European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has criticized French moves to protect EU cultural industries as "reactionary" ahead of upcoming talks on a massive EU free trade agreement with the United States. European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso has criticised French moves to protect Europe's film and cultural industries as "reactionary" ahead of upcoming negotiations on a major EU free trade agreement with the United States.   "Some say they belong to the left, but in fact they are culturally extremely reactionary," the Commission president said in an interview with the "International Herald Tribune" published on Monday.    Without specifically naming France, Barroso said that those fearful of a US cultural invasion of Europe "have an anti-cultural agenda".   Such fears indicate "no understanding of the benefits that globalization brings, also from a cultural point of view," he added.   Hollande said on Monday that he found Barroso’s remarks “hard to believe”.   The unusually harsh criticism from Barroso followed marathon talks Friday between the bloc's 27 trade ministers to agree on the terms of the Commission's mandate to negotiate the EU-US trade agreement, which would be the biggest free trade deal in the world.  France insisted on a cultural exception that would exclude the audiovisual sector from the negotiations. After 13 hours of talks, a compromise was reached agreeing to French demands while stating that the Commission could review the issue later if necessary.  "I am going to listen to what my American friends say on this [and] then we can ... ask for additional mandates" if needed, said EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht.  EU officials have repeatedly warned that excluding any economic sector could hand the US an early bargaining chip in what promise to be tough negotiations. Washington says no areas should be excluded from the talks.  Ministers were under intense pressure to agree to the guidelines on which the European Commission will negotiate the EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) so the talks could be formally launched at the G8 meeting starting on Monday. If a deal is struck, it will establish the world's largest free trade arrangement, with bilateral trade in goods last year worth some €500 billion ($670 billion) and another €280 billion in services. Trillions of euros flow between the bloc and the United States in annual investment. The EU says a trade deal would add some €119 billion euros to the EU economy a year and would result in a €95 billion annual boon for the United States.

Italian industrial data - New industrial orders data from Italy shows the deep damage caused to its manufacturing base in the last year. Italian industrial orders slumped 10% year-on-year in March, after 12 months of recession, austerity measures, and political uncertainty. But orders were actually 1.6% higher than in February, a somewhat encouraging sign for the future . Industrial sales (as opposed to future orders) tumbled 7.6% year-on-year, and were down 0.9% on a monthly basis. Steve Collins, global head of dealing at London & Capital Asset Management, dubbed the figures 'dire'....My take on what has been going on is that the "corporates" that have all the unelected people at the EU,ECB,IMF,WTO etc. on speed dial have decided that the social systems of the "West" are too expensive and bad for business. The unelected do not care - the revolving door means that after they have done their master's bidding they can look forwards to nice directorships to supplement their pensions. Big business spends billions on lobbyists and political donations - they do not do this other than to influence events. Rebalancing, restructuring, global race - words used by the elite as they re-order things in this "post democratic age"....How many democracies have been overthrown recently?
National budgets are now subject to the Troika for several countries....This Troika is telling countries how many people to sack, and what state assets to sell off. "Post democratic age" has been mentioned by Barroso a few times, now Lagarde is saying the same (not sure about HVP).  Draghi said he would do "anything it takes" to save the Euro (note - save a currency, nothing about saving the life chances of tens of millions of people).
Also - if you get bored you may want to look up what protections from prosecution the likes of Draghi enjoy, and who has the authority to stop him from doing whatever he wants to.
Anyway, I must go...I'm taking my close friends out to lunch before the zombie apocalypse starts.

