We dont need help, we dont need help.. erm... HELP

[martin]

So the Govt has now caved in after all those denials !!!!!

just wondered if instead of giving the money to the P Govt why not divide it up among all the people ...a few hundred thousand each..that would create a real boom and get Portugal out of the mess as everyone would run out to the shops and buy new furniture, cars etc

[joeysoap]

sounds familiar. two irish government minisers denied that ireland was asking for a bailout when the imf/ecb were in dublin discussing the terms. don't know how portugal got into this mess but doubt that it was all the banks fault. irish banks were lending money to tom dick harry and anybody who could walk in a straight line for 10 seconds to purchase hotels in bangkok, budapest, london etc etc. apartments? how many blocks can you built? golf courses? how many do you want ? helicopters? only the best.

yesterday it was revealed that county managers in ireland ( there are 29 of them) have up to 42 days holidays a year + 9 bank holidays. some counties in ireland have less than 50,000 population. the mind boggles. and these guys expected the imf/ecb to go easy on them? jeeeezzz.

[ANDY]

Gold Makes Dead Portuguese Dictator Top Investor Without Gains
By Joao Lima - Jul 22, 2010 12:00 AM GMT+0100
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Business ExchangeBuzz up!DiggPrint Email . Portugal owns more of the precious metal relative to the size of its economy than any euro country, accumulated mostly during Salazar’s 36 years in power using savings and money from exports including tungsten and canned fish. Source: Sipa via AP Images


Play VideoJuly 12 (Bloomberg) -- Gijsbert Groenewegen, a partner at Gold Arrow Capital Management, talks about the outlook for gold and the U.S. dollar. Groenewegen speaks with Matt Miller and Carol Massar on Bloomberg Television's "Street Smart." (This is an excerpt of the full interview. Source: Bloomberg)

Attachment: Chart of gold price; and euro, Portugal stock index, bond A pedestrian walks past Portugal's finance department in Lisbon. Photographer: Mario Proenca/Bloomberg
Former dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar might have been remembered as Portugal’s best investor had central bank rules allowed the country to benefit from his shrewdest trade: Europe’s biggest gold pile.

Portugal owns more of the precious metal relative to the size of its economy than any euro country, accumulated mostly during Salazar’s 36 years in power using savings and money from exports including tungsten and canned fish. Gold’s 26 percent advance in the past year leaves Portugal holding an increasingly valuable asset, though one the indebted government can’t touch because the law prevents proceeds from going to state coffers.

“With the increase in the price of gold, you have some nice booked gains, but you can’t cash them in,” said David Schnautz, a strategist at Commerzbank AG in London. “It’s a buffer for an extreme-case scenario.”

Portugal’s budget deficit is three times the limit for euro members and its debt will equal 84 percent of gross domestic product this year. Standard & Poor’s gives Portugal the second- lowest credit rating after Greece among the 16 euro countries.

The 382.5 tons of gold that Portugal holds are valued at about $14.7 billion, or 6.8 percent of GDP after converting into euros, Bloomberg calculations and International Monetary Fund data show. Italy’s gold equals 4.8 percent of its economy, followed by Germany with 4.2 percent. Greece’s gold reserves equal 1.4 percent of GDP.

Gold Ignored
Moody’s Investors Service, which cut Portugal’s rating by two notches on July 13, only looks at gold reserves in cases where governments need to generate “hard” currencies such as dollars and euros. That doesn’t apply to Portugal, said Anthony Thomas, a sovereign debt analyst at Moody’s.

Portugal’s gold is managed by the Bank of Portugal, whose law says proceeds from sales must be placed in a reserve account and can’t be transferred to the state treasury. The bank pays a dividend each year to the government from earnings on interest and securities. The dividend paid for 2009 was 203 million euros ($260 million), the central bank said in a July 2 e-mail.

A Bank of Portugal official in Lisbon declined to comment on the management of the gold reserves, as did a Finance Ministry spokesman in the Portuguese capital.

Salazar made his name in Portuguese politics as a budget disciplinarian at the Finance Ministry before serving as prime minister from 1932, when he developed the authoritarian “Estado Novo” or “New State,” until 1968. He died two years later at the age of 81.

Wolfram Sales
“In exchange for exports, the Portuguese state sought to obtain scarce goods and services during World War II, and secondly convertible currencies or gold,” said Joao Paulo Avelas Nunes, a professor at Universidade de Coimbra in northern Portugal and author of a book on the Estado Novo and its relationship with the wolfram industry.

