Xefterides and interests

Written by Kostas Stupas

1) Xefterides and interests

Greece should remain the country with the largest number of newspapers in the developed world. At the same time, it must also lead the countries with the least reading ability.

However, every now and then we know that some millions are spent in order to buy an old title. This is because hounds, predators and prey, live in a world of illusions where they believe that by spending money they are gaining political and economic influence.

The place reminds us of the old movie “The Imaginary” with Lambro Costadara, where some guy emptied a barrel of oil into the well of his summer house in Spata, he thought he found the oil and spent it to create a company, “Caracin Oil” if I remember well.

As soon as the news broke, someone pretending to be a journalist came to provide them with some useful contacts and relevant propaganda.

It was Mr.

Mr. Xefteris was the only one who benefited from this story because the truth was finally revealed that the people of Sabatana had poured oil into the well. He left the Karasinians who thought he had found oil to bear the expenses he incurred in exploiting and benefiting from it.

In state-owned economies like Greece, where the state controls most of the GDP output, and where government spending depends on most of the economy, a significant portion of the business community is state-owned, and thus interconnected.

Thus, decisions about the distribution of money that becomes wages for workers and profits for companies are made by politicians and governments. For decades, on the right and on the left, these expenditures were given the so-called “entanglement” criteria.

In order to have influence, commercial interests took over newspapers, television channels and football teams in order to manipulate public opinion in favor of those who “fed” it and against those who “fed” competitors.

This situation has gradually begun to change with the addition of community funds and subsidies to state spending.

In Greece, even the operation of kindergartens is now funded by the National Rescue Fund. Anyone who has dealt with this issue knows that after the orgy of the first decades, bureaucrats in Brussels became strict about disbursement. They require that projects be awarded through open bidding and that participants meet certain conditions. This is also one of the reasons why projects have been completed in the last 20-30 years and changed the face of the country.

Of course, instances of image mapping and contest tampering continue to occur. But they are now the exceptions rather than the rule.

I mention all of the above because I notice that while readership has decreased, newspaper headlines have increased.

Many for example. In recent years, they have been enthusiastic about the European Development Fund identified during the pandemic which, with leverage, will reach €70 billion. Suddenly, newspapers were relaunched, and at the same time about 10 new electronic media outlets were created.

The journalistic profession, which had been in crisis in the past decade, saw an increase in demand for services, as happened during the Koskotas period, if old-timers remember.

Most of those who aspire to dip their toes in the honey are likely to be happy, like Lambros Costandaras when he paid the money to become an oilman.

This is because circumstances now, as we said, have changed greatly.

The reason for the above remarks is the story told to me a few days ago by a company executive who suddenly accepted a transfer offer. When he went to discuss, he found that although the businessman had financial superficiality and influence, there was no business model for the job he wanted. Through discussion, he understood that the plan was to take some projects aside and build a company that would then implement them. Having been in the market for years, he understood how this worked until the late 1990s when many student unions found themselves with companies and public projects.

He did not accept the offer, and stayed with the company he was working for, but he understood why millions were spent on newspapers that no one reads.

Note those of us in 2015 supported the country remaining in the euro and the EU at all costs. And for this very reason. To once resemble an average European republic.

2) Dividends elsewhere, liabilities elsewhere

Dear Mr. Stopa, I have been reading you for several years but this is the first time I am writing to you. Your column has been, for many years, an oasis of reason in our country's public written discourse.

I am writing to you on the occasion of two news items that I read in the financial pages of a prestigious newspaper (Kathimerini) on Sunday, 03/31/2024, and which I believe require comment.

We read in the newspaper in question (an article by Mr. K. Kalitsis) that the Greek government is considering issuing new bonds in order to give them to Greek banks (I assume with some form of exchange) in order to raise the quality of their bonds. Supervisory capital and protecting it from possible future changes in the economic climate.

In my humble opinion, this move can be interpreted as (once again) an almost indirect recapitalization of these banks from Greek taxpayers' money. But given that the supervisory capital of large systemic banks already consists largely of deferred tax liabilities, one might think that in this way at least the Greek government implicitly acknowledges that the development of airbnb and the Golden Visa has an expiration date, it has the necessary foresight to protect the banks ( and indirectly the economy) for the next day.

At least that's what one would think in a normal state.

