The introduction of a financial transaction tax in Europe could benefit the European economy and raise the level of growth, according to a study written by two prominent economists, Professors Stephany Griffith-Jones and Avinash Persaud....The study was presented today in Brussels during a press conference chaired by S&D Euro MP Anni Podimata who will draft the European Parliament's report on the Commission's proposal. Mrs Podimata welcomed the study and said: "This study confirms what we have been saying all along. The financial markets have to make a fair contribution to the crisis they provoked. "An FTT will reduce the fragmentation of the internal market. Put together with other tools, it will act as a disincentive to high frequency trading and other practices which increase risk without ensuring liquidity. "This would contribute to a better financing of the real economy, encourage investment and job creation in the EU. "The S&D Group is against putting the entire burden on ordinary taxpayers, and calls for measures to boost growth. In this sense, an FTT is an integral part of this approach". Professor Stephany Griffith-Jones confirmed the benefits of an FTT. Among them, she said: "The Commission has calculated that it would only have a -0.2% effect on growth. It takes into account the fact that a very small part of investment by credit companies would actually be taxed and that high frequency trading would be decreased. "But, in our study, we argue that an FTT would also contribute to reduce the risk of a future crisis. When this is taken into account, you obtain a positive effect on growth of about a quarter of a percent". Professor Stephany Griffith-Jones rejected the argument that the tax would not be feasible because of fraud: "In the past, the same was said about income tax, which is indeed avoided but which still raises a lot of money", she said.My latest opinion ON GREECE AND THE E.U.---The only way to save Greece is to expel it from the E.U and the Euro. The only way to save Europe ,is to dissolve the E.U and abandon the Euro. The E.U has been responsible for imposing the iniquitous Climate Change furphy on the ecomomies of Europe. This bizarre and truly vicious religon has smashed the global economy. ... It has acted as a wrecking ball on the financial infrastructure of all those regions witless enough to adopt it. It has driven up energy costs ,leading to the closure of businesses everywhere ,rising unemployment and excessive hardship and death by hypothermia for the elderly and the needy. It has distorted the functioning of economies everywhere by rewarding failed inefficient, primitive energy suppliers and distributors,whilst penalising those who provide cheap and reliable energy. It has rewarded rentseekers and carpet baggers ,at the expense of those who actually do an honest day's work....Ditch the insane climate change policies of the E.U and save the global economy.
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www.BNR.roThis pressure could now lead to protests from the German people which could result in Germany's exit since, lets be realistic about this, German consumers would benefit considerably by the reintroduction of a strong DM: Imports would be less expensive, foreign investments would be far cheaper and so would holidays in the Mediterranean.
In addition, Germany would be free to join up with other strong Eastern European countries and revert to a Classical Liberal vision of Europe.
This discussion should be put on ice temporarily as AEP has just penned another article, suggesting Germany has bowed to global pressure and signaled they will agree to the bailout.
Anything can still happen, and no doubt will
There are many reasons for this, the primary being that Greece cannot afford the suffocating burden of being a member of the EU in terms of the ridiculously large bureaucratic requirements, the murderous red tape and the ludicrously expensive European type welfare state. These things are unaffordable to countries like Greece and Portugal. None of this is necessary for the countries either - or for any other EU member state for that matter. The EU does not in any way benefit the European populations.
So, unless Greece leaves the euro, as a primary prerequisite for regaining economic stability in any event, and also the EU, I find it really difficult to see how the country will pull itself back from the brink.
government controls, or spends.
as GDP = C + I + G and G is
Tax receipts + deficit. [C = consumption, I = investments, G = total
government spending]
What happens is that when G/GDP exceeds about 30% or so, the tax revenues drop because government employees are paid from those taxes and that is a circular recycling process that is inefficient.
Add on to this phony programs like solar cells, windmills, 'education' at its current levels, and other mistakes the only way to maintain the GDP is for government to borrow. That is where the US is now and also where Greece is stuck.
More G then becomes tax revenues plus borrowing plus monetizing the debt and that is terminal. This spirals upward until there is a fiscal collapse. Get ready, it is on the way.
Greece and most of the EU have too much government. That must be cut because that is one of the structural defects that keeps propelling the debt out of sight.
The Greek state is €7bn in arrears to companies; manufacturing contracted at 15.5pc in December; and a further 50,000 small firms are expected to go bankrupt by July. The Labour Institute thinks the economy will contract by another 7pc this year.
