Slovakia Bratislava Commentary

Slovakia, Poland, the Euro,

2012-01-10T08:59:00.000+01:00

Slovakia is essentially a mini Poland but fiscally and currency-wise more like Finland, because Slovakia uses the euro, has lower state debt than Finland, and a population that generally has very little private debt. The banks lend money derived from local deposits and are healthier than their western counterparts.

Slovakia adopted the euro in 2009 did suffer a recession that year, but comparable to the one that hit the neighbouring Czech Republic, which kept its koruna independent currency. Large foreign investors such as Volkswagen, PSA, Kia, say they decided to expand operations in Slovakia because there was no currency risk with the destination markets.

Keeping an independent currency may be a desperate stabilisation tool for a country that is crisis hit and uncompetitive, but for Slovakia the currency union helps its exports and further economic integration with Austria and Germany.

In Poland the zloty’s sudden decline is putting economic growth at risk as it squeezes the 700,000 Poles – part of a nascent middle class – who took out mortgages denominated in foreign currencies, mostly Swiss francs. So far, people are making their payments, but as the zloty continues to fall against the franc there is a growing worry that it could choke off consumer spending.

Such a fear does not exist in Slovakia as there are no mortgages denominated in foreign currencies so this significant risk that is a problem for both Poland and Hungary does not exist in Slovakia...

The next election is unlikely to produce an anti-business government as even the left is committed to Slovakia's integration with the eurozone.

Shrinking banks and who they will affect most (look on the right)

2011-11-22T21:59:00.001+01:00

Attard Montalto reckons that to reach the new loan-to-deposit (LTD) ratio, loans will be cut back rather than deposits increased. And here is a picture of the relative size of the problem – LTD ratios by country:

Source: Nomura

European banks are ailing, exposed as they are to the sovereign debt of countries on the brink of insolvency. A series of failures among European banks would be likely to result in heavy losses for their own creditors. As a result, financial institutions around the world are getting understandably nervous about lending to them. The natural response by Europe's banks is to rein in their own lending to shore up their balance sheets. The upshot is going to be a recovery-stunting tightening of global credit conditions.

The global financial crisis gave us a lesson in how a crisis can spread between financial systems. Three years ago the sub-prime crisis spread from the US to Europe. In 2011 the stress has been crossing the Atlantic in the other direction. The US financial sector was hit harder than other industries by the stockmarket sell-offs in August. Then, in late October, MF Global, a derivatives broker, became the first major US casualty of the euro zone crisis, filing for bankruptcy after making heavy losses on its US$6bn portfolio of European sovereign bonds.

In October the Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, claimed that "the direct exposure of the US financial system to the countries under the most pressure in Europe is very modest." That's not strictly untrue, but it is a little misleading. The overall direct exposure of the US financial system to the debt of Greece, Italy, Spain, Ireland and Portugal is about US$147bn, accounting for only 6% of total foreign claims on those sovereigns, according to calculations by Goldman Sachs that are based on data from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). European banks account for 89% of total foreign claims on the so-called PIIGS governments.

However, the indirect exposure of US banks to problem sovereign debt through derivatives, guarantees and commitments is much higher, totalling around US$493bn. If indirect exposure is included, US banks account for 18% of total foreign exposure. This is equivalent to around 5% of the total assets of US banks. That may still sound low, but losses of that size could cause the collapse of banks operating with low capital ratios. Exposure would also be unevenly distributed, with some banks more vulnerable.

These exposures also leave out lending to shaky European banks. Lending by US banks to French and German banks (which are collectively the largest holders of peripheral euro zone debt) is worth around US$1.2trn. Money-market funds are even more worried about their exposure to European banks. The ten largest US money-market funds alone had outstanding short-term loans to European banks worth US$285bn at the end of August 2011, equivalent to about 42% of their total assets, according to Fitch Ratings.

The exposure of money-market funds should not be taken lightly. They are the largest suppliers of dollar funding to non-US banks. In September 2008 the near-failure of the US$62bn Reserve Primary Fund triggered a run on money-market funds that caused enormous stress in global interbank and foreign-exchange markets, until the US government stepped in to bail out the sector.

Money-market funds are already moving to reduce their exposure to European banks: they reduced short-term lending to banks in Europe by 14% between the end of August and the end of September. The resulting stress is clear to see in the European interbank market, where the EURIBOR-OIS spread has widened to levels not seen since the 2008-09 global financial crisis, indicating that banks are getting very nervous about lending to each other.

For the moment, the move by money-market funds away from Europe is improving credit availability in some other areas. For example, Fitch reports that lending to Australia, Canada, Japan and some Nordic countries has increased. But money-market funds have also retreated into US Treasuries and US agency debt. If they continue their flight toward safety, financial institutions around the world will find it increasingly hard to obtain dollar liquidity. Central banks have responded to this threat by reactivating currency swap facilities set up during the 2008-09 credit crunch.

Reduced lending by European banks themselves could have an even bigger effect. The latest crisis has saddled Europe with the image of an impoverished debtor in desperate need of creditors. If that were wholly true, the risks facing financial institutions in other regions would stem mainly from the losses they might suffer on the money they have lent to their European counterparts (or, as in the case of MF Global, on derivatives that indirectly expose them to failures in Europe). But that doesn't tell the full story. The euro zone might be struggling to deal with a handful of crisis-plagued countries, but the bloc as a whole is actually an important supplier of credit to other regions, especially emerging markets. European banks have generally pursued growth by expanding lending into emerging markets. This is in contrast to the US, where banks have instead sought growth through securitisation of income streams, particularly mortgages (with well-known disastrous effects).

According to data from the BIS, the stock of lending by western European banks to banks in emerging markets totalled US$3.6trn at the end of June 2011, equivalent to 71% of emerging market banks' total borrowing (that figure includes 19% accounted for by the UK). European lending dwarfed the US$765bn (15.1% of the total) loaned to emerging markets by US banks and the US$311bn (6.2%) loaned by Japanese banks. Eastern Europe relies on western European banks for over 90% of its banks' foreign funding. Banks in the Middle East and Africa are reliant on European bank lending for 82% of their foreign borrowing, while even banks in Latin America and emerging Asia source 68% and 53% of their foreign borrowing from western European banks, respectively.

For economies that rely on foreign borrowing, the high proportion coming from Europe is a serious vulnerability. The claims of European banks on the Czech Republic were equivalent to 97% of Czech GDP in mid-2011, the highest ratio in the world. All of the most exposed countries by this measure are in eastern Europe. Chile, with liabilities to European banks worth 37% of GDP, is the next most exposed emerging economy, followed by South Africa (27%), Turkey (22%), Malaysia (22%) and Mexico (21%).

Asia and Latin America are less dependent on credit from western European banks, and their strong external positions afford some protection. That said, they would by no means be immune from a process of accelerated deleveraging by western European banks.

Reliance on European money is also becoming an important factor in the outlook for economic growth in many countries. As European banks find it difficult to raise funds themselves, and as they suffer losses on their assets, their natural response is to retrench. Moreover, the plan to recapitalise euro zone banks that was agreed in late October will require them to raise €106bn (US$146bn) in new capital by mid-2012. In a weak environment for equities, they will be reluctant to issue new stock to meet the requirements. Instead, they are likely to shrink their asset base by cutting their lending. The resulting crunch in global credit markets is going to make it harder for businesses and consumers all around the world to borrow, while the most exposed economies could flirt with balance-of-payments crises. In many ways, Europe's banks can do just as much harm to their debtors as their creditors.

What Robert Fico needs to answer for before he tries to become Slovakia's Prime Minister again

2011-10-28T10:11:00.001+02:00

Robert Fico has a mixed record as a politician. He chose to ally with failed politicians of the past, and has associated the Slovak left with nationalism..

He is very popular for all the wrong reasons, and he needs to show much more statesmanship

New government for Slovakia by March 2012

2011-10-24T13:50:00.002+02:00

Slovak PM Iveta Radicova (left) with Angela Merkel (German Chancellor)

It may feel like a long time from now, but by March 2012 Slovakia will have a new a government.

Well placed observers believe that the country will be led by a grand coalition of the left and the right, a bit like Ms Merkel's coalition with the SPD in Germany.

The female PM Ms Radicova is not likely to stay. It is hard to say whether the real instrument of her downfall was her fractious coalition ally.

The challenges of the global situation necessitate national unity and resolve.

The centre of Bratislava is being redeveloped

2011-09-28T22:51:00.003+02:00

A significant urban regeneration projecton a 3.5 hectare site at the very centerof the inner city core of Bratislava.

Kamenne namestie today

Project when completed 2013-4

Location:	Bratislava city core
Retail:	60,000 m²
Leisure:	12,000 m²
Office and Hotel:	50,000 m²
Parking:	2, 000 spaces
Cooperation:	Tesco
Sector:	Mixed use
Completion:	2013/14
Country:	Slovakia

Credit reating agency affirms A+ rating and stable outlook - Slovak central bank chief predicts euro fiscal union

2011-09-08T09:45:00.002+02:00

Parker told Dow Jones Newswires. In July 2008 Fitch revised Slovakia’s Long-term foreign currency Issuer Default rating (IDR) to A+ from 'A' on stable outlook. The rating agency affirmed Slovakia's IDRs at 'A+' in June 2011.

Prime Minister Iveta Radicova informed that the National Bank Governor and member of the ECB Governing Council Jozef Makuch said that the euro will need a fiscal union to work in the long-term. According to Makuch, mechanisms adopted at the level of the European Council are only a short-term
solution. “The euro is a stable currency, yet it's only standing on one leg,” Radicova paraphrased the governor.

Sade Adu in Bratislava

2011-09-07T12:12:00.000+02:00

Wages and buying power:gap between Austria and Slovakia/Czech/Poland shrinking

2011-09-05T00:41:00.002+02:00

Until recently, Austria's neighbours in Central Europe were ahead by a nose with investors, especially because of the cheap wages paid in the East. However, that situation is changing rapidly. The wage and buying power gap between Eastern and Western Europe is getting smaller. This will have an effect on the competition for locations in Europe in the future.
This is the conclusion reached by a new study conducted by the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies on behalf of the consulting company TPA Horwath. The study looked primarily at unit labour costs and buying power in ten countries in Central and Eastern Europe: in other words, what the state collects in each case, take-home pay for individual workers, and what you can actually buy for that amount in various neighbouring countries.

In the case of unit labour costs, the differences are still huge. Unit labour costs in Eastern Europe are below those in Austria. People also earn significantly less, although their wages are increasing, and the amount they have left over varies.

Well paid jobs at banks and insurance companies

In Austria, in 2010 average labour costs were EUR 3,966 a month. This put Austria streets ahead of Central and Eastern European countries included in the analysis. Slovenia, a model country in economic terms, has on average 44 per cent of Austrian labour costs. The earnings level in Austria here is 54 per cent higher than for the economy as a whole. Similar industry-specific differences can also be seen in Slovenia and Croatia. The earnings gap is considerably larger in all the other Eastern European countries studied: as much as 80 per cent in Poland and 143 per cent in Romania.

Net earnings: much smaller gap

However, a very different picture emerges in a comparison of average net earnings (gross wages after deduction of taxes and social security contributions) and real buying power – in other words, what people can buy with their incomes. Here it becomes apparent that the gap between Austria and the Eastern European countries is much smaller. For example, in 2010 the ratio of net earnings to so-called purchasing power parity in Slovenia was 63 per cent of the Austrian level (of EUR 1,800), followed by Croatia (59%) and the Czech Republic (58%). The level of net earnings was somewhat lower in Poland (53%), Slovakia (49%) and Hungary (42%).

Where do employees have more take-home pay

Convergence of wages

The analysts extrapolated current trends from these varying costs and deductions: unit labour costs are rising steadily in Eastern Europe. In fact, despite everything, in almost all the countries studied this is happening at a faster rate than in Austria. As a result, wages are slowly converging on those in Austria. At present, average labour costs are 44 per cent of the Austrian level. Growing competitiveness is driving this primarily because Central European countries are increasingly using modern “western” technologies. Furthermore, Central European countries are gradually developing a strong industry that is far more productive than small businesses.

Receptive to investors

Finally, despite relatively high tax and contribution ratios, the institute’s experts found a striking receptiveness to investors in Central and Eastern European countries. For example, at the height of the prolonged global economic crisis, taxation policy raised value added tax rates rather than taxes on work.


The work cost factor is decisive for the choice of location

There are still very significant differences in the case of direct taxes (such as income and corporation tax), the experts at TPA Horwath in Vienna concluded. In Austria, in 2009 direct taxes accounted for around 30 per cent of total taxes, which was however still below the average for the EU 27. Hungary was next, fairly well below Austria with a rate of 25 per cent of direct taxes in total earnings, then Romania, Poland and the Czech Republic between 24 and 21 per cent. Direct taxes played the smallest role in Slovakia (around 19 per cent). Trend: during the crisis, Eastern European countries tended to increase value added tax, while lowering income and corporate tax. This was a definite advantage for investors.

What is the politics of Slovakia and the Euro as well as the eurozone/EU

2011-08-24T00:23:00.002+02:00

Sovereign euro Risk of Slovakia according to the rating agencies

September 2011	Sovereign risk	Currency risk	Banking sector risk	Political risk	Economic structure risk	Country risk
	A	BB	A	AA	BBB	A

Sovereign risk

Stable: The commitment to fiscal consolidation will remain strong, and debt levels should remain well below EU thresholds.

Currency risk

Stable: Growing concerns regarding the solvency and competitiveness of some euro area members are potentially negative for the single currency. However, interest rate differentials should favour the euro in the short term.

Banking sector risk

Stable: Slovakia's banking sector is very conservative and very profitable but also very conservative in its asset allocation. The banking sector has been resilient to the aftermath of the global crisis of 2008-09. However, some foreign banks with branches in Slovakia could face distress because of the euro area crisis.

The Slovak capital Bratislava, the economic hub of the country

Political risk

The centre-right government looks less stable than its predecessor, but it is more investor-friendly. None of the parties likely to make it into parliament in a general election threatens Slovakia's international creditworthiness.

Economic structure risk

The economy's dependence on exports of automotives, machinery and electronics weighs heavily on the outlook for the economy, and could make medium-term growth more volatile.

Slovakia is led by a four-party, right-wing coalition, in which the largest party is the Slovak Democratic and Christian Union-Democratic Party (SDKU-DS the political party that brought about the 19% flat tax). The government has delivered pro-business changes that dilute workers' rights in the hope that will reduce the disincentives to hire people. This has dismayed many given widespread reform fatigue. Fiscal consolidation will be the main economic policy issue in the coming years.

The chances of the current coalition surviving until the election scheduled for 2014 are fair given that the overcast global environment does not favour major changes. But personal and programmatic clashes could bring it down before then. Real GDP growth is slowing in 2011 as the government is performing fiscal consolidation with a view to put aside funds in case there is a global crisis. Growth until 2015 will be slower than in the boom years but fairly fast in the chastened environment but at least this is not over levaraged unstable growth. Inflation is settling around 2.5% in 2012-15. The current account is expected to register deficits averaging around 3.4% in 2011-15.

Political outlook The centre-right ruling coalition turned one year old in July. Coalition parties have shown resilience despite frequent disputes. Disagreements between ruling parties could spill over in late 2011 when parliament debates the government's recent decision to sanction Slovakia's financial contribution to the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) from 2013.

Economic policy outlook

Slovakia's fiscal consolidation effort has been progressing in line with plans in 2011. At end-July the state budget posted a deficit of €1.67bn (US$2.3bn), 30.4% smaller year on year.

Economic forecast

In June seasonally adjusted industrial output fell by 2.2% month on month. The economic sentiment indicator (ESI; 2005=100), which had moved lower in the second quarter, after climbing in the first quarter, edged down further in July, dropping by 1.6 points month on month, to 93.9. This reflected weaker confidence in the industrial sector, owing to weakening demand of trade partners in the EU.

Slovakia Growth statistics Expenditure on GDP (% real change)

2011-08-23T23:56:00.000+02:00

Slovakia Growth statistics
Expenditure on GDP (% real change)

light blue = 2011

darker blue = 2012

Private consumption

Government consumption

Gross fixed investment

Exports of goods & services

Imports of goods & services

Source: Economist Intelligence Unit

Origin of GDP (% real change)

light blue = 2011

darker blue = 2012

Agriculture

Industry

Services

Source: Economist Intelligence Unit

An American who has lived in Slovakia since 1991 talks about living here

2011-08-22T18:22:00.001+02:00

reasonably interesting
especially the bits about blava

Reuters: Credit agencies reaffirm and upgrade Slovakia

2011-08-21T03:18:00.001+02:00

bratislava in august 2011

Moody's, which gives Slovakia an A1 sovereign rating with a stable outlook, said on Friday that Slovakia's access to money and bank reserves for any future turbulence are on the increase and reaffirm the country's stable outlook.

