serfs in a self-protecting, self-serving feudal system.

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A balancing act alright, but he’s not bad at that.

Supporters To Trump: Break Campaign Promises At Your Peril (R.)

Mark Morris, a leader of the Colorado-based Three% United Patriots militia group, said he understood Trump would need time on some issues, but he expected quick movement on repealing Obamacare and appointing a conservative Supreme Court justice to fill the seat of the late Antonin Scalia. He said he hoped Trump would stand with ranchers in their disputes with the federal government over fees charged for cattle grazing on public land – a call to arms for many in the patriot and militia movement. Morris warned Trump should not count on his followers to stay with him if he did not produce results. “People voted with a lot of faith that he will come through,” he said. “I don’t think it is going to work out very well if he doesn’t get the things done and he comes back at the end of four years and says I need four more years to accomplish what I need to accomplish.”

Trump had to take strong action on immigration given his rhetoric, said Roy Beck, head of Numbers USA, a group that favors reduced immigration levels. He said Numbers USA and other grassroots groups would pressure Trump to keep his promises to bolster enforcement and cut back on legal immigration and foreign workers, including eliminating immigration by low-skill and non-extraordinary-skilled workers. “There’s no way he would have been elected president if he had not so boldly made immigration his top issue,” Beck said. “You have to come through on your top issue. The question is in the details.” He said many Trump supporters understood his talk about the border wall was “shorthand” for restoring the rule of law in immigration, although it was a promise by which he would be judged. “We’re in the best position we’ve ever been in since the 1950s to get control of this issue, but we still have big challenges,” Beck said.

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Nothing to do with Trump, it’s been coming for a long time.

Trump Spells End of Normality for Europe (Spiegel)

Angela Merkel has no lack of experience in dealing with egocentric men. The chancellor has known Russian President Vladimir Putin for years and she speaks regularly with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the phone. After the surprising victory of self-made politician Donald Trump in the US presidential elections, another member of this species will now be added to the group. No wonder, then, that the German chancellor wanted to call the new US president-elect as quickly as possible on Wednesday. The only problem was that no one in the German government had a number to call. It was only after the Chancellery in Berlin requested assistance from the German Embassy in Washington that they were able to reach a contact close to Trump.

The election victory of Trump, literally the embodiment of the new wave of angry voters, creates fresh challenges for the German political elite, not just when it comes to the phone directory. Most leading politicians among both the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU) and the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) had been convinced that Democratic rival Hillary Clinton would prevail in the election. Now they are all facing the same difficult question. How do you react when the incoming occupant of the most powerful position in the Western world sees himself as a populist and is threatening to end traditional Western alliances? German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who recently branded Trump a “hate preacher,” has said he is preparing for “difficult times.”

The chancellor herself also reminded the president-elect that “democracy, freedom, respect for the law and for human dignity, regardless of ancestry, skin color, religion, gender and sexual orientation” are all values that must be defended – the very ones that the Republican candidate more or less openly questioned during his campaign.

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The entire world economic problem in just a few words: “A lot of profit that is created here does not stay here. It goes to the business headquarters in London or other parts of the world.”

Trump’s Rise Comes As No Surprise On England’s Disaffected East Coast (G.)

“It’s like Brexit isn’t it,” says Tim Rix, a staunch leave supporter and the fifth generation of his family to run JR Rix and Sons. “Donald Trump was voted in for many different – and sometimes conflicting – reasons,” the managing director says. “Many reasons that overturned the establishment’s expected result.” There are thousands of miles between the rust-belt US states that supported Trump and Rix’s office in Hull in east Yorkshire, but in many respects the two places are closely aligned. The communities of both quietly voted to shock the world, taking decisions that would reveal deep divisions in each nation and leave large swaths of society asking how this could happen. Rix sees parallels in the economic protectionism that Trump used to appeal to millions of struggling US middle-class voters.

“Europe is broken, it’s not going to work,” he says. “We have our own problems and we need to concentrate on dealing with the problems in this country.” The mood in those areas that turned against the establishment in the EU referendum is one of economic and social discontent, where people feel left behind and struggle to find their own answers to this and every other question posed by the decline of post-war industrial Britain. And while Rix and his forebears managed to develop a business that now turns over £4m to £5m, the local area is faring less well. Following the demise of its fishing, shipping and heavy industries, the city moved into sharp decline. But manufacturing still makes up 17% of the jobs in Hull, compared with 2.6% in London, according to statistics from the Centre for Cities thinktank.

“When the fish industry went down other businesses got more important. We have a lot of global operators in food, chemical, aerospace and oil refineries,” explains Ian Kelly, chief executive of the Hull and Humber chamber of commerce. “A lot of profit that is created here does not stay here. It goes to the business headquarters in London or other parts of the world.” And so Hull remains one of the poorest cities in Britain, with nearly 30% of households in social housing and one of the lowest average workplace earnings in the UK.

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Dancing the Con Tango.

