Hungarian Politics

[Martinus]

Great. Again, the paprika-devouring, antisemitic, racist, homophobic, goat-fucking racist fucks cause turmoil in the area and zloty to plummet.

Fuck you, you tards. Get out of the EU.

I have been thinking that Poland has been too good to be true. I wonder if there will be skeletons falling out of the closet soon. But for sure, Poland is far from being as fucked up as Hungary is.

Actually I think S&P said they may upgrade our rating if we pull off the promised cuts.

[Tamas]

Great. Again, the paprika-devouring, antisemitic, racist, homophobic, goat-fucking racist fucks cause turmoil in the area and zloty to plummet.

Fuck you, you tards. Get out of the EU.

I have been thinking that Poland has been too good to be true. I wonder if there will be skeletons falling out of the closet soon. But for sure, Poland is far from being as fucked up as Hungary is.

Actually I think S&P said they may upgrade our rating if we pull off the promised cuts.

If I tried hard enough, I bet I could get a position in my comp's Polish office 

[Richard Hakluyt]

Fleeing to Poland for the good life?

Times are hard 

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Great. Again, the paprika-devouring, antisemitic, racist, homophobic, goat-fucking racist fucks cause turmoil in the area and zloty to plummet.

Fuck you, you tards. Get out of the EU.

I have been thinking that Poland has been too good to be true. I wonder if there will be skeletons falling out of the closet soon. But for sure, Poland is far from being as fucked up as Hungary is.

Actually I think S&P said they may upgrade our rating if we pull off the promised cuts.

If I tried hard enough, I bet I could get a position in my comp's Polish office 

bring beets

[Martinus]

Actually, we may experience a slump in 2012 (perhaps not an outright recession, but definitely a slow down of growth). The zloty is weakened because of the euro turmoil, and we will suffer if Germany (our chief customer) reduces consumption.

The old/new government is promising far reaching reforms but it's about to be seen how much they will deliver.

At least the M&A market is busy for now as many international financial institutions are forced to sell their Polish subsidiaries (which are frequently in much better position than their parents) to finance the bailouts they received.

[Tamas]

Breaking: it was thought that the Minister of National Development would have a press conference about the initial stages of our negotiations with the IMF which he was appointed to lead, but instead he announced his resignation.
Not good.

IIRC, two days ago he made a comment on the "irresponsible" declarations from the Finance Minister (who is a bafoon and is ruining the country with his inept dumbass assfuckery). So I guess that was enough to force him out of office. The FM is so high up the PM's ass you can't even see the guy. So far, everybody who said a non-positive word about him somewhere were fired.

EDIT: apparently, he will keep his role as lead negotiator with the IMF. 

[Tamas]

Let's recap the pension situation quickly:

A year ago, the government decided that all payments toward the private pension accounts would be transferred to the state budget instead, for 14 months A few weeks later, they presented the people with a coercion:
they can "protect their pension" by "returning to the safe state pension system". Or, they are free to stay in the private pension scheme, but then while their employers would keep paying the equivalent of 24% of their wage to the state pension system like they always did, they would not receive a single penny of pension from the state after that, since they would "remove themselves from national solidarity"

Out of the 3 million private pension payers, a whooping hundred thousand remained in the private system, including me. But of course my account gained no new funds as all of it was sent to the budget. I supposedly got one year worth of "service time" out of it, but that's totally useless unless I have at least 20. The accumulation of this service time after my 24% is what have been removed from me by the way, as punishment from opposing the government's plans.

Fast forward to yesterday: it has been announced, that the pension payments from the remaining 100 000 private pensioners will be "redirected" to the state budged in 2012 as well, and for 2013 "for sure".
And, the bill to have it "redirected" indefinetly has been drafted. An interesting thing about that bill is that it does not mention any compensation to us - if it stays that way, it will be just stolen from us and that's it.


In other words, the private pension funds will have enough of this shit and close, transferring my considerable savings to the state.

This a disgrace. Once again my disgust with the system and my country, where this communist shit can be done without masses protesting on the street, is just about complete.

These pension savings, and I mean the full sum of the 3 million people's, were the only remaining long term reserves of the economy, and the population. They managed to spend almost all of it in a year and still has us near collapse. Finishing off us remainers, plus setting up a world-record high VAT and some other extra taxes will allow them to avoid cutting spending for an other year, but then what?

[The Brain]

That's how democracy works. The lazy classes take your money.

[Tamas]

aaand, this morning, the delegation of the EU and IMF packed up and left Budapest in the middle of the negotiations.

[Sheilbh]

The Economist blogged on this:

Democracy in Hungary
Slip-sliding away

Dec 19th 2011, 17:47 by A.L.B | BUDAPEST

GYÖRGY MATOLCSY, Hungary's economy minister, wanted a war with the International Monetary Fund, and now he has got one.

Officials from the fund and the European Union have broken off preliminary talks with the Hungarian government over a financial safety net for the country. Why? Because the parliament, where the ruling Fidesz party has a two-thirds majority, has accelerated plans to change the management of the central bank and to expand membership of the monetary council, which sets interest rates.

MPs are also considering a new rule to fix tax and debt policies within the constitution. As a "cardinal law" it would require a two-thirds majority to change, thus limiting future governments' room for manoeuvre.

The new legislation could "undermine the independence of the central bank", said Amadeo Altafaj-Tardio, the EU's monetary-affairs spokesman. The IMF echoed these sentiments, stating that an independent central bank is "one of the cornerstones of sound economic management".

