MONDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2015 ANALYSIS THE LEADING INDEPENDENT DAILY IN THE ARABIAN GULF ESTABLISHED 1961 Founder and Publisher YOUSUF S. AL-ALYAN Editor-in-Chief ABD AL-RAHMAN AL-ALYAN EDITORIAL : 24833199-24833358-24833432 ADVERTISING : 24835616/7 FAX : 24835620/1 CIRCULATION : 24833199 Extn. 163 ACCOUNTS : 24835619 COMMERCIAL : 24835618 P.O.Box 1301 Safat,13014 Kuwait. E MAIL :[email protected] Website: www.kuwaittimes.net Focus Greece rejects new loans as money runs out By Aurelia End T he decision by Greece’s anti-austerity government in Athens to refuse fresh EU-IMF loans has set economists guessing how long Greece’s meagre finances can last. “From what I hear, Greece can barely hold on until February,” Alexandre Delaigue, economics professor at the French military academy Saint-Cyr, told AFP. The new hard-left government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras that took over after the Jan 25 general election faces a daunting debt repayment schedule this year. It must repay €9.0 billion to the International Monetary Fund this year, including €2.3 billion in February and March, according to BNP Paribas. There is subsequently another €6.7 billion in bonds held by the European Central Bank which must be paid in July and August, and €15 billion in short-term debt held by Greek banks owed throughout this year. Greece’s rejection of new EU-IMF loans, and its insistence on Friday in talking directly to its international creditors without the intervention of lower-level fiscal auditors, has alarmed financial markets. The yield on Greek 10-year bonds now exceeds 11 percent, an impossible rate for Greece to borrow at today were it to attempt to raise money without EU-IMF protection. Asking for Time After rebuffing the committee of EU-IMF fiscal auditors known as the ‘troika’, which Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis dismissed as “rotten” and “antiEuropean”, Greece is asking creditors for time. “We need time to breathe and create our own mediumterm recovery program, which amongst other things will incorporate the targets of primary balanced budgets and radical reforms to address the issues of tax evasion, corruption and clientelistic policies,” Tsipras said in a statement to Bloomberg. The Greek finance ministry on Saturday said it had hired advisory investment bankers Lazard “to advise on issues of public debt and fiscal management”. Lazard in 2012 had assisted Athens in brokering a 50percent writedown on the country’s short and medium-term debt. Lazard CEO Matthieu Pigasse had said ahead of Saturday’s announcement that it was “absolutely necessary” to reduce half the Greek debt held by public institutions, effectively a cut of around 100 billion euros. Tsipras’ administration has promised to pull Greece out of a “humanitarian crisis” caused by five years of fiscal cuts with a stimulus program estimated to be worth around 13.5 billion euros, according to BNP Paribas. This includes hiring back thousands of civil servants, restoring the minimum wage and raising pensions, mainly among the poor. The government says it can find the money by closing tax loopholes employed by wealthy Greeks and by cracking down on smuggling and corruption. Domestic critics note that similar pledges by the socialist administration of George Papandreou in 2009 bore little fruit. Ahead of the election, many Greeks stopped paying their taxes and state coffers are nearly empty. Greek daily Kathimerini has noted that less than €2.0 billion remain, and will be used up by the end of February. “The government is able to finance itself because Greek banks buy its short-term debt issues, and because the European Central Bank supports them. If the ECB turns the tap off, it’s over,” warned Delaigue. Credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s said in a note on Friday that Greece’s top banks had been considerably weakened from a recent outflow of deposits and the weight of existing non-performing loans. “We believe the four banks’ liquidity has deteriorated significantly over the past few weeks,” the agency said, adding that it had revised their cash position to “very weak”. “Depositors have been withdrawing money for weeks, around 5.0 billion euros in December and 15 billion euros in January,” added Adam Memon, economist at Britain’s Centre for Policy Studies. —AFP All articles appearing on these pages are the personal opinion of the writers. Kuwait Times takes no responsibility for views expressed therein. Kuwait Times invites readers to voice their opinions. Please send submissions via email to: [email protected] or via snail mail to PO Box 1301 Safat, Kuwait. The editor reserves the right to edit any submission as