Several States With High Unemployment Are Outsourcing Food Stamp Services - To INDIA - 26 states total -

Reading - Several States With High Unemployment Are Outsourcing Food Stamp Services - To INDIA - 26 states total -

Michele Brown has seen Americans' struggles with jobs first hand. She lives in hard-hit Florida, spent 20 years in the real estate business and recently had her days as a nanny cut back after her boss had his own hours reduced.

But nothing prepared her for what happened one day when she called a toll-free line to inquire about her food stamps.

"The woman who answered the phone -- it's not like she wasn't nice or anything -- but it was kind of evident that she wasn't in the States," Brown said.

It turns out the woman was at a JP Morgan Chase call center in India.

"That really put me over the edge," said Brown, 52, of Jupiter, Fla. "It's not right because we need the work here. People are in a bad way here."

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Americans have never liked the idea of jobs going overseas. But for many, it's more offensive when taxpayer dollars -- including those in the federal stimulus plan -- go to create those jobs. And when those jobs deal with food stamps, unemployment insurance and other public benefits, well forgot irony, to many it's just downright plain insulting.

Unemployment in Florida is now 9.7 percent.

"Why is the state of Florida sending these jobs away?" Brown asked. "The thing that really iced it for me, I knew that JP Morgan had gotten bailout funds."

So she called her local politicians and then she reached out to her local newspaper, the Palm Beach Post. The paper did a story two weeks ago about the $50 million Florida paid JP Morgan in the last three years to administer the food stamps distribution.

Those services include 24-hour customer-service call centers. Some of those calls were answered in Bangalore and Gurgaon, India. Others were taken at two U.S. call centers.

The next day the head of the state's Department of Children and Families said something needed to change.

"I don't want any calls going to India," he said. "We need to take care of this."

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The state now has a commitment from JP Morgan to move all of its calls to the United States, according to Judi Spann, a spokeswoman for the Department of Children and Families.

Florida isn't alone in sending its customer service calls overseas.

There are three major companies that provide debit cards to food stamp recipients: JP Morgan Chase; eFunds, which is now part of Fidelity National Information Services; and Affiliated Computer Services or ACS.

JP Morgan Chase Sends Calls to India

JP Morgan is the only one today still operating public-assistance call centers overseas. The company refused to say which states had calls routed to India and which ones had calls stay domestically. That decision, the company said, was often left up to the individual states.

ABC News canvassed the country, asking states about their call centers. Often state officials overseeing the programs had no idea, despite past controversies, where their calls were going.

JP Morgan provides food stamp debit cards in 26 states and the District of Columbia. It also provides child support debit cards in 15 states and unemployment insurance cards in seven states.

The 130,000 food stamp families in West Virginia have their calls routed to India, according to Jerry Luck, program director for the state.

"We have no complaints with the call center. We get very good service," he said. "I was born and raised in Pittsburgh. There's sometimes a communication issue between somebody from Pittsburg and somebody from Harrisburg, Pa."

The state's contract with JP Morgan expires on Aug. 31. In requests for a new contract, West Virginia has requested a domestic call center because of political concerns.

The 488,000 households in Tennessee also have their calls sent to JP Morgan call centers in India. The state's contract runs through February 2012 and there are currently no plans to change it, according to Michelle Mowery Johnson, director of communications for state's Department of Human Services.

She noted that there are no federal or Tennessee state laws prohibiting the outsourcing call center operations.

Unemployment in West Virginia is now 6.9 percent and 9.6 percent in Tennessee.

Other states struggled to answer questions about their call center locations.

"Who would have ever thought it would be such a difficult question to answer," said Amy Kempe, spokeswoman for the governor's office in Rhode Island. She eventually learned that JP Morgan was sending the state's food stamps calls to India but now keeps them all domestically.

Kempe later told ABC News however that JP Morgan was still routing calls for unemployment benefits to India. Unemployment in Rhode Island now stands at 10.5 percent.

Following a congressional mandate in 1996, states started moving toward electronic delivery of food stamp benefits, now called Electronic Benefit Transfer or EBT.

States Save by Outsourcing

States found it cheaper to outsource these services. By switching to debit cards for food stamps and other benefits, states save millions of dollars in processing and administrative fees.