There is no chance that free enterprise can pick up the slack in the foreseeable future as the state is dismantled, even if premier Lucas Papademos reaches a debt deal with Germany’s Wolfgang Schäuble and staves off default in March. Unemployment must inevitably punch higher.
One can see why the high priests of the EU Project wish to prevent elections taking place in April. The political centre is disintegrating, with the once triumphant PASOK party down to 9pc in the polls and New Democracy at 18pc -- each party reduced to a pro-Memorandum rump after the mass expulsion of dissidents, and each stunned almost senseless.
Dimitra Noussi, who runs two homeless shelters and a soup kitchen for the City of Athens, said the crunch comes once people have been unemployed for five or six months and cannot pay the rent. Most fall back on the kinship network but there comes a point when critical mass overwhelms even this cultural backstop.
"I’m afraid we’re going to see an unbelievable increase in numbers. We’re suddenly starting to see people in their fifties coming in, and even families with children. They feel humiliated and desperate. I never thought I would see such a thing in my country."
Can a return to the drachma save Greece as unemployment soars?
Greece’s unemployment bomb has detonated. After a deceptive calm, the surge in job losses since last summer is shocking even for those who never believed that combined fiscal and monetary contraction could possibly lead to any result other than ruin.
Germany’s finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble toned down threats to force Greece out of the euro, bowing to intense pressure from France, Italy, and the US-led bloc of global leaders.
Mr Schäuble said the country is "on the right path" and signalled that pension cuts agreed by the Greek cabinet over the weekend would be enough to secure approval for the loan package from EU ministers on Monday.
"If Greece can implement all the necessary promises by the end of February and clear up any other open questions, the second aid package can be approved," he said.
Austria’s finance minister Maria Fekter said Greece faced stringent conditions on new aid but said that the "majority" of EMU countries not want to risk a dangerous misadventure that would cost even more in the end.
"We are not going to abandon Greece. It would be even harder for Greece to repay its debts with a devalued drachma," she told ORF television. A deal will unlock the next tranche of money from the EU-IMF Troika and allow Athens to meet a €14.5bn payment to creditors on March 20.
So you want us to go back to the gold standard. Well that hasn't stopped economic crashes in the past how is it expected to do so in the future. Only someone with a very simple understanding of economics would even suggest such a silly idea. Today there are a lot of metals more valuable than gold which only real value is as a personal adornment. I suppose you are one of those who believes if you coat things in gold they work better well they don't.
For every practical use of gold in the past there are better metals & materials today. If those that bought gold thought long and hard about it they would realise that it was one of the most useless metals they could own. Now if you want a really useful metal try silver; it's much more useful than gold. Given the choice an engineer would always choose another metal rather than gold not because it was cheaper but because it was better suited.
Gold is only valuable because people believe it has value and for no other reason. If all gold disappeared tomorrow we wouldn't have a problem but then if copper disappeared we would be in big trouble. So let’s go over to the copper standard or does that also sound silly.
Better still why don’t people start to value what is really important for all of us and that is our labour. Commerce and trade is the exchange of one man’s labour for another man’s labour and always has been. The problem is not that the economic model is broken, it’s that we have for too long lived under the delusion that money can make money which is just a crock of shit. Money can be used to generate production and so return a profit but when money is used to produce a profit with no useful item having been created in the meantime then that’s madness in motion. For the past 60 years we have been living from one bubble to the next and the last one was the big bang. We now need to get back to using capital to produce wealth in the form of goods and services (which banking should be a very, very small part of) out of which we can earn a profit. That's the standard we should return to not the idiotic gold standard.
Our currency and accounts are only loosely connected with tangible assets and are subject to swaps and derivatives and loans and such and the Fed printing presses.
If the system collapses, then we will find out if gold holds its 5000 year prominence as a currency or reserve currency of choice.
Uniunea Creştină (CDU/CSU) a Angelei Merkel şi aliatul său liberal (FDP), Partidul social-democrat (SPD) şi Verzii dispun de o majoritate confortabilă pentru ca Gauck să fie ales după demisia de vineri a lui Christian Wulff, suspect de corupţie.
Gauck a fost candidatul din partea SPD şi a Verzilor în iunie 2010 împotriva lui Wulff, pe care Merkel a ajuns să îl susţină, în mod regretabil.
Gauck, calificat de Merkel ca fiind "un profesor de democraţie" în cadrul conferinţei sale de presă, se bucură de o mare popularitate în Germania.
Doar partidul de extremă dreaptă Die Linke, care include foşti membri ai Partidului comunist ce conducea în RDG, îl critică puternic pe acest pastor luteran.
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