|
On May 05 2013 07:04 kafkaesque wrote:Show nested quote +On May 05 2013 06:50 maartendq wrote:On May 05 2013 05:50 nitram wrote:On May 05 2013 04:38 maartendq wrote:On May 05 2013 04:07 Gorsameth wrote:On May 05 2013 02:30 maartendq wrote:On May 05 2013 01:34 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:Portugal plans to avoid the threat of needing another bailout by making another $6.3bn in cuts over the next three years, with measures including raising the retirement age by one year to 66 and laying off around 30,000 government workers, the prime minister has said.
Pedro Passos Coelho announced the proposals on Friday in a prime-time televised address to the nation. Portugal received a $102bn euro rescue in 2011 after overspending, heavy debts and weak growth left it close to bankruptcy amid the eurozone's financial crisis.
Passos Coelho warned the country couldn't expect the rest of Europe to throw it another financial lifeline and said Portugal must honour the terms of the three-year bailout agreement, which demands deep cuts in spending.
Some wealthier northern European countries have shown signs of bailout fatigue as the continent's southern nations, like Portugal, Spain and Greece, have gone to them for help.
With the eurozone financial crisis appearing far from over amid a broad European economic slowdown, asking for more money could aggravate political problems.
“The idea that Europe will always come to our aid is wrong,'' Passos Coelho said.
He added Portugal must show “our European partners that they have no reason to doubt our commitment'' to repairing the country's public finances.
The center-right coalition government will likely have a hard time, however, selling its latest austerity measures to a disgruntled public. Source 30,000... that's just insane. There has to be a more productive way in solving the current crisis.. The "funny"/sad part is by firing 30.000 people you now have 30.000 more who cannot pay there loans and have no money so spend on the economy. All your doing as a government by firing people is delay the problem another week and making more people suffer. On the "bright" side, soon we will be able to move our production facilities to Portugal/Spain/Greece instead of China. Manual labour will be just as cheap, and it's a lot closer to the target markets. Blue collar workers will be all that's left since everyone with a degree will have migrated to other parts of Europe or South America. Except Poland, which is a financially stable EU nation, is a far better place to set up cheap production. Free education and high unemployment make Poland far superior in this area, no? I don't get all the praise for Germany either. Their system that employs people at a fixed salary of 400 EUR / month for working fulltime jobs is humiliating for the people working there. Needless to say, companies like Zalando and Amazon love to make use of that. What? 400 € (it's 450 € now) is what you can make tax free without affecting either your unemployment benefits, your basic welfare or your "student salary". If you consider 45 hours a month (10 € an hour seems to be the standard for work that doesn't require any experience, at least here in the south) a fulltime job, I'd love to live in Belgium.
Sorry, I stand corrected. There's still a lot of things I don't like about the German minijob-system, but this is not the place to discuss this.
Belgian has fixed minimum wages depending on the sector. Students can work up to 50 days a year, practically tax free for both the student and the employer.
|
On May 05 2013 07:04 kafkaesque wrote:Show nested quote +On May 05 2013 06:50 maartendq wrote:On May 05 2013 05:50 nitram wrote:On May 05 2013 04:38 maartendq wrote:On May 05 2013 04:07 Gorsameth wrote:On May 05 2013 02:30 maartendq wrote:On May 05 2013 01:34 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:Portugal plans to avoid the threat of needing another bailout by making another $6.3bn in cuts over the next three years, with measures including raising the retirement age by one year to 66 and laying off around 30,000 government workers, the prime minister has said.
Pedro Passos Coelho announced the proposals on Friday in a prime-time televised address to the nation. Portugal received a $102bn euro rescue in 2011 after overspending, heavy debts and weak growth left it close to bankruptcy amid the eurozone's financial crisis.
Passos Coelho warned the country couldn't expect the rest of Europe to throw it another financial lifeline and said Portugal must honour the terms of the three-year bailout agreement, which demands deep cuts in spending.
Some wealthier northern European countries have shown signs of bailout fatigue as the continent's southern nations, like Portugal, Spain and Greece, have gone to them for help.
With the eurozone financial crisis appearing far from over amid a broad European economic slowdown, asking for more money could aggravate political problems.
“The idea that Europe will always come to our aid is wrong,'' Passos Coelho said.
He added Portugal must show “our European partners that they have no reason to doubt our commitment'' to repairing the country's public finances.
