His struggle to make ends meet exemplifies the plight of Greeks mired in a fifth year of recession. Yesterday the official unemployment rate rose to a record 22.6 per cent in the first quarter. But the hungry civil servant's attitude towards the general election on Sunday also typifies the polarized nature of the national debate.
The race has boiled down to choice between a coalition led by either New Democracy, the conservative establishment party, or Syriza, an insurgent Leftist coalition.
Vangelis will support the latter, as he did in a May 6 vote, when Syriza stunned the whole of Europe by coming second and then confounded attempts to form a national unity government, so requiring Sunday's fresh election. New Democracy, however, led narrowly in the last public opinion polls before they closed on June 2 under Greek law. Private polling since has shown a similar trend.
The stakes could hardly be higher. The vote has been presented as a de facto referendum on Greece's membership of the euro because of the pledge by Alexis Tsipras, Syriza's 37-year-old leader, to revise the second memorandum of understanding between and international institutions and lenders, which contained the toughest austerity measures and brought riots to the capital's streets.
His demands include a three to five year moratorium on Greece's interest payments, a rapid recapitalisation of the country's banking system and a restoration of unemployment benefit and the minimum wage to pre-crisis levels - reforms that were required by the memorandum.
Though Mr Tsipras has given himself some wriggle room, by not committing to a unilateral cancellation of the agreement, his critics claim that his demands would be so inflammatory that Berlin and Brussels would soon give up on the Greeks. The next tranche of Greece's bailout funding would then be withheld, so hastening its exit from the euro.
Officially, Mr Tsipras is committed to staying in the currency, though the same cannot be said for all the members of his coalition. But his gamble is that German leaders are bluffing when they say that a Greek exit from the euro would be manageable.
Like many Greeks, he reckons that although his country is small enough to represent just two per cent of the eurozone's output, it is big enough to be the first domino that starts the collapse of the single currency.
He is hoping that supposed disillusion in Europe with austerity will work in his favour and loosen the creditors' grip on the Greek economy.
"Tsipras is trying to convince people that we can stay in the euro with him in charge," said Spiros Rizopoulos, head of Spin Communications, a consultancy in Athens. "But if he thinks Angela Merkel is going to back down – well, he can say that, but I can say I am Brad Pitt, but am I am not Brad Pitt."
Greek bank shares rose 19pc yesterday, bucking European trends on market talk that broadly pro-bailout parties are likely to prevail on Sunday.
But few people will vote with enthusiasm for New Democracy. Its 61-year-old leader Antonis Samaras is seen by many Greeks as part of the corrupt old guard responsible for what Wolfgang Schaeuble, the German finance minister, this week called "decades of economic mismanagement".
Though Mr Samaras says he wants to renegotiate the memorandum, his demands would be minor compared to those of his rival Mr Tsipras.
Neither however has presented a convincing vision for rebuilding Greece's sclerotic bureaucracy and lack of competitiveness.
No finance limit forces Obama into fame game - Sydney Morning Herald
Illustration: Simon Letch
This morning, Australian time, the US President, Barack Obama, is due to attend a fund-raising dinner party at the New York home of movie stars Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick. Co-hosted by the editor-in-chief of Vogue, Anna Wintour, the price of a ticket was a reported $80,000 a head. Not a good look for the President in the week the US Federal Reserve reported that average American wealth had plummeted to $77,300 in 2010 - down from $126,400 in 2007.
As the US economy is underperforming, unemployment is officially 8.2 per cent and confidence is, at best, wavering, this would not seem to be the time to be hanging out with high-wattage wealthy celebrities. But the President needs the money.
Obama and the now certain-to-be-anointed Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, have opted to not accept public financing for the 2012 presidential election campaign. Previously, candidates would raise money to boost their electoral fortunes before the party conventions, but after that would accept the benefits - and constraints - of public funding.
Now, after a Supreme Court decision that effectively deregulated campaign financing (undoing all those decades of hard work to reform what had arguably been a pretty corrupt system), the bar has been raised significantly.
More money is going to be needed. And there are now virtually no limits on how it is raised or spent.