Companies, including JP Morgan, filled the niche. For a fee, the bank will provide debit cards to benefit recipients. Each month, they will load money onto the cards and on a daily basis process transactions at stores.

For unemployment insurance, the providers also process ATM cash withdrawals.

For instance, in Michigan, JP Morgan allows unemployment recipients two free withdrawals from its network of ATMs. For each addition withdrawal, the bank takes a $1.50 fee. If somebody loses their card, the first replacement is free. The second costs $7.50.

The banks also get a fee for each case they handle.

Take Indiana. JP Morgan gets 62 to 64 cents for each food stamp case handled monthly there. With 296,245 cases right now, that means the state is paying JP Morgan $183,672 a month on top of any other fees it collects.

Indiana eliminated 100 full-time employees when it hired JP Morgan to make the program cost-neutral, according to Marcus Barlow, spokesman for the state's Family and Social Services Administration.

But unlike Florida, Tennessee or West Virginia, Indiana keeps all its calls domestically. In fact, all of its calls go to a call center in Maryville, Ind., Barlow said, because the state required an in-state call center when soliciting bids.

Other states have rebelled against sending jobs overseas.

South Carolina used to have its calls go to a JP Morgan call center in India. But in its latest contract, signed a year and a half ago, it stipulated that the calls stay domestically.

Indian call-center employees typically earn about $2.50 to $3.50 an hour, roughly 70 percent less than their American counterparts, said Jagdish Dalal, a managing director at the New York-based International Association of Outsourcing Professionals.

Overseas call center sites, he said, can vary from small "mom and pop shops" with 15 employees to mass operations with 3,000 seats.

But Dalal added that companies that engage in outsourcing often end up facing higher costs related to infrastructure because the transportation and electrical systems in the developing countries often home to call centers, like India, aren't as reliable as in the United States.

Despite these obstacles, he said, the savings from outsourcing persists, with companies saving about 25 percent to 30 percent by locating workers in foreign countries.

The Fight Against Outsourcing

In recent years, lawmakers have attempted to curb federal and state governments' use of outsourcing and met with varying degrees of success.

In 2005, New Jersey passed a law essentially requiring all services under state contracts to be performed within the United States.

Since at least 2003, Congress has considered several bills related to outsourcing, including those that would limit the practice as well as one -- the "Call Center Consumer's Right to Know Act" that would require call center operators to disclose their location to callers. The act never became law.

Most recently, Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., proposed a bill stopping banks that receive funding under the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program -- which includes JPMorgan Chase -- from sending new call center jobs overseas. The bill was approved by the House, but did not move on from there.

While JP Morgan would not say what percentage of its calls go overseas, the other two major companies said all of their calls are handled in the United States.

"While we do not comment on specific client contracts, the support for all of our food stamp programs is handled domestically," Ken Ericson, director of corporate communications for ACS, said in an e-mail.

eFunds used to route calls overseas. It was acquired in 2007 by Fidelity National Information Services and now keeps all public-assistance calls domestic, according to Anthony Ficarra, who oversees the electronic benefit transfer program for the company.

Fidelity is the largest food stamp servicer, handling accounts in 31 states. All of the calls go to centers in Wisconsin, Arkansas, Florida and Minnesota.

"We have a large operation in India ourselves, but because of the nature of the programs, we do it all in the U.S," Ficarra said. "For us there's a long-term sensitivity to not handling those things outside the borders of the country."

Read more -http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Economy/story?id=7452561

Obama's Stimulus Weatherization Program - planned 593,000 - actually weatherized 22,000 homes last year -

Reading - Obama's Stimulus Weatherization Program - planned 593,000 - actually weatherized 22,000 homes last year -

Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment, Don Mares, congratulates the first group of LIUNA weatherization program graduates.

On the one-year anniversary of President Obama's American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, a new report obtained by ABC News says a $5 billion weatherization program that was meant to save energy and create jobshas not yet done much of either.

As of December 31, only 9,100 homes had been weatherized nationwide, according to the new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to be released Thursday.

The Department of Energy, which runs the program, says it actually weatherized more than 22,000 homes last year with Recovery Act funds. Either way, it's a far cry from the 593,000 they had planned to complete last year.

What's the hold up?

The GAO says the problem is red tape. Before getting the full funding, local governments and contractors have to jump through several hoops.