The center-right coalition government will likely have a hard time, however, selling its latest austerity measures to a disgruntled public. Source 30,000... that's just insane. There has to be a more productive way in solving the current crisis.. The "funny"/sad part is by firing 30.000 people you now have 30.000 more who cannot pay there loans and have no money so spend on the economy. All your doing as a government by firing people is delay the problem another week and making more people suffer. On the "bright" side, soon we will be able to move our production facilities to Portugal/Spain/Greece instead of China. Manual labour will be just as cheap, and it's a lot closer to the target markets. Blue collar workers will be all that's left since everyone with a degree will have migrated to other parts of Europe or South America. Except Poland, which is a financially stable EU nation, is a far better place to set up cheap production. Free education and high unemployment make Poland far superior in this area, no? I don't get all the praise for Germany either. Their system that employs people at a fixed salary of 400 EUR / month for working fulltime jobs is humiliating for the people working there. Needless to say, companies like Zalando and Amazon love to make use of that. What? 400 € (it's 450 € now) is what you can make tax free without affecting either your unemployment benefits, your basic welfare or your "student salary". If you consider 45 hours a month (10 € an hour seems to be the standard for work that doesn't require any experience, at least here in the south) a fulltime job, I'd love to live in Belgium.
Don't mind him, he is being overly negative on this page. What I've heard about the program and how the people in it experience being a part of it was very positive.
|
On May 05 2013 07:34 Flyingdutchman wrote:Show nested quote +On May 05 2013 07:04 kafkaesque wrote:On May 05 2013 06:50 maartendq wrote:On May 05 2013 05:50 nitram wrote:On May 05 2013 04:38 maartendq wrote:On May 05 2013 04:07 Gorsameth wrote:On May 05 2013 02:30 maartendq wrote:On May 05 2013 01:34 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:Portugal plans to avoid the threat of needing another bailout by making another $6.3bn in cuts over the next three years, with measures including raising the retirement age by one year to 66 and laying off around 30,000 government workers, the prime minister has said.
Pedro Passos Coelho announced the proposals on Friday in a prime-time televised address to the nation. Portugal received a $102bn euro rescue in 2011 after overspending, heavy debts and weak growth left it close to bankruptcy amid the eurozone's financial crisis.
Passos Coelho warned the country couldn't expect the rest of Europe to throw it another financial lifeline and said Portugal must honour the terms of the three-year bailout agreement, which demands deep cuts in spending.
Some wealthier northern European countries have shown signs of bailout fatigue as the continent's southern nations, like Portugal, Spain and Greece, have gone to them for help.
With the eurozone financial crisis appearing far from over amid a broad European economic slowdown, asking for more money could aggravate political problems.
“The idea that Europe will always come to our aid is wrong,'' Passos Coelho said.
He added Portugal must show “our European partners that they have no reason to doubt our commitment'' to repairing the country's public finances.
The center-right coalition government will likely have a hard time, however, selling its latest austerity measures to a disgruntled public. Source 30,000... that's just insane. There has to be a more productive way in solving the current crisis.. The "funny"/sad part is by firing 30.000 people you now have 30.000 more who cannot pay there loans and have no money so spend on the economy. All your doing as a government by firing people is delay the problem another week and making more people suffer. On the "bright" side, soon we will be able to move our production facilities to Portugal/Spain/Greece instead of China. Manual labour will be just as cheap, and it's a lot closer to the target markets. Blue collar workers will be all that's left since everyone with a degree will have migrated to other parts of Europe or South America. Except Poland, which is a financially stable EU nation, is a far better place to set up cheap production. Free education and high unemployment make Poland far superior in this area, no? I don't get all the praise for Germany either. Their system that employs people at a fixed salary of 400 EUR / month for working fulltime jobs is humiliating for the people working there. Needless to say, companies like Zalando and Amazon love to make use of that. What? 400 € (it's 450 € now) is what you can make tax free without affecting either your unemployment benefits, your basic welfare or your "student salary". If you consider 45 hours a month (10 € an hour seems to be the standard for work that doesn't require any experience, at least here in the south) a fulltime job, I'd love to live in Belgium. Don't mind him, he is being overly negative on this page. What I've heard about the program and how the people in it experience being a part of it was very positive.
The Guardian would disagree:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/21/mini-jobs-germany-britain
Unsurprisingly, the view from trade unions and sympathetic researchers is much grimmer: a 2010 report by researchers from the University of Duisburg-Essen, for instance, provides empirical evidence to show that "mini-jobs" are a growing low-wage trap with little prospect of longer-term transition, even into low-skill employment. Splitting regular jobs into mini ones is becoming more common. And "mini-jobbers" tend to be paid considerably less than the equivalent standard hourly wage for a given activity, nothwithstanding Germany's anti-discrimination laws that explicitly prohibit this.
