French pension protests loom - After a quiet summer, anti-austerity protests will return to the streets of the eurozone today as French unions hold a day of protest action against Francois Hollande's pension reforms.

Let by the hardline CGT union, demonstrations will take place in 180 locations across France - as workers show their anger against Hollande's proposal to make them pay larger contributions and wait longer to collect their pensions.

Student unions and far-left groups are also expected to join the protests, in the latest expression of disquiet against Hollande's government.

The plans are meant to target France's pensions black hole, which is on track to hit €20bn by the end of the decade.

As Reuters explains:The draft pension law, to be presented to cabinet on September 18th and sent to parliament shortly thereafter, aims to wipe out an annual deficit that will otherwise hit €20bn in 2020. Its main effect is to extend the pay-in period for pension contributions to 43 years by 2035 from 41.5 now.Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault's government submitted a new reform draft to France's top administrative court on Friday adding an amendment that will reduce advantageous conditions for pensioners who have more than three children starting in 2020. 

Analysts have criticised the bill as being too timid, but the CGT argues that it places an unfair burden on workers.

Opinion poll data released last night found that 61% of the public back the protestors, with four in five saying they are concerned about their pensions.

However, the word from France is that today's protests are likely to be subdued, with some moderate unions declining to take part. It's unlikely to be a repeat of the pension protests that gripped the country for days in 2010.

Still, it should give an insight into the public mood in France, which faces many more tough decisions to bring its deficit into line in the years ahead.

I'll try to track the protests through the day, along with other key events as usual.

Out of a moment of extreme crisis has come an opportunity-now it's up to all sides to seize "IT" with both hands.

We can write a new chapter in the diplomatic handbook, dedicate it to the off-the-cuff remark – the gaffe even – which averts a war.

"We don't yet know if John Kerry's apparently unplanned comment in London, suggesting Syria could avoid a US military strike by turning over its stash of chemical weapons, has set in train a process that will ultimately prevent armed American action. But Barack Obama described it as a "possible breakthrough" and the relief can be felt across multiple world capitals.

Of course the practical problems are legion – one report claims that getting rid of Syria's chemical weapons stockpile could take not weeks or months but "years". Nevertheless, this latest initiative deserves to be taken seriously because it gives all the key players something they need. Crucially, it would allow the antagonists to step back from the brink without losing face.

For Bashar al-Assad, the prize is obvious. If he agrees to ban the banned weapons, to use the vocabulary of the Northern Ireland decommissioning process, he can dodge the US bullet that was perhaps coming his way. Even with Kerry promising on Monday that any attack would be "unbelievably small", Assad would still prefer to avoid an American attack if he can.

For Russia, whose foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, seized on Kerry's rhetorical flourish and turned it into an initiative, there is a double benefit. First, Vladimir Putin gets to pose as the global statesman who stayed the hand of the mighty American hyper power. Second, Russia has its own reasons for wanting to see Syria's toxic arsenal put beyond use. Moscow has long worried about such weaponry falling into opposition jihadist hands should Assad fall. Spiriting it out of Syria dampens that danger. (Tehran is said to support the latest Russian plan for similar reasons.)"(source: guardian.uk)



Let's be honest about this. This is good for a public that does not want to be embroiled in war, but this is a victory for Assad, and unlikely to end the war. The revulsion produced by his use of chemical weapons (and before someone's knee-jerk response about definite proof, it doesn't really matter for the point I'm trying to make) shows Assad what a poor part of his arsenal chemical weapons really are. He can't use them without risking a western response. So he's giving up something e can't use, for what is in effect a free hand in dealing with his opponents. 100,000 have died before chemical weapons were used, and no one is going to lift a finger as long as he uses conventional weapons. The west has nothing on him, no cards to play, why would he make the slightest concession...
This gaffe will not stop war, because we are already at war with Syria (thanks to the terrorists we have sent in), and because the US wants hegemony over the Middle East to offset the decline of its empire....The suggestion that Assad did this is laughable.
If CW were launched, then there would be satellite imagery from just before the attack, showing a missile launched from within regime held areas. The numerous US geo-stationary satellites that are currently hovering over Syria are designed to spot these things. They've been doing it for decades.
This evidence doesn't exist because it never happened. We know the terrorists are in possession of CW, we know that they have already used them, and we know they had the most to gain from the use of CW...So who do we think used them?
Apparently it's whoever the Botox bandit (Kerry) plucks out of a hat FFS!!!

Tullow Oil, one of the Britain's most successful exploration groups, has made its first discovery in the Arctic in a move which will encourage more drilling and anger green groups campaigning against fossil fuel extraction in the region.

