Would you be surprised to hear that the human race is slowly becoming dumber, and dumber? Despite our advancements over the last tens or even hundreds of years, some ‘experts’ believe that humans are losing cognitive capabilities and becoming more emotionally unstable. One Stanford University researcher and geneticist, Dr. Gerald Crabtree, believes that our intellectual decline as a race has much to do with adverse genetic mutations. But there is more to it than that.
According to Crabtree, our cognitive and emotional capabilities are fueled and determined by the combined effort of thousands of genes. If a mutation occurred in any of of these genes, which is quite likely, then intelligence or emotional stability can be negatively impacted.
“I would wager that if an average citizen from Athens of 1000 BC were to appear suddenly among us, he or she would be among the brightest and most intellectually alive of our colleagues and companions, with a good memory, a broad range of ideas, and a clear-sighted view of important issues. Furthermore, I would guess that he or she would be among the most emotionally stable of our friends and colleagues,” the geneticist began his article in the scientific journal Trends in Genetics. Read more >>
Optimism it seems is all that matters (or is all that is allowed) as we are battered by dismal data left, right, and center. Of course, a reflection on the markets tells any 'smart' person that it all must get better - or why would stocks or sovereigns, or EURUSD be where it is?
However, the 6 out of 10 15-24 year olds in Greece (61.7% to be exact) would beg to differ with that view of the world (as their economy grinds to a halt) - and with Spain reaching new highs at 55.6% (as well as the Euro-zone over 24%), all the bureaucratic lip-service in the world won't stop the revolt that is coming we fear. Read more >>
The nation of Greece comes to a screeching halt again for two days starting Tuesday. Unions have called for a 48-hour general strike ahead of an anticipated vote by the Greek government on yet another round of austerity measures late Wednesday night. Protesters will march on the parliament in central Athens on both days.
Greek media are expecting the vote to be a cliffhanger with narrow passage by just a handful of votes.
If legislators do not pass the measures, it will endanger the payout of the next international bailout installment of 31.5 billion euros, which the government desperately needs to stay in operation. Without the funds, it says it will run out of money by mid-November.
But Greeks are furious over the effects of multiple rounds of belt-tightening, which have resulted in cuts to pensions and pay and seen unemployment in Greece's fifth year of recession soar to over 25%. Critics of austerity have called for economic stimulus programs instead, like those implemented in the United States. Read more >>
Thousands of Greek protesters have responded to their leader's plans for austerity measures by gathering in Athens for an anti-austerity rally. Some of the demonstrators pelted riot police with petrol bombs, bottles and pieces of marble. The protest in the capital is part of a nation-wide strike that has shut down rail service, grounded flights and closed schools. Al Jazeera's Dominic Kane reports from Athens.
The fourth such strike of the year is expected to paralyse train and ferry traffic, disrupt flights and shut down public services as unions seek to send a message to the government that they will not tolerate a third straight year of cuts. The coalition government of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras is holding delicate negotiations with Greece’s so-called ‘troika’ of creditors — the EU, IMF and European Central Bank — to secure the release of loans needed to avoid bankruptcy.
The government has been told by its creditors to jumpstart flagging economic reforms and lighten the budget by 9.2 billion euros ($12 billion) next year in order to secure a 31.5-billion-euro loan slice next month. The money is part of an overall EU-IMF bailout of 130 billion euros that is tied to Greek reform pledges, including a long-delayed privatisation drive.
Waves of prior austerity measures over the last two years managed to slash Greece’s runaway deficit by over six percent of output, at the cost of cuts to wages, pensions and benefits. One in four Greeks are officially unemployed — with the real number higher still according to unions — and the economy is in a deepening recession. Read more >>
Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling SA, the world’s second-largest Coca-Cola bottler, plans to move its main stock listing from Athens to London as Greece’s largest company by market value flees the epicenter of Europe’s debt crisis.
The move will make it eligible for inclusion in the benchmark FTSE 100 Index. A new company established in Switzerland by one of the bottler’s main shareholders will make a share-exchange offer for Coca-Cola Hellenic and seek a primary listing in London, according to an Athens bourse filing today. Coca-Cola HBC AG will also seek to list in New York.