It's a highly controversial subject anyway, both in Europe and in Germany.
|
Some stuff I started writing but cba to finish cause I realized that economy has mostly stopped being a matter of supplying us with products and give us income, but became a slave of financial capital and institutions.
+ Show Spoiler +This is sligthly offtopic cause it's more of a systemic view, but: It's hard to create a stimulus for economies where there is no real demand.
There is already a huge offer for almost everything, mostly from well established companies.Niches in IT are being closed, biotechnology is possibly a next one, but the more specialized it gets, the less labour it needs.
Most of the products are being manufactured in China anyway, and consumption is artificially kept up with stuff like programmed obsolescence.
There's financial capital following its own rules, stock markets are at their peaks again while the economy in EU and US is cooling down, something doesn't add up. If these companies get such high amounts of money from the banks getting money at such low interest rates (which they invest in assets, govt. bonds, stocks, resources etc.), where are the stock companies going to invest it if there's no one able to buy their increased production?
When no one is able to buy the products of the investments made into stocks, what will it result in? Another stock bubble, cause the prices for increased production will have to fall, since the high demand of money from consumers will make it impossible for them to buy at the initial price, unless you supply the consumers with cheap money as well.
More on-topic:
http://www.voxeu.org/article/target-imbalances-financing-capital-account-reversal-europe
This is an interesting link regarding Germany's "wealth" though. Their high exports have basically not been paid with real money, but with promises of payment.
And this guy tells you what happens to germany's wealth if this debt can't be paid back (which I am pretty sure of will not be possible simply cause debt=money, and it won't get back to the countries making the debt, the PIIGS cause of their shitty economies)
http://www.voxeu.org/article/target-losses-case-euro-breakup
|
I don't get all the praise for Germany either. Their system that employs people at a fixed salary of 400 EUR / month for working fulltime jobs is humiliating for the people working there.
Well it's a difficult topic, and at the moment it looks like most parties are going into the direction of a minimum wage of about ~8 euro/h.
Even the FDP (most liberal party) decided today that they'll probably not stand against it anymore.
I'm kind of torn on the topic, it has both negative and positive sides. If "400 euro - jobs" are used to help during peak times and get people into reasonably paid jobs, then of course it's a good thing. But if it just gets abused by large companies who basically use the taxpayer to subsidize their wages it's obviously bad. (usually people who work for really low wages also get unemployment benefits)
But regarding the fact that at the moment about 22% percent of people are actually working in the "low paid - sector" i favor minimum wages because in my opinion it got a little bit out of hand by now. Higher wages here in Germany will also help other EU countries to get more competitive and wages in Germany basically haven't gone up for 10 years straight now.
|
ATHENS (Reuters) - Greek youth unemployment rose above 60 percent for the first time in February, reflecting the pain caused by the country's crippling recession after years of austerity under its international bailout.
Greece's jobless rate has almost tripled since the country's debt crisis emerged in 2009 and was more than twice the euro zone's average unemployment reading of 12.1 percent in March.
While the overall unemployment rate rose to 27 percent, according to statistics service data released on Thursday, joblessness among those aged between 15 and 24 jumped to 64.2 percent in February from 59.3 percent in January. Youth unemployment was 54.1 percent in March 2012.
"It is by far the highest youth unemployment rate in the euro zone, highlighting the difficulties young people face in entering the labor market despite government incentives to create jobs," said economist Nikos Magginas at National Bank.
Athens has lowered the minimum monthly wage for those under 25 years by 32 percent to about 500 euros to entice hiring.
Greece's economy is in its sixth year of recession, battered by tax hikes and spending cuts demanded by its European Union and International Monetary Fund lenders. The economy is expected to slump by 4.2 to 4.5 percent this year.
The high jobless rate is keeping Greeks pessimistic about their economic prospects.
Source
|
Here in Spain we got 52% youth unemployed and 26% active people unemployed, also that means 6.200.000 people without a job.
Capitalism is cool.
|
Mario Draghi should be in jail.
But instead, we'll have him at the head of the european central bank until 2019...
|
On May 09 2013 23:00 arChieSC2 wrote:
Here in Spain we got 52% youth unemployed and 26% active people unemployed, also that means 6.200.000 people without a job.
Capitalism is cool.
Yeh the massive youth unemployment numbers everywhere are destructive for the future economy and their lives. It's time to stop the austerity since it's clearly not working.
|
On May 10 2013 02:41 RvB wrote:Show nested quote +On May 09 2013 23:00 arChieSC2 wrote:
Here in Spain we got 52% youth unemployed and 26% active people unemployed, also that means 6.200.000 people without a job.
