SNUS#6: Running Out of Gas Edition

It's Monday, making it prime time to turn on our Serious News Update Service™ and scan the serious stories making headlines in Hungary. Today we tip our hat to Hungary's leading English-language general-interest newspaper, the Budapest Times, which after a year of off-line success has finally gone online. Unfortunately, this week's BT is not yet posted, so for the time being we will be limiting our Monday SNUS to the venerable Budapest Business Journal, which has lots of interesting and alarming items. As usual, overall importance and/or immediacy are designated by the numbers in parenthesis, with 1.0 meaning "don't have a cow, man" and 10 "Ay caramba!" Links, if available, are provided for stories scoring at least a 7.0.
• The new government is promising economic growth, dynamism and "jobs, jobs, jobs" but its desire to cling to power will probably mean an end to any significant reforms for the next two years. Which in turn will lead to stagnation, lethargy and "no jobs, no jobs, no jobs," except for bureaucrats, accountants and paper-pushers, who are rewarded with another set of baffling new changes to the tax code. (9.5/10)
• The National Bank of Hungary, the supposedly responsible chaperones charged with watching the teenagers who run the Hungarian economy, said they had "lost" €650 million in imports. If you find the missing €650 million, please turn it in to the National Bank, because it is making the country's trade numbers worse than ever. (7.5/10)
• A computer game developed by the geeks at Budapest's Stormregion Kft is storming Europe. Called "Codename: Panzers, Phase One," the World War II tank battle-themed game lets you lay waste to quaint European cities and otherwise blitz to your heart's content, and seems to be doing particularly well in Germany. Uh-oh. (3.5/10)

More SNUS after the jump...

• A Ukrainian-Russian consortium is taking over Dunaferr Rt, the steelmaker in the central Hungarian city of Dunaújváros, formerly known as "Stalincity." (5.5/10)
• Foreign investors are tuning in to Antenna Hungária Rt, but it is not clear that the Hungarian state, the majority owner of the broadcaster, is ready to tune out. Meanwhile, the future for state-run TV channel MTV is hazy. We advise you to stay tuned. (2.5/10)
• Local oil and gas giant MOL Rt is getting more giant and less local, following a decision to list its shares on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. (2.0/10)
• A €60 million leisure and entertainment complex featuring an "aquapark," hotel, cafés, restaurants, and other fun stuff will be build on the site formerly occupied by the West Balkan outdoor pub in South Buda. (4.0/10)
• While some Hungarian makers of environmentally friendly energy gear are making headway in international markets as far away as Asia, Hungary's new renewable energy strategy is already running out of gas, in part because of a shortfall in the amount of power generated by burning organic "biomass," including wood chips. (5.5/10)
• The Finance Ministry wants to impose a new tax on small enterprises and the self-employed so they can go bankrupt and collect unemployment benefits. Other experts are suggesting that the country's hard-hit entrepreneurs simply be executed and their bodies mulched and used as biomass to reach the country's new renewable energy strategy. (6.0/10)