Wolfram, the mineral from which tungsten is obtained, soared in value when the war started in 1939 as its resistance to heat and impact made it ideal for weapons production. Portugal is Europe’s third-largest producer of tungsten after Russia and Austria, according to U.S. Geological Survey data.

Portugal had 866 tons of gold in 1974, when the dictatorship of Salazar and his successor Marcelo Caetano ended, according to the Bank of Portugal. In 1950, Portugal’s gold reserves totaled 171 tons, World Gold Council figures show.

When the regime was overthrown, along with the military junta in Greece, Portugal was one of the poorest countries in western Europe and was fighting a war in its African colonies.

Decade Advance
Gold is headed this year for a 10th consecutive annual advance, the longest winning streak since at least 1920, and traded at a record $1,265.30 a month ago in London. Since then, it’s declined 5.8 percent to $1,192.50.

Central banks and governments added 425.4 tons to reserves last year to take the total to 30,116.9 tons, the most since 1964 and the first increase since 1988, data from the World Gold Council show. Gold represents 82 percent of Portugal’s national reserves, the highest percentage among the 20 biggest holders of the precious metal, according to the gold council.

“The surprise to anybody outside of the gold market is that Portugal stuck by their reserves when other euro-zone countries were actively selling,” said Jessica Cross, chief executive officer of London-based commodities research company VM Group, which has tracked gold sales by central banks for 17 years. “Portugal happens to be in the right place at the right time having large amounts of gold.”

The Bank of Portugal has said it sold batches of the metal every year from 2003 to 2006 under an agreement between European central banks that caps gold sales.

“Portugal’s reserves go back a long way,” said Antonio de Sousa, president of the Association of Portuguese Banks and a former governor at the Bank of Portugal. “Beyond the symbolic value often attributed to gold, it’s an asset like any other. It’s a question of portfolio management.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Joao Lima in Lisbon at jlima1@bloomberg.net

[ANDY]

July 30, 2010
A Postcard from Europe
Portugal: Falling Back on Gold


Portugal has struggled to rein in its budget deficit, but its huge gold reserves are a source of comfort.
PIIGS. That’s what the international media calls the five European countries of Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain after spiraling debt in these economies forced the world to reset its global recovery clock, and instead rethink the viability of the euro itself. Having always been a quiet performer in Europe, Portugal found itself unexpectedly thrust into the spotlight this year when attention was drawn to its budget deficit, which climbed to 9.4% in 2009. But with 382.5 tons of gold in its coffers, does Portugal have a safety net?

Even as stock markets remain volatile, gold has been the shining star for nervous investors. The precious metal has spiked 11% so far this year and 26% in 2009. Portugal’s 382.5 tons of gold are managed by the Portuguese central bank, Banco de Portugal, and no matter how in debt the country is, a state law prevents the government from laying its hands on the cache or from directly profiting from the assets. Instead, the central bank pays the government an annual dividend each year from any interest it accrues from the gold or any proceeds from sales. Last year, according to Bloomberg, that windfall was $260 million. With this, Portugal has an enviable gold horde, assets that were built up from the time of its former dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar’s authoritarian rule. And there is no doubting the preciousness of the asset. Even as Moody’s cut Portugal's sovereign debt ratings by two notches to A1 from Aa2 in July, gold futures surged to $1200 an ounce. But just how useful is gold to Portugal now? The country has the largest gold reserves among any euro nation. It provides the ultimate buffer against any economic eventuality, and an economic meltdown is a real threat considering that Portugal’s bloated deficit might eventually harm its growth prospects.

The country is not a Greece yet, but its problems are similar. Banco de Portugal itself has warned that the economy might grow just 0.9% in 2010 and as little as 0.2% in 2011, stating that there is a 50% chance that the country will re-enter recession next year. The Portuguese government is working hard on its fiscal management, having introduced a number of ‘austerity’ measures through tax hikes, salary pullbacks and spending cuts, in a bid to cut the country’s deficit to 7.3% of the gross domestic product (GDP) this year and 4.6% of the GDP in 2011. Despite Salazar’s follies, he was prudent in accumulating all that gold. Perhaps, current Prime Minister Jose Socrates might take a page from Salazar’s playbook. But for now, this “P” in the PIIG is plated in solid gold.