The central European country has not had to bail out any of its financial institutions because of the global financial crisis due to the conservative governance of the banking system, and its sound economic recovery, driven mainly by foreign demand, had helped keep banks sound.

"Continuing economic growth and decreasing unemployment have contributed to stabilising the stock of problem loans and to decreasing the loan-loss charges in Q1 2011, whilst macroeconomic developments will be the main driver of asset quality over the next 12-18 months," said Simone Zampa, a Moody's Vice President and senior analyst.

Slovak bank profits more than doubled last year, and Moody's expected this trend would continue, demonstrated by a 79.5 percent annual jump in profitability in the first half.

The Slovak central bank's stress tests in April showed an improvement in financial strength.

important graphs to understand which bits of the eurozone are healthy and which are not

2011-08-15T14:34:00.000+02:00

Some essential numbers to help understand Slovakia

Graphs by Spiegel on Eurostat data:

debt

On the euro crisis

2011-07-14T05:50:00.001+02:00

Slovakia is still playing tough - The Economist

Article in the economist, Bratislava's position on the greek crisis

2011-06-30T19:33:00.001+02:00

Slovakia is still playing tough

AU Optronics - Taiwan in major investment in Slovakia

2011-06-29T10:43:00.001+02:00

huge new factory making flat screens in Slovakia

The Prime Minister of Slovakia helps inaugurate the large investments of this Asian flat screen maker AU Optronics Corp. (ADR) (NYSE)‎

3000 jobs are expected to be created by this development as well as more at suppliers' plants.

In related news Deutsche Telekom Shared Services s.r.o. (DTSS) will gradually be expanded to support all Group subsidiaries in Europe. These will subsume functions from other regions and served from Bratislava.
By late 2015, more than 500 additional jobs are expected to be created in Bratislava.

(DTSS) will gradually take over tasks from the finance and accounting processes of all Deutsche Telekom subsidiaries in Europe. For this purpose, selected operations will be concentrated in Bratislava over the next couple of years.

DTSS began handling various accounting processes for the Group subsidiary T-Systems in 2006. The accounting services provider was known as T-Systems VICOS GmbH until 2009. Bundling international accounting tasks in Bratislava will support the standardization of internal processes in high quality and thus improve efficiency while also lowering costs. Today, DTSS and its 100 employees already provide services to 14 international and nine associated German companies.

Stefan Hofbauer, Managing Director of DTSS: "The planned expansion of Deutsche Telekom Shared Services s.r.o. reflects our clear commitment to our operations in Bratislava. In just a few years we will be the central European organization responsible for handling many of the Group's accounting tasks."

Deutsche Telekom is one of the world’s leading integrated telecommunications companies with around 128 million mobile customers, 36 million fixed-network lines and approximately 17 million broadband lines (as of March 31, 2011). The Group provides products and services for the fixed network, mobile communications, the Internet and IPTV for consumers, and ICT solutions for business customers and corporate customers. Deutsche Telekom is present in over 50 countries and has around 244,000 employees worldwide. The Group generated revenues of EUR 62.4 billion in the 2010 financial year – more than half of it outside Germany (as of December 31, 2010).

Who is doing well in the Eurozone and who is stagnating

2011-06-20T22:33:00.000+02:00

Their Excellencies the ambassadors of Denmark, Norway and Netherlands to Slovakia are all female and cyclists

2011-06-20T08:47:00.001+02:00

It seems to be consistently true, the more barbaric a country and the more dictatorial the leader the more he transports himself in self-important motorcades with massive police escort, big cars/limousines etc.

Bratislava's ambassadors from some other small EU states prefer the bicycle as you can see from the photo. This is great and it is an example that should be surely followed by others. Bratislava's mayor, Milan Ftacnik says he is a fanatic cyclist. He needs to prove it. Pedestrianise some car-clogged streets, ban cars from stare mesto completely, including those of local residents. The only cars should be allowed up the diplomatic hill. Anywhere in the centre from the Andrejsky cintorin and nivy, to the castle should be pedestrianised immediately.

Their Excellencies the ambassadors of Denmark, Norway and Netherlands to Slovakia are all female and cyclists

Meanwhile the re-enactment of the coronation of the Austrohungarian queens and kings in Bratislava is something you shouldn't miss if you are here, it is really great.

all austrohungarian kings and queens were crowned in Bratislava including empress Maria-Theresa

Geeky, how the new train station in bratislava will be linked up.

2011-06-14T20:38:00.000+02:00

How the main train station will be connected to a new main train station called Filialka. The stops will eventually be Vienna, Hauptbanhof (new central station in Vienna being currently built) Flughafen Wien, Hlavna stanica (main train station in Bratislava), Filialka Bratislava Airport

Slovakia supports likely new head of ECB, Draghi

2011-04-29T07:27:00.001+02:00

Slovak finmin backs Draghi for ECB post - Reuters

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The Slovak University of Technology Selects Geneza’s MediaINFO Server for Dissemination of Digital Textbooks and Notes

2011-04-20T16:19:00.002+02:00

Bratislava, Slovakia

Imagine a university that gives all the study materials to its students electronically, imagine no more it is happening in Bratislava!

Faculty of Chemical and Food technology, one from the faculties of the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, the most significant technical university in Slovakia, has selected Geneza’s MediaINFO solution. This central European university will primarily use MediaINFO Server as the method of distributing digital books to its numerous students. Standardising on MediaINFO is going to help cut the cost, waste, and the physical constraints of the old paper textbooks and notes that are currently printed or bought.

Additional benefits are the 24/7 online availability of the study materials and textbooks, which can be then linked, forwarded via email, printed, saved, annotated, or even translated automatically. MediaINFO is going to help sweep away the printed study materials in the university as well as the strain they place on the university library facilities. Normally an initiative that helps contain costs can hardly be expected to improve educational outcomes, but with MediaINFO the Slovak University of Technology is poised to achieve just that.

The Chemical library (where implementation will take place first) was founded in 1955 and has developed into one of the most complete collections of chemical information in the world. The chemical library’s leadership extends in being a technologically astute organisation, and a pioneer in digitisation in Slovakia. In this spirit the students will be the first to benefit from the ability to use social networking tools in conjunction with MediaINFO as well as the collaboration tools that MediaINFO provides. The ability to work on assignments together using modern web tools is something that the students are also likely to encounter in their future employment. Becoming conversant with modern ways of digital working is a skill sought by employers so this will indirectly benefit the students too.

www.geneza.com

Jozef Dzivak, the director of University’s Chemical Library, said on behalf of the Faculty of Chemical and Food technology: “We anticipate that the successful implementation of MediaINFO will help us save time, effort and costs for ourselves and for our students. This is a good application of technology that solves a number of practical problems in the real world. We are making MediaINFO our university system because it maximises access to the study materials, makes them easy to search, print and study from. But one of my favourite outcomes is the first real reduction in hundreds of thousands of pages that are routinely thrown away and reprinted either because the textbooks have been updated or because the paper copies become damaged or lost. MediaINFO will help us do our bit for the environment”.

Sasa Mutic, chief executive officer at Geneza, said, “Organisations today are challenged by inefficiencies and a lack of easy accessibility to their content both internally and externally. It is often underestimated how many resources are wasted in activities such as photocopying or printing information, especially time. MediaINFO helps optimise processes inside an organisation leading to a boost in communication, effectiveness, speedy and modern transfer of information irrespective of working hours, distances, or other constraints. The granular control of rights also allows the university to stay in control of its intellectual property”.

--
About The Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava ( “STU”) & the Slovak Chemical Library

The STU is a modern educational-pedagogical and scientific-research institution and the biggest technical university in Slovakia. Since its establishment in 1937 more than 112,000 graduates have completed their education at STU and annually an average of 19,000 students study at the university.

STU currently consists of 7 Faculties and 2 institutes, offering accredited study programmes for Bachelors, Engineering (Master) and Doctoral study.

The Chemical library was founded in 1955 as the Library Centre at the Faculty of Chemical and Food technology Slovak Technical University in Bratislava. After various changes culminating in its current status since 2004 the library has become a major driving force for digitisation and computerisation of processes in the Slovak academic community.
http://www.schk.sk/en/home
www.stuba.sk

About MediaINFO
MediaINFO is a complete software solution for intuitive viewing, browsing, searching, cataloguing and sharing digitized content. MediaINFO is powering some of the world's most prestigious libraries, publishers, educational institutions, and magazines. MediaINFO helps organizations utilize and re-use their content more effectively by leveraging past investments in content and re-purposing them for new audiences.
Find out how it can help your organization by visiting http://www.geneza.com/

About Geneza
Geneza develops solutions for organizations seeking to better present, control, search and manage their content. Whether your content is still only in physical form, partly digitised, in PDF, ALTO/METS, flat tiff; we can provide an end-to-end solution that will cover your requirements. Geneza is trusted by some of the world's largest and most respected libraries, academic institutions including the Library of Norway, the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne and others.

Mailing Address
Geneza
Champs Courbes 23
1024 Ecublens
Switzerland
http://ch.linkedin.com/in/digitisation

Almost 40% of big business in Slovakia wants to hire and expand

2011-04-18T13:39:00.000+02:00

Bratislava's Eurovea. Bratislava's downtown is buzzing
with activity and growth.

Foreign investors operating in Slovakia believe the economic crisis is ending and expect their businesses to flourish in the coming months, according to an economic sentiment survey conducted among 166 investors from other European countries undertaken by seven foreign chambers of commerce in February and March 2011, Slovak spectator reported on 8 April.

Almost two thirds of investors in Slovakia expect the economic environment to improve significantly over the course of 2011.

Nearly 39% of the surveyed businesses said they will be looking to hire more employees this year.
We are optimists now too, since movement has returned to the Slovak economy, said Vladimír Slezak, the general director of the Bratislava-based branch of Siemens.

IMF on Slovakia and its economy

2011-04-13T04:31:00.000+02:00

Bratislava, April 11, 2011

Slovakia has swiftly recovered from a deep recession, and is facing a favorable medium-term macroeconomic outlook, with real GDP projected to grow by around 4 percent per year. The policy focus should shift from crisis response to enhancing the foundations for long-term growth and stability. The main challenges will be to correct the crisis-induced underlying deterioration in the fiscal position, prevent credit boom-bust cycles, reduce the high unemployment and maintain strong productivity growth. Following important fiscal adjustment this year, consolidation will need to continue during 2012–13 with a view to bringing the government deficit below 3 percent of GDP in 2013. Achieving this challenging target will require a careful consideration of the composition of the adjustment efforts.

Outlook: a return to steady and robust growth

1. The Slovak economy has continued to recover since early 2010. Following a deep recession in 2009, real GDP swung to a robust 4 percent growth in 2010. The upturn has been larger than in most of Slovakia’s neighbors reflecting strong fundamentals and a surge in the export-oriented manufacturing sector, which benefited from a revival in global demand. In tandem, the financial sector has regained strength, profits in the corporate sector are recovering, real estate prices have stabilized, and the fiscal position is improving.

2. The growth outlook for 2011 and the coming years is strong. While growth will still be driven mainly by the export sector, a gradual rebound in domestic demand would provide some boost and broadly offset the withdrawal of fiscal support. As spare capacity diminishes and confidence firms, employment and private consumption will start to improve, albeit gradually. Overall, real GDP is projected to grow by about 3¾ percent in 2011 and by about 4¼ percent in 2012–15, among the strongest performances in the European Union (EU) but still significantly below the pre-crisis rate of expansion.

3. Inflation is projected this year temporarily to increase to about 3½ percent. Reflecting higher international oil and food prices, and an increase in VAT and excise taxes, inflation surged in early 2011. However, as core inflation remains well-anchored, headline inflation is projected to decline to below 3 percent in 2012 and beyond.

4. Downside risks remain considerable and are both external and domestic in nature. The global economic environment continues to be challenging, including on account of possible loss of market confidence related to adverse feedback loops between sovereign and bank risks, Mideast political turmoil, and uncertain oil and other commodity prices. Domestically, a renewed decline in real estate prices and a loss of fiscal credibility, if the government fails to achieve the targeted fiscal consolidation, are the main risks.

The policy agenda: from crisis response to growth and stability

Fiscal Policy: bringing the deficit below 3 percent of GDP in 2013

5. In spite of the recovery, the general government deficit remained high in 2010, at 7¾ percent of GDP. The deficit had widened to about 8 percent of GDP in 2009, as revenue contracted sharply and spending continued to expand at a fast pre-crisis pace. Reflecting the export-led recovery, revenue growth in 2010 fell short of GDP growth. With expenditure and output growing broadly in line, the deficit was almost unchanged from its 2009 level.

6. The 2011 deficit is projected to decline to below 5 percent of GDP on the back of a welcome consolidation effort and further economic recovery. The size of the adjustment, around 2½ percentage points of GDP, and its composition are broadly appropriate. Implementing the planned expenditure cuts in full, particularly with regard to wages and municipal spending, may prove to be difficult. However, some higher-than-budgeted revenue on account of the improved economic conditions would help offset expenditure slippages.

7. The authorities’ commitment to reduce the deficit to below 3 percent of GDP by 2013 is credible and appropriate.Adhering to this anchor, in line with EU requirements, will help maintain market confidence and keep Slovakia’s interest premium low. The deficit should be further reduced to about 1 percent of GDP in the medium term. This will help prepare for aging-related expenditure pressures, and provide some room for counter-cyclical fiscal policy in case of a downturn.

8. The intention to reduce the deficit by around 1 percentage point of GDP each year in 2012–13 strikes the right balance. Pacing the adjustment will help minimize the adverse impact on growth and avoid recourse to lower-quality and possibly unsustainable measures. Nonetheless, the adjustment efforts needed to meet the 2013 deficit target will be challenging.

9. The authorities’ fiscal policy priorities should guide the composition of the 2012–13 consolidation efforts. Priorities could include supporting growth through infrastructure investment and education, reducing the high unemployment and income disparity across regions, and strengthening the efficiency of the tax system. In addition, improving the quality and ensuring the financial soundness of the health care system remains a standing priority.²

10. Simultaneously achieving these priorities and the consolidation targets will require broad-ranging revenue efforts and expenditure reallocation and cuts. Only raising some minor taxes and concentrating the expenditure efforts on cutting wages and operational costs may not be sufficient, and may erode some essential government services to unsustainably low levels. Given the large consolidation needs, there is no room for premature tax cuts or for additional spending without re-prioritization. It will also be important not to slow or postpone key public investment projects and to strengthen EU funds absorption capacity.

11. Initiatives to harmonize and simplify social security contributions and unify revenue collection are welcome.They could be complemented with efforts to broaden the tax base and improve the efficiency of VAT collection. However, net revenue gains from harmonization, unified collection and improved VAT administration could be slow to materialize and should not be expected to contribute to the 2012–13 consolidation effort. In this regard, it would be preferable for recently announced proposals to reform the social security contributions system to remain focused on the main objectives of simplification, transparency and reduced incentives to opt for self-employed status, while maintaining broad revenue neutrality.

12. The authorities’ fiscal institutional reform plans are expected to improve commitment, discipline, transparency and planning. Laudable efforts to seek a broad consensus on such important reforms as introducing debt and expenditure ceilings and establishing a fiscal council can help ensure their durability. A well-designed ceiling on overall expenditure growth could be especially useful for guiding the fiscal consolidation in the next few years and for facilitating spending reallocation in line with evolving priorities. In the context of the envisaged fiscal institutional reforms, putting in place an effective medium-term budget framework would support planning and prioritization. Further improving the timeliness and quality of fiscal information would enhance transparency. Proposals to strengthen fiscal discipline at the local level could be complemented with incentives to raise real estate taxes.

13. The plans to ensure the sustainability of the pension system are welcome. Automatic alignment of the retirement age with changes in life expectancy and in the old age dependency ratio and adjustments in the indexation formulas could help ensure the viability of the first pillar. As to the second pillar, relaxing the restrictions on investment policies would increase the range of products available to savers and better align saving and investment objectives and horizons, and is an immediate priority. In addition, maintaining a sufficient contribution rate and promoting the participation of new labor market entrants would help support this pillar.

Financial Sector: strengthening safeguards and promoting further capital market development

14. The financial sector has strengthened further. A traditional banking model with a large deposit-to-loan ratio and limited investment in risky securities helped banks withstand the global financial crisis. With the improvement in economic conditions profits have rebounded. Financial soundness indicators are solid, and recent stress tests carried out by the National Bank of Slovakia reassure that banks can cope with severe shocks to economic growth and inflation.

15. Nevertheless, risks remain and continued vigilance is needed. In particular, the commercial real estate and construction sectors remain fragile. Moreover, banks could be affected in case of renewed financial turmoil in the euro area through the impact on parent banks, even though domestic direct exposure to foreign securities is limited. To reduce these risks, the authorities should continue improving coordination and collaboration with neighboring countries and home supervisors of foreign banks. Indications of intensifying competition, relaxation of lending standards and accelerating credit growth should be carefully monitored.