Shares in Tullow climbed more than 3% as well operator OMV said it had struck a reservoir in the Barents Sea off the far north of Norway which could contain up to 160m barrels of oil and 40bn cubic feet of recoverable gas.

"This is a major frontier light oil discovery for Norway, Tullow Oil and our co-venturers. We look forward to pursuing the exciting exploration and appraisal follow up arising from this breakthrough discovery," said Angus McCoss, exploration director at Tullow, which holds a 20% stake in the prospect.

"The well results are a breakthrough for the regional exploration activities as the presence of good quality oil shows the possible large potential of an area, which will see more exploration drilling in the near future," said OMV in a statement.

The Austrian company said the production licence 537 in which the well was drilled could hold as much as 500m barrels of oil equivalent based on similar geological evidence nearby.

Tullow has become a stock market favourite on the back of major discoveries in Uganda and Ghana that helped establish those African nations as new oil producers.

The company, led by Irishman Aidan Heavey, has also become the targets of various campaign groups who have accused it of political lobbying, tax avoidance and even bribery, allegations it has steadfastly denied.

But the oil strike in the far north is a significant step for Tullow, which last autumn bought a 40% stake in exploration acreage of Greenland just weeks after the boss of French oil group, Total, said drilling in the Arctic should be abandoned because of the potential reputational and environmental damage if there was an oil spill.

In March this year a new government in Greenland put a moratorium on the granting of fresh oil and gas licences in its Arctic waters but existing licences are still valid. British oil company Cairn Energy, which pioneered a new bout of exploration off Greenland two years ago, said it would resume its controversial exploration in that area in 2014.

Greenpeace has made protection of the far north one of its key campaigns and last month its Arctic Sunrise vessel was chased out of Arctic waters by Russian coast guards after it approached a drill rig working for Moscow-based oil company, Rosneft.

Russia and Norway signed an historic agreement to carve up the Barents Sea between them in 2010, a move which was expected to herald much more drilling in the region.

The Oslo government unveiled 20 new exploration licences in the Barents during the summer and Statoil has already made big finds in the more southerly part of the Barents

Andrew Whittock, an oil analyst with Liberum Capital in London, said the Tullow find was significant although these were early days to try to assess the reservoir's ultimate potential. "This proves a new shallow play in the region. Good news but (it) needs more appraisal."

China's National Bureau of Statistics has accused a county government in southern China of faking economic data by coercing local companies to boost industrial output figures, state media have reported. Luliang county in southern Yunnan province pressured 28 local companies to report 6.34bn Yuan (£665m) of industrial output last year, while according to "initial calculations" the true figure was less than half of that, the state newswire Xinhua reported on Thursday night. "Companies complained that if they did not fraudulently report higher data their reports would be returned by local government departments," it said, citing a National Bureau of Statistics report. "They also said that fake reports would ensure they would enjoy favorable policies such as securing bank loans."

The county government itself reported fake investment data, Xinhua added. Analysts say that phony economic data is nearly ubiquitous in China, as officials are promoted based on their ability to present favorable numbers. "You have an incentive system that encourages the falsification of data," said Fraser Howie, the co-author of Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China's Extraordinary Rise. "We known that for literally decades provincial GDP figures have never totaled the national GDP figures – you have a fundamental mismatch of those numbers." "Anybody who's working with Chinese statistics runs up against problems, inconstancies, and incomplete data," Howie added. "There are just black holes in information gathering." Howie said that while false data was a long-running national problem, Chinese authorities may launch selective crackdowns every few months to demonstrate vigilance. "It could be that this is a particularly egregious case, it could be that there's political infighting, it could be that this leaked somewhere else first," he said. He drew a parallel to President Xi Jinping's anti-corruption drive, which critics have dismissed both as lip service and as a political purge. "Its like the corruption thing – they're not going after nobody, but they're certainly not going after everybody," he said. "Yunnan is far away, nobody really goes there, nobody really cares. It's not like this happened right in Beijing, at the heart of things."

The European Central Bank (ECB) has improved its outlook for the eurozone economy this year. It now expects the single-currency area to shrink 0.4% compared to its previous forecast in June of a 0.6% contraction. The ECB on Thursday held interest rates at 0.5% despite tentative signs that the eurozone is recovering.

The 18-nation bloc emerged from recession in the second quarter of this year, with growth of 0.3% recorded between April and June. 

ECB president Mario Draghi said: "I am very, very cautious about the recovery. I can't share enthusiasm. It is just the beginning. Let's see, these shoots are still very, very green."