This presidential election is, according to Obama's senior campaign strategist, David Axelrod, going ''to test the limits of what money can do in politics, because there's gonna be so much of it concentrated in so few states'', as he told New York magazine's John Heilemann earlier this month.
And Obama is now falling behind in the fund-raising stakes. Although at the end of March, when he had raised about US$197 million, he was way ahead of the then-frontrunner Republican contender Romney, who had just $87.5 million, the other Republicans have since coalesced behind Romney - and so have their donors.
Just this week, billionaire Nevada casino owner Sheldon Adelson, who had been backing Newt Gingrich, kicked in $10 million to Romney's Restore Our Future super-PAC (political action committee) and Forbes magazine reports he may well follow that with the $100 million he had promised Gingrich.
Last month, Romney raised $76.8 million to Obama's $60 million, and he is pulling ahead with the very wealthy.
Wall Street has spurned Obama, so far giving Romney $37.1 million and Obama only $4.8 million. Ominously, these sums include donations from 19 people who gave to Obama in 2008 but not this time. Forbes says 32 billionaires, or 8 per cent of their 400 rich list, have donated to Romney and more will follow.
So while Obama continues to pursue the grassroots online fund-raising that was so successful in 2008, for the really big bucks he is being forced to take his begging bowl to three different and potentially risky sources of funds: Hollywood, Silicon Valley and rich gays. No one in the know doubts that the President's decision to support gay marriage was made with an eye to the pink dollar. A few days after the decision, a Hollywood fund-raiser hosted by George Clooney and including high profile gay supporters, raised $15 million.
This strategy is risky because it requires Obama to be hanging out with the mega-rich at a time when his political message is directed to economically distressed Americans, who are striving to return to being middle class. It could easily backfire on him.
The now pretty much united Republicans are trying to portray Obama as more focused on fund-raising than on governing. Given he has done 160 events so far (compared with George Bush's 74 at this time in the 2004 race), including six in just six hours in Maryland last Tuesday, this will not be a hard case to make.
A few weeks ago it was unimaginable that America's first black president may be in danger of not winning a second term but that prospect is now causing apprehension and even panic among Democrats.
The failed recall of the Republican governor Scott Walker in the highly unionised and overwhelmingly Democratic state of Wisconsin is being seen as a huge wake-up call that the party cannot assume that it will win in the presidential election in November.
Consolidated polling is showing just a two-point difference between Obama and Romney. Even among the three key demographics Obama felt confident of holding - women, young people and Latinos - the numbers are starting to close.
If Romney chooses Latino Florida senator Marco Rubio as his running mate, as a straw poll among party conservatives advocated this week, they could be a formidable team able to make significant inroads into the much-needed Latino vote in states such as Florida and Arizona.
Obama shows no signs of improving his ticket would he ditch the Vice-President, Joe Biden, although refreshing his team would seem to be a no-brainer in a tight electoral race. If this is not the time to place the extremely popular Hillary Clinton on the ticket, when is?
Obama's team foolishly set the bar high by leaking their expectation that their guy would be the first in presidential election history to raise $US1 billion and that Priorities USA Action, his super-PAC, would rake in another $100 million. Instead, Obama is struggling to reach the revised target of $750 million and his PAC, according to New York magazine, has just an embarrassing $10 million.
So we will be seeing a lot more of Obama with movie stars and the super-rich in coming months. The only question is whether the money raised will be at the expense of his political credibility - and his electoral prospects.
Twitter: @SummersAnne
Follow the National Times on Twitter: @NationalTimesAU
FOREX-Euro rises for third day but gains could fade - Reuters
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Printing money: How to create a currency - BBC News
European officials may not like it, but the prospect of Greece leaving the euro is a serious possibility.
The picture will become clearer after a Greek election on 17 June.
If the winners are hostile to the austerity measures demanded by the European Union and IMF, then Greece might have to look for a new currency.
It would not be a simple case of resurrecting Greece's old currency the drachma.
Changing currency is a complicated process that would take at least six months and probably much longer.
So the new Greek government might want to call Warren Coats.
Over the last 20 years at the International Monetary Fund, he has advised numerous countries on how to create currencies.
