The big finds are quickly gobbled up by the elitists and sucked into some megacorporation (if it didn't originate there)... And in alot of cases they will keep things that would be good for mankind as a whole from gaining traction as it would have a negative effect on their bottom line .... buying out competition ....
Not saying I don't agree with his views ... Looooonnnnggg term
But I don't respect the guy one bit
Just another greedy elitist using his political connections to line his pockets ...
War on poverty shit is a complete joke and a front for the globalistt elitists acting like they care ....
Are their any honest billionaires anymore that aren't a whore to the one party system in some wy shape or form ... Probably not or very rare ... Just a complete joke at this point ... If u wanna be really rich you gotta sell your soul otherwise you working against a stacked deck
----------
In September 2005, Giustra flew Clinton to Kazakhstan as part of a three-country philanthropic tour. Clinton praised the Kazakh autocrat for "this statement you have made about opening up the social and political life [of Kazakhstan]". Within two days of the former President's meeting with Kazakhstan’s president Nursultan Nazarbayev, Giustra's fledgling uranium company signed preliminary agreements giving it the right to buy into three uranium projects controlled by the state-owned uranium agency, Kazatomprom. "The monster deal stunned the mining industry, turning an unknown shell company into one of the world’s largest uranium producers."[13][14]
In 2006, in the months after Mr. Clinton's visit helped secure Giustra's company the right to mine uranium in Kazakhstan, Mr. Giustra donated $31.3 million to the Clinton Foundation.[13] This figure is at variance with the one released by the William J. Clinton Foundation (on the 18 December 2008), as part of an arrangement with President-elect Barack Obama. It reports Frank Giustra as giving between US$10–25 million.[15]
In February 2007, a company called Uranium One agreed to pay US$3.1 billion to acquire UrAsia. Giustra, a director and major shareholder in UrAsia, would be paid $7.05 per share for a company that just two years earlier was trading at 10 cents per share.[13]
In May 2007 Giustra was one of four chairs of the 2006 Global Leadership Awards dinner in New York where Clinton was honoured along with out-going UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
In June 2007, Giustra joined with Clinton to launch the Clinton-Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative to address global poverty. Giustra committed $USD 100 million plus half of what he makes in the resource industry for the rest of his life. Carlos Slim Helú, the Mexican businessman and richest person in the world, made a matching contribution and Giustra is expected to enlist others in the Canadian resource industry.
But I don't respect the guy one bit
Just another greedy elitist using his political connections to line his pockets ...
War on poverty shit is a complete joke and a front for the globalistt elitists acting like they care ....
Are their any honest billionaires anymore that aren't a whore to the one party system in some wy shape or form ... Probably not or very rare ... Just a complete joke at this point ... If u wanna be really rich you gotta sell your soul otherwise you working against a stacked deck
----------
In September 2005, Giustra flew Clinton to Kazakhstan as part of a three-country philanthropic tour. Clinton praised the Kazakh autocrat for "this statement you have made about opening up the social and political life [of Kazakhstan]". Within two days of the former President's meeting with Kazakhstan’s president Nursultan Nazarbayev, Giustra's fledgling uranium company signed preliminary agreements giving it the right to buy into three uranium projects controlled by the state-owned uranium agency, Kazatomprom. "The monster deal stunned the mining industry, turning an unknown shell company into one of the world’s largest uranium producers."[13][14]
In 2006, in the months after Mr. Clinton's visit helped secure Giustra's company the right to mine uranium in Kazakhstan, Mr. Giustra donated $31.3 million to the Clinton Foundation.[13] This figure is at variance with the one released by the William J. Clinton Foundation (on the 18 December 2008), as part of an arrangement with President-elect Barack Obama. It reports Frank Giustra as giving between US$10–25 million.[15]
In February 2007, a company called Uranium One agreed to pay US$3.1 billion to acquire UrAsia. Giustra, a director and major shareholder in UrAsia, would be paid $7.05 per share for a company that just two years earlier was trading at 10 cents per share.[13]
In May 2007 Giustra was one of four chairs of the 2006 Global Leadership Awards dinner in New York where Clinton was honoured along with out-going UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
In June 2007, Giustra joined with Clinton to launch the Clinton-Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative to address global poverty. Giustra committed $USD 100 million plus half of what he makes in the resource industry for the rest of his life. Carlos Slim Helú, the Mexican businessman and richest person in the world, made a matching contribution and Giustra is expected to enlist others in the Canadian resource industry.
Errr mark Cuban
Only modern recently made super rich guy off the top of my head ... That I can think of ... that I respect
I guess many guys in science and tech world too
I'm talking more along the lines of the guys that got rich through finance/investing and using their connections/political ties etc to line their pockets ... Get insider info/sweetheart deals etc..