The move comes as European officials try to convince investors that Greece’s future belongs in the euro region three years after the country’s debt crisis broke out. While German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Athens to assure Greek citizens she wants them to stay in the euro, the largest opposition party says Greece should renege on all its bailout agreements and a report today showed unemployment rose above 25 percent in July. Read more >>
Source
Greece's statistical agency says unemployment in the crisis-struck
country has risen to a startling 23.1 percent in May — up from 16.8
percent a year earlier. An agency statement Thursday said the worst affected group is young people under 25, where 54.9 percent are out of work.
A total 1.15 million people were unemployed in
May 2012, compared to 1.1 million in April, or 22.6 percent of the
workforce. In May 2009, months before Greece's crisis broke,
unemployment was just 9.1 percent.
Greece has avoided going bankrupt by
international rescue loans. In return, Athens imposed harsh austerity
measures to limit runaway government overspending and improve
chronically weak tax revenues.
The coalition government is now striving to identify €11.5 billion worth of cuts for 2013-14.
Greece’s credit rating may be cut again by Standard & Poor’s on concern the debt-burdened nation will need more support from European Union lenders.
The outlook on Greece’s CCC rating, already eight levels below investment grade, was revised to negative from stable, S&P said in a statement yesterday. The change reflects the risk of a downgrade if Greece is unable to obtain its next disbursement of bailout loans from the EU and International Monetary Fund rescue package, the rating company said.
Representatives from the so-called troika of the European Commission, European Central Bank and IMF return to Athens early next month to review Greece’s economic program, which will determine whether the nation will receive further funds from rescue packages, amounting to 240 billion euros ($297 billion), needed to remain in the 17-nation euro area.
Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has held meetings with the leaders of the two parties supporting his coalition government since it was formed following elections on June 17 to hash out a 11.5 billion-euro package of budget cuts demanded by the creditors for the next two years. Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras said yesterday the government is still working on identifying almost a third of the cuts. Read more >>
Starving Greeks queued around the block for free food handouts as the country's politicians managed to end a crippling stalemate to form a coalition government. Young children as well as the elderly waited in line in Athens to collect the parcels of fruit and vegetables donated by farmers from Crete to help ease the devastating austerity faced by many Greeks.
But as hungry people collected food, a few miles away a new conservative-led alliance was formed, vowing to renegotiate the country's strict European bailout in a bid to breath economic life back into the debt-stricken country. Conservative Antonis Samaras was sworn in as prime minister and head of a three-party coalition that will uphold the country's international bailout commitments.
Cretan farmers handed out some 2,700 10-kilo packages of produce, in cooperation with the capital's municipal authorities. Among the people lining up was Panayiota Sidera, 31, from Athens. She said she has been unemployed for two-and-a-half years and her husband is also out of a job. The couple is living on a (euro) 250 monthly disability pension and rent from an apartment they own, and has a (euro) 540-a-month loan installment to pay. Read more >>
Western society has behaved neurotically for the past twenty years and needs to be cured. Professor Mark Stein draws this conclusion in a psychoanalysis of the financial crisis (via Steve Keen).
European finance officials have discussed limiting the size of
withdrawals from ATM machines, imposing border checks and introducing
euro zone capital controls as a worst-case scenario should Athens decide
to leave the euro. EU officials said the ideas are part of a
range of contingency plans. They emphasised that the discussions were
merely about being prepared for any eventuality rather than planning for
something they expect to happen.
But with increased political
uncertainty in Greece following the inconclusive election on May 6th and
ahead of a second election on June 17th, there is now an increased need
to have contingencies in place, the EU sources said. The European
Commission said today it was helping with legal advice in discussions
of contingency scenarios regarding Greece by the Eurogroup working
group.
"I've not said that I'm not aware of any discussions, I've
said I'm not aware about any plans, which is a slight difference,"
Commission spokesman Olivier Bailly told a regular news briefing, when
asked about Commission involvement in discussions about the
contingencies were Greece to leave the euro. "What I said also is that some people are working on scenarios. We are
providing information about EU law, as the guardian of the treaty," he
said. Read more >>
Press TV
A new report says around 13,000 Greek people are homeless in the capital Athens and the number of the poor in the recession-hit country is on the rise.
The report by the charity organization, Praksis, which was published on Thursday says in the Greek capital of over four million, around 11,500 Greeks are living in abandoned buildings, while 1500 others live on the streets.
While Athens emerged as the center of Europe’s debt crisis, cities across the continent are trying to cope with the biggest decline in prosperity since World War II. A report last week showed that euro-area unemployment rose to the highest in more than 15 years in April and the region’s economy is contracting for the second time in three years.
