THE DENIALS THAT TRAPPED GREECE
THE warning was clear: Greece was spiraling out of control.
But the alarm, sounded in mid-2009, in a draft report from the International Monetary Fund, never reached the outside world.
Greek officials saw the draft and complained to the I.M.F. So the final report, while critical, played down the risks that Athens might one day default, with disastrous consequences for all of Europe.
What is so remarkable about this episode is that it wasn’t so remarkable at all. The reversal at the I.M.F. was just one small piece of a broad pattern of denial that helped push Greece to the brink and now threatens to pull apart the euro. Politicians, policy makers, bankers — all underestimated dangers that seem clear enough in hindsight. Time and again over the last two years, many of those in charge offered solutions that, rather than fix the problems in Greece, simply let them fester.
Indeed, five months after the I.M.F. made that initial prognosis, Prime Minister George Papandreou of Greece disclosed that, under the previous government, his nation had essentially lied about the size of its deficit. The gap, it turned out, amounted to an unsustainable 12 percent of the country’s annual economic output, not 6 percent, as the government had maintained.
Almost all of the endeavors to defuse this crisis have denied the overarching conclusion of that I.M.F. draft: that Greece could no longer pay its bills and needed to drastically cut its debt.
Until October, when European leaders conceded that point, the champion of the resistance was Jean-Claude Trichet, who stepped down this month as president of the European Central Bank. It was he who insisted that no European country could ever be allowed to go bankrupt.
“There is simply no excuse for Trichet and Europe getting this so wrong,” said Willem Buiter, chief economist at Citigroup. “It is fine to make default a moral issue, but you also have to accept that outside of Western Europe, defaults have been a dime a dozen, even in the past few decades.”
If leaders had agreed earlier to ease Greece’s debt burden and moved faster to protect the likes of Italy and Spain — as United States officials had been urging since early 2010 — the worst might be behind Europe today, experts say.
The turning point came at a late-night meeting last month when Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, pushed private creditors to accept a 50 percent loss on their Greek bonds. Mr. Trichet had long opposed such a move, fearing that it could undermine European banks. Instead, at his urging, European leaders initially promoted painful austerity for Greece, prompting a public backlash that pushed Mr. Papendreou’s government to the brink of collapse and could force Athens to abandon the euro.
Many view the latest rescue plan as too little, too late.
“Because of all this denial and delay, Greece will need to write down as much as 85 percent of its debt — 50 percent is not enough,” Mr. Buiter said.
It was never going to be easy to turn things around in Greece, particularly given European politics. In countries like Germany and the Netherlands, many people oppose bailing out their southern neighbors. Policy makers and, indeed, many financiers believed that they could buy enough time for Greece to solve its problems on its own.
“It was quite obvious, by the spring of 2010, that Greek debt could not be paid off,” said Richard Portes, a European economics expert at the London Business School. “But in good faith, policy makers felt that Greece could grow out of its debt problem. They were wrong.”
BOB M. TRAA is no one’s idea of a radical. A Dutchman, he labors at the I.M.F., among the arcana of global debt statistics. He wrote the 2009 report.
Immediately after that bulletin, he produced another, more damning analysis, which concluded that if Greece were a company, it would be bankrupt. The country’s net worth, he concluded, was a negative 51 billion euros ($71 billion).
But because Greece had a high-enough credit rating at that time, it could keep borrowing money and skate by. Once again, the Greek government objected to the I.M.F. analysis, although this time, the report was not amended.
Attention has only recently been drawn to these early I.M.F. studies. The Brussels research group Bruegel, which conducted an analysis at the I.M.F.’s behest, concluded the fund should have done more to draw attention to Greece’s troubles.
By early 2010, banks and bond investors were growing reluctant to lend Greece money. The country’s finance minister, George Papaconstantinou, delivered a blistering message to his European partners....
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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/business/global/europes-two-years-of-denials-trapped-greece.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=globaleua24
11 comments:
Rabbi Matisyahu Salomon is most happy when he gets to get out of the confines of his miserable job of do-nothing-"guidance" at the Lakewood yeshiva.
He gets especially giddy when he travels to the far off remnants of the former Soviet Union to places like like Baku in Azerbaijan or Tbilisi in Georgia or some such junket where he is hailed like a "conquering hero" as he becomes a bushy bearded rabbi "candy-man" handing out free sweeties (candies) to the bewildered urchins and patting boys and girls on the cheeks and heads like a kindly grand-daddy from Mars.