His clients have included nations that emerged from the Soviet Union including Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.
Mr Coats has also helped Iraq and Afghanistan and, most recently, Southern Sudan to launch new money.
He says there are three phases to the process.
Currency design and production
"Deciding what and who appears on a nation's currency might sound trivial, but it is highly political," said Mr Coats.
Bosnia-Hercegovina is a good example of how difficult the situation can be.
In the late 1990s after a bloody war for independence the nation had to form a new currency.
But the three groups that make up the population, Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs could not agree on who to put on the notes - even when the choice was limited to literary and artistic figures.
"Usually two would agree one would disagree," said Mr Coats.
"This went on for many months. And in the end there was never an agreement," he said.
The head of the central bank, Peter Nicholl, who was a New Zealander appointed by the IMF, decided what went on the currency.
In Greece's case, the situation is much less fraught. It can draw on the images and figureheads used on its previous currency the drachma.
It may though have to decide on how many denominations of note there will be and what they will be worth.
There is useful rule of thumb to help with that.
Experts say the largest coin should be worth around 2% of the average day's wage and the smallest note should be worth 5% of the average day's wage.
Once those details are sorted out the notes will have to be printed, which is usually done by a specialist printing firm.
It is estimated that for a country the size of Greece that would cost $50-$60m.
There are not many firms that can handle a contract of that size and if they are busy then Greece might have to wait for its new currency.
Analysts say there is no chance of a new currency before the end of this year.
"If this was a serious consideration for 2012 the presses would have to be running already. And there are no credible rumours that that is happening," said Paul Jones an analyst at Panmure Capital.
Preparing rules for exchange
Getting the new currency printed is just the start of the process.
Greek officials would then have to work out how to get that new currency into the system.
The problem for Greece is that the population is unlikely to want to exchange their euros for the new currency.
Rules may have to be put in place to prevent large amounts of euros leaving the country.
There would have to be an information campaign to make sure the population understood how the process would work.
The question of timing also has to be addressed at this stage, ideally banks and other businesses would need enough time to adapt their systems.
The notes would have to be distributed to banks and a launch date set.
Legal issues
Notes and coins are just pieces of paper and bits of metal until they have the status of legal tender.
That requires laws which define and control the use of a currency.
When swapping a currency these have to be adapted and laws will have to be approved in Parliament.
Business will have to look closely at the new legislation to see if contracts priced in the old currency are still valid or need renegotiation.
So should Greece embark on such a lengthy and expensive process?
Mr Coats has this final thought: "The majority of Greeks want to keep the euro because they don't trust their government and central bank to do better with a new currency of their own than they did with the old one."
Debt crisis: ECB last hope as dam breaks in Spain - Daily Telegraph
Spain is caught in a vicious downward spiral as the property crash accelerates, further undermining the banks and state finances. This in turn is drawing Italy into the fire and threatens to overwhelm the EU's rescue machinery.
"We must have a real circuit breaker," said Sondergaard. "The question is whether the ECB will now blink and go down the route of quantitative easing (QE)".
He said the ECB should slash interest rates by half a point to 0.5pc and "pre-commit" to half a trillion euros of QE over coming months, blanketing the Spanish and Italian bond markets.
Nomura said the ECB must act with overwhelming force rather than engaging in piecemeal bond purchases that fail to restore confidence and have the toxic side-effects of pushing existing bondholders down the credit ladder -- the dreaded effect of "subordination".
"The eurozone has the wrong policy mix across the board. Fiscal policy is too tight; monetary policy is too tight; and the tough regulation of the banks is coming at the wrong time. Together it is all pushing the eurozone to breaking point," he said.
Spanish premier Mariano Rajoy said in a private letter to EU leaders last week that the ECB is the only body with firepower and nimbleness able to contain the crisis at this point.
The pleas have so far fallen on deaf ears in Frankfurt where ECB hawks insist that any such intervention to help EMU's struggling debtors would reduce the pressure for root-and-branch reforms.
The bank said in its June report on Thursday that Spain must make further draconian cuts to meet its deficit target of 3pc of GDP next year. It enraged monetarists by denying yet again that the eurozone faces a serious monetary slowdown or "an abrupt and disorderly adjustment" for banks -- or a credit crunch in layman's language.