necessary. Dark day for Woods raises prospect of ‘yips’ By Mark Lamport-Stokes S tunned golf fans at the Phoenix Open were left to ponder how the mighty have fallen after Tiger Woods plunged to new depths with the worst score of his professional career in Friday’s second round. Looking more like a struggling amateur than the greatest player of his generation, and arguably of all time, Woods was out-ofsorts in every phase of his game as he laboured to a mind-boggling 11-over-par 82 at the TPC Scottsdale. His chipping, in particular, was poor and many pundits are now pointing to Woods, a 14-times major champion once renowned for his magical skills around the green, as being a sufferer of the ‘yips’ when it comes to that component. Dottie Pepper, who won 17 times on the LPGA Tour, including two majors, tweeted on Friday: “Never fun seeing, let alone reporting on, 2 dreaded topics in golf: shanks & yips. Sadly, #Tiger has the latter. Nerves not mechanics.” Arron Oberholser, a PGA Tour player who also works as an analyst and commentator for Golf Channel, said: “I think the greatest player that I’ve ever seen has the yips. “Whether that’s because of a release pattern or whether it’s not enough reps, it’s flat out the disease. He’s got the yips.” Woods had also struggled with his chipping in his previous tournament, last month’s Hero World Challenge in Orlando where he tied for last place, and at Scottsdale he hit chips fat and thin while occasionally resorting to a putter instead. Before any rush to judgement is made, however, it is worth emphasising that Woods was competing at Scottsdale in only his second event in five months, having endured back problems for much of last year after undergoing surgery. Required Comfort Level He is also still adapting to the fifth swing change of his career, this time with new consultant Chris Como, and history will recall that Woods took a long time to reach the comfort level he wanted for each of his previous four overhauls. “He’s really revamping his golf swing and just seems like he needs some more repetitions,” American world number nine Jordan Spieth said after playing the first two rounds at the TPC Scottsdale with Woods. “From the looks of it, he looks very healthy, looks like nothing was bothering him, so he should be able to get out there and get a lot of practice in. I would look for him to make a strong comeback this year.” Others were not so optimistic on Friday after Woods, for the first time in his career as a professional, missed the cut in consecutive PGA Tour events, his previous one having occurred at the PGA Championship in August. “I think he needs to get rid of Chris Como,” Oberholser said on Golf Channel. “He needs to get rid of all of these biomechanic guys. You don’t go to a biomechanic guy when you’re the best guy who’s ever played the game practically.” Woods, limited to just nine tournaments worldwide last year due to his back issues, has often struggled to take his game from the practice range to the golf course, and fellow PGA Tour player Colt Knost believes this is once again the case. “I watched tiger hit balls for 30mins yesterday on the range and he absolutely striped it! Something is going on in that head of his,” Knost tweeted on Friday. After missing the cut at the TPC Scottsdale, Woods conceded that his chipping problems stemmed partially from a mental block. “To an extent, yes it is, but I need to physically get the club in a better spot,” said the 39-year-old Woods. “My attack angle was much steeper with (previous instructor) Sean (Foley). Now I’m very shallow, so that in turn affects the chipping. I’m not bottoming out in the same spot.” Time and again during his remarkable playing career, Woods has successfully overcome assorted challenges - many of them injury-related. If yips are in fact his latest challenge, it would be foolish for anyone to write him off any time soon. —Reuters World’s problems enter Japan’s psyche, again By Ken Moritsugu T he Japanese, who inhabit one of the safest countries in the world, have been brutally reminded that the world is a dangerous place. In a shock to a country that can feel insulated from distant geopolitical problems, two of its own have reportedly been killed by Islamic radicals in Syria, the latest apparently beheaded in a video posted online this weekend by militant websites. This island nation closed itself to the outside world for two centuries under samurai rule. Then rising militarism and occupation of neighboring countries preceding World War II had disastrous consequences, driving Japan back into an isolationist mindset. It has ventured out in fits and starts for the past two decades, and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pushing for