This all brings to mind another German-named Yiddisher, Einglisher, Brittisher, Yekkisher, Frummisher, Haredisher Mashgiach: Rabbi Moshe Eisemann from another Haredi Yeshiva, NIRC, the Baltimore yeshiva, who also loves to travel to the former USSR and fondle its young Jews literally.
Moshe Eisemann has been repeatedly accused and named as practicing pedophilia such as playing with the genitals and masturbating boys who come under his spell, under the guise of "counseling" them in Judaism. This has been an "open" secret for years and widely criticized on this blog and others over the years, as well as reported in mainstream Jewish papers such as in the Baltimore Jewish Times: "Special Report: Sexual Molestation August 31, 2007 Ner Israel Rabbi Alleged Abuser."
They like to travel around these Brittishers do. They are very worldly you know. They pseak English with a tainted Germanic twist. Very Aryan they are. Going to the far off former barbaric Soviet Union holds no fears for the likes of Übermenschen and bosom-buddy Mashgiach Ruchanies Moshe Eisemann and Matisyahu Salomon. After all, as that old English saying goes, "only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the mid-day sun" and dear old Eisemann and Salomon are keeping up the good old antics of fellow Brittishers like Lawrence of Arabia (a presumed homosexual) and "Dr. Livingstone I presume" (who loved to hand out with the natives) by hanging out with the lost tribes of far flung Jews.
But hey, hang on there, why is it that Matisyahu is always criticizing "technology" while you'll never hear him utter any strong criticisms of the likes of pedophiles like Eisemann who was forced to quit in disgrace because of the allegations against him. Seems Matisyahu has a selective memory when it suits him. He should know and act better than that if he wants to be taken seriously.
Moshe Eisemann Ner Israel Yeshiva Rabbi Abuser 1
"Special Report: Sexual Molestation August 31, 2007
Ner Israel Rabbi Alleged Abuser
Phil Jacobs Executive Editor
The whispering got louder in the summer of 2006. Rabbi Moshe Eisemann, 71, a beloved longtime Ner Israel Rabbinical College scholar, teacher and author, was associated with the words “alleged molester.”
A Baltimore-area pulpit rabbi and Ner Israel colleague left Rabbi Eisemann off the invitation list to his daughter’s wedding, because of the uncertainty of it all.
The blogs, the Internet sites, were teeming with allegations of molestations by many rabbis, including Rabbi Eisemann. There have never been any complaints or charges filed with the police against the rabbi.
When students identified themselves as victims to Ner Israel, the school allegedly chose Rabbi Yaakov Hopfer, president of the Baltimore Vaad HaRabonim, to look into the accusations.
Rabbi Hopfer, spiritual leader of Shearith Israel Congregation in Upper Park Heights, is not on the faculty or staff of Ner Israel. He did not return two telephone calls to the Baltimore Jewish Times made in early August of this year. His response could have cleared up much of the speculation. He also chose not to respond to a personal letter mailed to him by the Jewish Times on Aug. 5, 2007, pertaining to the status of Rabbi Eisemann. The letter was referred to by Rabbi Eisemann in a recent conversation he had with the Jewish Times.
Ner Israel’s response to a request for answers on the subject was an e-mail from its president, Rabbi Sheftel Neuberger, which read: “Ner Israel takes claims and complaints of abuse made by an individual very seriously. It has implemented an independent process to investigate and deal with such claims and complaints as necessary. Given the sensitivity and nature of the subject, and the Yeshiva’s concern for all involved, both claimant and accused, it is the policy of the Yeshiva to refrain from discussing or commenting on these matters.”
The Jewish Times had asked: “Is Rabbi Eisemann still teaching at Ner Israel? Is he still living on campus in faculty housing?”
In the summer of 2006, this reporter telephoned Rabbi Sheftel Neuberger and asked these two questions. Rabbi Neuberger replied that “Rabbi Eisemann would most likely retire from the Ner Israel faculty” and “most likely move off of campus.”
Moshe Eisemann Ner Israel Yeshiva Rabbi Abuser 1
"Special Report: Sexual Molestation August 31, 2007
Ner Israel Rabbi Alleged Abuser
There was, according to a source close to the Vaad HaRabonim, no actual din Torah (rabbinic court ruling) in Baltimore concerning Rabbi Eisemann. Instead, the source confirmed that Rabbi Hopfer was asked to act as sort of a one-man decision maker.