Only modern recently made super rich guy off the top of my head ... That I can think of ... that I respect
I guess many guys in science and tech world too
I'm talking more along the lines of the guys that got rich through finance/investing and using their connections/political ties etc to line their pockets ... Get insider info/sweetheart deals etc..
No Bazooka As ECB Backtracks: Draghi Won't Pursue Yield Caps, To Sterilize Bond Buys In SMP Continuation
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/05/2012 - 08:15
2s10s 2s10s Bond European Central Bank Eurozone Germany LTRO Money Supply
In what can only be interpreted as a huge disappointment for the ECB and Draghi yielding to German demands, Bloomberg has leaked what likely will be the final plan of the ECB tomorrow, which contrary to previously rumors stating that the ECB will pursue yield caps, or even just buy bonds on an unsterilized basis, appears to be a huge dud:
ECB BOND PLAN SAID TO REFRAIN FROM SETTING PUBLIC YIELD CAPS
DRAGHI'S BOND PLAN SAID TO PLEDGE UNLIMITED, STERILIZED BUYING
ECB PLAN SAID TO FOCUS ON GOVT BONDS, MATURITIES UP TO 3 YEARS
ECB SAID TO CONSIDER SELLING BONDS IF CONDITIONS NOT MET
ECB PLAN SAID TO STRESS CONDITIONALITY OF ANY BOND PURCHASES
ECB BOND PLAN SAID TO HAVE BROAD COUNCIL SUPPORT - but not unanimous, as Germany again objects
The keyword above is highlighted: sterilized, which simply means for those who are unaware, such as all the algos taking the EURUSD higher, that the ECB's entire overhyped plan is nothing more than a continuation of the Securities Market Program, or the SMP, which has been dormant for over 25 weeks, and which was deactivated because it did not work! Because sterilized means no new money enters the system, something which for Europe is unacceptable considering Spain alone is now seeing $100 billion in outflows each month.
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/05/2012 - 08:15
2s10s 2s10s Bond European Central Bank Eurozone Germany LTRO Money Supply
In what can only be interpreted as a huge disappointment for the ECB and Draghi yielding to German demands, Bloomberg has leaked what likely will be the final plan of the ECB tomorrow, which contrary to previously rumors stating that the ECB will pursue yield caps, or even just buy bonds on an unsterilized basis, appears to be a huge dud:
ECB BOND PLAN SAID TO REFRAIN FROM SETTING PUBLIC YIELD CAPS
DRAGHI'S BOND PLAN SAID TO PLEDGE UNLIMITED, STERILIZED BUYING
ECB PLAN SAID TO FOCUS ON GOVT BONDS, MATURITIES UP TO 3 YEARS
ECB SAID TO CONSIDER SELLING BONDS IF CONDITIONS NOT MET
ECB PLAN SAID TO STRESS CONDITIONALITY OF ANY BOND PURCHASES
ECB BOND PLAN SAID TO HAVE BROAD COUNCIL SUPPORT - but not unanimous, as Germany again objects
The keyword above is highlighted: sterilized, which simply means for those who are unaware, such as all the algos taking the EURUSD higher, that the ECB's entire overhyped plan is nothing more than a continuation of the Securities Market Program, or the SMP, which has been dormant for over 25 weeks, and which was deactivated because it did not work! Because sterilized means no new money enters the system, something which for Europe is unacceptable considering Spain alone is now seeing $100 billion in outflows each month.
Fed chief Bernanke took advantage of low rates to refinance puff_>>
Bernanke's latest financial disclosure form, released Thursday, shows he refinanced his Washington home in 2011. He took out a 30-year mortgage with a fixed 4.25 percent rate, replacing one taken out in 2009 that carried a 5.375 percent rate. Both mortgages were valued at between $500,000 and $1 million. The government requires top officials to estimate only ranges for their financial assets rather than an exact figure.
Read more.......
http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/housing/story/2012-09-06/bernanke-refinance/57651740/1
Bernanke's latest financial disclosure form, released Thursday, shows he refinanced his Washington home in 2011. He took out a 30-year mortgage with a fixed 4.25 percent rate, replacing one taken out in 2009 that carried a 5.375 percent rate. Both mortgages were valued at between $500,000 and $1 million. The government requires top officials to estimate only ranges for their financial assets rather than an exact figure.
Read more.......
http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/housing/story/2012-09-06/bernanke-refinance/57651740/1
THE VANITY FAIR NEW ESTABLISHMENT 2012
Tim Cook and Jonathan Ive, Apple
Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google
Jeff Bezos, Amazon
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook
Jack Dorsey, Twitter, Square
Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz
Marissa Mayer, Yahoo
Ben Silbermann, Pinterest
Elon Musk, SpaceX, Tesla Motors, SolarCity
Reid Hoffman and Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn
Adele, singer, songwriter
Joss Whedon, writer, director
Dick Costolo, Twitter
John Lasseter, Pixar, Walt Disney Animation Studios
Terry Gou, Foxconn
Lady Gaga, singer
Preet Bharara, attorney
Herb Allen III, Allen & Co.