Japan to play a larger international role, most controversially by seeking to loosen constitutional restraints on its military. As Japan has learned before, venturing out inevitably has risks. The question is whether those risks will drive Japan back into its shell. Analysts say it is too early to predict the impact of the Islamic State hostage crisis on government policy and the public psyche. Past experience suggests that Japan may, after some handwringing, continue what has been a very gradual expansion of its militar y role. A major test could come in the spring, when the parliament is expected to take up Abe’s proposals to allow its Self-Defense Forces to do more. “Contrary to what some people are arguing, the ongoing hostage crisis will have little to no effect as far as official policy or public opinion is concerned,” predicts Jun Okumura, an independent analyst. In office about two years, Abe has traveled far more widely than his predecessors, meeting dozens of his counterparts in Latin America, Africa, Europe and Southeast Asia. His most recent trip was to the Mideast, where he pledged humanitarian and development group that controls parts of Syria and Iraq. “I will pledge assistance of a total of about 200 million US dollars for those countries contending with ISIL, to help build their human capacities, infrastructure, and so on”. His words reached the Islamic State group, which in a video three days later accused Japan of donating money “to kill our women and chil- imposed by the postwar constitution - some say too far. At home, many opposed the deployment. In Iraq, half a dozen Japanese were kidnapped. One was found decapitated, his body wrapped in an American flag, after thenPrime Minister Junichiro Koizumi refused demands to pull the troops out of Iraq. Such violence is shocking any- Junko Ishido, mother of slain Kenji Goto, speaks to reporters while her husband Yukio Ishido stands beside at their home in Tokyo yesterday. —AFP aid for the countries battling the Islamic State group. A larger global role includes joining the effort against terrorism, even if Japan cannot contribute troops under a post-World War II constitution that limits its military to defending Japan. “All that, we shall do to help curb the threat ISIL poses,” Abe said in a Jan 17 speech in Cairo, using an acronym for the militant dren” and threatened to kill two Japanese men it held as hostages. It’s not the first time Japan faced such a crisis. In 2004, it sent several hundred troops to Iraq to help in the reconstruction. Though it was a noncombat role, the overseas deployment was a significant break with past policy. It required special legislation and stretched the self-defense limits where, but par ticularly so in Japan, which has among the world’s lowest murder and gun ownership rates. The troubles of the Mideast can seem farther away than in the United States or Europe. Unlike New York or Paris, Tokyo hasn’t been attacked by radicalized Muslims. The most infamous terrorist act in recent times was homegrown, the release of poisonous gas in the Tokyo subway system by a religious cult in 1995. “It is unusual for Japan, which has not participated in the military operations (against the Islamic State group), to be targeted,” the Mainichi, one of Japan’s major newspapers, observed in an editorial. It concluded: “We no longer live in a time when we can feel safe, just because we are Japanese.” In the decades after World War II, the country focused on economic growth and relied heavily on the United States for protection from global threats. It still does today, but Japan has been edging its own military overseas for more than 20 years now, though in a very cautious way. The risks came home early. Over public opposition, the Japanese parliament passed a law in 1992 that allowed it to dispatch troops and others to UN peacekeeping operations. A Japanese police officer was killed in Cambodia the following year. While the police withdrew from peacekeeping for several years afterward, the Cambodia mission was completed, and the military has continued to join others in the years since, notes Okumura, the analyst. The 2004 killing of one of the hostages in Iraq increased pressure on the government to pull out its troops, but that mission continued too, until 2006. A decade later, Abe is trying to push the edge of the envelope. He laid the groundwork when his Cabinet reinterpreted the constitution last year to allow Japan, in some situations, to defend allies that come under attack. He still needs lawmakers to approve legal changes necessary to empower the military to do that and more. Heated debate is expected, but his party holds a solid majority in parliament and Abe may well get his way. —AP