On alternative energy, tourism, haircut, the police

Haircut or writedown? A huge difference!

Your article (Reuters) says that banks have offered a 40% haircut while politicians demand a 50% writedown. The former is nonsense; the latter is wisdom.

A ?haircut? is a forgiveness of debt; after having made a haircut, lenders no longer have any claim against the borrower of whatever kind. A ?writedown? is a provision in a bank?s P+L statement for possible future losses. Should these losses not occur, those writedowns can be reversed in the future. A writedown has no effect on the banks? continued 100% claim against the borrower.

Both a haircut and a writedown go against a bank?s P+L statement. The haircut is irrecoverable; the writedown is not.

The objective must be to get banks to record losses in their P+L by marking Greek bonds to realistic market prices (e.g. 50%). The objective cannot be to force banks to incur irrecoverable losses when the borrower has only had three years of crisis.

When banks record these losses in their P+L, their capital and in a hurry!

The governments don?t really need to replenish capital with cash. They could pass laws allowing banks a maximum of 10 years to absorb those writedowns. However, no dividends during this period.

Klaus Kastner

Austria

Something is working in Greece

Has anyone noticed that Greece handled 16 million tourists this year? That was a record. We get very blase about tourism in Greece but it takes a lot of effort and organization to handle 16 million tourists.

Greece is entering the field of solar energy generation, and further oil exploration. Greece has to be one of the best countries in the world to develop solar technology of any sort. There?s a field for Greek R 2) Education, where fortunes have been spent by this generation on education yet they seem to overlook the basic premise as outlined by Aristotle and Plato who said, «We don?t line in a society just for our own benefit, but to serve others.? The Greeks should adopt this as a slogan, by the media and inscribed on every public building, school entrance and classroom.

Petros Attard-Botsaris

Greece?s archeological treasures

As A. Craig Copetas himself admits by the end of his op-ed, without really overtly stating it, the problem of Greece and its maintenance of its treasury of archeological sites in gross incompetence.

Here in Nafplio, I watched for four years as the small regional archeological museum on Syntagma Square was renovated — a job that would have been completed within six months in any other non-Third World nation. I observed literally hundreds of tourists and students turned away because of this travesty. Most had come wanting to view its prize exhibit — the only full set of Mycenian armor found in Greece. When I would inquire of staff when the museum would reopen, I was given a vague shrug.

When recently visiting Iraklio on Crete, we found the main archeological museum had had the second-floor galleries closed for renovations for the last five years. Let?s give that project a one-year duration anywhere else. When asking when it would be fully reopened, again the vague shrug.

There does not seem to be any sense of priorities. There does not seem to be any exercise of logical thinking, which was once, long ago, a Greek virtue.

James F. Smeader

The police?s job in Greece

Of course the police has to do its job.

The question is: What job ?

In the 80s I started my job as a sociologist in the police force in Holland. In those days we had many political tensions. These tensions crystallized over the issue of having a place to stay. ?Krakers? (squatters ) organized several large-scale riots concerning this issue. And in Holland we did need the help of the army to get control of those riots.

So, concerning the job the police did last week, Greece is still a peaceful country.

And I think this country has to stop reflecting its dictatorship experiences on today?s police.

The issue I want to stress is that having a police force without having an accepted police mission in society, ends up in a society with no mission.

So please don?t blame the police when it has no clear or accepted mission.

The issue is that whatever work the police has to do, it has to do it professionally. And to become a professional you must learn how to manage (new) situations. I think they did the job very well last week.

Of course it?s always possible to improve (the effect of) your professional actions. So listen to what people have to tell you about your actions or the results of your actions.

But how many (European) countries were confronted with a crisis like that which Greece has to manage today? How and where could the Greek police learn how to become perfect during such days, when nobody is perfect these days. Especially in Athens.

Hans van der Schaaf

Alternative energy

As an engineer and being new in Greece I would like to congratulate Theodore Vasilopoulos on his letter urging the government to build solar power stations and the like.

Actually, everyone in Greece, especially the engineers, technicians and politicians, must ask themselves: What have we been doing for the last 25 years?

Solar energy for the production of electricity has been around for a long time and if the companies don?t exist in Greece then firms can be brought in to build these stations like in the case of the airport, then handed over to the government.

It?s time we had a government and people running the power industry who are able to think ahead and get with the latest state-of-the-art technology that?s on offer.

This means 100% rejection of the two parties who have made up the last two governments and a new start.

Come on you Greek people, don?t be the sheep-like vote fodder of yesterday.

David Lewin

Athens

The 11-year-old is right

God bless young Theodore; he is right in that energy is one big way that Greece can help make its economy more productive. Solar power potential for Greece is great, yet barely tapped into, and Greece has not even come close to developing its hydroelectric power potential of up to triple of what it is now. The government claims that eventually up to 40 million barrels of oil, about 1/3 of the nation?s annual needs, could be produced by Ionian Sea fields. He is also correct that other eurozone countries will want a productive Greece to remain a part of the EU. Thanks for publishing his letter. 

Peter Kates