Well, I guess that's it. The EU is done for.   Europe was doomed in any eventuality, of course. Ultimately the only sustainable way to compete with countries like China and Bangladesh is to lower the living standards of the majority to similar levels.  When it comes to grim reading about the current European condition, it does not rain but it pours.  The latest catalogue of unremitting gloom (unless you're a German) comes in a 49-page survey of public opinion in eight EU countries conducted in March by Pew pollsters.  The results show support for the EU has shrunk from 60% to 45% in a year on average across the eight countries.  The more detailed findings are that public support for EU integration has eroded strongly, with Germans alone in favor of handing more powers to Brussels to tackle the four-year economic and financial crisis that is severely sapping EU confidence and reinforcing the sense of inexorable medium-term decline.  "Positive views of the EU are at or near their low point in most of the countries surveyed, even among the young," said the pollsters, who talked to nearly 8,000 people.  It is striking how the policy responses of EU leaders to the currency crisis are at such odds with public opinion, as centripetal political action clashes with centrifugal national moods.  The crisis management of the past three years has essentially seen Berlin, Brussels, and others resort to technocratic fixes in an incremental process of pooling economic and fiscal policy powers in the eurozone.  Outside of Germany, however, public support for surrendering such powers from the national level to Brussels, as is happening, is declining rapidly, generating an ever widening "democratic deficit" in the EU that the leaders regularly bemoan but have done nothing to address.  In a big speech on Europe last month, the leading German political thinker, Jürgen Habermas, diagnosed the elite policy responses to the crisis and concluded that "postponing democracy is always dangerous".  Pew's findings dovetail with Eurobarometer poll results revealed last month in the Guardian that showed a collapse in public support for the EU in the union's six biggest countries, making up two-thirds of the half-billion population.  The survey results are particularly spectacular for France, reinforcing the sense of drift a year into the term of President François Hollande and underlining the estrangement between Paris and Berlin.  "The prolonged economic crisis is separating the French from the Germans – threatening the Franco-German axis that has long driven European integration. And it has separated the Germans from everyone else.  "No European country is becoming more dispirited and disillusioned faster than France. French public opinion has soured on a number of measures in the last year … Even more dramatically, French public opinion on a range of issues is now looking less like that in Germany and more like that in Spain, Italy and Greece … The French are also beginning to doubt their commitment to the European project, with 77% believing European economic integration has made things worse for France, an increase of 14 points." Pretty much the only optimism evident in the survey is in Germany, leading the pollsters to conclude that the Germans are living "on a different continent". This acute divergence in perception on how the crisis has affected Europe, say officials and diplomats closely involved in the crisis management, makes things much more difficult to fix because the cultural and psychological realities in the different countries are so varied.

A revised European Bathing Water Directive which is due to come into force in 2015 will require water to be twice as clean to achieve the highest standard – a rating of Excellent. Tourism bosses fear that the new rules could have a big impact on the communities around any beaches that fail to make the grade.
They are calling for a more flexible approach that would allow them to provide daily updates on the water quality meaning that they would only have to close the beaches to bathers on those days when the pollution reaches hazardous levels.  Malcolm Bell, the head of Visit Cornwall, said: “We are going to face a challenge to explain to people that things have not got worse – it is just that the hurdle has got higher.  “If a beach is on the new borderline, it doesn’t mean it will be borderline all the time.  “Sometimes it will be beautiful and other times there will be problems, so we want to be able to put up signs on those incidents but be able to take them down when it is more than safe.”  Jonathan Ponting, principal environment planning officer at the Environment Agency, said work was under way to improve the water quality in those areas at risk.  He said: “The vast majority of our beaches pass the current standards and they have seen a massive improvement over the past 20 years, but we are moving to a system that uses much tighter standards than the current ones that we report to.  “Tourism is a massive part of our economy in some of these areas and there is no doubt that if some of these beaches do have signs advising against bathing it could be damaging for the economies in those areas. “The Environment Agency has been working to get as many of those beaches as possible to meet those standards.”  Temperatures are expected to rise tomorrow to just shy of the hottest seen this year, with the South East expected to get up to 73.4F (23C), about the same as is forecast for the south of France.
 

GERMANY–Deutsche Bank said Monday it will raise €2.8 billion ($3.65 billion) in fresh capital in a dramatic about-face for the bank, which has repeatedly said it won't turn to shareholders for help boosting its capital cushion. The bank, Europe's second-largest by assets, has long faced doubts from investors and analysts about whether it has enough capital to absorb potential future losses and to meet increasingly stringent regulatory requirements. On paper, Deutsche Bank had one of the thinnest capital ratios of large European banks.  The Basel rules don't fully kick in until 2019, but banks across Europe are under pressure from regulators and investors to comply with the rules well before then. Few investors or analysts expected the bank to meet the targets in 2013.  The size of Deutsche Bank's capital hike is relatively modest compared with what some bankers, analysts and investors think it needs. Analysts previously estimated the bank needs up to €10 billion. Deutsche Bank executives have been meeting in recent weeks with senior investment bankers to sound them out about how much capital the bank would need to raise to placate investors, according to people who participated in the meetings. The bankers' response: Deutsche Bank should come up with at least €6 billion and possibly as much as €10 billion to put the capital concerns behind it, these people said. The bank's change-of-heart apparently stemmed from executives' frustration with the lack of reaction among investors to the bank's strategic changes, according to industry officials. The bank's management felt they could raise a token amount to alleviate market concerns without destroying credibility, these people said. "This is a blatant U-turn," said a senior investment banker who was involved in the talks. "It's a real climb-down for them."  The timing of the capital increase could raise questions because earlier this year, with Deutsche Bank's stock trading more than 15% above its current levels, executives insisted they had no plans to raise new capital. If they had proceeded with the share sale at the time, they could have raised more capital by selling a fewer number of shares, a preferable outcome for the bank's existing shareholders. While Deutsche Bank didn't disclose the terms of the share sale, industry officials said the deal's structure would likely involve a small number of big institutional money managers picking up the shares at a small discount to the stock's current trading price. Because the share sale is relatively small, Deutsche Bank doesn't need to go through the process of offering all existing shareholders the right to participate, a potentially costly and complex process that Deutsche executives were eager to avoid....NOW, WE ALL KNOW THAT THE fed PUMPED OVER 25 TRILLION DOLLARS IN THIS BANK IN THE PAST TWO YEARS !!! Show us the money Mrs. Merkel !!!!