The euro fell to a six-week low against the US dollar after Mr Draghi's comments. Explaining the drop, Adam Cole, head of currency strategy at RBC Capital Markets, said: "He didn't pay any lip service to the better data that we've had in recent weeks. He also reiterated the forward guidance from a month ago."

In July, Mr Draghi said interest rates are likely to remain low for an "extended period". It was the first time the central bank issued so-called forward guidance on interest rates, but the bank has not given any indication on how long an "extended period" might be.

That will in part depend on how European economies fare over the coming months. In the second quarter of the year, Germany and France saw stronger-than-expected growth of 0.7% and 0.5%, respectively.

But weaker economies, including Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands, all saw output fall. The ECB expects the recovery to be gradual over the rest of the year, and strengthen in 2014.

In the last five years, there have in fact been a significant number of new guidelines, laws, drafts and recommendations. The banks were forced to increase the size of their financial cushions, for example, but they still aren't large enough. Regulators devised split banking systems designed to shield customer deposits from risky trading activities, but the concepts are half-baked and have yet to be fully implemented.

The leading industrialized nations agree that banks should be liquidated in accordance with clear rules -- and without adversely affecting taxpayers, if at all possible. Nevertheless, there are still no uniform international principles to achieve this goal. Most countries don't even have an insolvency statute for the industry.

Bankers' bonuses were capped, but then their fixed salaries were increased dramatically. Regulators had vowed to rein in the rampant trade in derivatives among banks by requiring it to be conducted on supervised exchanges. Instead, the over-the-counter derivatives market has grown by 20 percent since 2009.

Over the years, lawmakers have lost sight of the most important objectives of regulation. Secure savings deposits, a continuous supply of credit and a functioning payment transaction system are as important to an economy as intact water pipes or power grids. The point is to ensure that this supply functions properly. At the same time, governments and taxpayers cannot allow themselves to be held hostage by the banks, merely because they can guarantee a basic supply of capital.

"What is needed is fundamental structural change, which, as in other industries, costs money. Lawmakers shy away from that," says Clemens Fuest, President of the Center for European Economic Research (ZEW).

Financial industry executives take every opportunity to warn that if regulators take aim at financial groups, then businesses, savers and investors will ultimately suffer.

The UN report will not reveal anything not already known to Washington.

UN inspectors investigating the use of chemical weapons in Syria are not expected to complete their work for another two to three weeks, increasing the likelihood that any US-led attack may take place before they have delivered their report.

The UN team left Syria with biological and other samples last Saturday and has been asked by the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, to speed up its work. But according to an unnamed western diplomat quoted by the Associated Press in New York on Wednesday, the accelerated timetable will only shave about a week off the original processing time.

John Kerry, the US secretary of state, has already said the UN report will not reveal anything not already known to Washington. Britain's position is similar. The US, France and Britain have all produced declassified intelligence assessments blaming the al-Ghouta attacks on 21 August on the Syrian government and arguing that the rebels were not capable of carrying them out.

Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, and Russia have blamed the opposition but have produced no evidence in support of their claim.

On Wednesday Russia's foreign ministry issued a report claiming to show that a chemical substance used in fighting at Khan al-Assal near Aleppo in March was not fired by standard Syrian army ammunition. The shell was similar to those made by a rebel group, the ministry said.

Khan al-Assal, where 26 people were killed, was one of the incidents the UN team was supposed to be investigating before the al-Ghouta attacks. The Russian report thus establishes a link between rebel forces and chemical weapons.

Russia had previously described the use of "cottage industry" quality sarin nerve gas delivered by a crudely made rebel missile. Western officials have characterised Moscow's submissions on chemical weapons as shoddy and incomplete.

Youth unemployment in Spain has reached a new high of 56.1%, a quarter of the 3.5 million under-25s jobless across the eurozone, according to the latest Eurostat figures.

The number of young Spaniards belonging to what has become known as the lost generation is up 2% since June to 883,000. Only Greece has a higher percentage of young people out of work, at 62.9%.

Among adult males, Spain has the highest unemployment at 25.3%, higher even than Greece. Despite the government's claims that the worst has passed and that employment reforms will encourage firms to hire, the figures suggest it will be a long time before any upturn in the economy is reflected in a declining jobless rate. With the holiday season coming to a close, the numbers are likely to rise as workers on seasonal contracts go back on the dole.