"It shows fantastic complacency. They are not complying with their own mandate," said Professor Tim Congdon from International Monetary Research. Critics say that all key measures of the eurozone money supply are now contracting, pushing the whole region into deeper slump. The ECB has missed its 4.5pc growth target for M3 `broad money" by a wide margin.
Mr Spiro said the fast-escalating crisis in Italy may force the ECB to act. Foreigners own half Italy's €2 trillion public debt and they are increasingly shocked by the failure of the EU authorities to halt contagion. "Foreigners haven't been buying Italian bonds, but most have not been selling either. The risk is that they will now start selling en masse," he said.
"Italian banks are under massive financial repression to buy the debt but they are running out of money. The ECB will have to act but it has lost so much credbility already that it will have to buy on a massive scale to make a scrap of difference."
The ECB has already bought over €200bn of Italian, Spanish, Greek, Irish, and Portuguese bonds, justifying it as necessary to ensure the proper "transmission" of monetary policy. The move caused a storm in Germany, prompting the resignation to both German members of the ECB board last year. A chorus of economists have exhorted the ECB to cap Spanish and Italian yields at 5pc or so by pledging unlimited intervention. Yet such a naked rescue of insolvent states would trigger legal challenges in the courts for breach of the EU's no-bailout clause.
Professor Paul De Graue from the London School of Economics said the bank should go ahead anyway and "let the lawyers argue about it for the next ten years."
There are no such constraints on outright QE or money printing by the ECB, in extremis. Monetarists say the bank should buy the bonds of all EMU states to lift the entire region and prevent debt-deflation taking hold in the South.
Fresh data yesterday shows how desperate the crisis is becoming in Spain. The property crash is accelerating. House prices fell at a 12.6pc rate in the first quarter of this year, compared to 11.2pc the quarter before, and 7.4pc in the quarter before that. Prices have fallen 26pc from their peak.
"Fundamentals point to a further 25pc decline," said Standard & Poor's in a report on Thursday. It may take another four years to clear a glut of one million homes left from the building boom.
Mrs Merkel chided the country gently yesterday for letting a "property bubble" spin out of control in the boom years. Her words prompted a furious reaction from Madrid.
Foreign minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo said Spain itself was the victim, flooded with cheap capital from northern European banks. "It is true that Spain and some other countries lived beyond their means but that was because banks from the core made lots of money investing here," he said.
Forex: EUR/USD bullish above 1.26 – V.Bednarik - FXStreet.com
FOREX-Euro holds firm on hopes of central bank action, soft US data - Reuters UK
* Cenbanks' liquidity pledge triggers short-covering
* Soft US data keeps hopes of Fed easing alive
* Euro looking better on charts, rises above Ichimoku kijun line
* Dlr/yen falls after BOJ stands pat
TOKYO, June 15 (Reuters) - The euro held firm against the U.S. dollar on Friday, reflecting hopes of central bank action to counter potential fallout from Sunday's crucial election in Greece, and after disappointing U.S. economic data.
G20 officials told Reuters that central banks from major economies stand ready to take steps to stabilize financial markets by providing liquidity and preventing a credit squeeze if the Greek election result roils markets.
New claims for U.S. state jobless benefits rose for the fifth time in six weeks and consumer prices fell in May, opening the door wider for the U.S. Federal Reserve to further ease monetary policy.
These factors prompted unwinding of market players' massively short positions on the euro, though worries about Spain's troubles in financing its debt remained in place.
The euro traded at $1.2628, maintaining Thursday's 0.6 percent gains and edging near a high of $1.2672 hit right at the beginning of the week in a knee-jerk reaction to the announcement of a plan to support Spanish banks.
While the outcome of the Greek election on Sunday is seen as holding the key in the near-term, the euro's technical outlook is improving, analysts said.
On daily Ichimoku charts the euro rose above major resistance from the kijun line, which stands at $1.2623 on Friday, for the first time since it began declining in May.(The kijun line is the mid-point between the highest high and lowest low of a particular instrument.)