The source said he thinks Rabbi Eisemann admitted some of the abuses to Rabbi Hopfer.
The abuses, according to another source, “weren’t extreme, but were on the cusp of abuse,” such as back-rubbing or kissing.
The source added that Rabbi Eisemann was allegedly also told to work through some of his issues with a therapist not connected to Ner Israel. That therapist, according to the source, did not consider Rabbi Eisemann’s actions “terrible abuse.”
Also, Rabbi Hopfer, according to the source, said that Rabbi Eisemann was “contrite.”
Still, he was — based allegedly on Rabbi Hopfer’s recommendations — retired from teaching students.
But in an interview last week with the Jewish Times, Rabbi Eisemann said that he denied any of the allegations of molestation. He also said that he was still “seeing students” and “still living on Yeshiva Lane,” and was never directed by any rabbinic authority to leave campus or stop teaching.
“The whole story [concerning the molestations] is really removed from me,” Rabbi Eisemann said. “I can’t get involved in it. I feel totally removed from it. I haven’t looked at any blogs or Internet sites, though people have told me about them.
“It is not I,” he continued. “I have a life to live, and I don’t have the strength to deal with these rumors. I have done no harm to anyone. It’s all wrong, and I can’t even dignify it.”
But on Friday, Aug. 24, 2007, an e-mail arrived at the Jewish Times from Rabbi Eisemann. It simply stated: “After reflecting on our brief telephone conversation, I wish to make it clear that I voluntarily retired from Ner Israel in August 2006.”
One source said: “You have Eisemann denying all of this. You have Ner Israel’s legal statement. You have Rabbi Hopfer’s judgment call. Also, Rabbi Hopfer found Eisemann’s accuser credible. Put it all together, this is what you have.”
Earlier in the summer, Rabbi Eisemann was in the Upper Park Heights neighborhood for Shabbat. Rabbi Moshe Heinemann gave him a VIP seat at the Agudath Israel Synagogue to daven. Rabbi Heinemann was one of 22 rabbis who signed a community letter last April of condemnation against child molestation.
Also, in Rabbi Eisemann’s book, “Music Made in Heaven,” copyright 2007, Rabbi Aharon Feldman, rosh yeshiva of Ner Israel, writes in a forward: “Rabbi Eisemann has deeply influenced the students at Ner Israel with his classes for over 30 years.”
"Special Report: Sexual Molestation August 31, 2007
Ner Israel Rabbi Alleged Abuser
Perhaps the first public comments concerning Rabbi Eisemann came from the blog Unorthodox Jew and from a blog called Chaptzem.
One anonymous blogger wrote, “When I was __ years old, I was a talmid [student] of Ner Israel. At that time, the Mashgiach Ruchni [spiritual adviser] was Rabbi Moshe Eisemann. I became close to him and trusted him totally like a father figure. He is a very sick man. He would tell me he loved me and would hug and kiss me inappropriately.”
Another anonymous blogger wrote that he met with New York Jewish Week publisher and editor Gary Rosenblatt, who wrote the expose on the molestations by former NCSY executive Rabbi Baruch Lanner. The blogger wanted advice on where he should go with his story of molestation.
Mr. Rosenblatt said he did receive a phone call from an alleged victim who wanted to discuss the issue of molestation specifically at Ner Israel. But, according to Mr. Rosenblatt, Rabbi Eisemann’s name was never discussed.
Then there was another contact made. This time, it was with Rabbi Yosef Blau, a faculty member of Yeshiva University of New York. According to the YU website, “Rabbi Yosef Blau has been the masgiach ruchani (spiritual guidance counselor) at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary since 1977. He also is spiritual guidance counselor for students at the university’s undergraduate schools and colleges for men.” He is also the current president of the RZA (Religious Zionists of America). The Jewish Times traveled to Manhattan to meet with him.
The rabbi, who has counseled many sexually molested Jewish men and women, explained that he had ongoing contact with an individual who reported that Rabbi Eisemann had behaved inappropriately with him and others. He was loyal to the yeshiva, but was troubled by the lack of response to the allegations.
“Through him, I became aware of the process where Ner Israel graduates who had complained to the administration were asked to tell their stories to Rabbi Hopfer,” said Rabbi Blau. “After he spoke with Rabbi Hopfer, he informed me that it was clear that Rabbi Hopfer believed the allegations. There would be an agreement that Rabbi Eisemann would be retired. There was a decision to leave him on the grounds so he wouldn’t go somewhere else where they couldn’t take responsibility. Rabbi Eisemann was allegedly retired without any explanation given. He stayed on campus. The fellow I am counseling is still somewhat disappointed with these results. But on the other hand, he didn’t want to hurt the yeshiva and is filled with mixed feelings.”
