Financial Transparency Coalition

ATHENS - Efforts to reform and rebuild Greece’s economy in future will be undermined because the country’s government, businesses and civil servants not only fail to stop corruption but actively participate in it. The warning comes today from Transparency International Greece’s first ever assessment of the ability of important national institutions to fight corruption.

Today is the 10th anniversary of Euro as the zone's single currency. On February 28th, 2002, all of the various currencies from Eurozone countries, which had been linked with fixed exchange rates to each other and the Euro for a trial period, ceased to be legal tender between member states. A decade later, the survival of the single currency seems to be in question thanks to the events inside Greece, Italy, and elsewhere.

From the Tax Justice Network blog: Misha Glenny has a good article in the FT today:

As the new Greek government struggles to convince Europe of its resolve to cut the country’s bloated public sector, it also has to decide whether to face down the real domestic threat to Greece’s stability: the network of oligarch families who control large parts of the Greek business, the financial sector, the media and, indeed, politicians.

The oligarchs have responded predictably: by accelerating their exports of cash. In the last year, the London property market alone...

Although most people don’t know this, the tailspin that Greece’s economy is in now did not begin in 2008, but rather in 2001, when it joined the euro. Although that statement doesn’t necessarily imply causality. The problem was there, but festering. When the financial crisis did get going, it didn’t so much create Greece’s problems, as it revealed them. At the beginning of 2010,Greece found itself on a precipice of financial ruin, driven by years of excess spending and borrowing and insufficient revenue. To prevent the country from defaulting on its debt, in May of 2010 the International Monetary Fund...