The Hacker
Yuri Milner, DST Global
Natalie Massenet, Net-a-Porter Group
Seth MacFarlane, writer, director, producer
Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures
E. L. James, author
Ashton Kutcher, actor, investor
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, the Row
Paul Graham, Y Combinator
Christopher Nolan, director
Jeremy Stoppelman, Yelp
Salar Kamangar and Robert Kyncl, YouTube
Will Ferrell, Chris Henchy, and Adam McKay, Funny or Die
Dan Doctoroff, Bloomberg LP
Louis CK, comedian
Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, All Things D
Judd Apatow, film producer, writer, and director
Tyler Perry, director, writer, actor, and producer
Peter Thiel, Founders Fund
Ryan Seacrest, host, producer
Susan Wojcicki, Google
Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos, Netflix
Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook
Kevin Ryan, Gilt Groupe, Business Insider
Lena Dunham, writer, director
David Karp, Tumblr
Mark Pincus, Zynga
Ali Pincus and Susan Feldman, One Kings Lane
Sal Khan, Khan Academy
Daniel Ek, Spotify
Dennis Crowley, Foursquare
Andrew Mason, Groupon
Tim Cook and Jonathan Ive, Apple
Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google
Jeff Bezos, Amazon
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook
Jack Dorsey, Twitter, Square
Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz
Marissa Mayer, Yahoo
Ben Silbermann, Pinterest
Elon Musk, SpaceX, Tesla Motors, SolarCity
Reid Hoffman and Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn
Adele, singer, songwriter
Joss Whedon, writer, director
Dick Costolo, Twitter
John Lasseter, Pixar, Walt Disney Animation Studios
Terry Gou, Foxconn
Lady Gaga, singer
Preet Bharara, attorney
Herb Allen III, Allen & Co.
The Hacker
Yuri Milner, DST Global
Natalie Massenet, Net-a-Porter Group
Seth MacFarlane, writer, director, producer
Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures
E. L. James, author
Ashton Kutcher, actor, investor
Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, the Row
Paul Graham, Y Combinator
Christopher Nolan, director
Jeremy Stoppelman, Yelp
Salar Kamangar and Robert Kyncl, YouTube
Will Ferrell, Chris Henchy, and Adam McKay, Funny or Die
Dan Doctoroff, Bloomberg LP
Louis CK, comedian
Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, All Things D
Judd Apatow, film producer, writer, and director
Tyler Perry, director, writer, actor, and producer
Peter Thiel, Founders Fund
Ryan Seacrest, host, producer
Susan Wojcicki, Google
Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos, Netflix
Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook
Kevin Ryan, Gilt Groupe, Business Insider
Lena Dunham, writer, director
David Karp, Tumblr
Mark Pincus, Zynga
Ali Pincus and Susan Feldman, One Kings Lane
Sal Khan, Khan Academy
Daniel Ek, Spotify
Dennis Crowley, Foursquare
Andrew Mason, Groupon
gold is telling us its coming soon....gold is gonna approach 2k by years end....and 1 more prediction you guys can bump it next year...the majority of the country will see $5 gas by next summer....things are just getting worse once the election is over and they really start to pour gasoline to put out the fire (as schiff loves to say) gold and oil are gonna skyrocket. a majority of us have been on here waiting for the BIG spike is gold for a few years, 2013 has a very good chance to be that year
i know they dont want to unleash it now but they night have no choice....todays jobs # was awful...of course obama wont tell us that, he will tell us it dropped to 8.1%, those fuc-king clowns...
the breakout on yahoo today was excellent....
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/brea...RhaWQDBHBzdGNhdANob21lBHB0A3NlY3Rpb25z;_ylv=3
i know they dont want to unleash it now but they night have no choice....todays jobs # was awful...of course obama wont tell us that, he will tell us it dropped to 8.1%, those fuc-king clowns...
the breakout on yahoo today was excellent....
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/brea...RhaWQDBHBzdGNhdANob21lBHB0A3NlY3Rpb25z;_ylv=3
His hands are tied given this fiscal mess, Ben has to keep interest rates at ultra low so his buddy Tim The Turbo Tax can refi old debts at a cheaper rate. Allowing interest rate to go up would blow up this fragile economy. Ben is working himself into the same corner where the Japaneses are at, and they're inviting the Germans to the party.
Jobless Greeks Resolved to Work Clean Toilets in Sweden
By Oliver Staley - Sep 7, 2012 8:51 AM CT
Casper Hedberg/Bloomberg
Tilemachos Karachalios works as a janitor in Stockholm, forced from his home by Greece’s economic crisis.
As a pharmaceutical salesman in Greece for 17 years, Tilemachos Karachalios wore a suit, drove a company car and had an expense account. He now mops schools in Sweden, forced from his home by Greece’s economic crisis.