Oil Tankers Used to Store Millions of Barrels as Land Sites Fill (BBG)

Oil companies booked tankers to store as many as 9 million barrels of crude in northwest Europe amid signs that space in on-land depots is filling up, a ship-operator said. The glut could get bigger still, given the region is scheduled to load the most cargoes in 4 1/2 years next month. There are 14 to 16 Aframax-class tankers now storing crude in the region, Jonathan Lee, CEO of Tankers International, operator of the world’s biggest pool of supertankers, said. Standard cargoes are normally almost 600,000 barrels. Lack of on-land capacity to hold the oil is the most likely cause of the buildup, he said. North Sea producers are among a long list of suppliers adding barrels just as OPEC prepares to try and eliminate a surplus.

Pressure on the exporter club is piling up because its own members are pumping like never before while nations outside the group including Brazil, Kazakhstan, Canada and Russia are producing more than ever or pumping from new fields. Traders began looking for profit at sea again earlier this month, with Tankers International saying at the time that between five and 10 ships had been chartered to hold oil near Singapore, most likely to profit from weak crude prices. Those ships are the industry’s biggest supertankers, holding 2 million barrels a piece. The vessels in the North Sea would normally carry about 70% less oil. Oversupply in the oil market has caused a key oil-price spread that denotes the scale of any surplus to balloon.

The difference in the price of January and February Brent contracts rose to $1.18 a barrel this week, the widest since April 2015, excluding days when the price expires. When the month-on-month discount gets deep enough – something called contango – it sometimes rewards traders to hire ships, keep hold of the oil, and sell it at the later price, because the gap more than covers the cost of booking a vessel. Other times, there just isn’t space to unload, forcing vessels to wait. Inventories in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Antwerp are the highest for the time of year since at least 2013, according to data from Genscape. “The big question is whether it’s contango or whether it’s a lack of physical land-based storage” that’s caused the storage buildup in Northwest Europe, London-based Lee said. “It seems to be the latter at the moment.”

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From my email contact: Property prices down 80% overnight in Delhi. I have a friend there, some apartments that were going for Rs 10,000,000 are now Rs 2,000,000. Owners desperate for cash. He doesn’t have money for milk and he’s a wealthy businessman. Business in the big bazaars is dead. Lines at banks for hours and lines as far as the eye can see. On the black market Rs/USD rate has doubled to 120. Cash is not a defence against deflation. We just saw it legislated out of existence. In a day. One freaking day. Poof.”

Rupee Rage Grows In India as Property Prices Collapse Overnight (R.)

Anger was rising across India on Saturday as banks struggled to dispense cash after the government withdrew large-denomination notes in a shock move aimed at uncovering billions of dollars of unaccounted wealth hidden from the taxman. Hundreds of thousands of people stood outside banks for a third day for long hours trying to replace 500- and 1,000-rupee banknotes that were abolished earlier in the week. The two bills, worth about 265 and 530 baht respectively, made up more than 80% of all currency in circulation, leaving millions of people without cash and threatening to grind large parts of the $400-billion cash-driven economy to a halt. There were also reports of people with large stashes of undocumented cash offering up to double the market rate for gold just to get rid of their bills.

The government has begun issuing new 2,000-rupee banknotes, said to be much more difficult to counterfeit than their predecessors, but the supply is far short of the huge demand. Redesigned 500-rupee notes are also in the pipeline. Thai residents planning to visit India are also being advised to prepare for inconvenience. “There is chaos everywhere,” said Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejrilwal and a bitter foe of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He said Modi’s move had upended the lives of the poor and working while the rich — whose wealth he had sought to target — had found loopholes to get around the new rules. People argued and banged the glass doors of a branch of Standard Chartered in southern Delhi after the security guards blocked entry, saying there were already too many people inside the bank.

Others turned on Modi, criticising his ongoing visit to Japan while countrymen suffered at home. “He is taking bullet train rides in Japan and here you have old people knocking on bank doors for cash,” said Prabhat Kumar, a college student who said he had spent six hours at the queue. “He has made a terrible mistake.”

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It was dead anyway.

White House Gives Up On Passing TPP (Hill)

The Obama administration’s won’t pursue passage of its signature Pacific Rim trade deal, dealing a major blow to President Obama’s legacy. Any hope of passing the sweeping 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) quickly faded after Donald Trump’s surprise victory on Tuesday and pronouncements by congressional leaders that the pact would not be considered during the lame-duck session. Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton each opposed the agreement during their campaigns, endangering the already slim chances that Congress would cobble together enough support to pass the historic agreement before the end of Obama’s presidency. The long-shot trade agreement faced widespread Democratic opposition on Capitol Hill and the environment for passing the deal only grew more toxic during the presidential campaigns.

As recently as last week, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman expressed optimism that the Obama administration and congressional Republican leaders could reach a deal on the final outstanding issues, including patent protections for high-tech medicines called biologics. But after Tuesday, the onus shifted to the willingness of Congress to consider the agreement. “We have worked closely with Congress to resolve outstanding issues and are ready to move forward, but this is a legislative process and it’s up to congressional leaders as to whether and when this moves forward,” said Matt McAlvanah, a spokesman for the Office of the U.S. trade representative, in an email to The Hill.

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He has done nothing so far; why expect it now?