"I'm a bit impressed by the euro's charts today. We may be approaching the time when we have to judge whether the euro's recovery from its bottom on June 1 may become more solid," said Teppei Ino, currency analyst at the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ.
Analysts at RBC Capital Markets said in report that a close above resistance around $1.2625, its January low, is needed to sustain the euro's corrective rebound.
NO EXIT AFTER ALL?
Traders agree that the euro has scope for further gains if Greece's pro-bailout parties manage to win a majority in Sunday's election.
But as speculators' net short positioning in the euro hit a record high last week, some analysts say even if the leftist coalition, which opposes the bailout, wins, the euro could be resilient.
"The initial reaction would be negative (for the euro.) But what's likely to happen after that is a new government will keep its commitment to the euro and start negotiating with creditors," said Junya Tanase, chief currency strategist at JPMorgan Chase.
"In that case, those euro short positions that have been stemming from fear of Greece's exit will have to be wound back," he added.
Euro zone officials said that the euro zone might consider giving a new government in Athens some leeway on how it reaches their austerity target.
Against the yen, the euro stood at 100.27 yen, staying above the 100 yen mark, above which Japanese exporters offers are lined up.
The euro's latest rebound from its two-year low of $1.2280 on June 1 started after disappointing U.S. payroll data rekindled speculation of another stimulus from the U.S. Federal Reserve.
Although Chairman Ben Bernanke dropped no hint of an immediate action when he spoke last week, hopes for more policy steps were heightened after the UK government and the Bank of England unveiled a 100 billion pound ($155 billion) funding scheme for banks to boost credit on Thursday.
Thus the dollar parked near its lowest level in three weeks against a basket of currencies, with the dollar index standing at 81.81. A fall below 81.785 will take it to the lowest level in more than three weeks.
Against the yen, the dollar fell 0.4 percent to one-week low of 78.97 yen after the Bank of Japan announced no policy change, though that is in line with market expectations.
Commodity-linked currencies also held firm on hopes of more policy support for the global economy, with the Australian dollar staying near a one-month high of $1.0034 hit on Thursday. It last stood at $1.0020. (Additional reporting by Antoni Slodkowski Editing by Ramya Venugopal)
Money market fund assets fall to $2.554 trillion - Yahoo Finance
NEW YORK (AP) -- Total U.S. money market mutual fund assets fell by $10.68 billion to $2.554 trillion for the week that ended Wednesday, the Investment Company Institute said Thursday.
Assets of the nation's retail money market mutual funds fell by $550 million to $890.20 billion, the Washington-based mutual fund trade group said. Assets of taxable money market funds in the retail category fell by $50 million to $703.57 billion. Tax-exempt retail fund assets fell by $500 million to $186.63 billion.
Meanwhile, assets of institutional money market funds fell $10.13 billion to $1.664 trillion. Among institutional funds, taxable money market fund assets fell $8.47 billion to $1.579 trillion; assets of tax-exempt funds fell $1.66 billion to $84.77 billion.
The seven-day average yield on money market mutual funds was 0.03 percent in the week that ended Tuesday, unchanged from the previous week, said Money Fund Report, a service of iMoneyNet Inc. in Westborough, Mass.
The 30-day average yield was also unchanged from last week at 0.03 percent. The seven-day compounded yield was flat at 0.03 percent. The 30-day compounded yield was unchanged at 0.03 percent, Money Fund Report said.
The average maturity of portfolios held by money market mutual funds was the same as the previous week at 45 days.
The online service Bankrate.com said its survey of 100 leading commercial banks, savings and loan associations and savings banks in the nation's 10 largest markets showed the annual percentage yield available on money market accounts was unchanged from last week at 0.13 percent.
The North Palm Beach, Fla.-based unit of Bankrate Inc. said the annual percentage yield available on interest-bearing checking accounts was unchanged from the week before at 0.06 percent.
Bankrate.com said the annual percentage yield on six-month certificates of deposit was also unchanged from the previous week at 0.21 percent. The yield on one-year CDs was unchanged at 0.32 percent and flat at 0.51 percent on two-and-a-half-year CDs. It fell to 1.11 percent from 1.12 percent on five-year CDs.
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