“It was a very good job,” said Karachalios, 40, of his former life. “Now I clean Swedish s---.”
Karachalios, who left behind his 6-year-old daughter to be raised by his parents, is one of thousands fleeing Greece’s record 24 percent unemployment and austerity measures that threaten to undermine growth. The number of Greeks seeking permission to settle in Sweden, where there are more jobs and a stable economy, almost doubled to 1,093 last year from 2010, and is on pace to increase again this year.
“I’m trying to survive,” Karachalios said in an interview in Stockholm. “It’s difficult here, very difficult. I would prefer to stay in Greece. But we don’t have jobs.”
Greece is in its fifth year of recession, with the economy expected to contract 6.9 percent this year, the same as in 2011, according to the Athens-based Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research. Since 2008, the number of jobless has more than tripled to a record 1.22 million as of June, out of a total population of 10.8 million.
“In Greece, there was no future,” said Ourania Michtopoulou, who moved with her husband to Sweden in 2010 after both lost textile industry jobs in Thessaloniki, where they had a comfortable life with a house and car. “Here, I can hope for something good to happen. Maybe not for me -- I’m 48 -- but maybe for my children.”
‘Go Home’
Their family now crams into a small apartment, while her husband, Nikos, works for a landscaper and her teenage children struggle with Swedish lessons.
“It was not easy for them,” she said. “My daughter said lots of times, ‘I hate Sweden -- I want to go home.’”
Karachalios began his career in pharmaceutical sales after his mandatory military service, working at three different companies in the southern city of Patras. He married a Chinese woman he met at the 2004 Athens Olympics, had a daughter, and divorced.
“You can plan, you can organize, you can make plans for 10 years, 20 years, but you don’t know what life brings,” he said.
An intense man with flecks of gray in his thinning black hair, Karachalios said he has lost 20 to 30 pounds since moving to Sweden. His hands are stained with grime. Instead of the suits and ties he once wore, he now dresses in jeans and work boots. His suits remain in Greece.
Lost Job
In Homer’s Odyssey, Telemachus is the son of Odysseus, a Greek hero who spent 10 years struggling to return home from the Trojan War. Karachalios was named after a great-uncle who was a favorite of his parents.
Karachalios’s troubles began in early 2010 when the Greek government, which provides health care, forced drugmakers to cut their prices by as much as 27 percent. To reduce costs, his then-employer PharmaSwiss fired him and two other salesmen, leaving his former supervisor to manage the accounts, he said. Karachalios searched for jobs and eventually spent two months in 2011 as a telemarketer in Athens. He quit after not being paid. An ill-fated attempt to start a retirement home cost him months of work and most of his savings.
Determined to move, Karachalios considered Australia before rejecting the immigration process as too expensive. He had a friend in Sweden, had visited before and knew its reputation.
“I knew they were very organized,” he said. “Everyone pays their taxes and it’s fair. There is no cheating.”
Single Dish
Karachalios arrived in March. His friend helped him find a room to rent and he pays 4,500 Swedish krona ($670) a month for a room in a quiet apartment complex that houses other immigrants, many from the Middle East.
His studio has no stove or oven, just a hot plate and microwave. He has a single dish, and when he has a guest, he eats out of a plastic container that used to hold feta cheese. A tiny Greek flag is taped to the wall. The room came with a television though Karachalios said he never watches. In the evenings, if he has the energy, he studies Swedish.
Because of his background in health care, Karachalios at first applied for jobs caring for the elderly. He was rejected without an interview because he didn’t speak Swedish.
To find a job, he began knocking on doors of restaurants and janitorial companies, and eventually found a position cleaning rental houses. It was hard, lonely work that didn’t allow a break for lunch, he said. His first week wasn’t paid because he was told he was being trained. After his second week, when he was paid for only 32 hours instead of the 40 he said he worked, he wasn’t called back.
Frugal Living
In July, he found work with a cleaning contractor run by another Greek. Although the hours are long and the work difficult, Karachalios said he is at least treated fairly.
In Greece, Karachalios was paid between 2,500 and 3,000 euros ($3,143-$3,772) a month, after taxes. In Stockholm, he makes 80 krona an hour. Based on a 40-hour work week, that equals about $1,907 a month.
“I was doing something more glamorous but I don’t mind this work,” he said. “I feel alive again. When you are unemployed too long, it’s very hard. I was angry all the time.”
Karachalios wasn’t paid until mid-August for work he did in July. In the meanwhile, he lives frugally, saving half-smoked cigarettes while he waits for his parents to wire money. He also worries about finding another job, which will be necessary once school resumes and the cleaning contract ends. If he can’t find a permanent job in Stockholm, he said he may move with his daughter to Shanghai, where his ex-wife lives.
“I don’t have anywhere else to go and work, and it would be helpful for my daughter,” he said.
