The incentive to falsify official statistics are clearly very strong in weaker political jurisdictions. and governments would be loathe to "open up their books" to independent auditors in a similar fashion to large U.S. and European companies.
The spreads question apparently contains an element of trust: investors can be more comfortable with company representations rather than the country in which they are domiciled.
More conclusions already examined by Minsky.
By Tony Barber in Brussels
Published: January 12 2010 13:59 | Last updated: January 12 2010 17:23
Greece was condemned by the European Commission on Tuesday for falsifying data about its public finances and allowing political pressures to obstruct the collection of accurate statistics.
In a damning report published as the eurozone grapples with its worst financial crisis since the euro’s launch in 1999, the Commission said figures from Greece’s were so unreliable that its budget deficit and public debt might be even higher than government had claimed last October.
At that time Greece estimated its 2009 deficit would be 12.5 per cent of gross domestic product, far above 3.7 per cent predicted in April. It revised its 2008 deficit up to 7.7 per cent from 5 per cent.
The data shocked and angered Greece’s 15 eurozone partners and prompted swift downgrades of Greek debt as well as an increase in the premium demanded by financial markets to buy Greek bonds
No comments:
Post a Comment