With close to six million Spaniards out of work, unemployment is so entrenched that there was no political reaction to the latest figures, neither from government nor the opposition. Indeed, mentioning the economy at all has become virtually taboo across the political spectrum. Meanwhile, Spaniards and recent immigrants are deserting the country in search of work, with 500,000 leaving in 2012, 60,000 of them Spanish nationals, most of them to Latin America and Europe. The total number of unemployed across the eurozone is 19.2 million, 15,000 fewer than in June. Across the EU the figure was 26.7 million, down 33,000 from June. However, it has remained at a record rate of 12.1% for the fourth months. The overall rate across the eurozone is 11%, half a percentage point up on last year. Italy saw a small fall to 12%, while the lowest rates among member states are Austria (4.8%), Germany (5.3%) and Luxembourg (5.7%). The rate in the US is 7.4% and in Japan 3.8%.

There is no doubt that the Greek programme has failed. In 2010 Greek public debt was just over €300bn, mostly privately held, two thirds of it by lenders abroad and governed by Greek law. The rational option would have been for Greece to declare default, seek a rapid restructuring of its debt and place its economy on a new footing. This would probably have meant exiting the European Monetary Union, a move with considerable costs but also major advantages in allowing the Greek economy to make a fresh start. Instead, the EU, led by Germany, decided to "rescue" Greece by offering it massive fresh borrowing, while forcing it to submit to severe austerity and wage cuts. The results have been catastrophic: cumulative economic contraction approaching 25%, adult unemployment at nearly 30%, youth unemployment close to 65%, unprecedented poverty, destruction of the welfare state and humanitarian crisis in the urban centres. Greek debt, meanwhile, is currently higher than in 2010, standing at €321bn and, since the economy has collapsed, its ratio to GDP approaches an exorbitant 180%. This is the background to the current debate. The "rescue" programme has already included a restructuring of Greek debt. Some of it was written off, although most of the losses actually fell on Greek lenders – banks, pension funds and small savers. Its maturity has been lengthened substantially and interest rates have come down dramatically to just over 2%. The problem is that in 2014-15 Greece must still make debt payments of more than €40bn and, since the rescue programme is ending in 2014, it is not clear where these funds will come from. The government has cut spending dramatically and imposed a storm of taxes; it could also use some money left over from the borrowing of the last three years. Even so, it is highly unlikely to make up the entire sum, particularly as its own finances for 2015-16 remain uncertain. This is the immediate reason why Greece might need a fresh package, perhaps up to €20bn.

The guardian.com - Leading experts in international law have attacked the government's legal case for military strikes against Syria, warning it "does not set out a sound or persuasive legal argument" and fails to prove that all other avenues to avoid further chemical weapons attacks have been exhausted.

Philippe Sands QC, professor of international law at University College London, said the argument set out on Thursday by the attorney general, Dominic Grieve, "is premised on factual assumptions – principally that the weapons were used by the Syrian government, that the use of force by the UK would deter or disrupt the further use of chemical weapons – that are not established on the basis of information publicly available".

Grieve's justification, set out in just over a page of arguments, claims military action would be legal "under the doctrine of humanitarian intervention" and that even "if action in the [UN] security council is blocked, the UK would still be permitted under international law to take exceptional measures in order to alleviate the scale of the overwhelming humanitarian catastrophe in Syria by deterring and disrupting the further use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime".

Sands said that in the absence of the UK invoking any right of self-defence or a UN security council resolution authorising force, the coalition's case is premised on a legal argument about humanitarian intervention that is controversial but could be available under certain conditions.

"However," Sands said, "as the facts are not made out, the note does not set out a sound or persuasive legal argument. If Iraq teaches us anything, it is that parliament must insist on seeing the full legal advice, caveats and all, and the full evidential basis on the key factual issues before proceeding to take any decision."

The government claim in its legal note that it is allowed to use strikes to "deter and disrupt" the further use of chemical weapons is also too lax, according to Dapo Akande, co-director of the Oxford institute for ethics, law and armed conflict.

"Even if there is a rule allowing intervention to avert a humanitarian catastrophe that rule would not simply permit action to deter and disrupt use of chemical weapons," Akande said. "This standard is too lax. It would be a rule about preventing and about stopping. The UK is not proposing to take action which will actually prevent or stop further uses of chemical weapons."

Grieve said the UK could legitimately take military action to "alleviate the scale of the overwhelming humanitarian catastrophe" as long as three conditions are met. That there is "convincing evidence, generally accepted by the international community as a whole, of extreme humanitarian distress on a large scale, requiring immediate and urgent relief"; it is "objectively clear that there is no practicable alternative to the use of force if lives are to be saved"; and the proposed use of force is "proportionate to the aim of relief of humanitarian need".

Akande said the case falls down on the second point because there are still avenues to be explored.