Little Contact
There are now 1.4 million foreign-born people in Sweden, or 15 percent of the population, an increase from virtually none at the end of World War II. While Sweden prides itself on being a tolerant and progressive nation, an anti-immigration party drew 5.7 percent of the vote in 2010, the most ever, said Klas Borell, a Swedish professor of sociology.
At the schools Karachalios cleans, he has little contact with Swedes. The principal of one school in Uppsala, Andreas Kembler, said that while he doesn’t know the janitors by name, he makes a point to say hello to them in the hall. The students have been learning about the crisis in Greece, and about the implications of unemployment, Kembler said.
When told about Karachalios, Kembler says he is troubled that Greeks are forced from their homes in pursuit of work.
Wrong Reasons
“I can see, now that our economy is strong and theirs is weak, that it may be natural to move somewhere where there are still jobs,” Kembler said. “I also feel that the move should be for the right reasons, positive reasons, and that in his case there must have been a certain amount of duress that he was under, which of course isn’t an appealing thought that he was forced to move away from his family.”
Karachalios wakes at 5 a.m. with the sun already up because of the long Swedish summer days. He checks Facebook on his phone for news from Greece and takes the subway one stop to Rinkeby, a gritty working-class neighborhood. Near the station is a parking lot where people without homes sleep in their cars, leaving their shoes and bottles of water outside the doors.
At a litter-strewn gas station just off the highway, Karachalios waits for a van to pick him up. Other migrant workers, headed for other destinations, wait nearby. He smiles with anticipation: once he’s in the van he’ll borrow a co- worker’s iPhone to talk with his daughter, Katerina, on Skype.
Katerina’s Day
When they talk, it’s about her day in Greece: her trip to the beach with her grandparents, what she’ll have for breakfast. He wants to bring her to Stockholm but won’t until he has a stable job and living situation.
Talking with Katerina is a highlight of his day and he was crushed when his laptop stopped working and he couldn’t Skype with her on her birthday. Now, he checks in with his parents by calling on his mobile phone and hanging up, and they do the same, so they don’t have to pay for the call.
After a cigarette with his co-workers -- all immigrants from Greece -- Karachalios piles into the van for the 45-minute drive to the outskirts of Uppsala, a small city north of Stockholm. Today’s job is to finish cleaning the elementary school they began working on yesterday. They start at 7:30 a.m. and work 2 1/2 hours before breaking. For lunch, they share their food, with Karachalios bringing fried meatballs for the group.
Family Distressed
Karachalios is charged with cleaning the dozens of double- paned windows, which takes its toll on his back and shoulders. On other days, he cleans floors. In his pocket, he carries a razor blade for scraping the gum off linoleum.
His decision to leave Greece has been hard on his family back home, sister Nikki Karachalios said. Just one year older, she and her husband lived in the same apartment complex as Karachalios and their daughters are the same age.
“As a family, we have always been very close and now it’s difficult,” she said in a phone interview.
Their father, who had been hospitalized with a respiratory condition, is particularly distressed, Nikki Karachalios said. Still, they all understand why he left, she said.
“He was very unhappy,” she said. “He had no money, he was completely broke, he had loans for the house he couldn’t pay. There was nothing for him here, he was staying home for days because he had no place to go.”
‘Serious Decision’
Two years ago, Nikki Karachalios lost her own job working for a French construction company when a planned highway from Patras to Athens was canceled. Her husband, a commercial sailor, is also without work and does odd jobs for his brother.
The family is supported by her father’s 700 euro-a-month social security check, which buys groceries and little else. She expects that payment to be reduced as the government makes a new round of cuts. She is considering moving to Stockholm, as well.
“By the end of the year I will have to make a serious decision about the future of my family,” she said.
In Sweden, struggling to make sense of Greece’s decline, Tilemachos Karachalios suggests a conspiracy by Germany and France to economically cripple the country in order to seize its Aegean oil reserves. He’s also bitter about comments made by former Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, who said in interviews abroad in 2009 that corruption and tax evasion were to blame for Greece’s problems.
“Who, me?” Karachalios said. “I’m not lazy. I didn’t steal from the government. I was honest and they made me like this, to come here.”
Unpredictable Future
What gnaws at him is the uncertainty that comes from not having a stable job or predictable future.
“I’m tired of all this,” he said. “I want to close my eyes and wake up in 10 years and not have to worry.”
Migrants to Sweden from within the European Union are free to look for work and can settle if they can provide for themselves or have family there. Although the unemployment rate is 7 percent, finding work can be difficult if new arrivals don’t speak Swedish, said Arto Moksunen, director of Crossroads, a nonprofit group in Stockholm that has provided assistance to 3,000 migrants since March 2011.
Konstantinos Fraggidis, who is the president of a Greek cultural association in Stockholm, said he fields 10 to 15 e- mails a day from Greeks asking about working and living conditions in Sweden.