16. The authorities should harmonize the different treatment of housing loans to avoid regulatory arbitrage.Banks are substituting traditional mortgages with other housing loans that are subject to weaker regulations and allow for higher loan-to-value ratios. Harmonizing the different treatment would ensure that regulation aimed at limiting excessive risk taking remains effective. To improve consumer protection, steps to increase the transparency of housing loans with regard to interest rate adjustments would be welcome.

17. The authorities should explore ways to deepen the secondary government bond market. This can lower interest rates and help develop the capital market overall. Steps taken by the debt management agency to increase issuance size and focus on benchmark instruments are welcome. Establishing an effective primary market dealer arrangement and relaxing investment restrictions on pension funds could provide additional liquidity to the market.

Labor Market and Other Structural Policies: tackling high long-term unemployment and maintaining strong productivity growth

18. In the wake of the crisis, addressing long-term unemployment and regional disparities is even more pressing. Long-term unemployment of low-skilled and young workers has risen to among the highest in the EU. Less prosperous regions are particularly affected. The economic recovery and incipient rebound in employment had little impact, so far, on prospects for the long-term unemployed.

19. Bringing down long-term unemployment will require a range of measures. Various new initiatives considered by the authorities—including linking social benefits to training and job search efforts; expanding intermediate labor market opportunities; and selectively increasing labor market flexibility—are welcome. However, they need to be complemented with steps to enhance some existing active labor market policies, and with appropriate funding to ensure implementation and program evaluation. Improving the transport infrastructure and fostering the development of a private rental market could help ease labor mobility constraints.

20. Productivity gains remain the main driver of medium-term growth potential and convergence, and the key to preserving external competitiveness. Boosting productivity will require sustained efforts to further reduce administrative burdens; to enhance the transparency of public procurement, in line with welcome recent initiatives; to strengthen legal enforcement; and to promote competition in network industries. Labor market flexibility in combination with wage growth moderation should help maintain the strong performance of Slovakia’s main export sectors.

¹ The mission wants to thank the Slovak authorities for their hospitality and the open and constructive discussions.

² Health care reforms could be guided by earlier IMF advice and recent OECD recommendations.

Pre-2008 economic crisis level of economic confidence in Slovakia

2011-04-11T10:28:00.000+02:00

Slovak business confidence has just reached its pre 2007-8 worldwide economic crisis levels. This is quite an achievement given that this is not the case with most other european states with the notable exception of Germany.

According to PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Forbes, and in a study they commisioned. The CEOs of companies in Slovakia perceive the business environment in Slovakia as positive or satisfactory, 44 percent of those polled said they had good reason to expect their revenues to rise within the next twelve months. “It is very important, how the companies active in Slovakia see the development of their future growth. The fact that they
do perceive it positively is a good signal for the future of the Slovak economy,” said Alica Pavukova, a PwC partner.

Investment comes to Slovakia

2011-04-03T23:04:00.001+02:00

GERMAN COMPANIES TO CREATE 10,000 NEW JOBS German companies expected to create some 10,000 new jobs at its Slovak units this year, welcoming planned changes aimed to boost the labour market flexibility making Slovakia a more attractive investment spot, a survey by investors showed. Hospodarske noviny, page 1

HEWLETT PACKARD WANTS TO HIRE NEW WORKERS The U.S. Hewlett-Packard Co.(HPQ.N) said it wants to hire hundreds of new workers to boost its Slovak unit to around 2,000 by the end of the year. The company operates a service centre for the region in the central European country. Hospodarske noviny, page 1

SLOVAK KIA LURES NEXT INVESTOR Spain company Grupo Antoliny, a supplier of South Korean car maker Kia Motor (000270.KS), wants to build an assembly plant with 120 jobs near Kia's Slovak unit in northern town of Zilina, a ministry report showed. Hospodarske noviny, page 15

Interesting article

2011-04-02T09:34:00.001+02:00

CEPA: CED (Getting Past Central Europe's Low-Wage Legacy)

Digital books transform the way slovak students get study materials

2011-03-26T08:03:00.001+01:00

I saw it recently in a demo and I think the SLOVAK TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY is now light years ahead in how it communicates with it's students. You rarely see situations when tech actually helps solve a real world problem , improve on the way it was done before, make both ecological and money savings as all this stuff was printed paper before.

The demo here is generic but this is how students at the Slovak technical university in Bratislava will get their study materials.

As far as I know only this university has such a modern system, but this is not developed internally.

GDP per inhabitant (EU average=100)

2011-03-01T10:51:00.002+01:00

GDP per inhabitant (EU average=100)
		2008	2007	2006	2005
1	Inner London (UK)	343	334	336	303
2	Luxembourg (LU)	279	275	267	264
3	Bruxelles-Cap. / Brussels Hfdst. (BE)	216	221	233	241
4	Groningen (NL)	198	165	174	164
5	Hamburg (DE)	188	192	200	202
6	Praha (CZ)	172	172	162	160
7	Île de France (FR)	168	169	170	173
8	Stockholm (SE)	167	165	166	172
9	Bratislavský Kraj (SK)	167	160	149	148
10	Wien (AT)	163	163	166	178
11	Oberbayern (DE)	162	165	168	166
12	Bremen (DE)	158	159	157	157
13	Utrecht (NL)	157	155	156	158
14	North Eastern Scotland (UK)	157	153	153	n/a
15	Darmstadt (DE)	156	156	158	158
16	Berkshire, Buckinghamshire & Oxfordshire (UK)	154	156	164	168
17	Noord-Holland (NL)	152	151	151	155
18	Hovedstaden (DK)	152	150	155	161
19	Southern & Eastern (IE)	148	166	163	158
20	Åland (FI)	145	143	147	140
	Source: Eurostat, based on purchasing power standards (PPS)

Bratislava culture

2011-02-25T03:44:00.002+01:00

New York Times...
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/25/arts/25iht-rarthit25.html?_r=1

Slovak GDP is accelerating still further edging towards 5% growth next year from 3.4% currently

2011-02-22T00:55:00.002+01:00

The February revision of the 2011 growth forecast to 3.4 percent from an originally projected 3.3 percent will boost tax revenue by 9 million euros ($12.3 million), representing less than 0.1 percent of gross domestic product, the ministry said today in a statement from Bratislava, Slovakia.

Tax revenue next year is set to exceed the original projection by 36 million euros, while in 2013 the government will probably collect 85 million euros less than planned, the ministry said. The 2012 and 2013 growth forecast was revised to 4.8 percent for each year, from 4.5 percent and 4.7 percent, respectively.

UK outside the euro, has it been a good move?

2011-02-18T13:38:00.000+01:00

While the euro economies have been lashed to the mast of a single monetary policy, Britain’s free-floating currency and flexible interest rates have allowed it to weather the global storms.

At least that is the conventional wisdom in the UK. Sadly, the save-the-pound brigade hit something of a snag. The economic indicators tell a rather different story. Since the financial crash, Germany and France have fared better in the single currency than has Britain outside.

The two big eurozone countries have suffered a smaller drop in output since the hurricane hit in 2007. Britain has ended up with a fiscal deficit three times that of Germany and 50 per cent above that of France. As for prices, it is the Bank that has lost the plot. Britain’s 2 per cent inflation target has been all but abandoned. Prices in Britain are rising twice as fast as in the eurozone.

Ah, but wait, I hear Messrs Balls, Osborne and King riposte in unison. Britain has at least been free to devalue sterling. The value of the pound has dropped a hefty 20 per cent during the past few years. That would be impossible were Britain trapped in the euro straitjacket.

Perhaps I am alone in thinking it odd that a central bank should be so eager to debauch its own currency. The politicians, I can understand. Like Harold Wilson in 1967 they forever cling to the deceit that sterling’s depreciation has no effect on the pounds in voters’ pockets. Besides the now cheap pound that has lost much of its value has not led to a rebalancing towards manufacturing in any meaningful way,

Devaluation has been an addiction of the politicians and professional policymakers in charge of Britain’s boom-and-bust economy for the past 60-odd years. Back in, say, 1960, one pound would buy about 12 Deutschmarks. If Germany had kept its currency, today’s figure would be about two D-Marks. Funny how German exporters still so easily outsell the British.

One or two countries in the eurozone have indeed fared worse than Britain since 2007. Ireland and Greece are the notable examples. But this raises another problem. Have Mr Balls and Mr Osborne so lowered their ambitions for Britain as to see Europe’s two smallest economies as the most useful comparator?
The uncomfortable reality is that eurozone countries against which Britain more naturally measures its performance have suffered less as a consequence of the crash. If one goes back further – say, to the creation of the euro in 1999 – the growth performance of the three economies has been pretty much of a muchness.

In truth, the real lesson from all this is a more prosaic one. Those charged with steering the economy should show a touch of humility. The thread linking the multiple mistakes in British economic policymaking in recent decades has been the righteous certainty of those making the wrong decisions.

It is visible again now at the Treasury and Bank as the senior officials so complicit in Mr Brown’s boom tell Mr Osborne the only course is the ferocious fiscal squeeze on which he has now embarked. They may, of course, be right this time. But the record hardly leaves one brimming with confidence.

Deutsche Telekom AG chooses Bratislava as its global financial centre

2011-02-16T14:09:00.001+01:00

Deutsche Telekom AG chose Slovakia as the location for its global financial-services center, Hospodarske Noviny reported, without saying where it got the information.

The German phone company picked Slovakia over Hungary because it uses the euro and its capital Bratislava is closer to Vienna, Hospodarske said. The investment may create as many as 500 jobs, the newspaper reported.

The investment will be a global centre for financial services, and should hire its first recruits as soon as this year, Hospodárske Noviny reported. “Slovakia is an apt country for business for us; thus we will always try to evaluate new opportunities for enterprise. We will implement them on condition that all due conditions are fulfilled,” Sylvie Braunle of Deutsche Telekom told the daily.

According to an unconfirmed report by the SITA newswire, the investment was decided upon in November 2010 and both sides were only waiting only for a convenient date to announce it.

Angela Merkel, Germnay's chancellor is coming to Bratislava

2011-02-15T13:11:00.001+01:00

Iveta Radicova, Prime Minister of Slovakia meets Angela Merkel in Bratislava, Slovak Republic

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia - German Chancellor Angela Merkel is travelling to the Slovak capital to meet her counterparts from Central and Eastern Europe in talks expected to focus on energy security and regional co-operation.

The future of the eurozone and other EU-related issues are also high on the agenda of the annual meeting of prime ministers of Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland whose countries form an informal grouping known as the V4.

Merkel, together with Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann and Ukraine's Prime Minister Mykola Azarov are scheduled to join Tuesday's meeting that marks the 20th anniversary of the group.

Growth and debt, check out the performance of Slovakia particularly GDP for 2011

2011-02-14T11:02:00.002+01:00

Volkswagen announces it will double its investments in Slovakia to a billion euros (1.36 billion dollars) in the next five years

2011-02-11T07:35:00.001+01:00

Volkswagen’s Slovak unit has reported that the VW mother company plans to give it €1 billion over the next few years to boost car and car parts production in Slovakia.

"In the coming five years, the company will double its investment compared to the past five years," Andreas Tostmann, head of VW Slovakia, said in a press release.

He added that Volkswagen would "focus on new technologies, boost production at its car plant in Bratislava and components plant in Martin," northern Slovakia.

Volkswagen said earlier it expected to launch production of its new small family car line at its Bratislava plant this year.

The company's output in Slovakia fell in 2009 due to lower demand for expensive SUV models produced here amid the global economic slump.

But as the economy recovered in 2010, Volkswagen increased output over the first six months by 43 percent compared to the previous year.

The company has already invested more than €1.7 billion in the Euro zone countries over the last few years, according to Reuters.

The Slovak plant, which is situated near Bratislava, produces SUV models including the Volkswagen Touareg, Audi Q7, and parts of the Porsche Cayenne.

Volkswagen Slovakia, which began production in 1991, exports nearly all its output, mostly to Germany and China.

Brilliant concert in bratislava

2011-01-30T18:44:00.001+01:00

The Danube region

2011-01-30T14:01:00.003+01:00

http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/cooperation/danube/index_en.htm

Also this is the status of the Bratislava Paris fast rail connection

more:
http://tentea.ec.europa.eu/en/ten-t_projects/30_priority_projects/priority_project_17/priority_project_17.htm

Paris - Bratislava by train and investments in Slovakia - updated

2011-01-17T01:42:00.002+01:00

2011 UPDATE

Foxconn (the company that makes the iphone for Apple) has just bought Sony's factory in Slovakia. Along with Samsung, this is making Slovakia a hotspot for the production of high quality electronics. It seems that after cars Giant electronics behemoths are setting up shop. It is intriguing that Foxconn is Chinese and yet it chooses to invest in Slovakia for its european investments.

In other news the transformation of Bratislava's transport and integration with 2 Ten-t rail corridors is about to begin mirroring the work Austria's rail started 60km away in Vienna.

Here are some graphics and visualisations of the cutting edge infrastructure that is going to be built in Bratislava:

Disused station in Filialka...

to be replaced by

new filialka station (close to existing ursinyho tram stop)

NEW INVESTMENTS IN SLOVAKIA

Transportation links and proximity to other eurozone countries' markets seen as strategic reasons to invest in Slovakia by asian investors.

The South-Korean companies Kia and Samsung want to continue broadening their activities in Slovakia, South Korean Ambassador to Slovakia Seok-soong Seo told Economy Minister Lubomir Jahnatek at their meeting on Tuesday. “The ambassador informed the minister that the main Korean investors, Kia and Samsung, would continue expanding their activities in Slovakia in the coming years, so Slovakia is becoming a more and more important partner to South Korea,” the ministry said.

The Slovak Trade and Development Agency (SARIO) just announced that in total so far this year there are 85 investment projects meaning that about EUR 2.4billion to EUR 2.5 billion will come into Slovakia as investments.

The Director of the SARIO direct foreign investments division Andrea Chovancova informed that these investors are going to create more than 12,000 jobs in Slovakia.

The agency is currently working on 139 investment projects at present in total.

Why Bratislava? Why Slovakia?

The key reason behind all these long term bets in Slovakia's and Bratislava's success are not cost based anymore. Bratislava is significantly above the average in the EU, in terms of wealth and prices for most goods are comparable to London or Athens.

Bratislava's good connections with Austria and the rest of europe are to receive a further boost.

In a previous posting we discussed the new european transport networks. Part of the major and transformational projects headed by the EU is TEN-T that aspires to connect the different parts of europe together with transportation links to boost trade among other things.

Bratislava has been included in two of these project including the one to Paris via Vienna and Stuttgard. This is obviously a transformational project for Bratislava as it links the city ever tighter to old-european capitals such as Vienna and Paris but it also makes Bratislava a part of the core european transport networks enhancing access in an environmentally sensitive way likely to survive the unsustainable boom in cheap filghts and their operators.

This is a relevant point as land transport is crucial if environmental concerns curb the affordability of cheap flights through which much of the eastern parts of the EU are linked to the older EU members. For example if one is stuck in Bucharest and wishes to travel to Frankfurt, the obvious choice would be to fly. However both because of the crisis but also because governments are increasing the taxes on polluting forms of travel, economic development via the airport is not a future-proof plan. This project therefore is vital for Bratislava as it can mean that the city becomes a hub for traffic from other regional capitals like Prague, Budapest etc. who would connect via Bratislava to the fast train network heading west. It could in fact become the replacement of the popular cheap flights. As natural a choice as taking the eurostar train between London and Paris.

http://ten.greens-efa.org/index.php?id=7&L=0

Why is this more than just trains crossing borders

Vienna's Sudbanhof station is already being demolished to make way for the infrastructure and new upgraded connection to Bratislava for the high speed trains. More on this big event Imagefolder, english (PDF, 1,65 MB)
This project will be run using ERTMS ("European Rail Traffic Management System"). This is a major industrial project being implemented by Europe, a project which will serve to make rail transport safer and more competitive. One component of ERTMS, the European Train Control System (ETCS), guarantees a common standard that enables trains to cross national borders and enhances safety, speed, and cost competitiveness.
Establishing an efficient trans-European transport network (TEN-T) is a key strategy for competitiveness and employment in Europe. If Europe is to fulfil its economic and social potential, it is essential to build the missing links and remove the bottlenecks in our EU transport infrastructure, as well as to ensure the sustainability of our transport networks into the future. Furthermore, it integrates environmental protection requirements with a view to promoting sustainable development.
In view of the growth in traffic between Member States, expected to double by 2020, the investment required to complete and modernise a true trans-European network in the enlarged EU amounts to some € 500 billion from 2007 to 2020, out of which € 270 billion for the priority axis and projects.
The speeds make this an alternative to planes. The train, TGV, already allows travellers to go from Paris to Reims in 45 minutes, and from Paris to Strasbourg, on the German border, in just two hours and 20 minutes. Under the old schedules, the trip to Strasbourg was nearly twice as long, at three hours and 50 minutes. TGV stands for "train a grande vitesse," which literally means high-speed train.
The areas of Bratislava that are likely to be affected by all this are likely to be:
Hlavna Stanica - Stare Mesto (Old Town)
Filialka - Stare Mesto (Racianske Myto/Ursinyho)

Some visualisations of the Bratislava station for this end of the Paris Bratislava line now follow.