"There are measures that the UK/US have not yet tried, for example trying to get approval from the UN general assembly under the 'uniting for peace' procedure," he said. "This would allow the general assembly to take action in cases where the security council is blocked by threat or use of the veto". He also said "action could be taken to refer the matter to the international criminal court – which is also action to deter further uses".

Akande added that when the attorney general's advice says international law allows Britain to take measures to alleviate a humanitarian catastrophe without security council approval, this can only be in reference to customary international law which is based on the "views and practices of states".

He said there is "very little evidence of state support for this view. Indeed most states have explicitly rejected this view."

The legal advice was published at the same time as a British intelligence assessment that concluded it was "highly likely" that the regime of Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the chemical weapons attacks in Syria last week.

AfD (Alternative for Deutschland) are suddenly on the map after this attack on Bernd Lucke in Bremen by some left-wing thugs. High time that the German public took notice of this party.  If only they would modify their main mantra of wanting out of the Euro, they could easily reach 10% and beyond. The rest of their programme I and most Germans can agree with and would vote for as many points they cannot find in the other parties' programmes. A real opportunity lost. Professor Lucke should fire his advisors. As it stands they are unlikely to jump the 5% hurdle. A great pity and a great waste.  The main reason most Germans want to stay in the Euro is not as sophisticated, as so often discussed in this forum. Most Germans are not paying such close attention. For them a single currency they can use across Euroland without losing 10% to thieving money changers is a big practical reason to want it. CONVENIENCE. For people in business the reason is even more valid. No loss on conversion and no  wasteful bureaucracy. Not really hard to grasp, especially by Britons travelling to Europe and finding it convenient when going to several countries and being annoyed about the conversion cost...To understand the reality of whether Europe is on the mend or not, you need to dig a little below the surface.  When you do that, what you see is horrifying in the extreme.  The basic fundamentals of private freedom wealth democracy are being slowly strangled and  the only possible way to cover that is by official lies corruption and the most obscene criminal activity since the second world war.  A Greek bailout for the third time is now kind of, officially accepted.  At the most now it will only be 10 billion they say.  It is pure hogwash, cant and lies of the highest order, utter drivel and spin,  Greece is losing now more than 42 billion every year due entirely to the destruction of its SME base. in tax revenues. Almost 50% of SME's are closed or bankrupt.  Spain is now losing over 135 billion a year for precisely the same reasons.  Portugal is now losing revenue of over 76 billion a year and rising very fast indeed .  France is hemorrhaging revenue faster than any of the PIIGS and early estimates put it at reaching a total that will equal the combined loss of revenue due to the collapse in the profits of the SME base by next year.  It is true that Germany is booming ?!?!?! Combined with retirements now rising at very fast rates due to demographics and baby boomers leaving top management positions it simply cannot find enough skilled talent in Germany.  How many people know that Germany is now actively seeking and paying Filipinos to go on the German Migrant Program.  They even want talent from the UK to go as apprentices.  Two big telecom companies want over 30,000 qualified experienced engineers .  I know, because we are sending them from the Philippines, including HRM Nurses and Midwives.  It is desperate for skilled staff and every year it is bleeding current employees due to retirement and the effects of the Euro in Germany which due to massive inflows of unskilled labor from the rest of Europe is driving wages down and poverty levels higher.  Not one single country in the EU has not seen its debt burden rise inexorably since the start and now even minor upward changes in the yield rates threaten to blown the whole thing sky high. Which it would have done already if the thieving corrupt obummer hadn't signed an illegal transfer under the table to the ECB of one point three trillion US US $1,300,000,000,000.00 handed over illegally to the ECB to prop the failed ponzi scam up again.
Representing almost US$6,500, fo9r every single working American Citizen in the private sector. Do the Europeans know this, do Americans know this fact. Vile evil criminal corruption and conspiracy grows ever larger day by day in Europe.  The filthy poisonous evil tentacles of the grotesque monster called Brussels grow at almost 5 times the rate of Asian bureaucracy, and its cost per unit, or cost for every stinking parasite attached to Brussels  is growing at over 7 % per annum.  Anyone who is capable of doing even the most basic of math's can  soon put a projection together that not only shows that this it totally insane but unsustainable, but that also pints out the only viable options.   The cruddy stasi witch  even after she has lied and corrupted and bought the votes  next month, will still not be able to hand over sufficient German wealth, without causing either Germany to collapse or starting WWW3.   So she will print, along with the other incalculably evil turd the draggy, they will print and print and monetize just as Japan is doing. Asia is going into meltdown as its currencies and markets collapse.  Before the year is over Europe will join them.  Mathematically nothing else is even remotely feasible. This is precisely the result you would expect when you allow the spawn of Hitler and Stalin and every other evil kleptomaniac and fascist to bully you into first listening to them, and second allowing to stay outside the reach of the gallows.
 Putting them in power is act of insanity that only another war can resolve...Not so hard to grasp, is it?