For example, the Recovery Act included so-called Davis-Bacon requirements for all weatherization grants. Davis-Bacon is a Depression-era law meant to ensure equitable pay for workers on federally funded projects. Under that law, the grants may only go to projects that pay a "prevailing wage" on par with private sector employers.

According to the GAO report, the Department of Labor spent most of last year trying to determine the prevailing wage is for weatherization work, a determination that had to be made for each of the more than 3,000 counties in the United States.

Secondly, many homes have to go through a National Historic Preservation Trust review before work can be started. The report quotes Michigan state officials as saying that 90 percent of the homes to be weatherized must go through that review process, but the state only has two employees in its historic preservation office.

According to the Department of Energy, the pace of weatherization is starting to pick up because the Davis-Bacon issues have now "largely been resolved."

"The states received wage determinations for every county in the U.S. before Labor Day and worked through the process of updating their systems and their wage rates throughout the fall," the Department of Energy said in a written statement.

The statement continued: "The agency is on a path to reach its target of weatherizing 20,000-30,000 homes a month."

Using The Money

The Department of Energy also told ABC News that about $522 million Recovery Act dollars has been spent so far on weatherization -- or about 10 percent of the $5 billion set aside for the program.

But Energy Department officials pointed out that the department weatherization program that pre-dates the Recovery Act and is not subject to Davis-Bacon requirements. Including that program, the Department financed the weatherization of about 124,000 homes in 2009.

"The Department continues to take proactive steps to accelerate the program schedule and ensure the success of the program," the Energy Department statement read. "For instance, we have developed a national agreement on Historic Preservation, which affects many older homes in America. The standardized template is helping to simplify the states' interactions with Historic Preservation Offices."

President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have repeatedly touted the weatherization program as an example of a stimulus project that will create jobs and move the country toward a new energy future.

"If you allocate money to weatherize homes, the homeowner gets the benefit of lower energy bills. You right away put people back to work, many of whom in the construction industry and in the housing industry are out of work right now. They are immediately put to work doing something," Obama said at an event in Elkhart, Indiana last year. "There are billions of dollars in this plan allocated for moving us towards a new energy future."

A year ago, the administration said that this money would put 87,000 Americans to work through partnerships with the Department of Energy and state and local governments.

In his jobs proposal late last year, the president proposed giving an additional $10 billion for weatherization projects -- create new incentives for consumers who invest in energy efficient retrofits in their homes, and expand existing incentives for businesses that invest in energy efficiency and create clean energy manufacturing jobs.

But Obama administration officials also acknowledged at that time that getting over constraints will determine how fast these weatherization projects can be implemented.

"These are projects that have very high rates of return. They would pay off purely as economic problems, even if there was no energy independence issue, even if there was no environmental issue," Obama's economic adviser Larry Summers said in an interview in December. "So the constraint is not going to be lack of federal budget, the constraint is simply going to be how rapidly these projects can be implemented."

Read more -http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Politics/stimulus-weatherization-jobs-president-obama-congress-recovery-act/story?id=9780935

Former Mexican foreign minister calls for ‘North American union’, unified currency - and with open borders -

Reading - Former Mexican foreign minister calls for ‘North American union’, unified currency - and with open borders -

Prolific Mexican politician and intellectual Jorge Castañeda believes that a greater North American community -- a "North American Union" -- with economies tied together under a European Union-style system, complete with open borders and a unified currency, is the wave of the future.

In a new interview with Web site BigThink.com, Castañeda, Mexico's foreign minister from 2000-2003 and a global distinguished professor of politics at New York University, said that with nearly 11 percent of Mexicans living in the United States, he has stopped seeing his nation as a Latin American country.

"Well, my sense is that we’re moving closer and closer to forms of economic integration with the United States and Canada and conceivably Central America and Caribbean could become part of that in the coming years," he said. "I don’t see Mexico as a Latin American country. Too much of trade, investment, tourism, immigration, remittances, absolutely everything is concentrated exclusively with the United States. So, Mexico has to be part of a North American community, a North American union, which at some point probably should include some type of monetary union along European lines with a free flow of labor, with energy being on the table, etc."

Often demonized as some type of "conspiracy theory" in mainstream American press, the so-called North American Union proposals have actually existed for some time. In May of 2005, the Council on Foreign Relations released a document entitled "Building a North American Community" in which it calls for an EU-like integration of Canada, the United States and Mexico.

