agency supervised by the European Central
Bank and designed to put an end to the reign
of existing agencies, which were currently crit-
icized by Greece, as well as other European
countries, for their “ratings”. It is commonly
accepted now in Europe that rating agencies
did not only prove to be totally unreliable dur-
ing the economic crisis, but, by employing
obscure procedures, caused successive spec-
ulative attacks against both Greece and the
European South.
•
Effectively dealing with excessive market
deregulation, insufficient supervision and the
lack of transparency, as well as flawed incen-
tive systems that gave rise to opportunism and
recklessness.
•
The imposition of new regulations on the oper-
ation of hedge funds, which have become
instruments of financial speculation.
•
The drastic reduction of leverage, with the aim
of putting a reign on speculation, along with
the imposition of stricter rules and limitations
on short-selling, which nurtures bearish specu-
lation phenomena.
•
The imposition of stricter regulatory controls on
financial institution policies, especially in
regard to the criteria and the methods used for
assessing credit risk.
•
The issuance of a euro-bond.
If these measures are not promoted, all national
efforts are doomed to fail.
Trade with Greece
2
We need to rekindle inter-
national cooperation
immediately, in order to
take concerted action for
reforming the financial
markets’ operation, based
on a series of commonly
accepted rules, which will
be universally applied.
”
“