I am going to ruffle a few feathers, but let me still say it – We had a dream run from 2003-2008 and now it is over. The days of 20% salary hikes and 30% stock returns are gone (at least for now) for the masses.

If you are really good at your job or in investing, you may get above average raises or returns, but that is not going to be the norm for everyone

If you entered the workforce in 80s or 90s, you may have seen tough times yourself (or maybe your family did). The reason why the current slowdown feels horrible is because our expectations are high now. Don’t get me wrong – I am equally angry with the government for running the economy to the ground.

I  faced a similar market from 2000-2003, when the market dropped by around 50% over a three year period. At the market bottom in April 2003, capital goods companies like BHEL, Blue star were selling at 5 times earnings. The current market darlings like Asian paints (15 times PE), Marico (around 5-7 times PE) and other consumption stocks were selling a very low PEs too.  At the risk of getting philosophical, I can think of the following things to do this time around.

- Assess your risk tolerance:  If you have trouble sleeping in the night after seeing your portfolio drop by 10-15% ,  you should reduce your level of equity holdings.  My thumb rule – will I be able to sleep well if my portfolio dropped by 40%+ ? 

- Clean out the trash: Now is a good time to clear up junk from the portfolio. A bear market and 40% loss on weaker ideas concentrates your mind. One should evaluate each position closely, sell the weaker ones and redeploy the cash in the better ideas.

- Have faith:  There is no data or logical argument which can make you hold on to your stocks or add money to it. You need to trust that the markets will recover in time and so will your portfolio.

It is easy for people to say that they want to think independently and stand apart from the crowd. Now that that we have a blood on the streets and no end in sight, you will know whether you can truly do that.

Euro Zone recession over? it hasn't even properly started. in the immortal words of those mullet-haired Canadian rockers Bachman Turner Overdrive, baby, you ain't seen nuthin' yet...

Delusion is a kind word for the belief that recession has ended in the Eurozone.... we'll see how the euro zone looks when both the French and Spanish banking sectors and probably Germany's too need to be bailed out and recapitalized, or can the probable half trillion euros of bad debt and overvalued junk bonds sitting on the banks' books be hidden forever?

Real recession is alive and well.  What we have here is, at best, a bogus temporary fix.  Like using filler to 'repair' a heavily corroded chassis of an old car, so these financial people and politicians are bodging the economy and trying to pass it off to people as if everything was repaired.

Just as a buyer would be very angry and feel cheated and made to look a fool when the find out a supposedly sound vintage car is  a heap of rust so these charlatans are cheating and lying to us.

The Eurozone is in a disastrous mess.  The EU has a medieval system of government with no distinction between the legislative and the executive in the form of an unaccountable Commission.  Its parliament can only block laws and is filled with over paid placemen with the vast majority from taking countries.  Such a primitive dangerous and medieval system was last seen in the UK under, perhaps, King Edward 1.  

Medieval systems mould politicians into medieval mentality.  The unelected Commission is dominated by medieval primitive individuals in business suits thinking, like medieval kings, that they know best and little people should be seen and not heard and never to be consulted.  They consider listening to little people the way of ignorance.. which is ironic because, as we all know, failing to listen is the hall mark of bad management and fatal to all constructive good politics.

Far from being healthy, the Eurozone is suffering from gross mismanagement and bad government caused by medieval mentality and minds attempting to run a 21st century super-state.  Never was there a more hopeless recipe for abject failure than this.

Meanwhile, Cameron, Milliband and Clegg all approve of this vile, dangerous, primitive and elementally regressive government as they all support the eradication of our imperfect but radically superior democracy in the UK.

This is not a mess, it is a betrayal which threatens us all.  Cameron, Clegg and Milliband loathe us and are happy to see the UK become a province of an immature, primitive, dangerous, unaccountable, regressive and, potentially, very nasty European super state.

Fitch Ratings warned that Europe had not gone far enough with plans for a banking union to lower the risk of bank defaults. The new resolution fund (SRM) would scare away funds by concentrating losses on senior bank creditors. Investors were “likely to differentiate more between weak and strong banks” if they could not be sure of state-backing in a crisis.