While the document does not specifically call for the ceding of sovereignty between the three nations -- as some vocal opponents of the idea have suggested -- it does recommend the formation of a North American Advisory Council and a multinational inter-parliamentary group to facilitate mutual cooperation. Though the group originally set out to achieve this goal by 2010, few in mainstream America are even aware of it today.

The CFR's full proposal is available online. [PDF link]

"Economic and social citizenship in North America implies the ability of citizens to exert pressure for the implementation of an inclusive economic policy at home and to be engaged in the international economy," wrote CFR member Carlos Heredia. "To the extent that citizens of the three partner countries see that North American integration brings concrete benefits, a new constituency will be galvanized to support these efforts in the years to come."

"How far away are we from that?" Castañeda asked, rhetorically. "Quite far, but so did it seem back in Europe in the 1950's and very little time later they came around and understood that that was their future lay. My sense is that the Mexican society is voting with its feet. We have a higher share of Mexicans living in the United States than we have ever had in our history. One out of every nine Mexicans, Mexican citizens, people born in Mexico, live in the United States today."

In recent weeks, Castañeda also appeared on CNN's Amanpour for a debate about the drug war. He explained that in his view, marijuana should be legalized in order to take away the drug cartels' primary revenue source. However, "we can’t do it in Mexico if the U.S. doesn’t do it at the same time," he said.

Speaking to BigThink, he carried a similar message.

"Having recklessly plunged the country into [the drug war] now, I think what Calderón and the United States should do is to sort of sit back for a second, think this through, see what they really want to achieve, what is achievable and what should be done that's new," he said. "For example, there are more and more states in the US that are moving towards decriminalization at least of marijuana. Mexico is still a very important producer of marijuana. Some people say that up to 60 percent of the profits of Mexico’s cartels come from marijuana. Well, if the United States or California’s de facto legalizing it through medical marijuana, what sense does it make for Mexicans to die to stop marijuana from entering the US when once it enters it can be sold legally at over 1,000 dispensaries in Los Angeles, more than the number of public schools there are in Los Angeles. That’s certainly one thing that we can do."

This interview was published to the Web by BigThink.com on Feb. 16, 2010. The complete interview is available here.

VETERAN BBC presenter tells TV viewers that he killed his lover - on show which was aired on Monday night -

Watching - VETERAN BBC presenter tells TV viewers that he killed his lover - on show which was aired on Monday night -

Update - BBC broadcaster Ray Gosling was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of murder after he confessed on television to killing a lover who was dying of AIDS.

Nottinghamshire Police started an investigation Tuesday after Gosling’s admission on the BBC East Midlands program "Inside Out" on Monday night that he killed his young partner more than 20 years ago.

Gosling said that he would refuse to cooperate with a police investigation and would not tell detectives the name of the man he claimed to have smothered with a pillow as he lay in the hospital.

"I’m not going to tell anything," said Gosling, 70, when asked whether he had considered that he might go to jail over his admission.

"There are different kinds of law, you know. There’s a law that’s written in law books and there’s a law in your heart... Different laws carry different weights at different times."

The veteran gay rights campaigner said that the killing was in the "very, very early days of AIDS," which suggests the mid-1980s.

"They [the police] will not know when, where, not a thing," Gosling said. "What’s the point of telling them? It was a private pact between us." S

The freelance presenter has denied suggestions that he made up the claim and said that he had informed some of his lover’s relatives about the killing.

A VETERAN BBC presenter will be interviewed by detectives after he told TV viewers he carried out a mercy killing on a former male lover who was suffering from Aids.

During a pre-recorded show which was aired on Monday night, award-winning documentary maker Ray Gosling, 70, revealed he smothered the unnamed man as he lay in hospital “in terrible, terrible pain”.

A spokeswoman for Nottinghamshire Police yesterday confirmed the force was not aware of the issue until the broadcaster made his revelation on BBC East Midlands’ Inside Out programme.

She said: “We are now liaising with the BBC and will investigate the matter.”

The BBC said it would “co-operate fully” with the police investigation.

Mr Gosling, who refused to reveal the man’s identity, said he was not “making a cause” of assisted dying but said there was a case for changing the law.

Yesterday he said: “Sometimes doctors do it on their own. Sometimes people do it on their own.

