March 29, 2024

Germany Approves Euro Bailout Plan; Slovakia Vote Awaits

By passing the measure, Germany promised to increase its share of the loan guarantees to 211 billion euros, or about $287 billion, from 123 billion euros, as agreed by national leaders in Brussels back in July. Under the euro zone’s tortuous procedures, however, all 17 European Union countries that use the euro must approve the agreement, a process that has revealed ever more fissures, layers of decision-making and political complexity that add up to a worrisome inability to react quickly and decisively to upheaval in fast-moving financial markets.

“The markets see that Europe cannot decide anything quickly, and uncertainty is always an inducement to speculation,” said Gustav Horn, director of the Macroeconomic Policy Institute in Düsseldorf, Germany.

The process also leaves the European Union potentially hostage to its smaller members. A significant hurdle was overcome when Finland passed the bailout fund measure on Wednesday despite domestic objections and an unresolved dispute over its demand for collateral from Greece. (Estonia and Cyprus approved the plan on Thursday, and a vote in Austria is expected on Friday.)

Similar fears have been voiced about Slovakia, an impoverished nation from the former Communist bloc whose people suffered mightily to adopt the euro and have little stomach for bailing out richer countries like Greece. Of the handful of countries left to approve the measure, it is the only remaining wild card. Some leading Slovak politicians have been highly critical of the agreement, and the governing coalition itself is divided about supporting the fund.

The speaker of Parliament in Slovakia, Richard Sulik, has said he will do whatever he can to stop the bailout fund from coming to a vote, even as advocates have desperately sought a compromise.

But the combined pressure of the euro zone members will probably be more than Mr. Sulik and other opponents can bear. A spokeswoman for Parliament, Beata Skyvova, said that the speaker and the prime minister met on Thursday, but that no deal had been announced.

Analysts have already said that the fund, even if it passes in all 17 countries, will probably be too small to defend against speculative attacks on deeply indebted European nations. Nevertheless, although the German vote perhaps offered nothing more than momentary relief, it was the crucial step to move the fight forward to the next stage.

“Without Germany’s participation, nothing would have been possible,” Mr. Horn said. “This project would have been dead.”

For the beleaguered German leader, Chancellor Angela Merkel, Thursday’s vote represented a sorely needed victory. Mrs. Merkel has been sharply criticized for her opposition to economic stimulus and disparaged over her slow reaction to the crisis. Under her stewardship, the project of European integration seems to move forward only when forced by circumstances and specifically by financial markets. Yet step by tentative step, move forward it has.

In the historic Reichstag building, graffiti from Red Army soldiers who conquered the capital of Nazi Germany still adorn the walls. Outside the Reichstag, the home of the German Parliament, a protester held a sign reading “Europe Finance Suicide Fund,” a play on the name of the bailout fund, the European Financial Stability Facility.

“The chancellor’s path is extremely contentious, with the public plainly opposed because it is unclear what limit there is to how far Germany has to jump in to cover Greece’s debt,” said Werner J. Patzelt, a political scientist at Technical University in Dresden.

The German public is staunchly against paying the debts of other Europeans, stereotyped in the news media here as spendthrifts compared with the virtuously frugal Germans. But as Europe’s largest economy, Germany is the only nation with the fiscal wherewithal to pull fellow countries in the euro zone out of trouble.

Government statistics on Thursday showed that even as economic growth has stalled, unemployment has continued to fall in Germany, defying the trend that has pushed joblessness higher across Europe, particularly in recession-stricken economies like Greece and Spain. The Federal Labor Agency reported that the unemployment rate dropped to 6.6 percent in September from 7 percent in August.

Germany continues to preach savings over stimulus to contain the debt crisis, withstanding sustained pressure from American policy makers and opting for the path of fiscal discipline supported by the Netherlands and Finland.

“We here in Germany are now on the right path, and the rest of Europe has recognized that,” said Joachim Pfeiffer, a member of Parliament from Mrs. Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union. “Just a year ago we were still fiercely criticized, including by the Americans. Today, Germany is the model for Europe.”

Stefan Pauly contributed reporting.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=c823877cfeb7d472f72080cf94fd5d74

ESPN Extends Deal With N.F.L. for $15 Billion

At $1.9 billion a year, ESPN will be paying 73 percent more than the $1.1 billion a year it has been spending for “Monday Night,” the highest rated program on cable television. ESPN began carrying Monday night games in 2006 when its previous package of Sunday night games moved to NBC.

But when ESPN made that earlier deal, which will expire in 2013, it received no playoff games and no chance of carrying a Super Bowl, which is rotated among CBS, NBC and Fox. All ESPN had were the rights to carry 17 regular-season games a year.

The new deal provides a path to adding a wild-card playoff game on the network by providing the league with an option to give one to ESPN — which would appear to mean taking one away from another network.

How that develops will probably be part of the continuing negotiations with CBS, Fox and NBC, which will be under pressure to retain their N.F.L. rights, at possibly steep fee increases, during a sluggish economy.

ESPN’s agreement will allow it to further secure its role as the cable channel with more N.F.L. content than any other except for the NFL Network. Under the contract, ESPN will expand its use of video highlights and add 500 new hours of league-branded studio shows almost immediately, including adding a third hour to the Sunday program “NFL Countdown,” which will now start at 10 a.m., Eastern time.

The daily “NFL Live” program will expand from a half-hour to 60 minutes. The deal will also let ESPN stream its N.F.L. programming to Verizon cellphones. Tablet users will be able to see “Monday Night” games and other league programs by using the WatchESPN app.

“The value of the N.F.L. to us is the ubiquity of the sport across our platforms all the time,” said John Skipper, the executive vice president for content for ESPN. “It’s just stupendous for us. It’s daily product — we don’t have a day without the N.F.L.”

He called the new deal, even at a much higher cost, “fiscally prudent for us” and one that “we will be able to absorb and continue to grow.”

For ESPN, the length of the deal, eight years, is advantageous because it will span a period when it will renegotiate all of its deals with cable, satellite and telephone companies — which will almost certainly lead to subscriber fees exceeding the more than the estimated $4.50 a month that ESPN now charges.

In a conference call, George Bodenheimer, the president of ESPN, said there would not be a specific “N.F.L. surcharge” added to subscriber fees. But, he added: “No portion of any of our fees is associated with any product. Our fees are based on the value of our products.”

Neal Pilson, a sports industry consultant, said ESPN’s $1.9 billion annual payment was affordable in cable economics.

“Hypothetically,” he wrote in an e-mail, “if you say 50 cents or one dollar (or more) of the $4.50 monthly sub fee is attributed to the N.F.L. on ESPN (and push that forward to support future increases in sub fees), you can easily justify the rights fee given all the programming and content ESPN will be carrying.”

At $15.2 billion for eight years of N.F.L. rights, ESPN’s contract greatly exceeds the size of recent deals like CBS and Turner’s $10.8 billion agreement to carry the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament for 14 years and NBC Universal’s $4.38 billion investment in the four Olympics from 2014 to 2020.

ESPN made losing bids for the N.C.A.A. and Olympic contracts, perhaps signaling that the deal it really wanted was the N.F.L. extension.

“We do not have a more important deal than the N.F.L.,” Skipper said.

The league’s next TV deal might be for a second Thursday night package of games to augment the one that is now carried by the NFL Network. But the creation, and sale, of a second such collection of eight games is not imminent. Goodell said, “It’s not likely we will do it in the next year.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=ddbaf37c03a8dfb980ec2b232c45650b