This will make it harder for weak banks to raise capital, forcing them to deleverage by selling assets, further crimping lending. Roberto Gallo from RBS said small banks may have to slash assets by €2.6 trillion (£2.2 trillion) over the next three to five years to meet new rules.

The figure supplied by the finance ministry of ¥1.008 quadrillion, or a thousand trillion by the end of June amounts to about £6.71 trillion at current exchange rates. By comparison, Britain's national debt is £1.2 trillion. Tokyo has the dubious distinction of having, proportionately, the biggest debt pile among industrialised nations, more than twice the size of its economy. The lion's share of that debt is from long- and short-term Japanese government bonds, as well as other borrowing. The staggering figure, about 1.7pc higher than the previous quarter, comes a day after Japan pledged to slash its budget and get spending under control. Japan has not faced a public debt crisis like the kind seen across the debt-riddled eurozone, largely because most of its low-interest debt is held domestically rather than by international creditors. But the International Monetary Fund and others have issued warnings about Tokyo's ever-increasing borrowing, after a series of sovereign credit rating downgrades in recent years. This week, the IMF called on Japan to adopt a "credible" fiscal plan to repair its books, including raising sales taxes to generate new revenue. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government is mulling whether to go ahead with a series of sales tax rises that would double the rate to 10 percent by 2015, a key source of new income but one that some fear would stall his economy-boosting plan dubbed "Abenomics".  

Greek unemployment rises to record 27.6%

The Greek jobless rate rose to 27.6% in May from 27% in April as austerity and recession continued to weigh on prospects.

It was the highest since the country's statistics agency started publishing the data in 2006, and more than twice the 12.1% eurozone average in June.

The number of unemployed people in the country is now 1.38m, an increase of 30,558 compared with April.

A breakdown of age groups shows unemployment among 15-24 year olds hit 64.9% in May:

15-24 - 64.9%

25-34 - 37.7%

35-44 - 24.7%

45-54 - 20.9%

55-64 - 16.2%

65-74 - 9.6%

Welcome to the USA Mr Samaras - where the FED (the cause of the Great Depression of 1929 and the rise of Fascism in Germany and Italy) resides and prospers! We really have a lot of sympathy for your poor downtrodden masses because the Fed-backed ECB and IMF have created the un-ending debt that caused them! We hope our little "media show" of sympathy will put food on everyone's plate in Greece real quick!

It is time to open central banking books for two overall reasons: either they are totally incompetent imbeciles or this depression is being orchestrated for financial gain and control of sovereign nations. Whatever the answer may be, banking officials need to be reviewed by independent government panels and then removed for crimes against humanity.

After all, these bankers have steeled themselves to loss of life and livelihood for generations – the rest of us need to steel ourselves to getting rid of them pronto before their scheme for ultimate control is finalized. For a start, fair referendums need to be allowed in all EU nations for an end to this “Euro Madness” and a return to individual currencies printed directly by government treasuries.

Anything and everything that's made up of unequal parts will eventually fail, and that applies to the ill thought out Euro, if all Euro nations could find a way of returning to their own currencies, without too much problems, they would do it, if Greece still had the Drachma it would devalue and get out of it's debt, and so would all the PIIGS countries, there is some merit in the Jewish 50yr jubilee tradition, where debts are written off and a new start is given, because continuous building up of debt that will take decades to repay, is not good for anyone.  

Common sense.  The PIIGS would be booming if their exchange rates had collapsed reflecting their problems.  That would stop expensive imports, boost domestic production and see investment and tourism not to mention ex-pats pouring in.  The very basic principle which is clear to everyone is that the costs of an event should follow the liability for that event. Everyone should pay for their own mistakes. For any debtor country to expect to have part of their losses “socialized” via the ESM vehicle or any other Eurozone taxpayer funded system is just another way for easy monetary policy to continue to once again encourage over borrowing and deficit spending.  These are merely addictive drugs to a dysfunctional political establishment which is more than happy to avoid fiscal prudence if such policies remain available to delay the inevitable day of reckoning when monetizing debts will no longer work. At that point we would all be finished because the sharing of states’ insolvency by the creation of money and socializing of losses would have served  to progressively absorb the remaining areas of solvency in today’s insolvent Europe. In short, if my neighbor borrows or lends too much, any resulting insolvency and its consequences should affect the contracting parties only. Yet governments in general have run deficits to prevent engaging this important principle. They do not want to confront the debt directly via liquidation and largely, they will not significantly reduce the size of the state.
The premise that one can perpetually support the economy in this way is false. Certainly, government could  spend a Keynesian style accumulated surplus but there is no accumulated surplus.  So instead, governments having spent more than they take in tax, are now spending even more than they take in for the explicit purpose of propping up bad investments and preventing the consequences of those bad investments from being recognized.
Thus, the government absorbs all the banks’ bad debts and runs large structural deficits and the cost is transferred to the taxpayers.  If the central bank prints money in excess in order to absorb the banks’ bad debts, inflation rears its head, and everyone with savings and who earns wages pays the price via a loss of purchasing power. What should have happened and still could happen is that the banks be forced to into insolvency and their assets liquidated on the open market.  This would clear the decks of all impaired debt and distribute the losses to those who owned the impaired debt: banks, pension funds, insurance companies, hedge funds and exposed individuals.  The costs of reckless lending and borrowing  would be seen to correctly follow the liability for that event so that every owner of debt would share equitably and proportionately in the losses.  The costs should lie where they fall.