“You can read how desperate these young people are,” Fraggidis said. “Here suddenly, you see them by themselves trying to leave Greece, not only their village but to leave the country. They have taken the big step and it is very traumatic.”
Always Tired
As his day ends, Karachalios returns to his room, cooks a simple meal and goes to bed. After five months in Stockholm, his life has settled into a routine. On weekends, he cleans his apartment, does his laundry and sleeps. He is almost always tired and has few people to talk to. He contrasts that to his life in Greece, where he spent weekends chatting with his parents over coffee and taking his daughter to the playground.
Even with his contempt of Greek politicians, Karachalios is proud of his country. The Stockholm subway isn’t as good as Athens’s metro, he says. Swedes aren’t as tidy as Greeks.
“I want to die in Greece,” Karachalios said. “I want to leave my bones in Greece.”
The resumption of school this month means the end of the cleaning company’s contract. Karachalios found another temporary cleaning job and also lined up part-time work delivering newspapers that will pay 7,000 krona ($1,038) a month. That job requires a car, and he spent what little money he had -- about 3,000 krona -- buying one. Two miles after getting behind the wheel, the car broke down, leaving Karachalios despondent and considering a return to Greece.
“To get to be 40 years old, it’s very hard to accept that your life is going to be like this,” Karachalios said.
By Oliver Staley - Sep 7, 2012 8:51 AM CT
Casper Hedberg/Bloomberg
Tilemachos Karachalios works as a janitor in Stockholm, forced from his home by Greece’s economic crisis.
As a pharmaceutical salesman in Greece for 17 years, Tilemachos Karachalios wore a suit, drove a company car and had an expense account. He now mops schools in Sweden, forced from his home by Greece’s economic crisis.
“It was a very good job,” said Karachalios, 40, of his former life. “Now I clean Swedish s---.”
Karachalios, who left behind his 6-year-old daughter to be raised by his parents, is one of thousands fleeing Greece’s record 24 percent unemployment and austerity measures that threaten to undermine growth. The number of Greeks seeking permission to settle in Sweden, where there are more jobs and a stable economy, almost doubled to 1,093 last year from 2010, and is on pace to increase again this year.
“I’m trying to survive,” Karachalios said in an interview in Stockholm. “It’s difficult here, very difficult. I would prefer to stay in Greece. But we don’t have jobs.”
Greece is in its fifth year of recession, with the economy expected to contract 6.9 percent this year, the same as in 2011, according to the Athens-based Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research. Since 2008, the number of jobless has more than tripled to a record 1.22 million as of June, out of a total population of 10.8 million.
“In Greece, there was no future,” said Ourania Michtopoulou, who moved with her husband to Sweden in 2010 after both lost textile industry jobs in Thessaloniki, where they had a comfortable life with a house and car. “Here, I can hope for something good to happen. Maybe not for me -- I’m 48 -- but maybe for my children.”
‘Go Home’
Their family now crams into a small apartment, while her husband, Nikos, works for a landscaper and her teenage children struggle with Swedish lessons.
“It was not easy for them,” she said. “My daughter said lots of times, ‘I hate Sweden -- I want to go home.’”
Karachalios began his career in pharmaceutical sales after his mandatory military service, working at three different companies in the southern city of Patras. He married a Chinese woman he met at the 2004 Athens Olympics, had a daughter, and divorced.
“You can plan, you can organize, you can make plans for 10 years, 20 years, but you don’t know what life brings,” he said.
An intense man with flecks of gray in his thinning black hair, Karachalios said he has lost 20 to 30 pounds since moving to Sweden. His hands are stained with grime. Instead of the suits and ties he once wore, he now dresses in jeans and work boots. His suits remain in Greece.
Lost Job
In Homer’s Odyssey, Telemachus is the son of Odysseus, a Greek hero who spent 10 years struggling to return home from the Trojan War. Karachalios was named after a great-uncle who was a favorite of his parents.
Karachalios’s troubles began in early 2010 when the Greek government, which provides health care, forced drugmakers to cut their prices by as much as 27 percent. To reduce costs, his then-employer PharmaSwiss fired him and two other salesmen, leaving his former supervisor to manage the accounts, he said. Karachalios searched for jobs and eventually spent two months in 2011 as a telemarketer in Athens. He quit after not being paid. An ill-fated attempt to start a retirement home cost him months of work and most of his savings.
Determined to move, Karachalios considered Australia before rejecting the immigration process as too expensive. He had a friend in Sweden, had visited before and knew its reputation.
“I knew they were very organized,” he said. “Everyone pays their taxes and it’s fair. There is no cheating.”
Single Dish
Karachalios arrived in March. His friend helped him find a room to rent and he pays 4,500 Swedish krona ($670) a month for a room in a quiet apartment complex that houses other immigrants, many from the Middle East.