“And if it happens to a lover or friend of yours, a husband, a wife – and I hope it doesn’t – but when it does sometimes you have to do brave things and you have to say – to use Nottingham language – bugger the law.”

During the 30-minute programme, Mr Gosling said: “Maybe this is the time to share a secret that I have kept for quite a long time.

“I killed someone once... He was a young chap, he’d been my lover and he got Aids.”

Strolling through a graveyard, he broke down as he recalled: “In a hospital one hot afternoon, the doctor said, ‘There’s nothing we can do’, and he was in terrible, terrible pain. I said to the doctor ‘Leave me just for a bit’ and he went away.

“I picked up the pillow and smothered him until he was dead. The doctor came back and I said ‘He’s gone’. Nothing more was ever said.”

Mr Gosling said he had no regrets about his actions. Asked what he would say to police if he was questioned he replied: “Nothing. It is a private matter.” Sarah Wootton, of Dignity in Dying, said: “This case yet again demonstrates that this is a real and present problem, which can affect us all. The law is out of step with what society needs and wants.”

A spokes man for Care Not Killing said it was “irresponsible” that the BBC had not told authorities earlier, as the show was recorded in November.

“Instead [it] made the decision to make it international news just before the Director of Public Prosecutions releases his assisted suicide prosecution guidelines,” he said.

Aiding or abetting another person’s death is illegal under the 1961 Suicide Act, and punishable by up to 14 years in jail.

BPA, "masculinizing" the female brain, now causes Aggression and Hyperactivity 2 - Banned in Canada - US? nope -

Reading - BPA, "masculinizing" the female brain, now causes Aggression and Hyperactivity 2 - Banned in Canada - US? nope -

Prenatal exposure to the endocrine-disrupting chemical bisphenol A (BPA) may increase aggressive behavior in toddler girls, according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and published in the journalEnvironmental Health Perspectives.

Researchers measured bodily levels of BPA in 249 pregnant women, then followed their daughters for two years. Children who had been exposed to the highest levels of the chemical before the 16th week of gestation had significantly higher scores on tests for aggression than girls of the same age with less exposure.

The study is the first to examine the effect of BPA on behavior in human children. It is consistent with the results of prior animal studies, which have also found that BPA can affect the brain and reproductive system. The National Toxicology Program concluded in 2008 that there was evidence to support the chemical's effects on human children.

Because BPA mimics the effect of estrogen, which plays a critical role in the male brain during the 11th and 12th weeks of pregnancy, researchers believe that the chemical might be "masculinizing" the female brain.

"In the developing brain, timing is everything," said neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine, author of The Female Brain.

"I'm worried that tiny amounts of this stuff, given at just the wrong time, could partly masculinize the female brain."

Although the study found no change in male behavior and no increase in behavioral disorders among girls, scientists noted that the population effects may be much greater than those seen in the study. Michelle Macias, spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics, noted that children in the study came from predominantly well-educated families, which tend to have lower aggression and hyperactivity rates than the average. In addition, neurologist David Bellinger noted that a population can become more aggressive as a whole without there being strong observable effects in individual children.

Read more - http://www.naturalnews.com/028172_BPA_hyperactivity.html

Goldman Sachs Secret deal to mask Greek debts - comes to light right AFTER the Bonus's get paid - hmmm -

Reading - Goldman Sachs Secret deal to mask Greek debts - comes to light right AFTER the Bonus's get paid - hmmm -



Goldman Sachs struck a secret deal with Greece to help it mask its vast debts, it emerged yesterday.

The Wall Street giant is claimed to have reaped as much as £192million in fees by entering a complex currency transaction in 2001 that helped Athens borrow cash without putting it on the books as a loan.

The so-called 'swap' deal, while permitted under EU rules, helped Greece meet eurozone limits on government borrowing.


Fiscal talks: Eurozone finance ministers meet in Brussels yesterday as the Eurogroup. They are expected to back an exceptional measure to instill budgetary discipline in Greece
Greece's vast deficits caused it to fail the criteria for joining the single European currency in 1999, but it succeeded in 2001.

Member nations had to reduce their budget deficit to less than 3 per cent of gross domestic product and trim national debt to less than 60 per cent of GDP.

The Greek deficit stands at nearly 13 per cent of GDP and public debt is almost twice the official ceiling at 113 per cent of GDP.

