The Brussel's Blog

O Financial Times the um apartado chamado The Brussels' Blog. É interessante porque te dá um insight de muitas noticias que aprecen de forma muito generalista nos jornais normais.
Aqui está o link:
www.ft.com/brusselsblog

Para dar um exemplo: para onde vão os 130b de euros aprovados para o 2º rescate grego? Sabias que mais de metade vai para os bancos e credores? Aqui está a explicacão:

"Whither Greece’s new €130bn? An update…
FT, Brussels' blog, 31/10/11
Thanks to some help from the European Commission, we have a bit more clarity on where European leaders will be spending the new €130bn in Greek bail-out aid. But the new data we received makes all the more clear that a huge amount is dependant on the still-to-be negotiated details of the 50 per cent Greek bondholder haircut deal, which may not be completed until the end of the year.

Just to remind readers where the confusion lies, of the €130bn in new funding, only €30bn was officially earmarked in last week’s summit communiqué – and that money will go for “sweeteners” to current bondholders so they’ll participate in a bond-swap programme. If they are going to take a 50 per cent cut in the face value of their bonds, they insisted on getting something else in return, and this was the price.

Of the remaining €100bn, fully €30bn will go to bank recapitalisations, not then €20bn we assumed last week. Although EU banking authorities have called for €30bn in new capital for Greek banks, officials tell us this is in addition to the €10bn provided in the first €110bn Greek bail-out.

Which leaves us with only €70bn to actually run the Greek government for the next three years. How did European authorities come to this number? That requires even more detective work, after the jump.

One element we left out of our analysis last week is the €42bn left in Greece’s first €110bn bail-out. That number will soon be reduced to €34bn, since at the summit eurozone leaders approved (finally) the next €8bn aid payment. It is now just awaiting approval from the International Monetary Fund board.

So although the new money being provided to Greece is €130bn, the combined bail-out (which is expected to be rolled into one) is actually €164bn. Of that, €30bn is the aforementioned “sweeteners” and €36.5bn goes to the Greek bank recapitalisation fund (€30bn in the new bail-out, plus €6.5bn left in the first bail-out).

So that leaves us with €97.5bn left to pay for Athens’ everyday needs.

As we noted last week, there’s about €35bn over the next three years that needs to go to pay for expected Greek government deficits, as projected by the so-called troika of EU-IMF inspectors. Subtract that, and you get €62.5bn to pay off about €88bn in Greek bonds and other liabilities. Which, if you’re asking for a 50 per cent haircut on those bonds, seems like too much bail-out money.

A couple of reasons this might be. First, as one official noted, Greece has about €6.5bn in unpaid bills, or “arrears”, which must be taken care of. So that needs to be added to the total Athens needs.

In addition, the €88bn in debt accounts for medium and long-term bonds that come due, and in the past the EU has assumed that Athens would be able to keep borrowing on the short-term T-bill market. The official said there is going to be an effort to reduce the T-bill stock, which is going to eat up bail-out cash, too.

Lastly, we don’t know how many of those bonds which come due in the next three years are held by the government sector – namely the European Central Bank, which went on a Greek bond-buying binge at the start of the crisis and has been accepting billions in euros in Greek sovereign bonds as collateral from Greek banks in need of emergency loans to run their day-to-day businesses.

Remember, of the €350bn in outstanding Greek debt, only about €210bn is in private hands and subject to the haircut deal. Since the ECB must be paid in full, that could eat up more bail-out funds, too.

But the biggest question mark is still the bond swap deal. Banking executives we’ve heard from in recent days said there will likely be delayed repayments, though closer to 20 years than the 30 years in the July agreement. But that would still mean you’d need less money in the near term, rather than more money, so the math doesn’t add up.

We’ll keep digging…"