Polls close in Greece, with 'No' vote in lead

[Anonymous]

Polls have closed in Greece referendum, which will determine the cash-strapped country's future in the eurozone, with opinion polls showing a narrow win for the 'No' vote.

According to Greece Interior Ministry partial vote count shows 'No' vote is in lead by accounting for 61 percent of early votes counted.

Earlier in the day, a poll by the Star television channel, carried out during voting on Sunday and the day before, showed that between 49 and 54 percent of the participants favored 'No' while 46 to 51 percent supported a 'Yes' vote.

Mega channel poll also suggested a 49.5-53.5 percent 'No' vote against 46.5-50.5 percent for 'Yes'.

Counting is now underway in Greece and the results of the referendum are expected to be announced by 2100 GMT Sunday.

Greeks had to choose whether to accept another tough austerity package proposed by the country's international lenders – the European Commission, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – in return for fresh bailout loans.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras had called for a ‘No' vote in the plebiscite, rejecting speculations that such a move would endanger Greece's place in the eurozone or in the EU.

However, opponents have warned that a ‘No' vote would see Greece ejected from the single currency bloc.

Though a so-called Grexit is not certain, Greece's potential exit from the eurozone could shake the foundation of the entire single-currency bloc as it could set an example for other cash-strapped members.

French President Francois Hollande, meanwhile, is set to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Paris on Monday night to "evaluate the consequences of the referendum in Greece," according to a statement by the French presidency.

The leftist government of Tsipras believes a 'No' vote will put pressure on the international creditors to provide Athens with a better, more economically viable deal.

Greece received two bailout packages in 2010 and 2012 worth a total of €240 billion ($272 billion) from its creditors following its 2009 economic crisis and, in return, accepted to implement harsh austerity measures.

Source: Press TV

 

[Non-Shatter]

With almost all the ballots counted, results from the Greek referendum show voters decisively rejecting the terms of an international bailout.
Figures published by the interior ministry showed 61% of those whose ballots had been counted voting "No", against 39% voting "Yes".
Greece's governing Syriza party had campaigned for a "No", saying the bailout terms were humiliating.
Their opponents warned that this could see Greece ejected from the eurozone.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said late on Sunday that Greeks had voted for a "Europe of solidarity and democracy".


"As of tomorrow, Greece will go back to the negotiating table and our primary priority is to reinstate the financial stability of the country," he said in a televised address.
"This time, the debt will be on the negotiating table," he added, saying that an International Monetary Fund assessment published this week "confirms Greek views that restructuring the debt is necessary".
Follow our live updates
But some European officials had said that a "No" would be seen as an outright rejection of talks with creditors.
Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who heads the eurozone's group of finance ministers, said the referendum result was "very regrettable for the future of Greece".
Germany's Deputy Chancellor, Sigmar Gabriel, said renewed negotiations with Greece were "difficult to imagine".
Mr Tsipras and his government were taking the country down a path of "bitter abandonment and hopelessness", he told the Tagesspiegel daily.

Analysis: Mark Lowen, BBC News, Athens

The partying by the "No" camp will go well into the night here and the government will be popping open the ouzo. Alexis Tsipras has called the eurozone's bluff - and it appears to have gone his way.
But the triumphalism won't last. There is still a sizeable chunk of the Greek nation deeply unhappy with what has happened. And the government will have to unite a divided country.
More than that, a deal with the eurozone has to be struck fast.
Greek banks are running critically low and will need another injection of emergency funds from the European Central Bank.
Given the bad blood of the past two weeks - Greece's Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis, calling the eurozone's strategy "terrorism" - it will be hard to get back around the negotiating table. And with the banking crisis and tax revenues plummeting amidst the instability, Greece's economy has weakened again, making a deal even harder to reach.
The eurozone's tough rhetoric will continue. But Greece's government will have its answer prepared: we put your demands to a democratic test - and they were rejected.

Greece had been locked in negotiations with its creditors for months when the Greek government unexpectedly called a referendum on the terms it was being offered.
Banks have been shut and capital controls in place since last Monday, after the European Central Bank declined to give Greece more emergency funding.
Withdrawals at cash machines have been limited to €60 per day. Greece's latest bailout expired on Tuesday and Greece missed a €1.6bn (£1.1bn) payment to the IMF.