"José Manuel Barroso, the European commission president, said on Tuesday this week the European "dream" was under threat from a "resurgence of populism and nationalism" across the EU."
Correction:
José Manuel Barroso, the UNELECTED president of the UNELECTED European commission, said on Tuesday this week the European "dream" was under threat from a "resurgence of populism and nationalism" across the EU.
Remember "citizen": democracy is nationalism and politicians who serve the people who elected them are "populist".
Orwell and Kafka must be turning in their graves.Public confidence in the European Union has fallen to historically low levels in the six biggest EU countries, raising fundamental questions about its democratic legitimacy more than three years into the union's worst ever crisis, new data shows.After financial, currency and debt crises, wrenching budget and spending cuts, rich nations' bailouts of the poor, and surrenders of sovereign powers over policymaking to international technocrats, Euroscepticism is soaring to a degree that is likely to feed populist anti-EU politics and frustrate European leaders' efforts to arrest the collapse in support for their project.

Figures from Eurobarometer, the EU's polling organization, analyzed by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), a think-tank, show a vertiginous decline in trust in the EU in countries such as Spain, Germany and Italy that are historically very pro-European.

The six countries surveyed – Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Spain, and Poland – are the EU's biggest, jointly making up more than two out of three EU citizens or around 350 million of the EU's 500 million population. The findings, published exclusively in the Guardian in Britain and in collaboration with other leading newspapers in the other five countries, represent a nightmare for Europe's leaders, whether in the wealthy north or in the bailout-battered south, suggesting a much bigger crisis of political and democratic legitimacy.

The most dramatic fall in faith in the EU has occurred in Spain, where the banking and housing market collapse, eurozone bailout and runaway unemployment have combined to produce 72% "tending not to trust" the EU, with only 20% "tending to trust".

The data compares trust and mistrust in the EU at the end of last year with levels in 2007, before the financial crisis, to reveal a precipitate fall in support for the EU of the kind that is common in Britain but is much more rarely seen on the continent.

In Spain, trust in the EU fell from 65% to 20% over the five-year period while mistrust soared to 72% from 23%. The EU could and should have been so much more than it currently is. Trouble with the EU we have is the lack of democracy. Votes against expansions are ignored or re-run (think of the EU Constitution that became the Lisbon Treaty instead). Only Poland is still positive - just how many billions of Euros have been transferred to Poland for them to be positive?

The Eurozone is in recession because it is an exporting bloc and its' key markets (not least countries like Britain) are just not buying. You would hardly know it from reading the British press but the Eurozone as a whole still has a TRADE SURPLUS with the rest of the world. When was the last time that Britain ran a trade surplus? The 1980's? Yet this article (and hundreds like it) paint a picture of a frustrated UK economy, raring to go, just waiting for an enfeebled Eurozone to buck its ideas up. It’s back-to-front new-speak garbage - the Eurozone will be out of recession the moment its customer countries (like Britain) start buying again.

You can’t suddenly decide to have an export-led economy when a crisis hits and it’s clear that your financial and services sectors are a parasitic dud or that running an economy based on bumping house prices and buying from each other is a daft Ponzi scheme. Manufacturing reputations take decades to establish and Britain comprehensively trashed its reputation in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s with crap products and poor leadership.

The entire world economy is in trouble right now and every country is hoping that ‘exporting’ will dig it out of a hole. That’s why Japan has just pledged to rubbish the value of its currency and invite inflation in through the front door. Britain trashed the value of the pound against the Euro as soon as the crisis hit, but as a net importer, it has only served to stoke the deficit.

There is a bigger picture here which has a lot to do with global energy availability (don't believe the recent 'revolutionary' shale hype, it's yet more PR garbage), landfill consumerism and environmental awareness. We can see that with even a relatively modest drop in demand, the world economy comes crashing to a halt. Yet for the sake of the environment, demand for all kinds of useless, pointless consumer crap needs to collapse still further…much, much further.

The ‘return to growth’ mantra is getting boring and showing up humanity as an uncreative, unimaginative race of lemmings. Actually, on second thoughts, I credit lemmings with more sense...