Capitalism is cool. Yeh the massive youth unemployment numbers everywhere are destructive for the future economy and their lives. It's time to stop the Euro since it's clearly not working.
Corrected
|
On May 09 2013 22:39 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:Show nested quote +ATHENS (Reuters) - Greek youth unemployment rose above 60 percent for the first time in February, reflecting the pain caused by the country's crippling recession after years of austerity under its international bailout.
Greece's jobless rate has almost tripled since the country's debt crisis emerged in 2009 and was more than twice the euro zone's average unemployment reading of 12.1 percent in March.
While the overall unemployment rate rose to 27 percent, according to statistics service data released on Thursday, joblessness among those aged between 15 and 24 jumped to 64.2 percent in February from 59.3 percent in January. Youth unemployment was 54.1 percent in March 2012.
"It is by far the highest youth unemployment rate in the euro zone, highlighting the difficulties young people face in entering the labor market despite government incentives to create jobs," said economist Nikos Magginas at National Bank.
Athens has lowered the minimum monthly wage for those under 25 years by 32 percent to about 500 euros to entice hiring.
Greece's economy is in its sixth year of recession, battered by tax hikes and spending cuts demanded by its European Union and International Monetary Fund lenders. The economy is expected to slump by 4.2 to 4.5 percent this year.
The high jobless rate is keeping Greeks pessimistic about their economic prospects. Source
actually those figures don't count the freelancers who might have just few euros of income every month or no profits at all but still marked as employed (like myself :p).
Portugal plans to avoid the threat of needing another bailout by making another $6.3bn in cuts over the next three years, with measures including raising the retirement age by one year to 66 and laying off around 30,000 government workers, the prime minister has said.
30,000... that's just insane. There has to be a more productive way in solving the current crisis..
Well, 15,000 to be layed off in 2013 and 150,000 (yes, that's a hundred and fifty thousands ^^) workers until 2015 for Greece, already agreed in the last memorandum.
|
On May 10 2013 03:25 accela wrote:Show nested quote +On May 09 2013 22:39 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:ATHENS (Reuters) - Greek youth unemployment rose above 60 percent for the first time in February, reflecting the pain caused by the country's crippling recession after years of austerity under its international bailout.
Greece's jobless rate has almost tripled since the country's debt crisis emerged in 2009 and was more than twice the euro zone's average unemployment reading of 12.1 percent in March.
While the overall unemployment rate rose to 27 percent, according to statistics service data released on Thursday, joblessness among those aged between 15 and 24 jumped to 64.2 percent in February from 59.3 percent in January. Youth unemployment was 54.1 percent in March 2012.
"It is by far the highest youth unemployment rate in the euro zone, highlighting the difficulties young people face in entering the labor market despite government incentives to create jobs," said economist Nikos Magginas at National Bank.
Athens has lowered the minimum monthly wage for those under 25 years by 32 percent to about 500 euros to entice hiring.
Greece's economy is in its sixth year of recession, battered by tax hikes and spending cuts demanded by its European Union and International Monetary Fund lenders. The economy is expected to slump by 4.2 to 4.5 percent this year.
The high jobless rate is keeping Greeks pessimistic about their economic prospects. Source actually those figures don't count the freelancers who might have just few euros of income every month or no profits at all but still marked as employed (like myself :p). Show nested quote +Portugal plans to avoid the threat of needing another bailout by making another $6.3bn in cuts over the next three years, with measures including raising the retirement age by one year to 66 and laying off around 30,000 government workers, the prime minister has said. Show nested quote +30,000... that's just insane. There has to be a more productive way in solving the current crisis.. Well, 15,000 to be layed off in 2013 and 150,000 (yes, that's a hundred and fifty thousands ^^) workers until 2015 for Greece, already agreed in the last memorandum.
yes and 15.000 new government jobs in 2013 too. What a coincidence.
|
Europe may want to end it's current streak of schadenfreude and bad decision making. Overly punitive bailouts and broken financial systems are simply not helpful.
|
On May 10 2013 03:42 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
Europe may want to end it's current streak of schadenfreude and bad decision making. Overly punitive bailouts and broken financial systems are simply not helpful.
Well, beyond a certain point, the EU needs to own up to the interrelations inherent to the use of the euro and step in when it comes to terrible decision making on the part of the most troublesome nations, namely Spain and Greece. The Euro will indeed flounder if each nation is allowed enough economic "freedom" to continue making terrible choices.
|
On May 10 2013 03:54 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On May 10 2013 03:42 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
Europe may want to end it's current streak of schadenfreude and bad decision making. Overly punitive bailouts and broken financial systems are simply not helpful. Well, beyond a certain point, the EU needs to own up to the interrelations inherent to the use of the euro and step in when it comes to terrible decision making on the part of the most troublesome nations, namely Spain and Greece. The Euro will indeed flounder if each nation is allowed enough economic "freedom" to continue making terrible choices.
