“Cataclysm” is, like most words of its type, of Greek derivation. A Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, told us nearly 2,500 years ago that one thing above all was certain: “all things change”.
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There is apprehension that the grim news from Brussels, Berlin, Rome, Paris and Athens could lead to a weakening, partition or breakup of the Eurozone, and perhaps the European Union itself.
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A small article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal brings back memories. In the article, John Coustas, CEO of container operator Danaos Corporation, reflects on the things that went wrong.
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There are at least three "received truths", as one of my college professors sarcastically called them, that, in the world of shipping, may be open to challenge. One is that last year's Gulf of Mexico oil rig explosion had nothing to do with the rest of the shipping industry, being only about wells and rigs -- and not ships
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A visit to a Greek shipowner's yacht is a characteristic feature of Posidonia, Greece's iconic shipping jamboree, held every two years in what a local banker calls "the cradle of democracy and denial."
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Posidonia is famously a gathering place for those interested in taking the industry's pulse. This year, in the face of the nation's greatest economic crisis since the hungry 1940s, three questions are being asked: 1) will Greek shipowners leave Greece; 2) will Greece eventually default; and 3) will Greece go back to the drachma. The answers so far, based on a highly unscientific poll: 1) most will stay; 2) probably; and 3) no.
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Greek bankers here at Posidonia are so far shtum, silent and otherwise not talking, at least in my hearing, about repayment of the recent euroloan, or bail-out. Will it ever be repaid? Can it be repaid--ever? Should it even be repaid?
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I'm taking a few days off before the stress of Posidonia, the biennale of shipping staged for the past 40-some years by Greece.
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I have referred to the effect of Greece's current agonies on its maritime sector. Not least, the crisis' impact threatens the continued viability of what cognoscenti (lawyers, Greek shipowners and parliamentarians) call Law 89.
This dandy ordinance was the brain child of some famous shipping tycoons in the 1950s., names available on request.
Essentially, it provides for a broad exemption from tax for a "Law 89" company, which is essentially one engaged in the shipping business.
Obviously, tax breaks for the elite, certainly including shipowners, will now come under scrutiny.
Greece's current Pasok (Socialist Party) government is under growing pressure to soak the rich, and this includes repeal of Law 89 and other
so-called incentives.
Word on the Akti Miaouli (the famed street of maritime dreams fronting on Piraeus harbour)
is that the Papandreou government, and the…
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To make his fateful appeal for emergency financial support, Greek Prime Minister Papandreou chose - unintentionally - a small island in the Dodecanese that was once the base for a significant Greek trading fleet.
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