Dixon at Commerzbank says politicians will have to give up on the idea of a quick fix: "There's been a realization among policymakers that we're not going to get the typical V-shaped recovery, and the sooner we all get used to that, the better. You get seven fat years and then you get seven lean years, as the Bible says: it's not a new phenomenon."
Is that the Gideon's Bible?

Some thoughts about EUROPE - The once-booming former Yugoslav republic was plunged into recession by the economic crisis, which dented demand for its exports of manufactured goods, machinery and transport equipment, chemicals and food. The economy is expected to shrink by at least 2% this year. But the statistic that has everyone concerned is the €7bn of bad loans on Slovenian banks' books, an amount equivalent to around one fifth of the country's total GDP. The rating agency Moody's has already downgraded Slovenia's second largest bank, and the IMF has estimated that the government needs to recapitalize the nation's lenders to the tune of at least €1bn. Perhaps most worrying is the fact that the Slovenian prime minister, Alenka Bratušek, was moved to say this week that her country would not be seeking a bailout. Bond investors are not taking any chances. Prices of Slovenian government debt have plunged, sending yields rising by an eye-watering 0.8% on Wednesday alone. Slovenia's 10-year debt is now yielding around 6.15%, not far from the 6.49% yield on 10-year bonds from Portugal, which is already in a bailout program. Laurence Wormald at SunGard Financial Systems said: "The evidence suggests that action will be needed by Slovenia within the next two, three months. However, a bail-in is likely to be less drastic than the one in Cyprus, since Slovenian banks are much less leveraged than those of Cyprus. Also Slovenia is different from Cyprus in one crucial respect, in that Slovenia has not created a large offshore banking center." After Slovenia, who's next? The research house Capital Economics has its money on Malta and Luxembourg....

 

I think there are only 2 options left:
1. Either a split up into a northern and southern Euro-zone
2. or Germans, leave the Euro-zone. This would mean to forgive debt in the amount of about 1,2 trillion Euros, but I think it is worth it. A growing number of Germans is sooo fed up with this Euro-debacle.  Naive and stupid as we actually are, we initially thought this was meant to be a peace project. And now take a look around. A bunch of incompetent Eurocrats turned this beautiful idea into a devastating nightmare. Before we knew what was happening we were catapulted to the helm of Europe and everyone expected us to wave a magic wand to solve the crisis.
Unfortunately we didn't have a magic wand and so we proposed the same recipe for southern Europe which put Germany back on track 10 years ago. Now it doesn't work for a number of intricate reasons, and suddenly Merkel gets depicted with a Hitler mustache, with the German economy morphed into a German Panzer conquering Europe - accused to have sold our products at gunpoint to helpless southern Europeans.
I think it is time for all Europeans to leave this Euro-zone-kindergarten to avoid further misunderstandings.
 

The wounded, bleeding elephant in the room in Brussels today is the awful damage that has already been done to Europe's economy.

Local firms in Cyprus saw business dried up as the country's banks remained closed, and customers learned the full scale of the crisis.

The looming capital controls (restrictions on cash withdrawals, bank transfers, etc) will hurt trade, possibly for months. And the destruction of parts of the Cypriot banking sector will take a great, big chunk out of the country's economy.

A well-respected fund manager based in London who blogs/tweets as Pawelmorski says the scale of the economic destruction achieved in the last week is unheard of 'without the use of weapons'.

He wrote yesterday....The combination of laying waste to the financial sector and tearing up the savings of thousands of residents means that Cyprus won’t return to current levels of output for a decade, a funeral pyre which bears comparison only with Greece.   There are four shocks happening at once; the bog-standard austerity shock; the trauma of bank withdrawal controls; the wealth shock; and the structural shock of wiping out the financial sector. The bailout bill is certainly going to get a lot higher too, as a larger amount of debt is piled onto a smaller economy.
The central bank in Cyprus imposed a €100 a day withdrawal limit at cash machines for all local banks on Sunday to avert a run on lenders, as the island's leaders meet its international lenders for last-ditch talks to avert a financial meltdown.