What do you mean by terrible decision making? I can see how that could be said about Greece but I'm not sure how it relates to Spain. As far as I know Spain and Greece had very little in common before the global financial crisis, at least in terms of government deficits/debt.
|
On May 10 2013 04:00 Melliflue wrote:Show nested quote +On May 10 2013 03:54 farvacola wrote:On May 10 2013 03:42 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
Europe may want to end it's current streak of schadenfreude and bad decision making. Overly punitive bailouts and broken financial systems are simply not helpful. Well, beyond a certain point, the EU needs to own up to the interrelations inherent to the use of the euro and step in when it comes to terrible decision making on the part of the most troublesome nations, namely Spain and Greece. The Euro will indeed flounder if each nation is allowed enough economic "freedom" to continue making terrible choices. What do you mean by terrible decision making? I can see how that could be said about Greece but I'm not sure how it relates to Spain. As far as I know Spain and Greece had very little in common before the global financial crisis, at least in terms of government deficits/debt.
Well the problem is that even if one considers the fiscal and monetary policy of Spain acceptable, which many do not, all it takes is one member nation's stupidity to make the house of cards begin to tumble.
|
On May 10 2013 03:54 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On May 10 2013 03:42 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
Europe may want to end it's current streak of schadenfreude and bad decision making. Overly punitive bailouts and broken financial systems are simply not helpful. Well, beyond a certain point, the EU needs to own up to the interrelations inherent to the use of the euro and step in when it comes to terrible decision making on the part of the most troublesome nations, namely Spain and Greece. The Euro will indeed flounder if each nation is allowed enough economic "freedom" to continue making terrible choices.
To use an analogy, Europe needs to put the fire out first. Afterwards it can figure out how to teach fire safety.
|
On May 10 2013 04:05 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On May 10 2013 04:00 Melliflue wrote:On May 10 2013 03:54 farvacola wrote:On May 10 2013 03:42 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
Europe may want to end it's current streak of schadenfreude and bad decision making. Overly punitive bailouts and broken financial systems are simply not helpful. Well, beyond a certain point, the EU needs to own up to the interrelations inherent to the use of the euro and step in when it comes to terrible decision making on the part of the most troublesome nations, namely Spain and Greece. The Euro will indeed flounder if each nation is allowed enough economic "freedom" to continue making terrible choices. What do you mean by terrible decision making? I can see how that could be said about Greece but I'm not sure how it relates to Spain. As far as I know Spain and Greece had very little in common before the global financial crisis, at least in terms of government deficits/debt. Well the problem is that even if one considers the fiscal and monetary policy of Spain acceptable, which many do not, all it takes is one member nation's stupidity to make the house of cards begin to tumble.
Do you mean Spain's fiscal and monetary policy now or pre-crisis? What do you think is/was wrong with it? What was stupid about it? I honestly don't understand what you are referring to, sorry.
As far as I know Spain has no control over monetary policy because it doesn't have a central bank. The monetary policy is dictated by the ECB. I'm not sure how much control Spain has over it's fiscal policy any more, because of the conditions/deal for the bailout money.
|
There was not, and still isn't, anything wrong with the fiscal policy of Spain. There are some provisions that made their labor more expensive, but a great deal of Spanish issues stem from a massive jump in unemployment in 2009 (maybe due to construction, but I'm not sure) and huge amounts of government money going to bail out banks. The latter should have never happened with a competent ECB, but it did. Then, the massive expansion of Spanish government debt fueled concerns that they, too, would have a liquidity problem. Of course this happened because, again, of the incompetency of the ECB. Time and time again, the ECB restricted funds to troubled nations and banks because of their finances in moments of crisis. They waited for those countries to catch fire, then made them sign agreements in desperation to keep their countries from fully imploding. Spain's problem wasn't anything they did wrong, but instead got duped by a system that turned on it when crisis struck.
|
Just read that 60,000 teachers lost their jobs in Spain, which basically catapults a whole generation back a hundred years. I wonder how long it's going to take before the whole country (and Portugal and Greece with it) gets swept up in Arab Spring-style social upheaval. The arrogance and short-sightedness of Olli Rehn and co. is really staggering.
The euro-crisis was the first real test for the EU since it's inception after the second world war, and it has failed that test spectacularly.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
