Wednesday's Top 10 with NZ Mint:Why the lights are going out in Athens; Britain's 100 mln pound house; Hong Kong house prices to fall 25%; 'I fired Greenspan'; Dilbert

Here's my Top 10 links from around the Internet at 6 pm in association with NZ Mint.

I welcome your additions in the comments below or via email tobernard.hickey@interest.co.nz.

I'll pop the extras into the comment stream. See all previous Top 10s here.

My must read today is #1. It's from deep inside Greece and explains graphically what is wrong. No wonder their bonds are trading at over 200%.

1. The lights are going out in Athens - Greek crime novelist Petros Markaris has written a detailed, impassioned description of life in Athens and the lay of the political and social landscape there.

It is an enlightening and nuanced view of what's going on in Greece and what's wrong with Greece.

It's written from the point of view of a disillusioned insider who knows where the bodies are buried and who's rorting whom.

It's a fascinating tour through the bowels of Greek society.

I won't be buying Greek bonds any time soon...

HT Andrew via email.

 Here's the piece, originally published in German in Die Zeit and translated into English, on the Breach of Close blog:

One is met with the bleak sight of empty shops all over Athens, even in the more upscale shopping districts such as Patission Street. Patission, as the Athenians call it, is the oldest of the three long streets that run through the center of Athens and a boulevard of the middle class. I know the street very well, since I live nearby. Patission was always dimly lit, but that didn’t matter, because the shop windows shone so brightly. In these days the street is pitch dark; every second shop has closed down. The few shops that have survived eke out a living with special sales.

Aiolou Street in the city center, a traditional lower-income shopping street, looks even more desolate. There are still some shops open but they’re empty. No customers. Aiolou Streethas become a pedestrian walkway without pedestrians. “How much longer can I hold out?” asks the owner of a small shop for men’s clothing where I’ve bought a pair of socks. “Days go by before a single customer wanders in.” At the same time you think twice before entering a shop because once you’re in, the owner or a shop-clerk will besiege you with how bad things are. The woman with the men’s clothing shop couldn’t hold out: as I was walking along Aiolou Street yesterday, I noticed that her shop, too, had closed.

2. Chinese property prices need to fall 30% - Bloomberg reports a Chinese legislator thinks house prices need to fall that much to become affordable.

Sound familiar?

Housing prices will be at a “reasonable” level when they are equivalent to about six years of salary for a family, the senior lawmaker said, according to the transcript of an interview with China National Radio.

“Based on this, property prices may need to fall 30 percent,” He said, according to the transcript on the broadcaster’s website. “But it doesn’t mean prices will go down in every region, every city. The exact extent of the decline will depend on demand.”

China reiterated this year it won’t back away from housing curbs including tighter mortgage requirements, while Beijing and the financial center of Shanghai are among Chinese cities that have said they will continue imposing home purchase restrictions this year.

3. There's something wrong in the world - Britain's economy is in recession and unemployment is at multi-decade highs. Yet luxury property prices are at astonishingly high prices in London. This shift in wealth and income to the 1% from the 99% is driving a lot of the grumpiness now spilling over into political scenes and (sometimes) onto the streets.

The stripping of Sir Fred Goodwin's nighthood is symptomatic, as is the uproar over the bonus (since revoked) of the Royal Bank of Scotland CEO. There's even something similar going on in Christchurch. When the masses are grumpy they will not tolerate naked displays of wealth. Come the revolution...

Here's the gory detail via Bloomberg

A home in the U.K.’s most expensive neighborhood is being offered for more than 100 million pounds ($158 million), according to the broker handling the sale.

The neo-classical house is located at 6 Palace Green in Kensington, one of London’s few private roads where no passing traffic can enter, Aylesford International Managing Director Louise Hewlett said. The 16,000-square-foot (1,486-square-meter) home is owned by Tamzen Ltd., a closely held company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands, according to the U.K. Land Registry.

Overseas buyers are driving London’s luxury home values, which have performed better than other parts of the U.K. real estate market. Prices have gained for 14 straight months as investors compete for a smaller number of homes for sale and seek safer assets amid geopolitical and economic instability.

4. Portugal is next - Bloomberg reports yields on Portugese 10 year bonds rose to more than 18% last night despite the ECB's money printing and the deficit deal.

Investors just don't believe the problems are solved. They see a big ugly Greek-style haircut coming their way,

Yet the Portugese PM still believes this is just a confidence issue and many in the bond markets think the ECB will eventually keep them whole by buying the bonds anyway.

Portugal Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho reiterated yesterday that there was no risk of investors being asked by government officials to take losses on Portuguese debt. “What matters the most at this time is that all the financial stress is removed,” he said while at the EU summit in Brussels.

The ECB will remain active in “supporting government bond markets of the countries that have come under pressure,” said Bill Dinning, the Edinburgh-based strategy chief at Kames Capital Plc, which manages about $75 billion. “I don’t think we should doubt the motivation, which is to continue with the euro zone in its current construction.”

5. Here it comes - Bloomberg reports Hong Kong property prices are now expected to fall a further 25% this year after falling 6% in the second half of last year.

No worries then...

Asian real estate markets from Singapore to Beijing to Mumbai are stalling or have started declining as governments seek to curb the type of housing bubble that brought down the U.S. economy. In Hong Kong, rising borrowing costs, extra transaction taxes and higher down-payment requirements imposed by the government have fueled the slump.

“We’re in for a very challenging first half,” said Wong Leung-sing, associate director of research at Centaline Property Agency Ltd., the city’s biggest closely held realtor. “The drop in secondary mortgages means buyers are having trouble borrowing from the banks the full amounts they need. The ones that are taking the biggest hits right now are the middle- to lower- priced housing segment.”

6. A theme for years to come - US and other large governments are cracking down on tax cheats hard. They're targeting banks and others who help them. It's like Kim Dotcom, but for bankers.

Can't say I have much sympathy.

Here's the fallout in Switzerland. A major private bank in Switzerland has just had to sell itself after being attacked by US tax authorities, Swissinfo.ch reports.

7. 'I fired Greenspan' - Naked Capitalism has the story about how Michael Hudson once fired Alan Greenspan for fudging some numbers.

Greenspan was sort of the hack that was hired. When I was on Wall Street, Greenspan was hired as part of a study I was doing on the balance of payments of the Oil Industry. And one day my boss, John Deaver came into my office and said he really worried about Greenspan being a part of this report because he was known as a hack that always gave …his clients what they wanted instead of something actual.

So he (JD) gave me Greenspan’s figures on depreciation of oil producing refinery assets in Europe and asked me to find out where the faking is? He said he couldn’t believe that Greenspan by himself wouldn’t of just faked the figures and it took me about a week to figure out where the faking of the figures came out (from) and that was Greenspan had simply picked up depreciation rates relative to output for the United States and projected them onto Europe.

8. By the way - Bloomberg reports the state government of California faces a cash crisis by March.

9. Totally relevant video of former Citigroup Chairman John Reed explaining how America's 'Too Big To Fail' banks were created and how they put America's regulators to sleep through the 1990s and 2000s. These are the same banks fighting to kill off the Volcker Rule right now that would force them to shut down their proprietary trading (ie gambling) divisions.

John Reed on Big Banks' Power and Influence from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

10. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert do battle over their Super PAC. There's a long chase. Good stunt doubles.

(Updated to corrected day of week....blinking useless provincial holidays...)