"Special Report: Sexual Molestation August 31, 2007
Ner Israel Rabbi Alleged Abuser
Former Student Speaks Up
Mike Simms sits for a crowded but comfortable late lunch at the Hometown Buffet, a favorite restaurant location of his in Phoenix, Ariz. It’s 115 degrees this afternoon, a day when a cold drink and a piece of fruit would do.
Instead, he’s got the steamship round au jus on his plate, along with a salad and some hot potatoes and brown gravy.
Mike, who has graying long hair and a gregarious personality, brings up words like Rashi and drasha during informal conversation. He jokes that this is probably the first time those words have ever been spoken at the Hometown Buffet.
He’s almost certainly correct.
A Hispanic woman comes over and takes away his empty plate. He gets up and goes for more.
Mike Simms, originally Zev Simanowitz, has come a long way since he was a student of Rabbi Moshe Eisemann, a teacher, author and scholar at Baltimore’s Ner Israel Rabbinical College.
Mr. Simms, a Phoenix-area locksmith, former community newspaper publisher and writer, was Rabbi Eisemann’s student in the 1960s at the Philadelphia Talmudical Academy.
He said he doesn’t remember much from his classes with Rabbi Eisemann. But he does recall his former teacher had a “habit of staring at people’s crotches. I knew that being around him there was an ongoing assault on my privates. He’d stare at my privates to the point where it made me uncomfortable.”
So uncomfortable that as a young teen, Mr. Simms went to a local store and purchased an athletic supporter that would flatten out any hint of his genitals.
“I remembered that soon after I put on the jockstrap, he looked at me with this face of, ‘What happened?’” Mr. Simms said. It worsened, according to Mr. Simms. One day after school, he found himself alone in the classroom with the rabbi."
"Special Report: Sexual Molestation August 31, 2007
Ner Israel Rabbi Alleged Abuser
“I remember distinctly him trying to calm me down. He was talking to me about masturbation. He told me it was sh’cha’tat zera [destruction of the seed],” he said. “That was all very nice, but I didn’t ask him for the lecture. I remember him saying that if you are not multiplying with your sperm, you are not multiplying. When he came out with this, I got like 40 shades of red.”
Then Mr. Simms left the room, but not before he believes Rabbi Eisemann touched him on his rear end twice.
There were other troubling signs, recounted Mr. Simms.
“When he was teaching, he’d have sitting on his desk a boy who happened to be the smartest kid in the class,” he continued. “He was slight of build, short and cute with glasses and curly light brown hair. Eisemann would sit there and this kid would sit at his right hand in front of the class. Eisemann would be patting his tush forever, almost caressing it at times.
“I was overwhelmed,” he continued. “What do you say about the rebbe with the beard doing something like this?
“If Rabbi Eisemann was here in front of me now, I guess I’d say to him that I wish I had the courage to say something along the way even though I know I would have been ignored. I wish I had been more knowledgeable about the subject so that I could not have been so naive,” he added.
Mr. Simms would go on to graduate from a different yeshiva. But when it came to continuing his Jewish education, he decided to go away from it to the extreme, joining the U.S. Marines. He stayed single all of his life.
In the Phoenix restaurant, he said the Rabbi Eisemann incident wasn’t the exclusive reason he wasn’t interested in Judaism any longer. It was just part of the process that turned him off.
“People like me could have been directed better,” he said. “But everyone did the same thing, ‘Shut up and do this.’ They would tear the covers off of Agatha Christie books because there was a woman on them. They lost us to unorthodoxy and to wandering in the land. They didn’t teach us spirituality. They taught us religion. It was sit-down-and-shut-up stuff.”
Mr. Simms takes some gulps of coffee from a brown cup.
“This was all a huge chilul HaShem,” he said. “For me, it was an encounter with evil. But it was also the whole Tevya, ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ thing. There was no room for question; You did things because you were told to do them. Even if it meant getting molested. Who knows what this guy did? Who knows?”
Mike Simms answered his cell phone on this day in August. It was time to go.
