Germany’s new central bank president Jens Weidmann warned debt-laden Greece that international creditors will pull out aid if it fails to pursue painful cuts to tackle its huge deficit as promised.
“Greece’s capacity for [debt] payment depends foremost on the attitude of the government and the people,” the hawkish Bundesbank chief told Welt am Sonntag daily in an interview that was published yesterday.
“A lot of aid has been given, but under strict conditions such as massive and swift privatizations. If these commitments are not upheld, there will no longer be a basis for additional aid,” he said. “Greece would have made its own choice and should assume the undeniably dramatic consequence of a default on its payments.”
Photo: Reuters
Although a potential Greek default would likely make life hard for eurozone member nations the single currency will survive “and remain stable even in that case.”
Despite a landmark 110 billion euro (US$160 billion) bailout agreed last year, Greece’s 350 billion euro debt load has only become heavier as a deeper-than-expected recession last year weighed on government income.
The European Central Bank has until the end of this month to decide on a second bailout for Greece, but remains divided over the role of the private sector.
Germany wants a second rescue package to include contributions by private creditors, banks and investment funds as the price of Berlin’s involvement.
Diplomats say the need is estimated at more than 90 billion euros — one-third to come from eurozone nations and the IMF, one-third from sell-offs of Greek state assets and the final 30 billion euros from the bank rollovers.
The latter two components are uncertain and it is also uncertain whether the headline 90 billion euro figure includes remaining tranches of the existing 110 billion euro package mustered last year.
While expressing sympathy for public resentment in Greece toward the reforms, the current process is “inevitable” for the country to become more competitive and put its financial house back in order, Weidmann said.
SECOND-RATE: Models distilled from US products do not perform the same as the original and undo measures that ensure the systems are neutral, the US’ cable said The US Department of State has ordered a global push to bring attention to what it said are widespread efforts by Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek (深度求索), to steal intellectual property from US AI labs, according to a diplomatic cable. The cable, dated Friday and sent to diplomatic and consular posts around the world, instructs diplomatic staff to speak to their foreign counterparts about “concerns over adversaries’ extraction and distillation of US AI models.” Distillation is the process of training smaller AI models using output from larger, more expensive ones to lower the costs of training a powerful new
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire
The artificial intelligence (AI) boom has triggered a seismic reshuffling of global equity markets, with Taiwan and South Korea muscling past European nations one by one. With its stock market now valued at nearly US$4.3 trillion, Taiwan surpassed the UK, Europe’s biggest market, earlier this month, data compiled by Bloomberg showed. South Korea is about US$140 billion away from doing the same. The tech-heavy Asian markets have shot past Germany and France in the past seven months. The shift is largely down to massive gains in shares of three companies that provide essential hardware for AI: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電),
Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) have repeatedly hit new highs, but an equity analyst said the stock’s valuation remains within a reasonable range and any pullback would likely be technical. The contract chipmaker’s historical price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio has ranged between 20 and 30, Cathay Futures Consultant Co (國泰證期) analyst Tsai Ming-han (蔡明翰) told Central News Agency. With market consensus projecting that TSMC would post earnings per share of about NT$100 (US$3.17) this year, supported by strong global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, and the stock currently trading at a P/E ratio of below 25, Tsai said the valuation
RSS