Stoil Topalov

This is the question, which is heard over and over again in the financial spheres after another stock exchange week continued its fall. Real estate prices are also falling and politicians cannot unite together against the crisis.

This week the global stock exchanges gave us only “falling” news. Dow Jones started the week with 7000 points for the first time since 1996 and until the end of the week it fell with another 6% and ended up with 6547 points. In London, the FTSE 100 ended the week with 5% loss, or 3523 points. Nikkei – the Japanese stock exchange fell with 2.3% and closed with 7173 points. In Greece, the Athenian stock exchange closed with 1474 points and this way it losses since the beginning of the year became 17.47%.

On Thursday the European Central Bank lowered the interest rate to 1.5% - the lowest level in the bank’s history. The economic data from the Euro-zone are becoming worse and worse and inflation looks like heaven compared to the upcoming deflation.

Some researches published in the UK show serious falls of real estate prices with average value of 10% in most European countries – exception are only Greece and Holland. This explains why the Greek government decided to sell and loan more than 30 government properties, in order to gather ?800 million. Also, this week the Greek government decided to sell the national airline Olympic to Marfin Investment Group, which had made an offer the buy the flying operations, the technical support base, and the land service for ?177.2 million.

In Greece, the chances of a common political frontline against the financial crisis are becoming less and less. The Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis initiated a series of meetings with Party representatives in the Parliament, in order to ask for support about the unusual measures, which his team is going to offer. None of the Leftist Parties in Greece supported him, because the financial crisis is their big chance to come back to power again. Barack Obama was faced with the same problem but his democratic party succeeded to get enough votes so his stimulus plan can be passed without even one republican vote. Unfortunately, this is very unlikely in Greece.