MADRID—Spain's central bank said a recession in the euro zone's fourth-largest economy deepened slightly in the final quarter of last year, but it said austerity cuts are bringing the country's runaway budget deficit under control. In the first estimate of fourth-quarter economic performance, the Bank of Spain said the economy contracted 1.7% compared with the same period a year earlier and likely contracted 0.6% from the previous quarter. In the third quarter, the economy had shrunk 0.3% from the previous quarter, and 1.6% on an annual basis. The Bank of Spain said gross domestic product fell just 1.3% in the whole of 2012, which was less than the 1.5% contraction anticipated by the government and a sign that strict budget cuts across the board are having a less detrimental effect than some feared. It cautioned that continuing cuts could still weigh on an economy already hurt by efforts to trim debt. "This budget consolidation effort has had a net contracting effect on activity throughout the year, especially in the last few months," the central bank said. This year, meeting even stricter austerity targets "will require an additional, very ambitious fiscal effort by the central and regional governments." Those comments are in line with heightened concerns by local and foreign observers that accelerated austerity measures promoted by the European Union are self-defeating, as a collapse in economic activity makes it harder to boost tax revenue, putting pressure on budget deficits. Earlier this month, the International Monetary Fund said it revising its metrics for how quickly governments should cut their budgets and the IMF's top economist Olivier Blanchard made the case that Europe's fiscal tightening has been too severe. "We do need to reduce the deficit, but the EU should be more flexible about the deadlines," said Josep Comajuncosa, an economics professor at Spain's ESADE business school. "Requiring a fast and drastic reduction of the public deficit could backfire. The deficit target should be pushed back one or two years." The central bank said tax revenue increases in recent months will make it easier for the government to get closer to its target of lowering the 2012 budget deficit to 6.3% of GDP from 9% in 2011. The target for this year is 4.5% of GDP. The latest data available, the central bank said, indicates tax revenue picked up in recent months due to higher value-added and corporate tax receipts, while expenses fell after the government suspended an extra monthly payment for civil servants and decided not to adjust pensions for inflation—two measures which eroded popular support for Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. Spain's statistics institute is due to release an official preliminary estimate of fourth-quarter GDP Jan. 30. Full data on Spain's 2012 budget deficit, including for regional governments, will likely be released late February.(sursa : WSJ)

MY POINT OF VIEW : David Cameron is now speaking more like the type of person of Scots ancestry, whom I’ve known throughout my life, in four different countries. I, too, was named after the Old Testament legend. Let us hope this David is able to skilfully negotiate, with his slingshot, an escape from the crushing, networking giant of the Continent, knowing euphorically as the ‘Guy Fawkes Club’ – to put it into context. As every attempt has been made to make the bible look irrelevant in today’s world (just see what Romans Ch1v22-32 says of homosexuality), those directing the course for British governments seemingly more concerned to make it easier for the Anglican church to be gobbled up by the Guy Fawkes Club – which long ago gave up any pretence of following Scripture (apart from the subject of marriage – talk of straining at a gnat...swallowing a camel)! Perhaps David has done a crash course in Comparative Religion, and has noticed how undemocratic it has been, for mostly Romans to have held key positions in government & quasi government organisations since UK membership of the Common Market – if only because no decent, self respecting Protestant could bring his/herself to be involved in the systematic destruction of the English Speaking peoples, to advantage that jealous rabble on the Continent. Which Cardinal was it who said, ‘Secret mines may take the town when open batteries fail,’ – on the very same subject ! At last, David Cameron is speaking like a Prime Minister of the Greatest little Britain of all time! UK only started to prosper, to the benefit of the rest of the world, also, when Henry VIII cut the haemorrhage of resources to Italy, & UK began to stand on her own two feet, trusting only in holy scripture, & herself. Mussolini’s mentoring Hitler was meant to reverse all that, & when it didn’t, citizens steeped in Mussolini’s theory & logic began settling in the nations of the victors after cessation of WW2 hostilities, with Mussolini’s Plan B. Part of that was Franca Arena’s setting up our first ever republican movement in Australia, & Ray Bellisario, family also from Italy, setting up England’s first republican movement since Cromwell, to discredit the leadership which caused Mussolini to lose, while other aspects of his culture were trumpeted as superior both directly & subliminally in influential nations, so that, for instance, cat spew chino & pissa (my spelling) became something considered superior, & with an arrogantly assumed dash of romance attached to it. A sense of inferiority amongst the nationals of some other countries, about their own cultures, only helped feed the appetite for self aggrandisement, of those keen to rebuild a new Roman Empire. To assist in this plan the IRA were entrusted with the removal of those who could have warned Great Britain’s leadership what was really going on: battle experienced heroes like the Queen’s relative, Earl Mountbatten, & Airey Neave, MP. I fear, though, that Cameron’s telling the nation how he would vote in any referendum, will tend to make it a foregone conclusion, as voters seem to follow what is seen as the ‘party line.’ Even the Soviet Union discovered that ‘individualism’ whether as nations or as persons, do far better when left to find their own level, instead of being part of some vast metaphorical farm growing peanuts, with individual humans’ means of self expression being emasculated – as though ‘bigger’ is ‘better !’ The communist experiment failed, so why allow catholic activists promote the lie that the British were better off under the Treaty of Rome? It has been an entirely religion driven exercise, cynically aimed at achieving what Mussolini failed to during WW2.