Under the deal between Goldman and Greece, the country's government effectively obtained a £640million loan without adding to its public debt burden.
This was achieved because the arrangement was treated as a 'currency trade'.

The allegations prompted uproar in Europe, where ministers are meeting to discuss a possible Greek bailout.

EU authorities demanded that Athens come clean over its financial engineering.


New storm: Goldman Sachs helped mask Greece's debts
But the Goldman arrangement is thought to be just one of many that helped mask the full scale of Greece's fiscal chaos.
Other Mediterranean countries, including Italy, have resorted to similar tactics.

The disclosures triggered questions in Parliament yesterday over whether the UK Government has entered any 'swap' arrangements curbing its debt burden.

Goldman Sachs declined to comment last night.
The bank has come under steady fire over its role in the sub-prime crisis and the vast bonuses being doled out to employees. Last month it set aside £10billion for its staff's performance in 2009.

The revelations come at a hugely damaging time, given fears that Greece is in danger of defaulting on its debts.
Yesterday the euro fell another 0.3 per cent to 1.36 against the dollar.

Finance minister Georges Papaconstantinou admitted his country was in 'a terrible mess' as he arrived in Brussels for the talks with fellow ministers.

He sent tremors through the markets by comparing the task of fixing Greece's deficits to 'changing the course of the Titanic'.

The suggestion that his country turned to investment such as Goldman to shroud the full extent of its debts will trigger particular fury in Germany, where taxpayers face the unappetising prospect of leading a Greek state rescue.

Conservative MP Michael Fallon said: 'How much confidence can we have in any progress reported from Greece when they (the EU authorities) have already failed to pick up fiddles like this?'

MPs will question Goldman Sachs director Gerald Corrigan on the deal when he appears before the Treasury Committee on Monday, Mr Fallon said.

Yesterday he tabled a Parliamentary question asking the Chancellor whether Britain was party to similar dealings with investment banks.

A Treasury spokesman said: 'The UK does not use swaps of any type for debt management purposes and has not done so under the current arrangements for debt management.'

However, Britain is known to have moved billions of pounds of liabilities off the government books through mechanisms such as the public finance initiative.

Read more - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1251280/Goldman-Sachs-new-storm-secret-deal-mask-Greek-debts.html#

Watching - Insane 9:41 minute - AH -64 Apache gunship compilation - doing what it does in Iraq -

Watching - Insane 9:41 minute - AH -64 Apache gunship compilation - doing what it does in Iraq -

Lake Erie Frozen over; First Time in 14 Years - cold snap will keep frozen for rest of the month -

Reading - Lake Erie Frozen over; First Time in 14 Years - cold snap will keep frozen for rest of the month -

Following a cold snap in the Northeast, Lake Erie's surface is virtually frozen over for the first time in about 14 years.

The ice ranges in thickness between paper thin along the northern shore and several inches along the southern shore, where many people are ice skating.

GoErie.com reports that the lake hasn't completely frozen since the winter of 1995-1996.

Although the ice cover is considered complete, prevailing winds have created some cracks in the ice.

There are also reportedly ice chunks floating off the coast of Dunkirk, N.Y., which is one of the deepest parts of the lake and would naturally be one of the last places to freeze.

Lake Erie, with an average depth of 62 feet, is the most shallow of the five Great Lakes, which is why it is the only one that completely freezes over.

Since lake-effect snow depends on warmer lake temperatures compared to the air, the frozen lake will deter large amounts of snowfall to the lee of the lake.

The current cold snap will keep the lake mostly, if not completely, frozen for at least the rest of the month.

Read more -http://www.accuweather.com/news-story.asp?partner=accuweather&traveler=0&article=2

Greece rules every transaction above 1,500 euros will not be considered legal if it is done in cash -

Reading - Greece rules every transaction above 1,500 euros will not be considered legal if it is done in cash -

Greece outlined on Tuesday its public sector incomes policy and a tax reform bill, as part of an EU-endorsed plan to increase state revenues and reduce its huge deficit.

The following are comments by Greek Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou at a press conference:

IMPACT OF REFORMS

"The total benefit of our incomes policy will be around 800 million euros.