Obama To Speak In Favour Of Debt Relief During Nov 15 Visit to Greece (Amna)

U.S. President Barack Obama is in full accord with the IMF that the Greek debt is not sustainable and must be settled, a White House spokesman said on Friday, adding that the President will ask for debt relief during his visit to Athens next week. According to a report by ERT correspondent to Washington DC Lena Argiri, the spokesman said Obama recognizes the sacrifices of the Greek people and his visit will send a message of support. He will also “praise the government on the reforms” implemented and “stress that there’s still work to be done.”

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All he’ll see is what’s left of Greek riches; what’s lost will remain hidden.

President Obama Goes to Greece (TEI)

A week after Donald Trump’s upset victory, U.S. President Barack Obama is traveling to Greece, in the first stop of his last European trip of his Presidency. During his largely symbolic visit, President Obama is planning to deliver a legacy speech from the birthplace of democracy. He is expected to make an impassioned case for the merits of democracy, European unity and security, and regional stability; at a time when all three are being tested by the rise of extremist parties and rhetoric. Although he is expected to repeat these themes during his second stop in Germany, given that Greece is faced with the extra challenges of a debilitating economic crisis and an historic influx of migrants and refugees, President Obama’s stop in Athens is a particularly welcome sign of support to the country.

Under the Obama administration, the U.S. has stressed the geopolitical importance of Greece for the stability and security of the wider region. President Obama’s visit is a signal to Europe that the U.S. is putting a premium on keeping Greece as an integral part of the EU. He is also expected to make the case for an economic policy that puts Greece on the path of growth. However, the visit will require careful diplomacy. As Paul Glastris, who wrote the historic speech that President Bill Clinton made in Athens in 1999, put it, President Obama “will have to thread a series of needles simultaneously. He will have to find words that express Washington’s support for Greek debt relief without alienating the Troika or discouraging further economic reform in Greece; that praise Greece’s exemplary handling of the refugee crisis without encouraging more refugees; and that signal solidarity with Greece over its very real Aegean security concerns without provoking the Turkish president into doing something stupid.”

Turkish president Recep Tayip Erdogan has publicly challenged the Treaty of Lausanne which set the modern-day borders of Turkey, including with Greece (Erdogan made particular emphasis to “our brothers” in Western Thrace, Cyprus, Crimea and Mosul). Worried, the Greeks hope to hear the U.S. president reiterate his support for the existing international treaties. Indeed, the fact that president Obama is ending his presidency with a visit to Greece contrasts with how he started his first term, when he visited Turkey in the hope of anchoring the country to Western values and interests. But as President Erdogan is cracking down on seemingly all forms of domestic opposition after the failed coup, his rule is turning more authoritarian and relations with the U.S. are strained.

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Pure misery: “Spending on dental care in Greece declined by up to 64%..”

Financial Crisis Takes Huge Toll On Greeks’ Dental Hygiene (Kath.)

Spending on dental care in Greece declined by up to 64% between 2009 and 2015, according to data compiled by the country’s statistical authority which also showed that overall health spending fell by slightly over 19% over the same period. According to ELSTAT, in 2009 Greeks spent a total of €1.95 billion on oral care (an average €473.4 per household). Six years later, spending had dropped to €701 million (an average of €169.5 per household). Experts say that pressed by the ongoing financial crisis, Greeks chose to sacrifice oral care in favor of less flexible health spending such as medicine and hospital treatment. Experts warn that the situation is made worse by the deterioration of public dental care service which has been hit by shortages in staff and equipment.

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Until recently, one of the world’s best health care systems. Criminal austerity.

Greek Hospitals Scrounging For Cash (Kath.)

Shortages of equipment and staff in the health sector have resulted in two key Athens hospitals, the Alexandra and the Elena Venizelou, borrowing from each other and third parties, according to the Federation of Public Hospital Workers (POEDIN). “Their budgets are in the red,” POEDIN said on Thursday. “They are unable to maintain their infrastructure and their equipment or to procure medicines and medical equipment,” it said. According to POEDIN, hospitals got €1.15 billion in state funding this year, down from €1.5 billion last year. They owe €1.3 billion in debts to the state.

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Home Forums Debt Rattle November 12 2016

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  • #31321

    Harris&Ewing National Press Club Building newssstand, Washington DC 1940 • Escaping the Soulless Machine (Steen Jakobsen) • Moving Past Never Trump (N
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle November 12 2016]

    #31322
    Joe Clarkson
    Participant

    Trump should kick out the Soros NGOs the same way Putin did.

    And what laws have “Soros NGOs” broken that they can be “kicked out” of the United States? Putin may believe himself the sole arbiter of legal justice in Russia, but why should you believe that Trump need not follow US law?

    #31323
    seychelles
    Participant

    Soros and his minions immediately and ridiculously attacked the ad as «anti-Semitic».
    Not antisemitic, anti-Zioglobalist. Trump’s first order of business if he wants to survive should be to “get rid of” all appointed or elected neocons in the Federal bureaucracy.

    #31324
    Nassim
    Participant

    The things that these fake NGO’s were doing in Russia would be classified as terrorism in the USA or UK.

    Buying local politicians with foreign cash, for example, is largely forbidden – except for the Clintons.

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