His studio has no stove or oven, just a hot plate and microwave. He has a single dish, and when he has a guest, he eats out of a plastic container that used to hold feta cheese. A tiny Greek flag is taped to the wall. The room came with a television though Karachalios said he never watches. In the evenings, if he has the energy, he studies Swedish.
Because of his background in health care, Karachalios at first applied for jobs caring for the elderly. He was rejected without an interview because he didn’t speak Swedish.
To find a job, he began knocking on doors of restaurants and janitorial companies, and eventually found a position cleaning rental houses. It was hard, lonely work that didn’t allow a break for lunch, he said. His first week wasn’t paid because he was told he was being trained. After his second week, when he was paid for only 32 hours instead of the 40 he said he worked, he wasn’t called back.
Frugal Living
In July, he found work with a cleaning contractor run by another Greek. Although the hours are long and the work difficult, Karachalios said he is at least treated fairly.
In Greece, Karachalios was paid between 2,500 and 3,000 euros ($3,143-$3,772) a month, after taxes. In Stockholm, he makes 80 krona an hour. Based on a 40-hour work week, that equals about $1,907 a month.
“I was doing something more glamorous but I don’t mind this work,” he said. “I feel alive again. When you are unemployed too long, it’s very hard. I was angry all the time.”
Karachalios wasn’t paid until mid-August for work he did in July. In the meanwhile, he lives frugally, saving half-smoked cigarettes while he waits for his parents to wire money. He also worries about finding another job, which will be necessary once school resumes and the cleaning contract ends. If he can’t find a permanent job in Stockholm, he said he may move with his daughter to Shanghai, where his ex-wife lives.
“I don’t have anywhere else to go and work, and it would be helpful for my daughter,” he said.
Little Contact
There are now 1.4 million foreign-born people in Sweden, or 15 percent of the population, an increase from virtually none at the end of World War II. While Sweden prides itself on being a tolerant and progressive nation, an anti-immigration party drew 5.7 percent of the vote in 2010, the most ever, said Klas Borell, a Swedish professor of sociology.
At the schools Karachalios cleans, he has little contact with Swedes. The principal of one school in Uppsala, Andreas Kembler, said that while he doesn’t know the janitors by name, he makes a point to say hello to them in the hall. The students have been learning about the crisis in Greece, and about the implications of unemployment, Kembler said.
When told about Karachalios, Kembler says he is troubled that Greeks are forced from their homes in pursuit of work.
Wrong Reasons
“I can see, now that our economy is strong and theirs is weak, that it may be natural to move somewhere where there are still jobs,” Kembler said. “I also feel that the move should be for the right reasons, positive reasons, and that in his case there must have been a certain amount of duress that he was under, which of course isn’t an appealing thought that he was forced to move away from his family.”
Karachalios wakes at 5 a.m. with the sun already up because of the long Swedish summer days. He checks Facebook on his phone for news from Greece and takes the subway one stop to Rinkeby, a gritty working-class neighborhood. Near the station is a parking lot where people without homes sleep in their cars, leaving their shoes and bottles of water outside the doors.
At a litter-strewn gas station just off the highway, Karachalios waits for a van to pick him up. Other migrant workers, headed for other destinations, wait nearby. He smiles with anticipation: once he’s in the van he’ll borrow a co- worker’s iPhone to talk with his daughter, Katerina, on Skype.
Katerina’s Day
When they talk, it’s about her day in Greece: her trip to the beach with her grandparents, what she’ll have for breakfast. He wants to bring her to Stockholm but won’t until he has a stable job and living situation.
Talking with Katerina is a highlight of his day and he was crushed when his laptop stopped working and he couldn’t Skype with her on her birthday. Now, he checks in with his parents by calling on his mobile phone and hanging up, and they do the same, so they don’t have to pay for the call.
After a cigarette with his co-workers -- all immigrants from Greece -- Karachalios piles into the van for the 45-minute drive to the outskirts of Uppsala, a small city north of Stockholm. Today’s job is to finish cleaning the elementary school they began working on yesterday. They start at 7:30 a.m. and work 2 1/2 hours before breaking. For lunch, they share their food, with Karachalios bringing fried meatballs for the group.
Family Distressed
Karachalios is charged with cleaning the dozens of double- paned windows, which takes its toll on his back and shoulders. On other days, he cleans floors. In his pocket, he carries a razor blade for scraping the gum off linoleum.
His decision to leave Greece has been hard on his family back home, sister Nikki Karachalios said. Just one year older, she and her husband lived in the same apartment complex as Karachalios and their daughters are the same age.
“As a family, we have always been very close and now it’s difficult,” she said in a phone interview.
Their father, who had been hospitalized with a respiratory condition, is particularly distressed, Nikki Karachalios said. Still, they all understand why he left, she said.