This is how the New Bratislava station and area will look

Potent stuff for the medium to long term future of this city.

and what about the trains that will run on the lines? The competing technologies are ICE from Germany or TGV from france

just see this (who needs planes...)

another one with some very happy frenchies :) well done!

BBC - Slovakia leads eurozone growth

2011-01-10T00:26:00.000+01:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9280000/9280836.stm

After the bailouts of Greece and Ireland, what are the prospects for the wider euro area?
Economic adviser Marie Diron examines the economic growth of eurozone countries.

Finance minister of Slovakia in english talking to Martin Wolf of the Financial Times interviewed

2011-01-10T00:11:00.000+01:00

Is Estonia a sign of what’s to come for the euro?

2011-01-09T23:12:00.000+01:00

The most significant EU-related development over the holidays was Estonia’s official entry into the eurozone on New Year’s Day, an event that is worth revisiting as the single currency prepares for what is likely to be another year of turmoil.

As Fredrik Erixon, director of the Brussels-based European Centre for International Political Economy, notes in a new “Obituary for the Estonian kroon”, it wasn’t too long ago that the Estonian government was being advised to drop its peg to the euro and let its currency float in order to save its economy from the ravages of the European debt crisis.

But Tallinn hung tough, and as we noted in an article last month, is now poised for gross domestic product growth that is the pride of the EU. According to forecasts by Eurostat, its 4.4 per cent 2011 real GDP growth would make it the best performer in the eurozone.

When I talked to Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves last month, he recalled with hard-to-contain smugness the amount of pressure the country resisted to devalue during the early days of the euro crisis. “All three Baltic economies were in serious trouble, and all kinds of people said devalue, devalue, devalue,” he said.

In his paper, Erixon cites U.S.-baed economic giants like Paul Krugman and Nouriel Roubini as among those who advocated devaluation, but officials recently told me that the International Monetary Fund was also in the Baltic devaluation camp.

Ilves argued that devaluation, even for an export-reliant economy, wasn’t a panacea. It could have reduced the price of Estonian exports and relative labour costs, he said, but because Estonia imported so many of the components that go into its exports, the gains would be marginal.

In addition, Ilves argued, Estonian home mortgages and commercial loans were largely denominated in euros. So a devaluation would have sent borrowing costs skyrocketing.

“You decapitate all those who are doing the right thing,” he said. “You’re doing in the people who are the most successful, the most economically active, the people who are doing what you want them to be doing.”

Instead, Estonia cut budgets early and deeply. Does the fact that it is now poised for a rebound bode well for other recent takers of the austerity medicine, like Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal? Perhaps, but the Estonians also had a few things going for them that these others – particularly Portugal and Greece – do not: an open, competitive economy and crucially, in the view of Ilves, a reserve fund that carried them through the rough times.

“We resisted the populist pressure in the good years to go and spend the reserves, and we went into the recession with strong reserves which tides us over,” he said. Other Baltics, particularly Latvia, which was forced to rely on an international bailout, were less cautious.

As a new member of the eurozone, Ilves said Estonia was ready to play its part in helping the countries who have fared less well during the recent crisis. Even though it is small and comparatively poor, Ilves said his country is well aware of what shared responsibility means – as a new member of NATO, he noted, Estonia relies on the alliance’s defence guarantees, which allows Tallinn to save more than a bit on military spending.

But if there’s one thing the euro’s 17th member won’t tolerate, he said, it’s a lecture. Here, I’ll just let Ilves speak for himself:

The poorer countries that are fiscally responsible end up paying out richer countries that are not. This would be even ok except for the occasional arrogance and haughtiness of the rich countries towards us poor east Europeans. You can’t be haughty towards us because we’re not so rich, and at the same time [argue] it’s time to bail them out. Ultimately, let’s face it: Being richer wasn’t based on being more productive. It was based on bigger loans. Wealth based on loans is not wealth.

Estonia could prove an interesting new voice in the deabte over the single currency’s future.

“Wealth based on loans is not wealth.”

Loans are denominated in the official money units.

Owning wealth aside from official money units is the only way

by which societies have built up their storehouse of a wealth of things,

thereby advancing their kind from the beginning, and preventing the decapitation of all those who are doing the right thing.

Estonia will do well in the eurozone for two reasons: it is small, and it is still an emerging market. By definition, emerging markets have a lot of catch up to do, therefore they must invest more in capital goods to become a capital-intensive economy (than a labor-intensive economy). By using more machinery and other capital, while also making substantial infrastructure improvements, cost per productivity would sharply fall. This would make them even more competitive than mature economies like Germany or Finland.

In other words, as a nation developes, its currency should appreciate in value (like China's should). By Estonia joining the euro, it would put a cap any upward pressure on its own currency, the Kroon -- by joining the euro, it would be in a currency bloc with mature economies that do not see significant upward pressure on exchange rates. Estonia, then would be playing beggar-thy-neighbor policies. A good template for Estonia is Slovakia, which has seen its unit labor costs decline throughout the past decade in relation to Germany (Spain and others saw their unit labor costs rise against Germany). Such "competitive" Eastern economies in the euro would make it even harder for Spain or Greece to compete. Report Derek Tunnicliffe

One of the lessons that Estonia might offer to others countries (inside and outside the eurozone) is that of their "flat-rate" tax system. It was untried experiment when they took it on, but it appears to be a success, in both business and personal terms. But they also try to ensure a balanced governmental budget - another lesson for all but Germany?

Corruption trends

2011-01-07T03:30:00.000+01:00

2 things
From the former boss at the www.economist.com
http://www.billemmott.com/article.php?id=287
a radically different approach it seems to the new much more right-wing and virulently anti-euro economist

also chart of the day about corruption over the last 12 years
it seems that corruption is correlated with the business cycle, but not much else and it is improving slowly in central europe. In 20 years...

2011 predictions - how will the new year turn out?

2011-01-02T02:24:00.000+01:00

Will the euro survive?
Yes. Despite the rolling wave of crises in peripheral European countries. It is probable that defaults will also be prevented in 2011. A less dramatic set of formal debt restructuring will happen in the PIIGSand Germany wants it to happen. As for a country leaving the Euro, that is more of 2012-13 question.

The euro will survive in the long run, and a north south divide may form, selecting countries that are able to live with Germany as direct trading partner and perhaps forming an ever closer union with it.

Will 2011 see banks fail?
2011 will be a year of bank runs in the anglosphere, banks in UK, Ireland, possibly Spain.

Will China’s bubble burst?
political risk may trigger a war involving north korea and poisoning the investments of many..

Will the US and its Nato allies start winning the war in Afghanistan?
no

Will social unrest worsen in Europe?

Most probably in the badly managed economies of the PIIGS. The utterly docile and passive public of the USA will continue to suffer silently a bit like an asian authoritarian regime, economic policy will stay the same, but the dangerous direction of US politics, with the Republicans continuing their transformation into a far right party, and the democrats continuing to be 2 parties in one. Europe's periphery may be smalshing lamposts but the rather silent rise of extreme politics in america with the tea party etc. will bring about surprising changes in the USA and not for the better,

The ongoing boom in germany will stabilise its neighbouring countries (including Slovakia), and bring about north/south divide in europe.

DANUBEBUS - A water bus will join Danube regions

2011-01-02T00:11:00.001+01:00

IN THE NEAR future a new form of river transport called the Dunajbus will offer regular boat service on the Danube from Slovakia’s town of Šamorín to Hungary’s Rajka, on to Bratislava and Devín in Slovakia and ending in the Austrian town of Hainburg. The goal is to intensify cross-border contact and travel between people living along the Danube. The project has been green lighted by the EU operational programme Hungary-Slovakia, 2007-2013, and should boost cross-border tourism and commuting. The Trnava Region parliament discussed the project in mid October as it would be responsible for 5 percent of the total project costs of €122,850. Other partners are Bratislava Region, Hungary’s Győr-Moson-Sopron County, and regions in eastern Austria, the TASR newswire wrote.

Slovakia and the crisis as compared with other Central european countries and balkan countries

2010-12-31T14:18:00.000+01:00

The graphs speak for themselves

The Slovak economy was affected by the global crisis but has shown one of the best rates of recovery. Only Poland has fared better, but its huge size makes it both less prone to downturns and more sluggish in upticks. Slovakia is projected to regain a 4% GDP pace this year and next, which is fairly goldilocks.

Slovakia is a big beneficiary of the euro and will therefore stay in it forever

2010-12-15T09:08:00.004+01:00

Richard Sulik who is mentioned here does not have the power to force his opinion, and anyway he only talking about a plan b should things take an unexpected turn such Germany leaving the euro itself. If one reads his comments in Slovak he is stating the obvious, if the euro's chief instigators ( Germany and France) throw in the towel and decide to give up on being parts of the biggest trading block in the world then Slovakia should prepare for it.

Journalists with not much to write should note that this hypothetical is firmly on pig flying territory. There is an anglosaxon assumption that the Euro and the EU are unecessary so the breaking of the euro is a matter of time back to the natural order of things... Additionally talking to british politicians one gets the impression that deep down they think that it was all a matter of a Helmut Kohl & Miterran love-in in the 1980s and that the future is bright for tiny countries with mercantilist policies. This thinking is ofcourse deluded and a product of lazy economic nationalism, self interest disguised as idealism, breathtaking arrogance, and a short termism that diplomatically has led Britain to now have the smallest influence in europe in its entire history. As the small print says in all that rubbish investment products sold in UK banks "past performance does not guarantee future returns". The world where the UK could exploit vast swathes of the world because of the primitiveness of the natives are over. The world is now more sophisticated and massive trading blocks are emerging, and you better be part of one of them. Slovakia's establishment has understood that and is integrating into the most viable scheme possible to address the globalising challenge. To put it in other words, even if the euro were to fail, it would be replaced by a successor!

Things would have to get massively worse for the euro to be a liability rather than an advantage for Slovakia.
For this small country this border/labour/monetary (and in the future possibly even fiscal) union with Germany is of strategic importance, as it is for other small fiscally conservative nations dotted around germany, such as the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Czech republic, and not least Austria. All these nations share common values and high Human Development Index as well as raw GDP performance.

Additionally under the EU, schengen, and euro umbrella, Slovakia has redressed the economic isolation that came about from the iron curtain and the nationalisms of the 30s and 40s. Membership of this Neo-Austrohungarian economic zone, Czechs, Austrians etc is powering the economy and integrating it in big infrastructure investments that will further entrench these ancient economic links.

Economic integration under the euro is not an ideology or due to romantic visions of internationalism, but because globalisation is making this a necessity. If there are countries that at some point reintroduce currencies, they will have lost in the challenge of the emerging competitors (China, India) and will face a deflationary path to irrelevance and further nationalism. One has to only look at states with independent currencies and with no european perspective. It reads like a list of basket-cases in europe that are going nowhere (Moldova, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Ukraine) So the answer to the article is probably that Slovakia would probably the least likely state to leave the Euro.

The real question also is why so much focus on the euro and so little attention is paid to the printing presses of the dollar?? That is far more newsworthy..

s

Should Slovakia quit the euro?

December 13, 2010 4:02pm
by Jan Cienski
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Slovakia is the newest member of the euro, and as the common currency lurches from crisis to crisis, there seem to be increasing doubts in Bratislava as to the wisdom of accession. (actually the epicenter of the debate is why the club is bailing out wayward members that are richer than slovakia).

The qualms come from Richard Sulik, the speaker of parliament and leader of the SaS party, a new grouping that is part of the centre-right governing coalition. In an article for the Hospdarske Noviny newspaper, Sulik denounces the policies that got Greece and Ireland into trouble, and looks fearfully at the potential threat facing Spain and Italy. In response, he says Slovakia should come up with a “Plan B” and contemplate reintroducing the koruna.

Sulik, a self-made millionaire who made his fortune in setting up a chain of copy shops, was a member of the team that helped create the Slovak economic miracle more than a decade ago by introducing flat taxes and slashing bureaucracy.

Finance minister Ivan Miklos, himself a key player in those reforms, has a different view: everything possible should be done to keep the euro strong.

Slovakia was initially thrilled to be spared the turmoil felt by its central European neighbours when the economic crisis hit the region. Flush Slovaks went cross-border shopping to Poland and Hungary in 2009 to spend their euros in countries where the national currency had plummeted in value. Foreign investors like Volkswagen were also pleased because they no longer faced currency risk in Slovakia, but still had access to much cheaper workers than in Germany.

However, Slovakia baulked at paying €800m ($1.1bn) to bail out Greece, and now faces the prospect of more demands as other peripheral eurozone countries fall into trouble.

“I think that it reflects a general frustration of the Slovak government,” says Lars Christensen, emerging markets analyst with Danske Bank. “The feeling is that when you join a club you should follow the rules, and not pay for the people who have broken the rules.”

Next door meanwhile, the Czech Republic, never an enormous euro enthusiast, has made it clear that it is in no rush to join the common currency.

“Nobody can force us into the euro,” Petr Necas, the prime minister, said recently, while Vaclav Klaus, the Eurosceptic president, has asked the government to work out if it can renege on the promise made to eventually adopt the euro when the Czech Republic joined the EU in 2004.

worth seeing

2010-12-14T00:23:00.000+01:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_zk2X92kxY#t=2m49s

The new British prime minister is politically small-minded and lacking in substance. So much for the special relationship.

2010-12-11T04:39:00.001+01:00

Britain under Tony Blair sacrificed men to fight in iraq in a big way, the UK has been supporting everything emanating from the US, with a fervour that can only be attributed to the UK getting something fairly substantial out of the "relationship".

Alas it seems that the nature of the UK's relationship with the USA seems to fundamentally be akin to that of a naive groupie and an ageing rock star... Love or commitment do not seem to be working both ways but it seems that now not even kind words are in the offing. What was the success of Tony Blair then??? the economy was a massive destructive bubble, and now accoriding to wikileaks:

David Cameron, Brown's successor as the guardian of British-American relations? The new British prime minister, American diplomats reported after a conversation with a high-ranking British banker, was politically small-minded and lacking in substance.

The only thing that can help this situation is European humility. British foreign minister, William Hague, has said: "The world has changed and if we do not change with it, Britain's role is set to decline." The new coalition in London now avoids using the term "special relationship."

well that didn't last long... and nothing of substance was gained. So why oh why is Tony Blair going around and pretending to be a great ex-statesman? He is a failed salesman that has fallen for his own pitch...

The winners and losers of the world economy

2010-12-09T22:46:00.002+01:00

Bratislava has a new mayor

2010-12-05T17:15:00.000+01:00

Bratislava has elected Milan Ftacnik as its new mayor.

He is by most accounts a modern person with an engineering background.
he just so happens to look like this however :)

Time Life magazine archive great article cool pictures of the era 1968

2010-11-28T11:34:00.002+01:00

Time Life magazine archive great article cool pictures of the era 1968

http://books.google.com/books?id=iz8EAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA22&dq=bratislava&pg=PA14#v=onepage&q=bratislava&f=false

the fear...

2010-11-24T23:54:00.000+01:00

A song for our times...

I want to be rich and I want lots of money

I don't care about clever I don't care about funny

I want loads of clothes and fuckloads of diamonds

I heard people die while they are trying to find them

And I'll take my clothes off and it will be shameless

'Cuz everyone knows that's how you get famous

I'll look at the sun and I'll look in the mirror

I'm on the right track, yeah I'm on to a winner

I don't know what's right and what's real anymore

And I don't know how I'm meant to feel anymore

And when do you think it will all become clear?

'Cuz I'm being taken over by the Fear

Life's about film stars and less about mothers

It's all about fast cars and cussing each other

But it doesn't matter cause I'm packing plastic

And that's what makes my life so fucking fantastic

[ Lily Allen Lyrics are found on www.songlyrics.com ]

And I am a weapon of massive consumption

And its not my fault it's how I'm programmed to function

I'll look at the sun and I'll look in the mirror

I'm on the right track, yeah we're on to a winner

I don't know what's right and what's real anymore

And I don't know how I'm meant to feel anymore

And when do you think it will all become clear?