Voters in France elected Francois Hollande as president May 6 after he pledged to soften austerity measures backed by his predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy, while Greece was thrown into another stage of turmoil after elections split parliament between pro- and anti-bailout parties with no clear winner.
“Before people didn’t see any questions and now they don’t see any answers,” said Austin Hughes, an economist at KBC Bank Ireland in Dublin. “There had been an expectation that incomes, employment prospects and asset prices would improve forever. That certainty is now gone.”More...
An election on Sunday in Greece failed to deliver a parliamentary majority for the two big pro-bailout parties, plunging the country into political limbo and increasing the risk that another vote may be required to resolve the impasse.
On Tuesday, the leader of the Left Coalition party, which benefited from rising anger over austerity to take second place in Sunday's poll, declared Greece's policy pledges under its EU/IMF rescue null and void. As Europe's largest economy, Germany has contributed the biggest share of the financial guarantees under the banks Greece's bailout, which is paid out in installments on the condition that Athens meets specific savings goals.
"The agreements must be respected. I don't think we can or should renegotiate," said Martin Schulz, a German politician and president of the European Parliament, on a visit to Berlin. Gerda Hasselfeldt, a senior member of the Bavarian Christian Social Union, sister party to Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, echoed Schulz in warning Greece against any backsliding. More...
A 77-year-old Greek man has committed suicide in central Athens by
the nation’s parliament, shooting himself with a handgun in apparent
financial desperation. Eyewitness reports say that the man shouted “So I won’t leave debts for my children” before turning the gun on himself. Others claimed he said nothing.
The pensioner was a retired pharmacist who owned a
drugstore in Athens, which he sold in 1994, Costas Lourantos, the head
of the Attica Pharmacist’s Association told Skai radio.
The number of suicides has dramatically increased in the country since
the beginning of the economic crisis, shows data released by the Greek
Health Ministry.
Prior to the economic downturn Greece had the lowest suicide rate in
Europe at 2.8 for every 100,000 inhabitants. Now, this figure has almost
doubled, with police reporting over 600 suicide cases in 2010 and 2011
respectively. Attempted suicides are also on the up.
Last month, a 38-year-old Albanian man killed himself on the island
of Crete. He had been unemployed for some time. The financial hardship
made him jump off his second-floor balcony, reported local news.
In neighboring Italy, a 78-year-old woman threw herself out of her third-floor apartment after her monthly pension was cut from 800 to 600 euro. Since the 25 per cent cut, the pensioner from Sicily had reportedly been struggling to make ends meet.
"The government is making us all poorer, apart from the wealthy – who they don't touch – in contrast with us workers and small businessmen who are struggling with heavy debts," said her son, Bruno Marsana, as quoted by The Daily Telegraph.
A picture frame-maker hanged himself in Rome. His suicide note told of "overwhelming economic problems." Previously, two men in northern Italy set themselves on fire in two separate incidents, citing financial woes as well. Both survived, sustaining severe burns. More...
Reuters On Monday, a 38-year-old geology lecturer hanged himself from a lamp post in Athens and on the same day a 35-year-old priest jumped to his death off his balcony in northern Greece. On Wednesday, a 23-year-old student shot himself in the head.
In a country that has had one of the lowest suicide rates in the world, a surge in the number of suicides in the wake of an economic crisis has shocked and gripped the Mediterranean nation - and its media - before a May 6 election.
The especially grisly death of pharmacist Dimitris Christoulas, who shot himself in the head on a central Athens square because of poverty brought on by the crisis that has put millions out of work, was by far the most dramatic.
Before shooting himself during morning rush hour on April 4 on Syntagma Square across from the Greek parliament building, the 77-year-old pensioner took a moment to jot down a note.
"I see no other solution than this dignified
end to my life so I don't find myself fishing through garbage cans for
sustenance," wrote Christoulas, who has since become a national symbol
of the austerity-induced pain that is squeezing millions.
Greek
media have since reported similar suicides almost daily, worsening a
sense of gloom going into next week's election, called after Prime
Minister Lucas Papademos's interim government completed its mandate to
secure a new rescue deal from foreign creditors by cutting spending
further. More...
The Greek government has used a rare emergency order to force lorry drivers back to work after a three-day strike. The drivers have until later on Thursday to return to the roads or face arrest and the loss of their licenses.