“He was very unhappy,” she said. “He had no money, he was completely broke, he had loans for the house he couldn’t pay. There was nothing for him here, he was staying home for days because he had no place to go.”
‘Serious Decision’
Two years ago, Nikki Karachalios lost her own job working for a French construction company when a planned highway from Patras to Athens was canceled. Her husband, a commercial sailor, is also without work and does odd jobs for his brother.
The family is supported by her father’s 700 euro-a-month social security check, which buys groceries and little else. She expects that payment to be reduced as the government makes a new round of cuts. She is considering moving to Stockholm, as well.
“By the end of the year I will have to make a serious decision about the future of my family,” she said.
In Sweden, struggling to make sense of Greece’s decline, Tilemachos Karachalios suggests a conspiracy by Germany and France to economically cripple the country in order to seize its Aegean oil reserves. He’s also bitter about comments made by former Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, who said in interviews abroad in 2009 that corruption and tax evasion were to blame for Greece’s problems.
“Who, me?” Karachalios said. “I’m not lazy. I didn’t steal from the government. I was honest and they made me like this, to come here.”
Unpredictable Future
What gnaws at him is the uncertainty that comes from not having a stable job or predictable future.
“I’m tired of all this,” he said. “I want to close my eyes and wake up in 10 years and not have to worry.”
Migrants to Sweden from within the European Union are free to look for work and can settle if they can provide for themselves or have family there. Although the unemployment rate is 7 percent, finding work can be difficult if new arrivals don’t speak Swedish, said Arto Moksunen, director of Crossroads, a nonprofit group in Stockholm that has provided assistance to 3,000 migrants since March 2011.
Konstantinos Fraggidis, who is the president of a Greek cultural association in Stockholm, said he fields 10 to 15 e- mails a day from Greeks asking about working and living conditions in Sweden.
“You can read how desperate these young people are,” Fraggidis said. “Here suddenly, you see them by themselves trying to leave Greece, not only their village but to leave the country. They have taken the big step and it is very traumatic.”
Always Tired
As his day ends, Karachalios returns to his room, cooks a simple meal and goes to bed. After five months in Stockholm, his life has settled into a routine. On weekends, he cleans his apartment, does his laundry and sleeps. He is almost always tired and has few people to talk to. He contrasts that to his life in Greece, where he spent weekends chatting with his parents over coffee and taking his daughter to the playground.
Even with his contempt of Greek politicians, Karachalios is proud of his country. The Stockholm subway isn’t as good as Athens’s metro, he says. Swedes aren’t as tidy as Greeks.
“I want to die in Greece,” Karachalios said. “I want to leave my bones in Greece.”
The resumption of school this month means the end of the cleaning company’s contract. Karachalios found another temporary cleaning job and also lined up part-time work delivering newspapers that will pay 7,000 krona ($1,038) a month. That job requires a car, and he spent what little money he had -- about 3,000 krona -- buying one. Two miles after getting behind the wheel, the car broke down, leaving Karachalios despondent and considering a return to Greece.
“To get to be 40 years old, it’s very hard to accept that your life is going to be like this,” Karachalios said.
Too much QE coming this week priced in after bad jobs number
Will dump once Ben does the sane thing and does no QE
If he does go insane route gains in markets will be capped anyway due to shitstorm of inflation in necessities (gas near 4 already, food inflation coming soon too supermarkets)in a shitty real economy he would unleash ... I dare ya Ben
Will dump once Ben does the sane thing and does no QE
If he does go insane route gains in markets will be capped anyway due to shitstorm of inflation in necessities (gas near 4 already, food inflation coming soon too supermarkets)in a shitty real economy he would unleash ... I dare ya Ben
No clue
All they are doing is prolonging the long term deleveraging .... And protecting the status quo .... Maintaining the elites wealth while allowing the big multinationals to grab an even bigger piece of the pie ... While the have nots and small business suffer the consqeunences of propping up asset prices in a real on the streets shitty economy...
This will go on for a long time much like Japan ... What the digits on wall street do is anybody's guess ... But I still feel the upside is very limited regardless of what they do .... Cause regardless of how much they print the job market not getting much better and the more you print the less money people have to spend on non necessities as wages not keeping up ... Consumer credit (debt only way little guy can keep pace) fell for the first time in a long time in july
All they are doing is prolonging the long term deleveraging .... And protecting the status quo .... Maintaining the elites wealth while allowing the big multinationals to grab an even bigger piece of the pie ... While the have nots and small business suffer the consqeunences of propping up asset prices in a real on the streets shitty economy...
This will go on for a long time much like Japan ... What the digits on wall street do is anybody's guess ... But I still feel the upside is very limited regardless of what they do .... Cause regardless of how much they print the job market not getting much better and the more you print the less money people have to spend on non necessities as wages not keeping up ... Consumer credit (debt only way little guy can keep pace) fell for the first time in a long time in july