'Cuz I'm being taken over by the Fear

Forget about guns and forget ammunition

'Cuz I'm killing them all on my own little mission

Now I'm not a saint but I'm not a sinner

Now everything is cool as long as I'm getting thinner

I don't know what's right and what's real anymore

And I don't know how I'm meant to feel anymore

And when do you think it will all become clear?

'Cuz I'm being taken over by the Fear

On modern food

2010-11-23T00:58:00.001+01:00

this is a fascinating video i am sure will stay with you next time you go to the supermarket

no regrets then....

2010-11-20T12:56:00.002+01:00

Essential reading on what is going on in Bratislava and Vienna (Wien)

2010-11-18T01:33:00.000+01:00

The Month of Photography Bratislava is organized as part of the European Month of Photography in Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Roma, Moscow, Luxembourg and Bratislava.

Links

20TH MONTH OF PHOTOGRAPHY BRATISLAVA - programme [PDF, 589 kB]
http://www.sedf.sk
More information about the programme
BHS – festival of returning performers and new discoveries
46th Annual Bratislava Music Festival (BHS), 19. 11. – 6. 12. 2010.
Even the most perfect recording won’t replace moments when music is being born, created in the harmony between the artist and the audience. That’s why – year after year – classical music fans await the Bratislava Music Festival. The forty sixth annual festival will once again take place between November and December. The programme will include big name artists and orchestras from 25 countries: it will be a festival of returning performers and new discoveries.

Ľubica Orgonášová is a Slovak soprano who owns the world stages. The concert at the BHS will celebrate her return after 30 years and the audience will discover that her interpretation of Mozart is without competition. She will perform with Camerata Salzburg.
A different flavour in Bratislava will be the return appearance of conductor Valery Gergiev with the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra. This magician has been marked as the most exciting talent on the stage in recent years and the richness in colour of his orchestra has no match. Some can recall that as a young man at the beginning of his starry career, he stood on the Reduta stage in 1980.
BHS is also a parade of world renowned orchestras: The Czech Philharmonic, The Hague Philharmonic, Budapest Festival Orchestra or the Krakow Philharmonic – with conductors Ken Ichiro Kobayashi, Neeme Järvi, Iván Fischer or Pawel Przytocki. Of course, it is an opportunity to welcome orchestras with an exotic flavour: The Armenian Philharmonic recently had great success at the BHS; let’s believe that this will be repeated. The World Expo in Shanghai inspired festival organisers to introduce the culture of this city here – for the first time, the Chinese Shanghai Philharmonic will visit the BHS with conductor Mahai Tang, whose artistic career started with Herbert von Karajan himself and with pianist Mélodie Zhao, who won Hummel’s Piano Competition in Bratislava.
Once again, excellent soloists will perform at the BHS: pianists Piotr Paleczny, Pavel Gililov, Henri Sigfridsson, Jenö Jandó, Emmanuel Ax, Mikuláš Škuta and Peter Pažický; violinists Václav Hudeček from the Czech Republic and Slovak Dalibor Karvay; cellists Frenchman Gautier Capuçon as well as the famed Italian, Giovanni Sollima. An evening of stars is promised by the Bratislava and world famous duo: Vadim Repin – violin, Boris Berezovskij – piano.
It must be mentioned that the BHS is acknowledging the Belgian EU presidency and has therefore invited Flemish ensemble, Anima Eterna, with the ever fresh Monteverdi’s madrigals. Since Slovakia has presidency of the Vysehrad Four, a concert is being prepared in which pieces from composers from all four countries will be heard, interpreted by artists from the V4 countries.
Apart from foreign artists, the Slovak Philharmonic, Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, ŠKO Žilina and the Bohdan Warchal Chamber Orchestra, celebrating 50 years of existence, as well as other artists, will perform at the BHS.
Audiences will certainly enjoy listening to pieces from big names whose anniversaries we are commemorating: 200 years since the birth of the darling of the Warsaw and Paris salons and the genius of romanticism, Fryderyk Chopin, as well as Robert Schumann, who worshiped the joining of music and poetry. Audiences will also be able to appreciate a master whose works are full of dazzling effects together with great pain - the excellent Gustav Mahler, who was born 150 years ago.
Once again this year, part of the Bratislava Festival will be the international stage of young interpreters, New Talent – SPP Foundation Award – this is a platform for discovering talent and presenting new artists, future great personalities in the music world.

(ip)
More detailed information at:
Links
- Bratislava Music Festival - Programme [PDF, 790 kB]
- http://www.filharmonia.sk

The president of the EU says euroscepticism leads to mercantilistic trade and foreign policy and eventually to war

2010-11-18T00:31:00.000+01:00

The president of the EU says euroscepticism leads to mercantilistic trade and foreign policy and eventually to war.

Mr Van Rompuy linked hostility to the EU, and the idea that countries could leave the Union, to a revival of aggressive nationalism.

"We have together to fight the danger of a new Euroscepticism. This is no longer the monopoly of a few countries," he said. "In every member state, there are people who believe their country can survive alone in the globalised world. It is more than an illusion: it is a lie."

The controversial comments made on Tuesday come less than a fortnight after David Cameron, the Prime Minister, declared that he was a Eurosceptic after his gruelling Brussels summit battle to block a sharp increase in the EU budget at a time of national austerity.

On China and its rise

2010-11-14T12:06:00.001+01:00

China wants a unipolar asia with itself as the leader. To this end it has facilitated a nuclear armed unstable country in the neighbourhood of ALL its major potential adversaries. N Korea to pin Japan,Pakistan to pin India(It also claims a Japanese island and an entire Indian state as its territory) and now a nuclear Iran to pin the US in the middle east.While it carries on a relentless mercantalist expansion of its economy for another decade.

To say nothing of its blatant supression of dissent and free speech including locking up of this years nobel laureate.

The real question is why many people in power in both US and EU seek to aid and facilitate this development when it is clearly not in the interests of our countries especially in the long term.

China shows no signs of a country that wants to emerge peacefully.

Slovak in America remembers.

2010-11-01T22:25:00.002+01:00

On infectious greed as a development model...

2010-10-26T20:57:00.001+02:00

One of the leading lights in the current government of Slovakia opined that Slovakia should attempt to become more like singapore or hong kong, a small extremely liberal enclave in the wider market of the EU and eurozone.

The allure of places like this should be tempered by the following facts.

they are usually accidents of history and are usually not countries proper (this is true of both Hong Kong and Singapore)
They have massive economies right next to themselves, and the rich of these countries usually uses these territories as a place to hide their money from taxes.
ermm.. this... http://video.ft.com/v/621971804001/Hong-Kong-s-property-extremes-cage-the-poor

it seems that google is about to index bratislava panoramas in its google maps service as this video shows

2010-10-18T00:10:00.001+02:00

Bratislava camera experiment

2010-10-17T23:54:00.002+02:00

Historical Pressburg- slider test from Manoo on Vimeo.

How RIGHT we are

2010-10-11T01:46:00.000+02:00

... in the income inequality sense..

Slovakia compares well to other eurozone countries in terms of debt

2010-09-30T10:24:00.000+02:00

Wall Street Journal interviews Slovak Prime Minister Iveta Radicova on the reasons why Slovakia refuses to bail out Greece with further loans

2010-09-01T20:43:00.002+02:00

Wall Street Journal interviews Iveta Radicova on the reasons why Slovakia refuses to bail out Greece with further loans

http://online.wsj.com/video/slovak-pm-wants-rules-on-defaults-for-euro-area/27574DAA-D4C6-4FE8-B835-89E4A58BDE29.html

Iveta Radicova is clearly an intelligent leader, and she explained that Slovakia is participating in an Eurozone insurance policy for the protection of the euro due to unforseen and unavoidable future circumstances.

However she politely suggested that the greek situation is not justifiable as a bailout, because it was hardly an unavoidable situation and that the indirect beneficieries of such bail-outs (often rich investors and banks) need to accept the risk of their investments and the tax payer cannot be there to pick up the pieces if the investor does not do their due dilligence. This is a point made by several economists over the years when bailouts started with Asia & Mexico under Clinton.

In other words the PM of Slovakia noted her and her country's aversion to a development model largely based on ever increasing borrowing. She expressed her solidarity with the greek people but not with the practices of their governments in the last 20-30 years in relation to debt.

This is not just words, Slovakia has a tiny national debt as a % of GDP which is even smaller than Finland and about half that of Germany at around 35%, moreover this is likely to decline further. One cound say that Slovakia is a very debt averse country culturally, and seems to be baffled by the prevalence of the credit card and other forms of indebtedness in the anglosaxon world.

The Slovak Prime Minister called for stronger regulation of euro-zone financial markets and for allowing overly-indebted countries to undergo and orderly default rather than throwing them new credit lifelines.

Earlier this year Slovakia, the newest and poorest of the 16-rich-nation currency group, caused a stir around Europe when it refused to be part of a EUR110 billion bailout for Greece, agreed on in May by euro-zone member countries and the International Monetary Fund. However it should remembered that Slovakia's share is fairly small as it is a small country of only 5 million people.

Why is Germany booming in a time of weak and state supported growth in the rest of the western world?

2010-09-01T11:12:00.002+02:00

Something quite extraordinary is going on, the values of the ageing baby-boomer generation have hit the brick wall of debt (also known as leverage).

The characteristic of most western societies from the 1980es onwards has been that a rise in living standards for some has become increasingly reliant on borrowing from tomorrow's (fewer and poorer) taxpayers. This has been true particularly of countries like Greece, Britain, Ireland, Spain, Italy and of course the USA. Their formerly "dynamic economies" now seem to have been largely based on accumulating debts and boosting spending unsustainably. The recent world financial crisis simply brought forward the day of reckoning to affect some of the perpetrators.

Meanwhile Germany took a pragmatic view during the years of euphoria, it exported the consumer goods everyone else wanted now while keeping its own consumption moderate and its already high wages in check during this period. It didn't join the party, it just served the drinks for those that were demanding the high-tech machinery and automobiles and other manufactures that germans excel at.

Clustered around germany are a number of economies that in varying degrees followed the policies of Germany. Chiefly countries like Slovakia (more than the Czechs), Poland, Sweden, Denmark etc. They are also closely linked to germany through trade. Slovakia has and is benefiting from German and Austrian investment, and in turn it has become a good customer, in the crisis the Slovak economy almost mirrored the sharp german slowdown and swift recovery

Reading now old articles carrying scathing criticism of europe in magazines such as the economist, or the Financial Times during most of the decade from 2000 up to 2008 makes illuminating reading. With hindsight teutonic/continental economies seem to shine through now as sustainable, socially responsible, and intergenerationally fair systems, and are not suffering the long-term consequences the debts have brought about and anglo economies will feel for decades. Back then the anglosaxon press at best would characterise europe slow or ageing or not as fast growing as the USA. I see no grovelling apologies for these misguided opinions of the past. It seems that Germany's policies but also its admirable investment in the east is in the best tradition of building up the future not only for its own citizens but also for its neighbours.

To back up my ideas about the lack of debt see the article below by one of the top US economists.

(Why is Germany doing well?) It's the lack of leverage

This contribution was authored by Carmen Reinhart and Vincent Reinhart.

Germany’s relatively robust comeback obviously requires a multi-part explanation. The very important dimension of its resilience in the current environment, where recoveries from the crisis, notably in the advanced economies, on the whole, have been disappointing.

Carmen M. Reinhart is Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for International Economics at the University of Maryland. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Reinhart held positions as Chief Economist and Vice President at the investment bank Bear Stearns in the 1980s, where she became interested in financial crises, international contagion and commodity price cycles.

We explored the experience of economies surrounding severe financial crises in a paper, After the Fall, presented at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s Jackson Hole Symposium. As we pointed out, Germany was a notable outlier in the now-notorious credit and debt boom of the decade prior to the onset of the subprime crisis. Credit relative to nominal GDP fell about 11 percentage points during 1997-2007; during the same period, credit/GDP rose 80 percentage points for most of the advanced economies. Germany’s gross external debt/GDP fell about 5 percentage points during 2003-2007, while that ratio climbed by about 50% for other advanced economies. Germany’s property market cannot even be loosely characterised as part of the global bubble. In fact, real house prices fell 11% from 1997 to 2007. Unlike Japan, which was the other notable outlier during the credit boom, it did not have the burden of a high public debt. As a consequence, despite rapid increases in government debt since the crisis, Germany does not have a private or public debt overhang of the historic proportions confronting most other advanced economies. It follows that a long and painful deleveraging is not on the horizon.

In this regard, Germany is the advanced economy counterpart to emerging markets in Asia and Latin America. Those economies also deleveraged during the tranquil booming years (as discussed in Reinhart and Rogoff, 2010). These emerging markets are not only recovering robustly—some are showing signs of overheating.

IBM may expand its investments in Slovakia outside Bratislava

2010-08-29T01:06:00.000+02:00

IBM may expand its investments in Slovakia outside Bratislava

The IBM company is welcome to invest in central or eastern Slovakia, the Minister Construction and Economy, Juraj Miškov, said on August 26 after meeting representatives of IBM Slovensko who told him that Slovakia was one of the five possible countries for a IBM investment in central Europe, the SITA newswire reported.
IBM representatives did not elaborate on their intentions at the meeting, SITA wrote. If the investment comes to Slovakia 200 jobs would be created next year and a total of 3,000 could develop over the next three years, the daily newspaper Hospodárske noviny wrote. IBM representatives are considering the towns of Žilina and Košice as well as other localities according to the newspaper.

IBM is one of the world's largest IT companies, currently employing almost 400,000 people world-wide. IBM has been active in Slovakia since 1990.

5% GDP - 2nd quarter of 2010 - Slovakia’s economy has best GDP growth among all countries in the European Union

2010-08-24T00:20:00.001+02:00

In the second quarter of 2010 Slovakia’s economy is posted the best GDP growth among all countries in the European Union.

The growth is spiking but it is not yet the stellar numbers achieved in the past given the international situation. Still Slovak growth looks set to remain strong for the rest of the year. Germany energising economy is a very big trade partner for Slovak business, and it certainly helped to generate the nearly 5-percent pro rata jump in Slovakia’s GDP.

In the second quarter, the country’s GDP grew by 4.6 percent year-on-year, following just slightly stronger growth of 4.8 percent in the first quarter, according to a flash estimate released by Slovakia’s Statistics Office on August 13. Total GDP in the second quarter reached €16.340 billion.

“The ongoing strength of the growth in the second quarter real GDP in Slovakia was, overall, more of a positive surprise,” Vladimír Vaňo, chief analyst with Volksbank.

In the first half of 2010, Slovak exports increased on average by 20.7 percent year-on-year, accounting for a similarly stellar recovery in Slovakia’s annual industrial production by an average of 22 percent in the first six months, Vaňo noted.

“Compared with expectations of other market watchers of around 4 percent year-on-year and our estimate of 4.3 percent, the year-on-year growth of GDP was faster than expected,” Martin Lenko, senior analyst with VÚB Banka, said.

Though the detailed structure of the growth in Slovakia’s GDP is not fully known yet, Lenko said that household consumption in Slovakia probably recorded only a moderate increase in the second quarter, similar to its performance in the first quarter, due to the country’s still high unemployment rate (mostly in the east of the country) which is falling only very slowly.

“Slovak quarterly expansion of 1.2 percent quarter-on-quarter runs ahead of results of similarly open economies of the Czech Republic or Hungary,” Vaňo said. “However, the overall eurozone economy, a destination for roughly half of Slovak exports, recorded a quarterly real growth of 1.0 percent in the second quarter. In other words, recovery of the export markets alone does not suffice in explaining the resilience of the Slovak economy.”

According to Vaňo, gauging from these comparisons as well as from the strength of the recovery in industrial production in the first half-year together point to Slovakia continuing to reap the benefits of euro introduction via a more resilient economic recovery. He believes this is explained by a competitive edge brought to Slovak exporters by the euro through lower interest rates but more importantly because of exchange rate stability and significant savings in the administrative costs of foreign trade.

“The faster than expected growth of GDP in Slovakia, and also in Germany, in the first half of the year is forcing us to revise the estimate of annual growth of GDP in 2010,” Lenko said. “We estimate that growth in real GDP will reach an average of 4.2 percent year-on-year in 2010 as opposed to our original estimate of 3 percent.”

The rosier growth numbers for Slovakia’s GDP have not yet been reflected in significant job growth in the country’s labour market.

The new train station of Bratislava - Hlavna Stanica as it will be in about 2-3 years

2010-08-23T01:17:00.000+02:00

In a previous report, (you might want to open it to have some background) we discussed the long overdue reconstruction of the Bratislava main train station that links Bratislava to Vienna.

The newly released pictures we are showing here show how the station will look. The area will be transformed from this drab communist vision of the 1980es:

Back to its original facade from 1905

The current reconstruction of the station hall will remove the 1980es exterior to reveal the historical facade of the station. This historical building will reconstructed to the original design by the architect F. Pfaff from the year 1905.