And the dollar falllsss, and the markets rrrriseee...?? abslute madness...?

LONDON—Euro-zone industrial output declined the most in three years in November, pulled lower by countries in the region's south facing recession as they attempt to cut debt and deficits through austerity policies. The decline is a further indication that the wider economy could contract for a third consecutive quarter in the final three months of 2012 as fiscally frail countries struggle with still-high borrowing costs and demand for goods suffers amid continuing job cuts. Output dropped 3.7% from a year earlier, the biggest decrease since November 2009, when output slumped 7%, Eurostat, the official European statistical office said Monday. Industrial output fell 0.3% in November compared with October, the third consecutive slide on a month-to-month basis. The yearly decline was due to weakness across the board with production of intermediate and capital goods falling at the steepest pace since 2009. In October, industrial output retreated 3.3% on the year and 1.0% on the month, Eurostat said. The October data were revised after previously being reported as falling 1.4% on the month and 3.6% on the year. The November figures were weaker than expected. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires last week projected the data to show industrial output rose 0.2% on the month and fell 3.2% on the year. The data provide further evidence that the economy of the 17-nation currency bloc contracted for a third straight quarter in the final three months of 2012. "November's euro-zone industrial production data provided further strong signs that the recession in the region as a whole intensified in the final quarter of last year," said Ben May, European economist for Capital Economics. Ireland, Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal all saw production decline in November compared with October. Italy also published its full industrial production release Monday. Output fell 1.0% on the month and by 7.6% on the year in November last year, a bigger fall than expected. Output has declined for six straight months in monthly terms, and 15 consecutive months on an annual basis. Italy's national statistics agency Istat said the decline was mainly due to a fall in investment and energy output. Eurostat also reported that Germany saw a meager 0.1% monthly increase in November, while in France, output grew 0.5% over the same period.

The leader of Italy's anti-establishment Five Star Movement political party, the second most popular by opinion polls, has added his voice to the anti-austerity rhetoric that will likely dominate the country's upcoming election campaigns. Beppe Grillo, an Italian comic, echoed Silvio Berlusconi's scathing criticism of the current prime minister Mario Monti's policies as 'German-centric' when he told US broadcaster CNBC that Mr Monti is a mere "bankruptcy curator" who "needs to disappear". He said:

The ECB puts out money that is meant to help our banks,but they do not use it to finance our businesses, but they give it to them to buy back their debt, to help French and German banks. That was Monti's work. The CNBC interview came on the same day Mr Grillo expelled two prominent party members who had voiced criticisms over his leadership style, branding it dictatorial. His expulsion of the pair unleashed at outpouring of criticism from the party's young supporter base, who compared him to famous dictators including Benito Mussolini and Joseph Stalin.

As of Monday evening....a Romanian/French jew at the helm - amusing ...

When German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble and his French counterpart Pierrre Moscovici gave their first joint press conference two weeks ago, they were asked who would take over leadership of the Euro Group once Jean-Claude Juncker stepped down. As early as last summer, Juncker had said he wanted to hand over the reins, but had been persuaded to continue for lack of consensus on a successor. But despite such indications that the end was nigh for Juncker's term at the top, both Schäuble and Moscovici played down the issue.

"Next year is next year," said the Frenchman. "We have other concerns at the moment," said the German.

As of Monday evening, however, the two can no longer dodge the question. At the end of yet another late-evening Euro-Group meeting in Brussels -- during which finance ministers from the 17 euro-zone member states agreed to provide €40 billion in aid to ailing Spanish banks -- Juncker told his colleagues that he intended to step down at the end of the year. "I have asked them to name another minister," Juncker said. His departure will mark an end to his seven-year stewardship of the common currency -- and one that comes not a moment too soon from his perspective. Juncker, who is also the prime minister of Luxembourg, had long been nonplussed at the lack of urgency with which his colleagues viewed his approaching departure, assuming that he would simply carry on until they got around to finding someone. Juncker himself is not blameless in this regard, having been convinced to continue once before, even allowing himself to be elected to another term as Euro Group president last summer. Still, he had been consistent in his desire to step down at the end of this year or the beginning of next. Now, it would seem, it would take a great deal of convincing from a personage such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel to get him to change his mind....Other candidates could theoretically be considered as well, but their chances are seen as limited. Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, for example, is considered both competent and less stubborn than his predecessor, but he has only been finance minister for a few weeks. It is also possible that the Euro Group chooses an outside candidate. The Lisbon Treaty merely stipulates that "the Ministers of the Member States whose currency is the euro shall elect a president for two and a half years, by a majority of those Member States." Still, it would almost certainly need to be someone who has played a central role in recent efforts to combat the euro crisis. Whoever might take over the leadership of the Euro Group, Juncker will likely continue to play a role as Luxembourg's representative. While his country's finance minister, Luc Frieden, currently fills Luxembourg's seat on the panel, Juncker, who carries the official title "treasurer" in addition to his role as prime minister, is likewise eligible for Euro Group membership. And, he has said, he still wants to have a voice.