Most petrol stations in Athens are out of fuel and shops and factories are running low on supplies. The drivers oppose government plans to open the industry to more competition as part of austerity measures agreed with the IMF and the EU.
The reform is a key part of the multi-billion dollar EU-IMF package intended to pull Greece out of its debt crisis. Members of the drivers' union said they would not back down and dared the government to seize their lorries.
"Leonidas with his 300 warriors said 'Come and get it'. We say the same: come and get it," said one of the organisers of the strike, Spyros Kapetanios.
Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou said the drivers would not be allowed to hold "Greek society hostage". More...
ATHENS (Reuters) The Greek cabinet minister in charge of the police force escaped unhurt on Thursday after a bomb in a booby-trapped package exploded next to his office, killing one of his closest aides, officials said.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the blast, on the seventh floor of the ministry that caused serious damage to the office of Civil Protection Minister Mihalis Chrysohoidis.
"I lost a valuable and dear colleague," Chrysohoidis, visibly moved, told reporters outside the ministry. He had been in the building at the time of the explosion at 8.15 p.m.
The victim, George Vassilakis, adjutant to the minister, was father to two children.
"It was a wrapped package that exploded in the aide's hands after he apparently picked it up and tried to open it," police spokesman Thanassis Kokkalakis told Reuters. "We heard a big bang, there was a lot of smoke and damage."
There was no warning and no reports of other injuries.
Greece has been rocked by a series of bomb attacks claimed by leftist militants since its worst riots in decades in 2008. Earlier this year, Greece arrested six suspected members of the country's most militant group, Revolutionary Struggle.
When he took office in 2009, Chrysohoidis said that he would crack down on militants. In a previous spell in the job in 2002, he dismantled November 17, Greece's most lethal guerrilla group.
Greece is also facing a deep economic crisis and last month won a 110 billion euro ($147.6 billion) bailout package from the European Union and the IMF.
Three people died in a petrol bomb attack on a Greek bank during an anti-austerity demonstration in May. In March, a 15-year old boy was killed and his mother and sister injured after a bomb exploded outside a building in central Athens.
Alkman Granitsas and Nick Skrekas DOW JONES NEWSWIRES Greece was paralyzed by a nationwide general strike Wednesday with sporadic incidents of violence breaking out as angry protesters clashed with police.
Police in Athens fired tear gas at protesters trying to break through a police line in front of Parliament, and in Greece's second city of Thessaloniki, they fired tear gas at youths throwing rocks at shops.
The strike has affected government services across the country, shutting ministries and public offices. State hospitals and public utilities are operating with skeleton staff. Shopkeepers joined the strike at midday local time, while journalists, bank workers, teachers, court workers, lawyers and doctors have also walked off the job.
All flights in and out of Greek airports have been canceled, while rail and ferry operations nationwide have been suspended.
The strike is seen as a key test of the government's ability to shepherd through tough austerity measures in exchange for a multibillion-euro bailout. Sunday, the Greek government agreed to a three-year austerity and reform program in exchange for a EUR110 billion bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.
Facing spiraling borrowing costs and a debt payment later this month that it can't pay, the government is scrambling to pass through legislation implementing the reforms, and Parliament is expected to vote as soon as Thursday on the measures. Under the terms of the deal with the EU and IMF, the government has announced a EUR30 billion package of austerity measures that will slash public-sector wages, cut pensions, freeze public- and private-sector pay and liberalize Greece's labor laws.
In addition, Greece has pledged to raise taxes including a 2 percentage-point increase in Greece's top value-added tax rate to 23%, and hikes in excise taxes for fuel, tobacco and alcohol.
Millions of Greek workers are taking part in Wednesday's strike, which was called by Greece's two major umbrella unions, the private-sector GSEE and the public-sector ADEDY, amid widespread discontent over the measures.
In the center of Athens, tens of thousands of protesters gathered in one of the largest public demonstrations in years, with unconfirmed estimates that the number could have topped 100,000. Police officials put the figure at 20,000, while GSEE and ADEDY told Dow Jones Newswires that a total of 50,000 took part in their protests alone, while the communist-backed PAME union, also on the streets Wednesday, usually attracts twice as many people at its protests as the other unions.
GSEE described it as the largest protest ever and said "the struggle and the mobilization of workers will continue and will intensify as long as these harsh and unfair measures aren't withdrawn."