The building was originally

Opened	1848
Rebuilt	1988
Formerly known as	Pressburger Hauptbahnhof

Some original pictures for your enjoyment

Romanian gypsies in France raised again the usual talk of integration

2010-08-20T00:34:00.000+02:00

Romanian gypsies in France raised again the usual talk of integration. But it has been tried!

here is an interesting passage on roma integration

"The communists tried to integrate the Roma, and the communists were masters at social engineering.

For example, when the germans left Transylvania in 70’s and 80’s, they left behind deserted villages. The regime decided to move poor homeless roma in the empty german houses and villages, a decision in tone with the regime’s claim to offer everyone equal chances. The move didn’t work very well, the new roma tenants being unable to assure the maintenance to their new homes, and the proper look of this villages turned to derelict.
Before this, the regime tried something else. After 1945, the communists evicted and deported the rich, the former elite on the ground of being vicious capitalists . Those rich people were living mainly in the centre of the towns, obviously. In the empty houses, the regime brought again the poor, mainly roma, in an attempt to make the communist rule more palatable to the masses and ingratiate themselves with the poor. So, for decades, many roma occupied the former’s elite central houses.

Also, the regime didn’t aknowledge such notions as „gens de voyage”. If you were seen wandering the streets, a Militia officer would come and start questioning, „comrade, why are you on the street at this time of day? You don’t work? Then come along comrade to the section, we will find an appropiate working place for you”. "

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,712496,00.html

2010-08-19T18:55:00.002+02:00

http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,712496,00.html

Slovak economy is revving up - the Return of the Tatra Tiger

2010-08-04T09:15:00.001+02:00

According to the Financial times:

notes/corrrections:

There are some persistent misconceptions about Slovakia and Czech republic that need to be addressed:

The region these countries inhabit is central europe, not eastern europe, this is correctly recognised by the german press. The term Mitteleuropa existed before world war 2, and describes the bulk of the former austrohungarian empire, and today the countries: Germany, Poland, Czech republic, Slovakia, tiny Slovenia, and parts of Croatia, Austria, and Switzerland. The term eastern europe is applied wrongly to any country that was conquered by Stalin's Soviet union (including most of Austria) after the war. This level of ignorance about geography by some editors in the anglosaxon press is worrying, they tend to confuse the historical term "eastern block" with the geographical term eastern europe. It makes one sound fairly uneducated to confuse the two, especially given that Moscow is geographically in europe...

Slovakia's former centre-left government kept the vast bulk of the economic reforms that have made Slovakia such a success. The problem was not economic policy, but a very corrupt parties being included in the former coalition (the nationalists) and Vladimir Meciar's HZDS which is now facing oblivion. I believe that the nationalistic leanings of Robert Fico, the former PM, and his burning ambition to be PM lef him to a bad choice of partners.

Slovakia is a very open economy, and a very small country (5 million) but you know, small is beautiful :) , both of which mean that its economy is affected alot by the gyrations of the global economy, big highs and big lows. This is less true of Poland for example because it is a huge country. As a result the former tiny-bit-left-off-centre government threw in the kitchen sink to stabilise the economy when the big gyrations of last year where affecting stability disproportionally. That was a good idea given that growth was bound to come back to more normal levels as it has. This was not mismanagement. Generally the economic consensus of Slovakia is far to the "right" of those in Austria for example...

the rest of the article about the likely positive future of Slovakia into a path of convergence and prosperity is fairly accurate. Although the recently aired idea of stepping onto the accelerator maniacally to become a Singapore of europe is overdone. Singapore is a city state and really is the place rich asians stash their wealth legal or laundered... If the giant chinese economy next door didn't exist, neither would Singapore... Its a parasitic state and not many of them are sustainable or desired in this world.. The world does not need more places where one can launder drug-money...

http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2010/07/09/return-of-the-tatra-tiger/#more-58946

"Slovakia is reclaiming the new tiger among central and eastern European markets after a boom in industrial output and car manufacturing boosted its economy.

Industrial output rose by 30 per cent on year-on-year basis, with the chemical industry rising by 50 per cent and the carmaking sector gaining 63.7 per cent. Electronics production did even better, rising by 85.3 per cent in May, mainly thanks to Sony and Samsung factories based in the country.

The Slovak economy, dependent mainly on exports, was once already called the “Tatra Tiger” after its GDP rose over 10 per cent in 2007 and outperformed its regional rivals.

Yet the economic crisis hit the country hard and joining the euro in 2009 also had costs. Unemployment rose as Slovak workers suddenly became more expensive than those from Poland and Hungary.
The government of the day intervened to ease the The budget deficit was as high as 6.8 per cent of GDP.

But now Slovakia has a chance to regain that promising status and attract more investors. The economy grew by 4.8 per cent year-on-year in the first quarter - the fastest growth among all EU members. GDP was $115.3bn in 2009 and is expected to rise by 3.2 per cent this year.

Slovakia is now ahead with important economic reforms, which are expected to contribute to the recovery and further economic growth.

The country’s new centre-right government, led by Iveta Radicova, was appointed on Friday. Its first task will be a decision on the €750bn European safety net designed to help debt-strapped countries."

Labour code in Slovakia - the protection of workers

2010-07-31T10:44:00.000+02:00

The ease of hiring and firing employees is a very tortured subject. All around the world employees are seeing their rights and working conditions removed without their consent consistently for about 20 years now. This seems to be the result of globalisation as we are seeing that most workers in most european countries lose out to employers. Note i am not referring to the USA here as what is going on there is horrifying as uninsured workers are rendered even homeless. The US is heading in a Dickensian direction for people that are not exceptionally educated connected intelligent or are inheritors of wealth through birth or marriage.

Employers for their part are behaving in less and less honourable ways. They employ illegal immigrants when they can at low wages and hide them from the authorities, in fact in southern EU countries undocumented workers seem to have exploded in numbers, when these people have no right to work in the EU countries.

Iveta Radicova and the Slovak government need to recognise that some decent living standards should be afforded to workers. It is this point exactly that was lost in the USA and in China and that is why life in Europe is so much more decent uniformly around most of the continent. This is also the reason behind vastly lower crime rates in the EU compared to the US.

There are no easy decisions to be taken with the labour code, but one thing is for sure, employers that either avoid creating a decent working environment and act as if poorer people aresomehow dirty.

Allowing a society to become very unequal creates a huge number of problems that are not obvious at the start. Lobby groups will always push to extend their powers over workers, but converting the entire working population into temporary workers is not the way to strengthen the slovak economy.

Additionally the reason behind the lowering of FDI has nothing to do with competitiveness anymore as the general FDI flows are much reduced by the fear of deflation and overcapacity.

Germany needs to be our example here. It has managed to produce workers that are well rewarded and yet competitive. In other words, the country needs to be competitive through the competitiveness and home grown companies in Slovakia, not competing with China who will keep workers most repressed.

Lowly paid workers with no certainty in their lives are discouraged from starting families and investing in themselves, becoming trapped by their circumstances. A Walmart-isation if you want.

The model should be Denmark, not the USA, the USA is a huge country with big debts and a totally different culture. Entepreneurialism is a good thing but that is the only thing the USA still gets right.

Iveta take a trip to nordic countries, Sweden, denmark, finland, and even Austria. Low populations, good competitive companies, and yet highly prosperous. The future of the Slovak economy is in following their example, ever since China and India entered world trade it has meant that Slovaks will never be as cheap or as crushed.

see also

The Shocking Conditions Inside China's Brutal Foxconn Factory

Chris Chang, M.I.C. Gadget | May 19, 2010, 4:47 PM | 9,758 | 75

AAPL Jul 30 2010, 05:20 PM EDT

257.25	Change	% Change
257.25	-0.86	-0.33%

Se

The Foxconn suicide mess all started from job stress. Within half a year, there were 9 suicide attempts, with 7 confirmed deaths in Foxconn’s factory in Shenzhen, China.

In order to find out what’s really going on in that factory, the Southern Weekly, described by The New York Times as China’s most influential liberal newspaper, sent an amateur reporter to slip into Foxconn’s factory to pose as a worker and the mission is to find out the truth about the suicide cluster.

The deaths of the workers in Foxconn have caused a lot of noise in the IT world. Macs, iPods, iPhones and iPads are all assembled in Foxconn’s factory of China. And now, without any explanations, workers who are assembling these gadgets have gone crazy and some of them killed themselves. After the sixth suicide attempt happened in April, Southern Weekly’s amateur reporter, Liu Zhi Yi, arranged to slip into Foxconn’s factory ... while another senior reporter, Yang Ji Bin, conducted interviews with the senior management. Together, they have found out the real living conditions of Foxconn workers.

...

Every single one of the workers is living through life like a clock. They work, they get off, they go to sleep. And the next day, they repeat the same thing again. The reporter thinks that the only way to stop this cycle is for them to end their lives.

If you are wondering if they are happy for producing Apple products, the answer is No. They are only happy on the 10th of every month, that’s the day when they get their salaries. On the 10th, the ATM machines are fully crowded with workers and their salaries start from $900 Chinese Yuan (about $130).

There’s one special agreement workers could choose to sign for before starting to work. The workers could sign a voluntary overtime working agreement so the factory is not responsible for their long hours of working. Anyway, they still have public holidays just like anyone.

Next, revolutionary and magical gadgets including iPhones and iPads are assembled by these workers and almost all devices in the market come from them. Most of the workers have no comments about the popular Apple products since they have never dreamed of owning the gadgets since their salaries are only enough to buy a knockoff version. While the gadget nerds are discussing how to spend their money on Apple’s iProducts, these workers are discussing about how to spend their money on those cheap knockoff iPhones.

This Southern Weekly reporter also had some chats with the workers during meal times. Some of them told him that they admired those workers who got sick leave approvals so they could get some rest. They also discussed their jobs to know more about the dangers. When they talked about the suicide cluster in the factory, they are speechless and some of them even made some jokes of those suicide attempts.

...

Moreover, the workers always dream of being rich someday. To fulfill this dream, they would use part of their salaries to buy lottery tickets. They also put their hopes on horse-racing gambling too.

Friendship is a big problem in the factory. There are some workers who do not know the names of their roommates even though they have worked together for a long time.

...

What’s more, the workers are superstitious in some ways. Previously, there have been some accidents like a worker having his finger cut-off during the production of devices. Now, a few workers in the factory think that the machines are cursed, so it’s dangerous for them to use the machines for their jobs. Also, one of the workers said that he constantly wanted to drop something on the floor so he could bend down to pick it up while working. Due to the long hours standing (up to 8 hours), if he had the chance to lie or squat down on the floor, it would be the most enjoyable moment during the work day. So, he could get the chance to rest.

My Conclusion:

With over 400,000 of workers in the Foxconn factory of China, it will be a mess if workers are mistreated badly. It’s definitely a pity for them to carry out mass production of iProducts while not being able to afford one. Some of them even killed themselves from the working pressure and I wish Foxconn could produce a better working environment like providing shopping malls, cinemas or karaoke to entertain them.

Destress rooms are probably not enough to fix their stress and I’m afraid it’s a silly idea since it may lead the stressed worker to kill someone else. Also, Foxconn needs to give more human rights to their workers and show more concern for them. Foxconn, please don’t treat your workers like dogs.

If Foxconn does not solve the problem, there will be more suicides. The workers definitely need beer, romance, and slightly higher pay. To put it simply, just make them happy. Let’s hope we don’t see a 10th jump… [Southern Weekly]

The incoming conservative government

2010-06-20T23:08:00.000+02:00

The conservatives are coming...

Bela Bugar ----- Jan Figel-----Iveta Radicova--Richard Sulik

Generally a fairly centrist lot, the christian party (KDH) is the most left wing of the coalition, Then its the hungarian/slovak party of Most HID. Jan Figel of the christian party, Iveta Radicova of the SDKU which is the largest party of the coalition and which will be ruling, and finally Richard Sulik the inventor of the 19% tax in Slovakia when he was working for SDKU in the 90s and 00s.

I feel that this government needs to be aware of how many of the certainties of the 90es in economics are being challenged and have changed. They need to show that they have understood that the broad based employee-class prosperity must not be hurt because that underpins the country's economy.

Tight and conservative regulation of the banks is also vital.

leftish SMER might face split in opposition...

2010-06-16T23:01:00.001+02:00

A briefing on what is going on in Slovakia:

Slovakia has a very open economy, its economy went though a big change of fortunes during the crisis due to the cyclicality of cars and other consumer goods Slovakia produces.
The policies of the left have not hurt the slovak economy (if anything they provided a keynesian soft landing from the shock of the turmoil since 2008 and the gas crisis). SMER may have been barking up the wrong tree with some pet projects, but the economy is again revving up even before the election.
The economy here in Bratislava has fared much better than any place i can think of, nation debt is only 36% of GDP which is the lowest in the eurozone, even Finland's...(44%). The economy is actually roaring ahead by conventional standards 3.4 is now being revised to 3.7% gdp growth for 2010, and within six months or so Slovakia will be flirting with 5% gdp growth again. It is going to be much faster than any comparable EU member and certainly fastest in the eurozone.
Some in the right claim that Fico destroyed the economy, that is just rubbish, he has been quite reasonable and cautious. He didn't fight corruption that is true, but the main economic policies are intact since 2000...they have delivered growth now the right needs to put the economy on an investment in infrastructure trajectory, use EU funds more effectively, and leave the labour code alone, it is moderate as it is. The big question is how the average Slovak can achieve higher salaries by making the potential of Slovak citizens shine through with even better education, language skills and a general modernisation. Crucially they need to cut bureaucracy.
A woman PM (check out communist era pic...) will send all the right signals abroad, Radicova will act as a Slovak Obama for Slovakia's image.

Central bank of Slovakia forecast: Slovak economy will grow by 3.7 percent in 2010

2010-06-16T18:18:00.001+02:00

and likely to accelerate further to 4.3% in 2011
positively steaming away in these days of no growth or negative growth for others...

Centre right wins

2010-06-15T07:14:00.000+02:00

It seems that our predictive ability is uncanny

My concern remains at the insistence of the right to make hiring and firing extremely easy. This is something that most decent societies take a moderate position on. It rewards unscrupulous employers at a time of high unemployment, and SDKU should not underestimate how much this might help to send them to opposition once again... If they allow again employers to keep employees as temps forever...

The mixed bag of results from the election mean the following

We are likely to get the first Slovak female PM, ms Radicova (pictured) given that the guy hugging her is the leader of the hungarian minority party, chances are that relations with Hungary are going to be vastly improved
Robert Fico (PM) is still popular by a united left of centre. His party resembles PASOK in greece of the 1990es to 2001. Corrupt to a certain extent, enough to keep itself relevant, and keep the right on its toes.
The right has won the election in the sense that the 4 parties that form the right (Christian non-democrats, Hungarians, Christian democrats, SAS neoliberals) are fairly moderate and would provide a welcome counterbalancing interregnum for Fico during which he can reconsider some of his extremist excesses (not so much in policy but in style).
Most of the press is anti-Fico perhaps overly so. The left should be respected and the country needs a serious newspaper of the responsible left.
Preliminary results of Slovakia’s general election, released Sunday by the Slovak Statistics Office, are likely to lead to the replacement of Prime Minister Robert Fico’s left-of-center cabinet with a business-friendly right-of-center coalition that will try to improve the country’s recently strained relations with Hungary. (However the Hungarian side seems to be on a nationalist crescento of its own making)
The new ruling coalition will likely include politicians who represent Slovakia’s large Hungarian minority, potentially helping Slovakia mend fences with its southern neighbor.
Although Mr. Fico’s Smer-Social Democrats party came first in Saturday’s elections, taking 34.8% of the vote, it won’t likely find suitable coalition partners in the 150-seat parliament.
Preliminary results showed the Slovak Democratic and Christian Union, or SDKU, with 15.4% of the vote, followed by the liberal Freedom and Solidarity Party, or SaS, with 12.1%, the Christian Democratic Movement KDH with 8.5%, and the Hungarian minority party Most-HID with 8.1%. Final election results are expected late Sunday.
The new parliament will thus be dominated by right-of-center parties led by the Christian Democratic SDKU, and the Hungarian minority party Most-HID. This coalition of four that will also include the Christian Democratic KDH and the liberal Freedom and Solidarity Party, and will hold a total of 79 parliament seats, compared with 62 seats to be held by Smer. The remaining nine mandates will be in the hands of the extremist Slovak Nationalist Party, or SNS (who's vote halved and nearly didn't make it to parliament!).
The Freedom and Solidarity Party (SAS) was formed last year by Richard Sulik, an economist who designed the flat-rate tax system introduced by the previous SDKU-led governments that ruled in 1998-2006. Mr. Sulik’s party, supported by mostly young voters thanks to its Internet-centered campaign, will be a novice in the Slovak parliament. Its agenda that includes the decriminalization of cannabis use for medical purposes and registered partnerships for same-sex couples is likely to face strong headwinds in this conservative country.
Nevertheless the solid result of Mr. Sulik’s party, the third-largest grouping after Smer and SDKU with 22 seats in the incoming parliament, showed voters’ discontent with the more established two junior partners in Mr. Fico’s outgoing leftist coalition cabinet.
Slovakia will have the first woman PM! A very good signal to be sent abroad. The Christian Democrats SDKU led by, run by Iveta Radicova, a sociology professor and a former presidential candidate, has long opposed Slovakia’s current labor regulations introduced by the Smer-led cabinet, which stipulate minimum wage requirements and limit employers’ freedom to dismiss employees.
Talking to reporters in a live television broadcast in the small hours of Sunday, Ms. Radicova, likely to become the first-ever female prime minister of Slovakia, sounded upbeat about her country’s prospects.