Robert Peston, BBC economics editor, Athens

Greek banks have stayed shut for a week Greek banks are desperately in need of a lender of last resort to save them, and the Greek economy.
And sad to say no banker or central banker to whom I have spoken believes the European Central Bank (ECB) can fulfil that function - because it is struggling to prove to itself that Greek banks have adequate assets to pledge to it as security for new loans.
There are only two options. The Bank of Greece could make unsecured loans to Greek banks without the ECB's permission - which would provoke a furious reaction from Eurozone leaders and would be seen by most of them as tantamount to leaving the euro.
Or it can explicitly create a new currency, a new drachma, which it could then use to provide vital finance to Greek banks and the Greek economy.

Greece on verge of euro exit

Greek government officials have insisted that rejecting bailout terms would strengthen their hand, and that they could rapidly strike a deal for fresh funding in resumed negotiations.
Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has said that with a "No" vote, Greek banks would reopen on Tuesday.
He was due to meet senior Greek bankers late on Sunday. State Minister Nikos Pappas, a close ally of Mr Tsipras, said it was "absolutely necessary" to restore liquidity to the banks now the referendum was over.
Some European officials sounded conciliatory.
Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni tweeted: "Now it is right to start trying for an agreement again. But there is no escape from the Greek labyrinth with a Europe that's weak and isn't growing."
Belgium's finance minister said the door remained open to restart talks with Greece "literally, within hours".
Eurozone finance ministers could again discuss measures "that can put the Greek economy back on track and give the Greeks a perspective for the future," he told the VRT network.
Summit called

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said he was consulting the leaders of eurozone member states, and would have a conference call with key EU officials and the ECB on Monday morning.
French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are scheduled to meet in Paris on Monday. A summit of eurozone heads of state has been called for Tuesday.
The European Commission - one of the "troika" of creditors along with the IMF and the ECB - wanted Athens to raise taxes and slash welfare spending to meet its debt obligations.
Greece's Syriza-led government, which was elected in January on an anti-austerity platform, said creditors had presented it with an "ultimatum", using fear to put pressure on Greeks.
The Greek government's opponents and some Greek voters had complained that the question in Sunday's referendum was unclear. EU officials said it applied to the terms of an offer that was no longer on the table.
The projected turnout in Sunday's referendum was about 62%.
As the result became clear, former Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, who had campaigned for a "Yes" vote in the referendum, resigned as leader of the centre-right New Democracy party.

 

[crabat]

East African community has something to learn from this crisis...i hope they will slow down their single currency plan...it will be a disaster

 

[Anonymous]

East African community has something to learn from this crisis...i hope they will slow down their single currency plan...it will be a disaster

Euro drops against dollar after Greek referendum early results

​

One euro was worth $1.0987 at 1915 GMT, down 1.20 percent from Friday night, in electronic trading before Asian markets opened.

New York (AFP) - The euro was dropping against the dollar Sunday after early results of the Greece bailout referendum suggested the country rejected fresh austerity demands from EU-IMF creditors. One euro was worth $1.0987 at 1915 GMT, down 1.20 percent from Friday night, in electronic trading before Asian markets opened.
Earlier in the day, the euro had fallen to 1.0963 dollar, with about 50 percent of votes counted in the Greek bailout vote.
The early official results showed that more than 61 percent of Greeks had voted 'No' to creditor demands for further austerity in return for a bailout.
A failure to reach a deal with the creditors could trigger a Greek exit from the eurozone, and after the ballot, Greece's government said it would step up efforts to reach a bailout agreement with creditors.
"The initiatives will intensify from this evening (Sunday) onward so that there can be a deal," government spokesman Gabriel Sakellaridis said on Greek television.


Read more: businessinsider.com

 

[Extraterrestrial]

Kama kuna ambaye hajasoma hiki kitabu kinachoitwa Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins nimewaletea baadhi ya quote za kitabu mtaona jinsi ambavyo Greece has fallen victim to Economic Hit man.Hawa creditors ni washenzi haswa na ukoloni hautokaa huishe,the creditors are ripping off every cent which the Greece people are making.Greece bora wajifunze kama ICELAND.Austerity measures ni kifo kikubwa cha economy,EU itakuja collapse tu.Below is part of the book;


John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, discusses how Greece and other eurozone countries have become the new victims of "economic hit men."