On Cyprus Bailout, there will be no agreement until the Ecofin meeting on 13th december. Holdups: (according to cyprus mail)

1. Still no data on bank capitalisation needs - expected friday, at least the preliminary version.
2. The cypriot legislature has to pass 20 bills implementing the "preliminary agreement" with the troika.

If anyone thinks the greek parliament had to do this legislation without sufficient time to deliberate, think about the cypriot parliament. They spent most of the negotiations with the troika, arguing that they didn't actually need it. And then suddenly caved in, because there was a bank run on Laika / Cyprus Popular Bank. (That nobody outside the local media and, err, me appears to have noticed). There's no report from the troika, there is no certainty that the banks can safely be recapitalised.

And the deadline from the ECB to recapitalise the banks is January 20th. And the state may run out of money before christmas.

A real mess....As usual something stinks. Must be something to do with the horse trading that goes on. Albeit dead ones, hence the stench. They'll be compromise and what will be left will be the usual fudge & a toothless banking union so full of holes that it would resemble a string vest. Alas poor Uk gave up its veto some time ago on financial matters! We are not there to determine any outcome and its likely banking supervision will be imposed across the EU not just the EZ! Meanwhile the rest of the world moves ahead, including the US, and the EU is stuck in its self inflicted cesspit. God help our young people across the continent

Heil Merkel!.......

"We have laid the foundations to ensure that Greek debt, the most tortuous and destabilizing problem facing the country, has become manageable," Mr Samaras said in a television address, adding that Greece has "ensured its place in the euro." It came after eurozone finance ministers finally reached a deal over Greece's debt burden, enabling the release of its latest tranche of rescue funds. Markets breathed a sigh of relief as eurozone finance ministers finally reached a deal to keep Greece afloat through what was dubbed “bail-out number three”. After 12 hours of talks at their third meeting in three weeks, the euro group settled on measures to cut Greek debt by €40bn (£32bn) and keep the country in the eurozone, a deal which lifted European indices in early trading. The agreement enables the release of the latest €44bn tranche of bail-out funds for Greece and was heralded by Antonis Samaras, the country’s prime minister, as marking a “new day for all Greeks”. ... German news see Merkel and the Deutsche Bundesbank - the state bank- as the winners of the deal....Why? Whereas the ECB is handing over the billions profit it made on Greek bonds to help out, the Bundesbank is pocketing the profits that will fill the German Federal Governments pocket. The Bundesbank is the institution that blocked a further cut to Greek debt, as it stated earlier in the week. Germany in spite of all appearances is benefiting from prolonged Greek misery, and has no wish to see Greece come out of the red. Heil Merkel!

Europe is an extremely poor place to do business

Europe is an extremely poor place to do business and its just getting worse. None of the Internationals wants to do business anymore because most of them lose money hand over fist due to EU regulations and the poor economic conditions and lack of a proper business environment. Many have stuck around while racking up quarterly losses in EMEA simply waiting for things to get better and trying to hold on to market share, but that will not keep up forever and the cracks are already showing. Disappointing eurozone PMI data dampens recovery...Manufacturing data from the eurozone shows that the sector contracted for the 15th month running, painting a 'bleak picture' and dampening hopes of an economic recovery in the region.mpens recovery ? There is no recovery. Its all hot air and bollox spouted by ministers and euro ministers, bankers and the IMF.We're going doooooown and we know it, hence the public anger. In the last 2 weeks alone. 250 jobs gone at severn seas, 350 at kimberley clark, over a 1000 lost at ford, now 6000 comet workers jobs on the line. I was added to the jobless figures myself a couple of months back so I know how things are feeling at the sharp end.But they must have their EU increases so they can continue to spend spend spend, fiddle their expenses, and feed us hot air and waffle.

Want to stimulate economic recovery?? weell here's how:
1. Cut taxes - let money ccirculate in the economy, not be lavished upon malingerers & the indolent!

2. Cut spending to the bone. End the socialist evil that is the welfare state.

3. cut red tape - abolish these silly 'elf & safety laws! do away with the legions of EU cucumber inspectors! Do away with regulators whose sole purpose is to strangle growth!