But in the same newspaper, on the same day, we were surprised to read that the same banks requested (via the Bank of Greece) and obtained permission from the European Central Bank to distribute dividends!

Is it ever possible? After so much of the Greek people's money was lost in previous recapitalizations (not to mention proud negotiations) instead of keeping the profits to improve their supervisory capital, as long as the “good” times continue, they chose to pay dividends and we are invited to cover the holes?

If the government acknowledges that this development is useful, what should the competent supervisory authority do? Does anyone in this country care about the interests of citizens (and taxpayers)?

If you post my message please use my initials only.

Thank you very much for your hospitality.

Ms.

Note: I do not know if it is correct to publish the names of Kathimerini and Mr. Kalitsis. I've quoted them in case you want to check the source (although I'm sure you know them much better than we do). Please remove them if this is a test.

3) Digital bureaucracy

Mr. Stopa Good evening,

Since I don't see anyone dealing with the new bureaucratic “binding” that has become more and more stringent in business lately, I would like to list some facts that many may not have realized and which I believe, apart from the obvious financial implications, may have political implications.

In recent years, there has been a “violent” digitization of many processes, but this is mainly related to the citizen/enterprise communicating with the competent authority or submitting supporting documents and not the completion of the transaction. To complete the process, an employee is required to work a second time, but apparently due to workload or staff shortages, it is delayed, with the result that the whole “digitization” often causes unacceptable delays and creates problems for traders.

Some simple examples:

A citizen who ceases his individual work submits the interruption request digitally, and the competent authority is late in completing it (often for months…) and the citizen continues to be charged insurance contributions that become overdue debts.

The company changes its legal representative and – similarly for several months – cannot obtain legal certification in banks and has difficulty in carrying out transactions

Foreign investors who fund local SAs are raising capital and think we are deceiving them when we tell them that capital raising tax must be paid to complete the process. We have sent the application digitally to the FAE and are waiting for MONTHS to pay and complete the process (personal example – people could not understand what I was telling them! )

In addition, there has recently been an attempt to impose a formal digital reset of legacy bureaucratic systems such as KBS, and the popular myDATA e-books, which have caused companies significant costs in equipment, upgrades of existing and new applications, but – mostly and most importantly – infinite working hours (costs A task that we often ignore) so that the AADE can know in real time what data will be declared in the annual tax returns. This is where funny things happen, for example. Banks have to issue an invoice for each €0.10 cent commission they charge as transaction fees, which each business must make a double entry in their books, resulting in a single entry for monthly banking fees where once a single entry was required, now requiring twenty or sometimes even a hundred. !

But also a digital business card that states that a small company that employs an employee in a commercial branch must make him scan himself (his QR code) when entering and leaving his work (according to data 75% of companies employ up to 4 employees) Workers).

Of course, an example is the huge effort that went into making the famous connection between POS and cash registers, devices that were not technically supposed to be connected, leading to ridiculous results, such as unsupported transactions, for example. Pay by card for a wholesale transaction, for which AADE has instructed you to issue a retail receipt (apparently virtual) and then issue a retail credit receipt… (and we didn't get it with the tomatoes!). Of course, no one thought that connecting to a POS cash register was actually useless, as AADE knows both the POS fees (the data is sent to the banks and is available to AADE) and the cash register fees (they are actually connected and transmit sales in real time) so Simple aggregation of that data would reveal a potential receipt/invoicing mismatch without having to bother the entire market for months trying to implement what is not workable!

It should be noted that all of the above is accompanied by threatening fines that in some cases reach tens of thousands of euros and even lead to the closure of companies.

On a philosophical level, when all this is implemented, the state will know in real time when I issue a document, when someone else issues a document to me, how many goods are on the way and what goods are on the way, when the employee comes to work and when he has left. We are talking about miserable liberalism, a situation that Comrade Stalin could not have imagined even in his wildest dreams!

What is truly strange is that companies, associations, organizations, and chambers are not complaining about all of this, but rather – at least at this stage – only accountants, who have the burden of implementing it on their shoulders.

But surely all small and medium entrepreneurship has started and realizes that the government, instead of facilitating and driving business, is again on the other side, creating obstacles that it calls “reforms”.

If I post, please delete my information.

welcome

T.B.

[email protected]