“Slovakia chose the path of responsibility that will help tackle its current problems,” Ms. Radicova said, referring mainly to lackluster economic growth and high unemployment.
“We’ll again turn Slovakia into Europe’s tiger,” she said, referring to the country’s reputation during the double-digit economic growth period in 2007 and 2008.

This blog believes that Robert Fico should lose power in Slovakia

2010-06-08T10:10:00.000+02:00

This blog believes that Robert Fico should lose power in Slovakia for the following reasons

his government contained inappropriate parties due to their extreme corruption, both Meciar and Slota are not fit for public life. Although Smer is far less corrupt itself, it is still responsible for the conduct of its partners as it hand picked them.
Slovakia is not drawing EU funds fast enough, that is a national crime.

We like SDKU warts and all, as well as KDH, SAS has a lot to prove mainly its deregulatory rhetoric and how it squares with the international financial crisis

Good news as the slovak voters seem set to throw corrupt Vladimir Meciar party out of parliament

2010-06-07T09:54:00.001+02:00

A recent poll found that the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) would be left standing in the cold outside parliament’s doors with only 4-percent support. The party has anything but lived up to its name, it is a corrupt personal fiefdom of Vladimir Meciar and it is about to be booted out of parliament.

Just one day earlier the Agency for Research of Public Opinion (AVVM) published its own poll, reporting similar results for Smer, SDKÚ, KDH, SaS, Most-Híd and SNS. But according to the AVVM poll, SMK would join HZDS in the club of also-rans after the 2010 election.

That result, however, was not affirmed in a poll conducted by the Focus agency released on May 20 in which Smer polled just over 35 percent and all eight of the aforementioned parties made it over the 5-percent threshold.

Ján Baránek, an analyst with the Polis polling agency, said that the polls show as many as four parties swimming in very dangerous waters: SNS, HZDS, SMK and Most-Híd.

“As far as I can remember, it’s a situation we haven’t had before, prior to a parliamentary election, and that complicates any reflections and deductions about the [composition of] the future parliament, not even mentioning the future government,” Baránek said

Martin Slosiarik, an analyst with the Focus agency, pointed out that the results of polls published in late May do not yet reflect voters’ perceptions and decision-making flowing from the controversy over Hungary’s dual citizenship legislation and the increased tensions that have entered the Slovak election campaign and are becoming a leading topic.

“This could considerably move voter’s preferences, but we do not yet have polls that show which parties could gain from it and which could lose,” he said.

Eyes on HZDS

Analysts agree that Smer is sure to capture the most votes in the election but what is less certain is its ability to team up with other parties who cross the threshold to form a ruling coalition in the next parliamentary term. Baránek says that Smer might be quite concerned about such a scenario, noting that this is probably why it has started even tougher, more negative campaigning.

“But the biggest threat lies in HZDS not making it into parliament,” Baránek said, adding that Smer, even with its high percentage, might have serious problems forming a government without HZDS taking at least some seats in parliament.

Will HZDS be able to climb over the threshold? That, according to Slosiarik, is one of the major questions to be decided in the election, one which the polls cannot answer.

“HZDS’ electorate has been tunnelled by Smer; it succeeded in attracting some portion of their voters,” Slosiarik told The Slovak Spectator, adding that HZDS does not have the potential to attract new voters and can only depend on support from its most faithful supporters. Slosiarik hypothesises that a low voter turnout, which could reach a historic low of about 50 percent, would aid HZDS.

On the other hand Slosiarik notes that SNS could benefit from the controversy over Hungary’s dual citizenship law, a factor not yet reflected in the recent polls.

“Preferences for SNS are moving not far from the dangerous 5 percent mark and this is what can now mobilise their potential voters,” said Slosiarik, adding that even a double-digit result for SNS would not surprise him.

Right hopes for a Czech scenario

The most recent polls confirm a strengthening position for Slovakia’s centre-right parties. Their hopes were also raised after the Czech parliamentary election lifted that country’s centre-right parties, including two newcomers to the political scene, who together received enough votes to outpace the ruling social democratic party. Despite the Czech Social-Democratic Party (ČSSD) capturing over 22 percent of the votes, it seemed clear that the next government would be formed by three centre-right parties. This result represented a significant drop in support for ČSSD, since it had received 32 percent of the vote in the last election, in 2006, Czech Radio reported. ČSSD leader Jiří Paroubek announced that he will stand down as the party’s leader.

According to Slosiarik, there is the potential for the right wing of Slovakia’s political spectrum to repeat the Czech scenario on June 12 and he believes it is mainly due to the success of Slovakia’s centre-right parties and particularly SaS, a new party on the Slovak scene, to attract a large number of new voters.

“That possibility wasn’t there at the end of last year, but now it seems that the centre-right parties have managed to address new voters,” Slosiarik said, adding that a problematic question in this scenario is whether SaS will be able to actually mobilise its potential voters.

Baránek agrees that the phenomenon of what he called “the internet voter” might play a role in the election, meaning mainly young voters from bigger cities and from the middle class.

“We don’t have any experience with the internet voters, whether they actually really stand up and go to vote,” he said.

The success of the Czech centre-right parties, according to Slosiarik, was based on Czech voters actually voting for the parties they had expressed support for in the polls.

“In Slovakia, mainly in the case of Most-Híd, there is the possibility that voters will be weighing the chances of the party [to make it into parliament] before actually voting for it, considering whether their vote would be wasted,” Slosiarik said.

The analysts generally agree that the possibility of Slovakia’s centre-right parties repeating the success of their Czech counterparts mainly depends on whether all five of these parties – SDKÚ, KDH, SMK, Most-Híd and SaS – make it into parliament and what the final position of HZDS turns out to be.

The Hungarian question

Conflicts that erupted in SMK in 2009, and the subsequent founding of Most-Híd party by a group of renegades from SMK, have also spiced up the political scene in Slovakia. Two weeks before the elections, both ‘Hungarian parties’ are struggling to attract enough support to cross the 5 percent threshold and analysts are reluctant to definitively evaluate their chances. Both Baránek and Slosiarik said they believe that at least one of these parties will be in parliament after the election.

“Higher turnout helps Most-Híd, while lower turnout helps SMK,” Baránek said, explaining the possibilities.

SMK, as the traditional ‘Hungarian party’ with what is thought to be a stronger core electorate, could benefit from the dual citizenship controversy, as Slosiarik says it represents tradition for ethnic Hungarians.

“In the case of Most-Híd, it’s all up to the Slovak part of that party’s electorate, whether they transfer their declarations of support in the polls into an actual election turnout,” Slosiarik said.

Slovakia is to give almost 1 billion dollar loan to Greece only after strict conditions are met

2010-05-28T08:05:00.001+02:00

Of course the following reflects the election cycle in Bratislava...

Slovakia will wait until Greece adopts savings measures to cut the budget deficit before disbursing its share of the emergency loan aimed at saving the Balkan country from default, Prime Minister Robert Fico said.
“We want to see Greece doing its homework first, we want to see laws being approved by parliament,” Fico said at a press conference in the Slovak capital Bratislava. “Personally, I don’t trust Greeks.”
Finance ministers from the 16-member euro region approved an 80 billion-euro ($105 billion) aid package for Greece, with another 30 billion euros pledged by the International Monetary Fund. The share of Slovakia, which adopted the euro in 2009, would amount to about 800 million euros spread over three years, according to the country’s Finance Ministry.
Greece yesterday pledged to push through 30 billion euros of budget cuts, equivalent to 13 percent of gross domestic product, in return for loans at a rate of about 5 percent.
Slovak lawmakers will need to amend existing legislation to allow for the loan, Fico said. A special session to do so will probably be held by a new assembly after the June 12 general election, he added.
SDKU, the largest opposition party, is against the Slovak participation in the loan and will seek a special parliamentary session before the election to discuss the issue, Iveta Radicova, the party’s election leader, said today according to the Sme newspaper.

Slovak PM says will not hike taxes after election

2010-05-02T16:30:00.000+02:00

as reported by Rueters:

* Prime Minister Robert Fico sees no higher taxes
* Personal, corporate income tax steady at 19 percent
* In response to world crisis May hike top-end health, social security contributions by a small amount.

Slovakia will not hike taxes if the leftist SMER party forms the next government after a June general election, Prime Minister Robert Fico said on Friday, adding such a step would hurt the business environment.

The euro zone member state introduced a flat 19 percent tax rate in 2004 to overhaul its complex tax system, and the tax reform has helped bring higher budget revenues in recent years.

"We do not plan to increase taxes, none of us wants to hike taxes for corporates," Fico told a meeting of the Employers' Association (RUZ). He added the personal income tax will remain untouched as well.

Thanks to wide-ranging market reforms, Slovakia became a magnet for foreign direct investment worth billions of euros, mainly into the car and electronics sectors, which helped to boost the economy to among the European Union's fastest-growing before the economic crisis crushed foreign demand.

Fico, a tireless campaigner with a strong chance to form the next cabinet with one of its current coalition partners or with one of the opposition factions, dismissed employers' call to cut health and social security taxes.

"We will not lower health and social security contributions, there's no economic room for this," Fico said.

Fico said he was considering higher health and social security contributions for higher-income earners, as a measure which would help to boost budget revenues and back the planned fiscal consolidation.

Slovakia, using the euro zone currency since January 2009, has pledged to axe its fiscal deficit to the EU's official limit of 3 percent of gross domestic (GDP) by 2012, down from 6.8 percent in 2009.

The government aims to cut the gap to 5.5 percent of GDP this year.

Here are some pictures from the recent opening of a new square in Bratislava and sizeable new park and recreation area by the danube.

Slovak national anthem goes showbiz

2010-05-02T12:38:00.000+02:00

This is funny in a time of heightened nationalism all over the world... :)

Slovak national anthem used as fanfar at Seoul Drama Awards 2009 - The organisers of a televised awards show in South Korea have apologised to Slovakia for mistakingly using the Slovak national anthem as background music on the show, which took place in Seoul in September of last year.

Slovak Ambassador in Seoul Dusan Bella has received a letter from the organisers in which they apologised for the 'inappropriate' use of the Slovak national anthem, adding that this happened by mistake, according to Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Peter Stano.

"We apologise for this from the bottom of our hearts, and we assure you that there was no intent whatsoever," reads the letter. "Thank you for telling us about this terrible mistake. We promise that no such thing will ever happen again."

According to Stano, the ministry has accepted the explanation, recognising from the very beginning that the Koreans had no bad intentions in unwittingly using the anthem. He added that the organisers of the awards ceremony obviously picked it for a serious event due to its pleasing melody.
(TASR, SLOVAKIA TODAY / ILLUSTRATION PHOTO)

debts of EU countries...

2010-04-29T15:04:00.000+02:00

Slovakia GDP likely to be 4.1% in 2010 & 4.5% or more in 2011

2010-04-22T13:05:00.003+02:00

Economies in the CEE region are expected to grow 2.8 % in 2010 and 3.4 % next year, reads the latest World EconomicOutlook drawn up by the International Monetary Fund. (IMF)

Similarly to western economies, the prognoses for individual countries in the CEE region vary in dependence on the impact of the economic crisis but the GDP in Slovakia is supposed to rise the most, namely 4.1 % this year (which is the most within central Europe and the euro zone) and 4.5 % in 2011.

This is obviously a fantastic prospect when despite the difficult times Slovakia and Bratislava in particular are recovering strongly. This wconfirms our long-term view that the durability of Slovakia's policies are helping the small nation converge with the living standards of Germany and other open and competitive economies in the eurozone.

Greece heading for a default

2010-04-16T11:04:00.000+02:00

So the focus was almost entirely on Greece and there are less people feeling that there will be a contagion as the greek situation is special due to the recklessness of the previous 9-10 governments. The apparently precarious position of its banks added to negative sentiment built up from the country’s funding problems and the disjointed response from eurozone leaders. At these yields deficit reduction is unworkable and it appears that external support will be necessary, though the government continues to insist otherwise. Trichet’s intervention and the confirmation that the ECB will be extending its relaxed collateral rules – essential for Greek banks – stemmed the widening tide and brought spreads back in during the afternoon. Greece’s spreads are now trading around 435bp and the Markit SovX WE is trading at 95bp, with most of the active constituents improving in tandem.

There is no possibility that Greece will default on its debts and no reason to doubt Germany's commitment to an EU pledge to help Greece, the European Union's monetary chief said on Thursday.
Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn told a conference in Brussels that Greek default was not an issue, saying: "There will be no default."

Rehn said he believed Germany was fully committed to doing its part to help Greece, if Greece requests financial assistance, despite the threat of a challenge to the aid package via Germany's courts.

The 16 countries that share the euro single currency agreed the details last week of how they would help Greece if required, including providing bilateral loans in proportion to their economic weight in the euro zone.
Germany would be expected to provide around 8.4 billion euros, according to the package, which will total around 45 billion euros -- 30 billion from the eurozone and 15 billion from the International Monetary Fund.

"I have no reason to doubt the German commitment if needed and if aid were to be requested," Rehn said, despite the possibility of a legal challenge in Germany to German involvement in the bailout mechanism.
Rehn also reiterated his intention to give more teeth to repeatedly breached rules on budget discipline and increase economic surveillance across the bloc to avoid any repeat of the fiscal crisis suffered by Greece.

Reasons why the EU and its the greater european region has good prospects and the Asian mirage is heading for a fall

2010-04-04T04:19:00.000+02:00

If you read the financial press there is currently an obsessive focus on the problems of europe, the invincibility of China, with the US assumed to be part of the winners club of nation. This is a myopic vision. For one high commodity prices will be a permanent bugbear of China that will put an ever increasing strain on its growth. Basically Chinese growth has peaked and will continue to fall gradually. China will end up in slow growth before achieving anything like first world status. Its extreme demographics are also harbingers of possible unrest with massive implications for investors there. Asian growth is based on

Andrea Moneta, chief executive of Aviva a huge insurance conglomerate, argues that most people continue to underestimate the potential of Europe and tend to forget that it is by far the world’s largest market for financial products. Europe and its financial backyard such as Russia included, has a population of more than 800m people and is growing. About 40 per cent of the world’s personal wealth is held in Europe. Europeans have personal financial assets of $62,000bn and this is expected to increase by a further $12,000bn during the next five years. And 13 per cent of Europeans’ wealth is invested in life assurance and pensions.

Aviva expects life assurance and pension assets currently totalling $8,100bn in Europe to grow by $1,700bn in the next five years, outstripping other regions such as North America and Asia.
Europe is thus not only a huge market with promising growth opportunities but has the added advantage of a stable regulatory environment, says Mr Moneta, who before joining Aviva 18 months ago was a senior executive at UniCredit. In terms of political, regulatory and even currency risks, Europe still enjoys a lower risk profile than many other regions round the world. All in all, says Mr Moneta: “We see Europe as a good growth story without taking big bets in Asia.”

The rise of China and why its all a big mistake and bubble

2010-04-02T02:13:00.000+02:00

It is not often that the chief economist of Goldman Sachs writes about china in the Financial Times newspaper.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/dc113472-3cfd-11df-bbcf-00144feabdc0.html

What they broadly say is:

greek crisis is largely fear of the future that started when unthinkable events like Lehman Brothers collapsed which now has led investors to question everything. Generally the greek furore will die down but the euro will somehow never recover from this.
China is going to continue its meteric rise
USA should continue to allow China to grow despite continuing to be an undemocratic dictatorship with an aggressive military
USA must stop threatening a trade war if china doesn't play ball
We should all let china export its deflation-inducing growth to the world and learn to love China,
there is no bubble in china, its all good

Overall the whole position is highly suspicious, it is offered as a prediction of what is going to happen when it looks more like what Goldman Sachs would like to happen and where it has bet its money. The fact that they are writing articles like this in the FT, betrays alarm that things are not going the way they have bet.