John Perkins is no stranger to making confessions. His well-known book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, revealed how international organizations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, while publicly professing to "save" suffering countries and economies, instead pull a bait-and-switch on their governments: promising startling growth, gleaming new infrastructure projects and a future of economic prosperity - all of which would occur if those countries borrow huge loans from those organizations. Far from achieving runaway economic growth and success, however, these countries instead fall victim to a crippling and unsustainable debt burden.

That's where the "economic hit men" come in: seemingly ordinary men, with ordinary backgrounds, who travel to these countries and impose the harsh austerity policies prescribed by the IMF and World Bank as "solutions" to the economic hardship they are now experiencing. Men like Perkins were trained to squeeze every last drop of wealth and resources from these sputtering economies, and continue to do so to this day. In this interview, which aired on Dialogos Radio, Perkins talks about how Greece and the eurozone have become the new victims of such "economic hit men."

John Perkins: Essentially, my job was to identify countries that had resources that our corporations want, and that could be things like oil - or it could be markets - it could be transportation systems. There're so many different things. Once we identified these countries, we arranged huge loans to them, but the money would never actually go to the countries; instead it would go to our own corporations to build infrastructure projects in those countries, things like power plants and highways that benefitted a few wealthy people as well as our own corporations, but not the majority of people who couldn't afford to buy into these things, and yet they were left holding a huge debt, very much like what Greece has today, a phenomenal debt.



"[Indebted countries] become servants to what I call the corporatocracy ... today we have a global empire, and it's not an American empire. It's not a national empire ... It's a corporate empire, and the big corporations rule."

And once [they were] bound by that debt, we would go back, usually in the form of the IMF - and in the case of Greece today, it's the IMF and the EU [European Union] - and make tremendous demands on the country: increase taxes, cut back on spending, sell public sector utilities to private companies, things like power companies and water systems, transportation systems, privatize those, and basically become a slave to us, to the corporations, to the IMF, in your case to the EU, and basically, organizations like the World Bank, the IMF, the EU, are tools of the big corporations, what I call the "corporatocracy."

 

[Extraterrestrial]

Angalia creditors wanavyotengeneza profit za kufa mtu Huku Greece citizens wakiteseka.

The IMF Has Made €2.5 Billion Profit Out of Greece Loans

By Jubilee Debt Campaign / jubileedebt.org.uk

Ahead of the payment of €462 million by Greece to the IMF on Thursday 9 April, figures released by the Jubilee Debt Campaign show that the IMF has made €2.5 billion of profit out of its loans to Greece since 2010. If Greece does repay the IMF in full this will rise to €4.3 billion by 2024.

The IMF has been charging an effective interest rate of 3.6% on its loans to Greece. This is far more than the interest rate the institution needs to meet all its costs, currently around 0.9%. If this was the actual interest rate Greece had been paying the IMF since 2010, it would have spent €2.5 billion less on payments.



Out of its lending to all countries in debt crisis between 2010 and 2014 the IMF has made a total profit of €8.4 billion, over a quarter of which is effectively from Greece. All of this money has been added to the Fund’s reserves, which now total €19 billion. These reserves would be used to meet the costs from a country defaulting on repayments. Greece’s total debt to the IMF is currently €24 billion.

Tim Jones, economist at the Jubilee Debt Campaign, said:

“The IMF’s loans to Greece have not only bailed out banks which lent recklessly in the first place, they have actively taken even more money out of the country. This usurious interest adds to the unjust debt forced on the people of Greece.”

Copyright Jubilee Campaign, 2015

 

[Anonymous]

@Extraterrestrial the EU has become a US puppet fascist union. They call debt was created illegally, it is illegitimate and odious. Without EU, Greece would be more independent. No more dictatorship from Brussels. Without EU market Greece can survive because Serbia and EURASIA markets would be opened. IMF can be replaced to BRICS..!!!