European economic news

Mafia now "Italy's No.1 bank" as crisis bites: report

News Daily,
10 January, 2012

ROME, Jan. 10, 2012 (Reuters) — Organised crime has tightened its grip on the Italian economy during the economic crisis, making the Mafia the country's biggest "bank" and squeezing the life out of thousands of small firms, according to a report on Tuesday.

Extortionate lending by criminal groups had become a "national emergency," said the report by anti-crime group SOS Impresa.

Organised crime now generated annual turnover of about 140 billion euros ($178.89 billion) and profits of more than 100 billion euros, it added.

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Italy Is Biggest Risk to Euro, Says Fitch

Wall Street Journal,

10 January, 2011

LONDON—Fitch Ratings on Tuesday pointed to Italy as the euro-zone member that poses the greatest threat to the currency bloc's future, as the lack of a regionwide plan to prevent the sovereign-debt crisis from spreading has coupled with the country's large debt burden and high borrowing costs.

Those factors are a major reason Italy's credit rating is likely to be downgraded by the end of January, said David Riley, head of global sovereign ratings at Fitch, speaking at a conference in London. "Italy is the front line of this crisis," Mr. Riley said, adding that the country's elevated government-bond yields have "marked a profound intensification of the crisis."

Italy is planning to sell €440 billion ($561.67 billion) in government bonds and Treasury bills in 2012. This is a daunting task given its current borrowing costs, Mr. Riley said.

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Greece Bank Run Shows No Sign Of Stopping: Deposit Outflows Continue In November

Zero Hedge,

10 January, 2012

The year is not over yet, and already Greece's banks have lost €36.7 billion of their deposit base in 2011, and a whopping €64.6 billion since the beginning of 2010, which is down from €233 billion to €173 billion in under two years. In October another €3.5 billion was withdrawn from Greek banks and likely either redeposited somewhere deep in the heart of Switzerland, or converted to various inert metals and buried somewhere in the back yard. The good news: the outflow is just over half of October's record €6.8 billion. The bad news: at this rate of outflows, Greek banks will have zero deposits in around 4 years. Which at the end of the day is all the matters, because while the Troica can keep funding capital shortfalls indefinitely, all faith in the country's banks has now been lost and Greece is officially a zombie economy. The fact that the country's deficit as a % of GDP is about to be re-revised even higher is no longer even meaningful: the Greek economy and its banking sectors are now officially dead. We merely feel bad for anyone who still has cash in banks as, just like gold in 1930s America, any residual cash may soon be "sequestered" for national security purposes. After all there are bankers who need record bonuses, and Military sales from Europe and the US that have to proceed using what will likely soon be "commingled" deposit cash.

With Work Scarce in Athens, Greeks Go Back to the Land

NY Times,

8 January, 2012

Nikos Gavalas and Alexandra Tricha, both 31 and trained as agriculturalists, were frustrated working on poorly paying, short-term contracts in Athens, where jobs are scarce and the cost of living is high. So last year, they decided to start a new project: growing edible snails for export.

As Greece’s blighted economy plunges further into the abyss, the couple are joining with an exodus of Greeks who are fleeing to the countryside and looking to the nation’s rich rural past as a guide to the future. They acknowledge that it is a peculiar undertaking, with more manual labor than they, as college graduates, ever imagined doing. But in a country starved by austerity even as it teeters on the brink of default, it seemed as good a gamble as any.

For article GO HERE