The planned law would allow the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, to nominate a third vice-governor to the board of the central bank. At the same time Fidesz MPs have proposed merging the central bank with the financial regulator to create a new body.

András Simor, the central-bank governor, described the proposed third vice-governor as a "political commissar" and said the new laws were a step on the road to the "final elimination" of the bank's independence. Government supporters point out that Ferenc Gyurcsany, the former Socialist prime minister, also interfered with the running of the bank and enlarged the monetary council.

Mr Matolcsy, meanwhile, is unbowed. He told Hír TV, a pro-government channel, that the government will continue to push the law through parliament, although he said the opinions of the European Central Bank would be taken into account. There is no reason, he says, to fear for the independence of the central bank. Negotiations will resume in January.

Fidesz allies have now been appointed to the presidency, the State Audit Office, the State Prosecutor, the National Media Authority, the new fiscal council and the new National Courts Authority, among others. Officials say that party backgrounds are irrelevant and that office-holders will exercise their mandates independently. Democracy in Hungary, they claim, is safe.

Opposition politicians, international watchdogs, the EU and the United States disagree. They argue that the government's attempt to limit the independence of the central bank near-completes Fidesz's steady undermining of Hungary's formerly independent institutions and its removal of the checks and balances found in most European democracies.

An overwhelming victory at the polls, which Fidesz won last year, does not, say Western officials, give the party a mandate for a long-term (the new appointees will hold office for between nine and 12 years) takeover of legislative and executive functions. Government officials have not explained why it seems that only Fidesz allies can be trusted to exercise their mandates independently.

Party leaders struggled to account for the abrupt departure of the IMF-EU delegation last week. János Lázár, head of the Fidesz parliamentary grouping, hit on one possible explanation. It would be perfectly understandable, he said, if officials "wanted to go home for Christmas and wait for little Jesus there, rather than in Budapest".

Wags in the capital joke that the Hungarian legislative process works as follows. The prime minister has an idea in the morning, Mr Matolcsy announces it as policy in the afternoon, by the end of the week Mr Lázár is piloting it through parliament and it becomes law on Monday. An exaggeration, to be sure, but not by much.

Is it as bad as it sounds Tamas?

[Admiral Yi]

Wags in the capital joke that the Hungarian legislative process works as follows. The prime minister has an idea in the morning, Mr Matolcsy announces it as policy in the afternoon, by the end of the week Mr Lázár is piloting it through parliament and it becomes law on Monday. An exaggeration, to be sure, but not by much.

Hungary needs funnier wags.

[Tamas]

Wags in the capital joke that the Hungarian legislative process works as follows. The prime minister has an idea in the morning, Mr Matolcsy announces it as policy in the afternoon, by the end of the week Mr Lázár is piloting it through parliament and it becomes law on Monday. An exaggeration, to be sure, but not by much.

Hungary needs funnier wags.

Actually, that quoted part is not an exaggeration. Sure, sometimes the PM has an idea at the end of the week prior to the one described there, but the general flow is the same.

To make all that smoother, the governing party has used two main tools in Parlaiment:
-propose bills as a single MP's proposal rather than the government itself - a lot of mandatory checks and consultations can be skipped this way. Basically every single law has been proposed like this
-schedule important laws to late night sessions - you minimize own voting manpower required, minimize opposition voices, and voter attention to all those. Not many people will be watching live Parlaiment sessions in the telly past 10PM.

Regarding the latter, recently the opposition parties coordinated to fuck them over (maybe it was about the education bill, not sure). They used each and every chance to delay the process, so the bill became a law only around 4AM in the morning. Kudos to them, but of course adjustments to parlaimentary process and government handling of these has been made to avoid this happening again, AFAIK.


Now, on the matter of us flipping the IMF and EU off, it appears that Barroso personally wrote a letter to Orban.

A leading online news site published parts of it in an article (as a translation). In return, the government spokeperson basically flat-out declined the quoted contents. So the journalist in question has started blogging the letter, word for word.

In it, Barroso asks, borderline demands as I see, that the government stops with their almost-ready (or already accepted? Can't keep up with their pace to be honest) law radically reforming our central bank, by giving much more government oversight over it.

Local educated guesses are that this is being done for two reasons: first, that the prez of the central bank has been rather vocal about his dissaproval of the government's careless rampage through our economy, and secondly, the central bank has amasssed a considerable reserve of euros. Mostly because when we got THIS close to bankrupcy during the heydays of the 2008 crisis, a lack of euro reserves contributed to that greatly.
Now, with the credit dry up and economic stagnation in Europe, the national budget is in a critical state even after the pension nationalization of early this year. And since the government just refuses austerity (how could a country run without more than 50% GDP redistribution plus a healthy dose of regular deficit spending, right?), they simply NEED to grab that euro reserve if we fall out with the IMF, and they'll probably need to fall back on it even if get IMF aid.

[Tamas]

Is it as bad as it sounds Tamas?

Yes, see above.

I am resigned to the fact that we are on a quick road to either default, or a sudden drastical drop in government spending, both which will lead to nazi rule.

[Tamas]

I download this morning's International Herald Tribune and what's on the first page? An article about the slow motion coup in Hungary.

And they are right.

[Sheilbh]

I download this morning's International Herald Tribune and what's on the first page? An article about the slow motion coup in Hungary.

And they are right.

Get out!  The UK's nice at the minute....