Here are some points that need to be considered:

Dictatorships don't end up well in the long run, their internal contradictions build up over time and then cause instability, but this is not going to be a story of peaceful and admirable democratisation like in central europe. Asia is still fairly barbaric in terms of values and there are many military implications because of China's rising military power. These will come to a head in the near/medium future. China is not switzerland, it may well become aggressive one way or another especially if it realises that it is a good way to keep internal stability in the absence of jobs and growth.
People like goldman have shown a lemming-like quality in their investing so much on the china story just as they invested so much on the previous US real estate bubble before. For various reasons china's future is going to be far less predictable than its past in the last 30 years, Goldman et al seem to have bet the house that things will continue exactly as they have in the past. It has to be remembered that the last time Goldman was badly caught out and would be bankrupt now if it wasn't for the american taxpayer saving Lehman. Their judgement is impaired, this is not the goldman of the past.

There is a massive bubble in China, it seems to be using its savings to produce even more capacity to export to the west at a time when the west does not want to import anymore. China's mercantilism is glaringly obvious now, and its savings in the good times are artificially propping up its economy now (that is if you trust chinese statistics...). The degree of this lopsided hydrocephalic development is underappreciated. The biggest problem china has is that not a lot needs to go wrong for a vicious cycle to be set in motion, creating the mother of all panics as the people that have plowed investment into china may pull all that out quite suddenly. This realisation may be the reason for Goldman to be wheeling out its chief economist in the media. More to calm investors rather than offer insight. There is a distinct Enron-like press management feel to the whole thing.
China benefits from the free trade religion in policy in a massive way, trouble is that a big trade war would probably tip china over very rapidly especially as all players seem to have concluded that they all want to pursue beggar you neighbour policies leading to this massive trade war. The biggest loser out of this by far would again be China.

There is no political support for current policies towards China, it was never strong but now it is heading very low, and sooner or later policy will shift to match it.

Linear development on unsustainable trends over very long periods of time is not how the world has experienced history. Its exactly when a nation looks unassailable that folly prevails (look at Japan...).

Slovakia will have elections in June 2010 - Our predictions on the Slovak election

2010-03-24T02:44:00.004+01:00

Most likely many people are wondering what happens next. (also enjoy the old pic of Robert he must have spent ages on that hair ) terrible :)

Here are some unscientific predictions (but then again remember there is no such thing as a scientific prediction)

Robert Fico the current PM will be re-elected (90%) but probably with more right-leaning coalition partners.
Taxes: "He emphasised that the government had not increased taxes (his measures are fiscally neutral) and added that any new government taking office after the June parliamentary elections must continue this trend. "
Vladimir Meciar is heading towards political oblivion without the 5% to make it to parliament (good riddance).

I think that eventually Fico will have to raise some more taxes somewhere because of the worldwide crisis, but it will not be by much.

In other news, results of a telephone survey carried out by Polis Slovakia agency show that most people would welcome seeing a leftist-rightist government after the parliamentary elections in June. The survey was carried out on March 13-16 of this year on a representative sample of 1,280 respondents Based on its results, 38 percent of those polled want Slovakia to have a leftist-rightist government after the elections, 18.7 percent of the respondents want a rightist government and 12.9 percent of people a leftist one. More than one in five participants do not care about the orientation of the government after the elections, while one in ten respondents could not answer the question.

I generally believe that Fico got some big an important things right (euro, taxation etc) and alot of smaller things wrong and very wrong. The coalition parties he chose were the worst possible.

Kia announced it would invest 100 million Euros to build a new engine production facility in Slovakia

2010-03-19T12:54:00.001+01:00

South Korean automaker Kia Motors said Thursday it would build a new engine production facility in Slovakia. The overall investment including production technologies will exceed EUR 100 million and will add the Zilina region more than 270 direct jobs, the company told SITA news agency.

“I am very glad we managed to obtain another investment worth more than EUR 100 million for Kia Motors Slovakia to build an engine production facility, thus increasing our overall capacity to 450,000 engines per year. We confirm our intention of long-term development of our activities in Slovakia. Our goal remains an effort to positively influence employment in the region of Zilina as well as overall economic growth of Slovakia,” President and CEO of the Zilina car company In-Kyu Bae said.

Kia Motors to invest 100 million euros to build new engine plant in Slovakia.

Kia announced it would invest 100 million Euros to build a new engine production facility in Slovakia (Europe). The company expects to launch the operations at its brand-new engine production plant in 2011 and reach full annual production capacity of 150.000 units by the end of 2012.

Kia did not disclose any information regarding the engines it plans to produce at the plant, but it is believed that the company will build highly advanced four-cylinder powerplants for its next-generation vehicles.

The new production facility will also provide engines for a plant run by Kia’s sister firm Hyundai in the neighbouring Czech Republic, which is located only 40 miles from the Kia’s Slovak factory. The investment is said to add 270 new jobs to the 2.700 people already working at existing Kia plant.

According to President and CEO of Kia Motors Slovakia, this 100 million euros investment will increase Kia’s overall annual production capacity to 450.000 engines, which confirms the brand’s strategy to develop Kia’s activities in Slovakia in the long term.

Kia has been operating a 1 billion euro automobile manufacturing plant in Slovakia since December 2006. The plant has an annual production capacity of 300.000 vehicles and currently builds three different vehicles; two for Kia and one for Hyundai.

The automaker uses same production lines to build the all-new Sportage and Hyundai ix35 (known as Tucson in the USA) crossovers, both destined for European market. It also manufactures three variants of popular cee’d: the 5-door cee’d, cee’d wagon and 3-door cee’d).

USA and UK between 2000-2008

2010-03-16T04:44:00.002+01:00

The economist needs to change... How the right has become discredited by this crisis and how this shows by the increasingly desperate articles in the economist magazine.

2010-03-12T02:43:00.001+01:00

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15663362&source=hptextfeature
The economist needs to change...

I think the www.economist.com has reached the limits of its ideology, because we live in the world that applied the economists' creed since 1979 and its now plain to see that from a european perspective, europe has lost by following the advice of the Chicagoschool/Economist/FTet al nexus.

In the name of free trade witht he US, we europeans have been sold:

crap sub-prime mortgages as saving financial products and lost money on those
american shares that seem extremely bubbly to me
we are lobbied to buy shoddy and diseased US food (e.g. chlorine bathed sick chickens etc..)
finally got the stupid credit card bug of not spending what we earn (worst case the UK)
we are being told what to do with our holidays and lives (i think anglosaxons don't really like their families and therefore keep themselves busy with work to avoid family life...) Personally I take many many weeks paid holiday a year and i dont work for the state. My life has meaning beyond work..
american-style politics of a presidential type (e.g. Blair) which shows what a mess it brought about in the UK creating 2 right-wing parties to choose from - hardly real democratic choice, its more like a "managed" political system - what the ancient greeks would recognise as an oligarchy....
US-based and influenced IMF emanating advice consistently bad and inappropriate but always suitable for US exporters' interests.
US-style healthcare although it is such a colossal disaster no civilised country wants to touch it and even the US is trying to move away from it via Obama., The economist was singing its virtues about a year and a half ago in a nauseating series of articles "special reports" which i would call advertorials.

I firmly believe that the pendulum needs to shift back quite a bit because the economist has become a religious publication in the sense that it doesn't change its mind when circumstances change. It is starting to sound like those breathless self-congratulatory and mindlessly campaigning press releases by US corporations.

I can personally testify to the fact that for most people as other comments described as well, the way of life in most european countries being infinitely more pleasant and purposeful than in the UK and the US (i have lived in all of them).

i can't help feeling that either economists' writers are rather sad individuals that should get out more, find a purpose in life and certainly consume far less...

(i am off for some cycling on the danube between Vienna and Bratislava and a coffee and croissants with my gf as i ve been given friday off by my employer because i did some good work
-gdp ticker counts this as minus... if i got a bonus and spent it on child labour employing products from China GDP ticker would say Plus- ergo stupid indicator and moronic free market zealots).

get a life seriously... Nobody thinks Thatcher was brilliant anymore, Adam Smith railed about morality in our financial interactions much more than he mentioned the invisible hand.

Anyone can grow if they inflate huge speculative bubbles... its fraud... like the anglo economies and poor Spain that now has concreted over all its beaches to create empty villas because it tried to be Britain through a housing based economy.

Tim Geithner, treasury chief of the US, defends hedge funds and rich investors and needs to be removed from his position..

2010-03-11T13:03:00.000+01:00

Geithner warns of rift over regulation
By Martin Arnold and Sam Jones in London and Nikki Tait in Brussels

Published: March 10 2010 20:50 | Last updated: March 10 2010 20:50

Tim Geithner, US Treasury secretary, has delivered a blunt warning to the European Commission that its plans to regulate the hedge fund and private equity industries could cause a transatlantic rift by discriminating against US groups.

A letter sent by Mr Geithner this month to Michel Barnier, Europe’s internal market commissioner, makes it clear that the European Union is heading for a clash with Washington if it pushes ahead with what the US – and Britain – fear could be a protectionist law.

The debate over the shape of future financial regulation has reached a critical point in Brussels. Diplomats were on Wednesday night moving closer to a compromise on the sweeping overhaul that has angered the industry and worried institutional investors.

- tough, they shouldn't be trying to destabilise governments that are sorting out the mess they made in the first place , they should stop speculating and get a real job producing something -

The draft EU directive would impose tighter restrictions on hedge funds, private equity and other alternative investment funds. It has caused alarm in the City of London, where some in the industry say it is a thinly veiled attempt by France and Germany to undermine the UK’s dominance of financial services.

If European diplomats reach agreement at a meeting on Thursday, the directive will be put to EU finance ministers when they convene on Tuesday. The proposed rules will require approval by EU lawmakers.

Mr Geithner’s one-page letter, sent on March 1, stresses the need for the US and Europe to work together on regulation of the financial services industry.

- The US does not regulate, their idea of regulation is putting wolves guarding sheep. Self regulation died with the crisis! -

Mr Geithner warns that US hedge funds, private equity groups and banks could be discriminated against if proposals to restrict the access of EU investors to funds based outside the 27-country bloc are included in the final law.

So-called “third country” elements of the directive would force non-EU funds to comply with the new rules if they wish to market themselves at all within the EU.

- We europeans had quite enough of american financial products, they are tainted by fraud because the SEC is toothless and generally only cares about business not citizens. Not in the EU sorry! -

2020 - Ten years of real convergence to go!

2010-03-11T09:25:00.000+01:00

In a very thoughtful paper "Strategy for Development of the Slovak Society" produced at the behest of the slovak cabinet, it is a document that outlines how Slovakia will achieve the continuation of the remarkable convergence it is already enjoying with the average northern european countries of the old EU (15).

Slovakia’s economic performance can come considerably close to the average of economies of the EU by the year 2020, says the paper called Strategy for Development of the Slovak Society that the Cabinet acknowledged on Wednesday.

The recession, a consequence of the global economic crisis in 2008, thwarted
development aspirations of the local economy. Notwithstanding this, the country can expect improvement following a period of two or three years necessary for a return to pre-crisis levels.

If conditions are fulfilled that are necessary for utilizing the improved global recovery, the Slovak economy may converge with its GDP per capita to the tune of 75-80 % compared to the EU15 countries

and to almost 90 % of the EU27 by 2020. The employment rate in Slovakia could near the levels of the EU15 and wages could reach 57 % of salaries in this group in the same time period.

All this implies strong growth for Bratislava in the next 10 years..

New law that seeks to further clean up politics in Slovakia

2010-03-08T13:57:00.000+01:00

The law will allow any Slovak to challenge the origin of anyone else's assets over 460,000 euros ($629,200). A prosecutor will be able to order the person to disclose where the funds came from. Courts will have the right to confiscate assets of unclear origin.

Basically if challenged any Slovak citizen will have to be able to explain how he/she got their assets. This will also make bribery more difficult.

This should make life very difficult for the mafia and certainly turn Slovakia into a country organised crime actively avoids.

The 150-seat parliament saw an unusual consensus when 112 deputies voted to change the constitution, necessary to allow adoption of this law, which was endorsed later by 116 votes.

We think its a step in teh right direction but more needs to be done. Slovakia is already "cleaner" than ITALY or Greece in terms of corruption but the role-model is Austria.

The PIIGS will not sink the euro - Economist Intelligence unit & BBC link to Joe Stiglitz discussing

2010-03-07T03:58:00.002+01:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/gavinhewitt/2010/02/s_6.html

http://tiny.cc/bratislava

2010-03-03T02:22:00.004+01:00

Please check this out http://tiny.cc/bratislava

also a tour of Bratislava across time http://www.flickr.com/photos/bratislava_byt/4390113043/in/set-72157623526064294/

Oh dearism

2010-03-02T23:47:00.003+01:00

If you have not seen this, do

also

Slovakia Bratislava Commentary

Slovakia, Poland, the Euro,

Shrinking banks and who they will affect most (look on the right)

What Robert Fico needs to answer for before he tries to become Slovakia's Prime Minister again

New government for Slovakia by March 2012

The centre of Bratislava is being redeveloped

Credit reating agency affirms A+ rating and stable outlook - Slovak central bank chief predicts euro fiscal union

Sade Adu in Bratislava

Wages and buying power:gap between Austria and Slovakia/Czech/Poland shrinking

Well paid jobs at banks and insurance companies

Net earnings: much smaller gap

Convergence of wages

Receptive to investors

What is the politics of Slovakia and the Euro as well as the eurozone/EU

Slovakia Growth statistics Expenditure on GDP (% real change)

Slovakia Growth statisticsExpenditure on GDP (% real change)

An American who has lived in Slovakia since 1991 talks about living here

Reuters: Credit agencies reaffirm and upgrade Slovakia

important graphs to understand which bits of the eurozone are healthy and which are not

On the euro crisis

Article in the economist, Bratislava's position on the greek crisis

AU Optronics - Taiwan in major investment in Slovakia

Who is doing well in the Eurozone and who is stagnating

Their Excellencies the ambassadors of Denmark, Norway and Netherlands to Slovakia are all female and cyclists

Geeky, how the new train station in bratislava will be linked up.

Slovakia supports likely new head of ECB, Draghi

The Slovak University of Technology Selects Geneza’s MediaINFO Server for Dissemination of Digital Textbooks and Notes

Almost 40% of big business in Slovakia wants to hire and expand

IMF on Slovakia and its economy

Pre-2008 economic crisis level of economic confidence in Slovakia

Investment comes to Slovakia

Interesting article

Digital books transform the way slovak students get study materials

GDP per inhabitant (EU average=100)

Bratislava culture

Slovak GDP is accelerating still further edging towards 5% growth next year from 3.4% currently

UK outside the euro, has it been a good move?

Deutsche Telekom AG chooses Bratislava as its global financial centre

Angela Merkel, Germnay's chancellor is coming to Bratislava

Growth and debt, check out the performance of Slovakia particularly GDP for 2011

Volkswagen announces it will double its investments in Slovakia to a billion euros (1.36 billion dollars) in the next five years

Volkswagen’s Slovak unit has reported that the VW mother company plans to give it €1 billion over the next few years to boost car and car parts production in Slovakia.

Brilliant concert in bratislava

The Danube region

Paris - Bratislava by train and investments in Slovakia - updated

2011 UPDATE

to be replaced by

NEW INVESTMENTS IN SLOVAKIA

Transportation links and proximity to other eurozone countries' markets seen as strategic reasons to invest in Slovakia by asian investors.

Why Bratislava? Why Slovakia?

BBC - Slovakia leads eurozone growth

Finance minister of Slovakia in english talking to Martin Wolf of the Financial Times interviewed

Is Estonia a sign of what’s to come for the euro?

Corruption trends

2011 predictions - how will the new year turn out?

DANUBEBUS - A water bus will join Danube regions

Slovakia and the crisis as compared with other Central european countries and balkan countries

Slovakia is a big beneficiary of the euro and will therefore stay in it forever

December 13, 2010 4:02pmby Jan Cienski | Share

worth seeing

The new British prime minister is politically small-minded and lacking in substance. So much for the special relationship.

The winners and losers of the world economy

Bratislava has a new mayor

Time Life magazine archive great article cool pictures of the era 1968

the fear...

On modern food

no regrets then....

Essential reading on what is going on in Bratislava and Vienna (Wien)

Links

BHS – festival of returning performers and new discoveries

Links

The president of the EU says euroscepticism leads to mercantilistic trade and foreign policy and eventually to war

On China and its rise

Slovak in America remembers.

On infectious greed as a development model...

it seems that google is about to index bratislava panoramas in its google maps service as this video shows

Bratislava camera experiment

How RIGHT we are

Slovakia compares well to other eurozone countries in terms of debt

Wall Street Journal interviews Slovak Prime Minister Iveta Radicova on the reasons why Slovakia refuses to bail out Greece with further loans

Slovakia Growth statistics
Expenditure on GDP (% real change)

December 13, 2010 4:02pm
by Jan Cienski
| Share