The president of ADEDY, Spyros Papaspyros, said: "This rally was double the size of the largest rally that has ever been held in Greece...tomorrow afternoon, we will also be holding a protest in front of Parliament, and if the government does not listen, there will be more strike action next week."
And PAME executive member Lefteris Papaconstantopoulos said: "We held rallies in 67 cities that attracted a mass turnout, and it's going to take some time for us to gather the numbers, but it was multiple times higher than our biggest protests we ever had for the May Day mobilizations."
PAME also vowed to continue and intensify the protests. "We will be holding another protest tomorrow [1500 GMT] in the center of the capital because the struggle has just begun," Papaconstantopoulos said.
reuters.com Police clashed with stone-throwing youths in Athens on Thursday as tens of thousands of strikers protested against draconian cutbacks aimed at pulling Greece out of a debt crisis shaking the euro zone.
World
In one central square hundreds of protesters hurled sticks and stones at riot police, who responded by baton-charging the crowd and firing several rounds of teargas.
The clashes came after more than 20,000 protesters marched through Athens beating drums and chanting slogans such as "Plutocrats must pay for the crisis" to mark the second general strike in two weeks.
Groups of anarchists threw petrol bombs, smashed shop windows, damaged cars, set garbage containers on fire and hurled lumps of marble torn from steps of the Bank of Greece.
Two protesters and 13 police officers were slightly wounded and 16 protesters detained, police said. But the level of violence was much lower than in 2008 riots that paralyzed Athens for weeks after the police killing of a teenager.
"Everybody is watching Greece to see the depth, intensity and sustainability of protests," said Theodore Couloumbis, deputy head of the ELIAMEP think-tank and a professor of international relations at the University of Athens.
"These protests are more than likely similar to the farmers' blockades earlier this year, which ran out of steam after a while," he said.
Participation in the Athens marches was slightly higher than in the previous nationwide strike on February 24 but not huge by Greek standards and much smaller than a 100,000-strong march against similar measures in the Irish capital last year.
"People understand we are going through difficult times," a senior government official said. By late afternoon, the streets had largely returned to normal.
EU politicians and credit rating agencies have broadly welcomed Greece's latest budget measures but have said quick and smooth delivery will be key to re-establishing the country's credibility diplomatically and as a borrower.
The cost of insuring Greek debt against default rose, as did the premium investors charge to hold Greek bonds rather than German benchmarks, as EU policymakers injected a dose of cold reality into talk of creating a European monetary fund.
Thursday's strikes were organized by labor unions representing half of the country's 5 million strong workforce, protesting cuts in civil servants' income, tax hikes, a pension freeze and plans to raise the retirement age.
The walkouts grounded flights, docked ships, shut schools and hospitals and halted public transport. Many archaeological sites and museums were closed to visitors and the publication of GDP and unemployment data was postponed.
WHERE DID THE MONEY GO?
There was no news on television and radio as journalists were on strike. Bank employees, firefighters, tax collectors and even some police officers were also among those marching. Unions are preparing further action in April and May.
Most Greeks believe that, despite the protests, the cash-strapped socialist government will press ahead with a budget plan agreed last week after months of wrangling with the EU and intense pressure from financial markets.
But the 4.8 billion euro ($6.5 billion) package of cutbacks is viewed by many as hitting the wrong people in a country with widespread corruption and tax evasion.
"The measures are unfair ... we cannot make it, we have children, families. We need to find the money to support them," said 60-year old health sector worker Odysseas Panagopoulos. "Banks and rich people should pay for this crisis."
Athens' streets echoed with loud-speakers blaring slogans calling for the rich to pay for the debt crisis. "No sacrifice for the rich!" protesters chanted holding banners reading: "Where did the money go?."
The general strike took place as EU policymakers are discussing ways to help the euro zone weakling.
Officials and unions gave widely diverging estimates of participation in the strikes. Interior ministry officials said about 15 percent of civil servants had walked out, while their union put the level at over 65 percent.
Last week's package, aimed at reassuring markets that Athens can handle a 300 billion euro debt mountain, came just 5 months after the socialists won an election on a promise to help the poor deal with Greece's first recession in 16 years.
"This government deceived us," said Zaharoula Toulia, a 57-year-old pensioner who lives on 800 euros a month and voted for the socialists. "They said there was money. Where is it?"
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