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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TobagoJack who wrote (22836)	8/18/2002 11:17:42 PM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 74559

Positive economic side of disasters: Floods hit Austrian Eurofighter order By Eric Frey in Vienna Published: August 16 2002 12:17 \| Last Updated: August 16 2002 12:17 Elmat's comments between [ ] The Austrian government on Thursday abandoned its plans to cut income and corporate taxes next year [now tell me isn't a disaster handy!!!]and also scaled back the purchase of fighter jets for its military. [good! less money for useless hardware and more money to the construction and the farmer. The disaster provided a very useful rebalancing in the flow of money] Responding to the worst floods in a more than a century, chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel said: "The new priority is reconstruction and quick help" for the victims. [See how a couple of meters of water in the river change priorities?This is my boy!] Austria will give €650m ($638m) in direct aid and another €400m of tax credits to households and small businesses. Total damages are estimated to be at least €4bn. [Schussel re-election is guaranteed!] The tax cuts, which were designed to boost the government's popularity before national elections set for October 2003, would have amounted to €1-€2bn. Last month, the government also decided to purchase 24 Eurofighter combat aircraft, but has now cut that to 18 and will try to negotiate more favourable financing terms with the consortium building the jet, [El Nino should happen every year I can tell you!] which includes the Franco-German European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, BAE Systems of the UK and Finmeccanica of Italy. Even before the floods, both tax cuts and fighter jets were controversial, and the rightist coalition government jumped on the occasion to abandon its commitments. {Gracias El Nino. Muchas Gracias} Economists argued that a loss of tax revenue would push the budget, which was balanced last year for the first time in three decades, back into a deficit. And 10 per cent of the population signed a petition to stop the €2bn purchase of the fighter jets, and opinion polls show that 70 per cent oppose the deal. High waters receded on Thursday across northern and eastern Austria, though the north-east corner of Lower Austria was still affected by waters flowing southwards from the Czech Republic. [Please, El Nino, come back soon!]