EU

"EU partners and markets will closely monitor the implementation of our fiscal plan, I believe that the response will be positive. The measures that we have announced are becoming action"

TIME FOR CHANGE

"The time has come for major changes, the country can't afford to wait any longer"

TAXATION

"From 1. Jan. 2011, every transaction above 1,500 euros between natural persons and businesses, or between businesses, will not be considered legal if it is done in cash. Transactions will have to be done through debit or credit cards"

"With the new tax scale, there is a shift of the burden from low and middle income to high incomes.

"There's tax relief for incomes up to 40,000 (euros)"

"Taxable income based on the new scales will include capital gains from the short-term trading of stocks"

REFORMS

"The income policy frame and the tax reform are part of the government's wider effort to clean up fiscal finances ... and open new roads for growth. We all know the difficult situation the country is in, we all know the government has submitted to the European Commission a stability and growth plan.

"We all know that the public sector wage policy is full of injustices ... which have been formed by adding up various allowances without a central direction.

"Everyone needs to contribute clearly to the big effort to save our economy. It is necessary to contain the cost of wages and (have) a just distribution of the burden between workers."

TAXATION

"Every autonomous taxation ... for special professions, like engineers, architects, taxis, gas station owners and kiosks is abolished"

BANK DEPOSITS

"Deposits in banks outside Greece are exempted from audits of their origin if they are repatriated within six months of the passing of the tax bill and are taxed with a 5 percent rate"

PUBLIC PENSIONS

"Public sector pensions will increase by 1.5 percent, except those above 2,000 euros a month"

PUBLIC SECTOR WAGE CUTS

"We need to contain the public wage bill and fairly share out the burden".

"The wage cuts will begin from 18 euros a month, reaching 345 euros a month for court officials. In percentages, it will be between 1 and 5.5 percent"

"The impact on low-income earners will be mitigated by lower taxes on middle and low incomes"

"The public sector wage income bill increased by 88 percent since 2001, far above the GDP increase"

REFORMS

"Income policy and the tax changes are in the framework of cleaning up public finances.

SPENDING CUTS

"There will be no wage increase for the prime minister and ministers and their allowances will be cut by 10 percent."

"Wages of board members in unlisted state companies will fall by 50 percent"

"The budget bill for allowances and compensations will be cut by 10 percent"

Read more -http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE61824V20100209

EU Wants Greece to Explain Debt Swaps - used complex financial deals that made its debt limits look lower -

Reading - EU Wants Greece to Explain Debt Swaps - used complex financial deals that made its debt limits look lower -

The European Commission said Monday that it wants Greece to explain how it used complex financial deals that allegedly made its debt limits look lower. Greece's credibility is already under fire for falsifying statistics and hiding the extent of its deficits, which have triggered a debt crisis that threatens the euro currency union and has sent the euro sliding.

EU spokesman Amadeu Altafaj Tardio says the EU executive has given Greece an end-of-February deadline to give details on how the deals, called currency swaps, affected government accounts since 2001.

He said such swaps weren't illegal unless the Greece was not using market rates to calculate the exchange rates used for the swaps. Greece never told the EU that it was using the swaps to mask debt, he said.

Eurozone nations pledged last week to aid Greece "if needed to guard financial stability in the euro area" — but did not say how they would bail out the country if it risks defaulting on its debt payments.

European stock markets and the euro were trading higher Monday despite disappointment last week that euro leaders did not lay out a solid plan to shore up Greece's finances. Bond markets see less chance of a default, as indicated by interest-rate spreads narrowing between Greek bonds and benchmark German ones.

Finance ministers from the 16 nations that use the euro meet later Monday to discuss whether they think Greece's austerity program will be enough to reduce its massive deficit over the next three years. Ministers from all 27 EU countries then meet Tuesday.

The European Commission has already warned that it will ask Greece to do more if it can't implement promised spending cuts and tax hikes — which have already sparked protests and a sweeping public sector strike in Greece.

It wants to keep Greece on a tight rein, ordering the government to report back in mid-March to show what kind of cuts it has made. The EU could then demand tougher action. The Greek government has promised to do everything necessary to reduce its deficit from 12.7 percent of gross domestic product last year to 8.7 percent this year — and under a 3 percent limit set by EU rules by the end of 2012.

The EU's former economy commissioner, Joaquin Almunia, told reporters in Paris on Monday that "a clear set of commitments" were "needed for Greece and the good functioning of the euro area."

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