It`a all Greek to them!

The Greek tragi-comedy continues: an early agreement to secure an 130 billion euro rescue package from the Troika (the European Commission, the IMF and the European Central Bank) is getting less and probable. The officials failed to reach common ground on the sensitive issue of job cuts, lowering pensions and reducing the statutory minimum wage. IMF requests, or let`s say recommends Papadendreou to sack approximately 15,000 government employees and reduce primary pensions by nearly 20% in order to cut the budgetary deficit by 3 billion euro in 2012.

What about the other perypheral EU countries: Hungary

With most of the investor focus nowadays on the PIIGS "fallen angels", and  on the forthcoming US presidential campaign, not much has been heard about some of the other EU countries: Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria. Rumors in the market are that banks there are slowly withdrawing capital and scaling out of their less profitable businesses, but is there any cause of concern regarding their financial stability ? How did they surf the crisis wave and do they still require a safeguard ? Are they going to be left out of the core-Europe, in case such plan materializes or not ?

European circus continues as Papandreou is rumored to resign

The farce is underway as the newest juicy rumor that hit the press is that the Greek Prime Minister will offer to resign in the next 30 minutes. According to BBC, Pap "will meet the Greek President Karolos Papoulios after the emergency cabinet meting finishes". The new coalition government will supposedly have "former Greek central banker Lucas Papademos at the helm". This comes after the surprising decision of Papandreou to call a referendum on the European Bailout Plan.