Someone was locked out..."
http://grainom.blogspot.com/2011/11/rebbe-for-sale.html
Must see report:
"Euro-Kaput: 'Euro could be dead by end-November' (YouTube. 5 minutes)
Uploaded by RussiaToday on Nov 6, 2011
Greek PM George Papandreou is aiming to form a coalition government and push through an international bailout package.
However, Patrick Young, executive director of investment advisory firm 'DV Advisors' views the situation as a political disaster."
New York Daily News:
"Herman Cain tries to sell himself as Mr. Honest, but sex harass fiasco is his undoing
GOP presidential hopeful had nice run, but now he's through
Mike Lupica. November 4 2011
[Photo, caption: GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain is trying to weather a sex harass scandal.]
It works out this way for Herman Cain, who has been trying to sell himself to the public as more than a candidate, as the most honest guy in the world: Cain comes up as just another politician in trouble who treats the truth as some kind of last resort.
Like some sweaty contestant on "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" down to his last lifeline.
Cain had the chance to take these old accusations about sexual harassment straight on, but that chance for him is gone now, in the wind, over a week when his version of things became as ridiculous as Bill Clinton telling us all that he did not have sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky.
Herman Cain was never going to be a serious candidate for his party's presidential nomination, even against a field softer than Carvel ice cream.
Now he's through.
Cain has told a few whoppers about what happened with a couple of women when he was running the National Restaurant Association. But maybe the most ridiculous is the one that it took him a few days to "remember more" about the two women who say he sexually harassed them in the 1990s, and whether they got paid to go away.
Here's the deal for a guy who really turns out to be all hat, and a bad one at that: Most powerful men in this country, running pizza companies or whatever they are doing, will go their whole lives without being accused of sexually harassing a woman.
When they are, though, you better believe they remember why. The idea that Cain needed a few days to refresh his memory just takes him further over the clown line..."
New York Daily News:
"Herman Cain tries to sell himself as Mr. Honest, but sex harass fiasco is his undoing
...Cain still thinks he can get past this, maybe because he has so many bullhorn hucksters from the right-wing media, radio and television, willing to turn themselves into human shields for him, having already decided that this is a witch hunt.
But ask yourself a question, as obvious as the answer is: How would all of Cain's defenders be reacting if the exact same charges had been made against Barack Obama in Chicago once?
Remember, these are the unhinged people who wanted to deport Obama because he once sat in the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church, and because Bill Ayers was his neighbor.
The ones who give Cain his full acquittal, only hearing his sketchy side of the story, look like bigger phonies than he - and bigger frauds than they generally are.
Of course it was a much easier narrative for them when they were sure it was just some plot against Cain from the Commie left-wing media.
Cain went running to Fox News on Monday morning, said that if the National Restaurant Association did make some kind of settlement with one of his accusers, he wasn't aware of it, and sure hoped it wasn't for much.
But as Michael D. Shear points out in a comprehensive and rather hilarious timeline in The Times, by the time Cain got to PBS later the same day, he now recalled that an "agreement" was reached with one of his accusers. And then tried to draw a tortured distinction between "agreement" and "settlement."
By the time Cain got with Fox's Greta Van Susteren that night, it was suddenly all coming back to him. One of the women may have gotten two months or three months pay. By Tuesday, he remembered that the woman might have been .... short! Again: Imagine if the candidate Barack Obama had ever tried to get by with claptrap like this.
Now the increasingly desperate Cain wants to change the subject - so would you - by making the issue who leaked the story, not the story of sexual harassment itself. First he was sure it was the devil liberal media after him. C'mon - you can never go wrong with that one. Then he pointed a finger at Rick Perry. Then Perry's camp said it wasn't them but, man, oh man, it sounded like something Mitt Romney's camp might have done.
Here was Cain giving one more damage-control interview last night to the Daily Caller: The self-proclaimed man of the people saying, "The voice of the people is more powerful than the voice of the media."
This goes to an old line, the one about adversity not building character, just revealing it. Cain had a chance, in his own voice, to talk about what really happened. Only he kept ducking and moving and acting as if the whole thing would go away.
Now the one who needs to go away is Cain himself. He's the one harassing us now. The Kardashian girl sounds more coherent explaining away a marriage."
How dare you insult the good, decent, and righteous memory of Moe, Larry, and Curly (as well as Shemp, Curly Joe etc) by connecting them to the filthy perversions of yeshivish pedophiles! The low-life Matasyahu Salomon does not deserve to be put into the same category as these yidden of righteous memory!
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