4. liberalise labour laws - end the minimum wage, criminalise trade unions. Then the economy will flourish!A Keynsian stimulus would have required supluses to have been run in the boom times.
This did not happen - in fact the last government was so incompetent that it did not even realise that it was running a structural deficit of £76bn in 06/07. Those advocates of Keynes were very quiet during the past decade - perhaps they believed the nonsense of "no more boom and bust". Either way, Keynes and his many disciples would be turning in their graves at the conduct of UK government policy for all of the last decade, and Keynes' ideas were made when the UK was a net exporter, had an Empire to fall back on, and government spending as a proportion of GDP was less than half what it is now.
A policy of running a deficit during a boom, followed by a bigger deficit during the inevitable bust is a recipe for national disaster, and people who propose such an action using the fig-leaf of Keynes should be sectioned under the mental health act and never be allowed in a position of power again.

ECB president Mario Draghi has expressed strong support for a "currency commissioner", saying it would strengthen the euro.Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy has criticised the suggestion that eurozone countries should surrender sovereignty and agree to the creation of a European Commissioner with new powers over national budgets of euro countries.  Speaking at a press conference with Mario Monti, Italy's leader, in Madrid, Rajoy argued that this was only acceptable as part of a full package of closer integration.

Rajoy said:

This is an idea, that considered on its own, I personally don't like. As part of a variety of measures for fiscal union, it could be considered.

The Bank of Israel has surprised the markets by cutting interest rates by a quarter-point, to 2%.

The Bank of Israel made the move after concluding that Israel's economy could struggle in early 2013 – and cited the eurozone crisis as a key factor...In a statement, it said:

Against the background of the debt crisis in Europe, the level of economic risk from around the world remains high, and with it the concerns over negative effects on the local economy.

It's the latest in a string of rate cuts by central banks around the globe, as concern has grown about the world economy.

None of the economists surveyed by Bloomberg had expected a cut, and the move has sent the shekel falling against the dollar.

Israeli shekel drops as central bank unexpectedly lops 25 BP off interest rate, taking it to 2%.

The Greek government will put labour market reforms proposed by foreign lenders to a vote in parliament next week, as a series of crunch meetings takes place next week.

The parliament will vote, despite a refusal to back the proposals by a junior coalition partner's refusal to back them, the finance minister said on Saturday. The 2102 budget law, which will bring a range of new austerity measure into the statute books, has been demanded by foreign creditors, will be presented on Wednesday.

A separate bill with new labour market reforms will be put to the vote later in the week, Yannis Stournaras, Greece’s finance minister said.

Greece is expected to run out of money in the middle of November and the government needs to get through a series of austerity measures to unlock the next tranche of aid.  The Democratic Left Party, which has refused to back the reforms, has 16 deputies in the parliament, with the government having a 176 majority. This means the law is expected to pass, but it shows fracture lines building within the ruling coalition.

On Wednesday eurozone finance ministers will hold a conference call on Greece, two days after Monday's Euro Working Group where senior eurozone officials examine the heavily indebted country's progress in meeting the required cost savings required by the Eurogroup.

At least the Greeks, the Spanish and the Portugese are starting to fight against the rape of their countries by the EU and the IMF.
Unlike the spineless Brits who just bend over and take it, from Cameron and his Atlantic Bridge coterie.
The fire-sale is under way, and the taxpayer will be paying for the largesse enjoyed by the shareholders and parasites of the multinationals.

It isn't going to be a two-speed Europe; it is going to be Greater Germany and the rest. And sooner or later, if Angie is still in office, she is going to be kowtowing to a (German) president of Europe. Only vassal states need apply. And they have. It's just that one or two are choking on the small print....Anthee Carassava is on the ground in Athens and she writes:

Thursday's protests are part of a 24-hour nationwide strike the country's two biggest labour unions have organised as European leaders meet in Brussels to decide the fate of the single currency. It is the second job walk out millions of Greeks have taken to in three weeks; the 20th since the financial crisis here erupted nearly three years ago.

“Just once,” said Yannis Panagopoulos, head of the GSEE private sector union, “the government should reject [international] lenders’ absurd demands. “Agreeing to catastrophic measures means driving society to despair and the consequences as well as the protests will be indefinite.”

From taxi drivers to doctors and diplomats, the strike is expected to paralyze an already suffocating economy. Ships remained docked, hospitals were operating on skeleton staff, and dozens of domestic and international flights face cancellations leaving travelers stranded as air traffic controllers joined the protest, keeping aircraft grounded and the country isolated from the rest of the world for three hours.

At least 4000 police have been deployed in the city centre alone. At least 12 buses of riot police and three water canons were propped outside parliament, shielding the building -- a favourite target of protests -- from militant demonstrators.