Spanish GDP falls by 0.1% - Spain's economy has now been shrinking for two full years.

Data just released by the Spanish National Statistics Institute showed that Spanish GDP fell by 0.1% between April and June. That's the eighth quarterly contraction in a row.

Encouragingly, though, the pace of decline has slowed -- following the 0.5% contraction suffered in the first three months of 2013.

And on a year-on-year basis, the Spanish economy has shrunk by 1.7%... well this is slightly better than the 1.8% economists had expected. I don't think we can call it a green shoot of recovery – but perhaps the bitter frost is easing?

In a statement on its website, Bitcoin said it had given a presentation to the Bank of Thailand about how the currency works in a bid to operate in the country. However, at the end of the meeting, "senior members of the Foreign Exchange Administration and Policy Department advised that due to lack of existing applicable laws, capital controls and the fact that Bitcoin straddles multiple financial facets... Bitcoin activities are illegal in Thailand".  The ruling means it is illegal to buy and sell bitcoins, buy or sell any goods or services in exchange for bitcoins, send any bitcoins to anyone outside of Thailand, or receive bitcoins from anyone outside the country. Bitcoin said it "has no choice but to suspend operations until such as time that the laws in Thailand are updated to account for the existance [sic] of Bitcoin", adding that "the Bank of Thailand has said they will further consider the issue, but did not give any specific timeline".  Launched in 2009 in the wake of the global financial crisis, bitcoins are "mined" using complex computer source code. The virtual currency started as a relatively niche method of payment, devised by an anonymous programmer, but can now be used for anything from online gambling to pizza delivery.

Al Cavaliere 4 anni di reclusione....Ma sulle pene accessorie dovrà ripronunciarsi la Corte di Appello

ROMA-Confermata la condanna d’appello a 4 anni di reclusione con rinvio alla Corte d’Appello di Milano per rideterminare l’interdizione. È questa la sentenza della Corte di Cassazione a conclusione del processo Mediaset. 

Al momento della sentenza gli avvocati difensori di Berlusconi, Longo e Ghedini, non erano presenti in aula. Berlusconi ha atteso il verdetto a Palazzo Grazioli insieme al vicepremier e ministro dell’Interno Angelino Alfano. Con loro anche Piersilvio Berlusconi, secondogenito del Cavaliere. In appello Berlusconi era stato condannato a 4 anni di reclusione per frode fiscale e a 5 di interdizione dai pubblici uffici. Ieri, al “Palazzaccio”, era stata la giornata delle difese. Nel corso della sua arringa l’avvocato Ghedini aveva spiegato che «nel tessuto della sentenza mancava la prova che Berlusconi avesse partecipato al reato». Martedì invece il procuratore Antonio Mura, dopo aver definito Berlusconi «l’ideatore del meccanismo delle frodi fiscali», aveva chiesto il rigetto dei ricorsi delle difese degli imputati (e quindi la conferma delle condanne). Da ricalcolare invece l’interdizione dai pubblici uffici considerata troppo elevata.

Deutsche bank posts surprise loss.

Germany - Deutsche bank posted a surprise net loss of €2.2bn for the fourth quarter. Germany's biggest bank was hit by hefty litigation and restructuring charges as the bank slims down, in light of the changing investment banking environment. Deutsche is being investigated for alleged manipulation of benchmark interest rates. Today it announced €1bn in litigation charges in the fourth quarter, which it said reflected "adverse court rulings and developments in regulatory investigations". Co-chief executives Juergen Fitschen and Anshu Jain said: We embarked upon the path of deliberate but sometimes uncomfortable change in order to deliver long term, sustainable success for the bank. Simultaneously, we set the bank on course for fundamental cultural change. This journey will take years, not months. Last week Germany's second-biggest lender, Commerzbank said it was planning to cut as many as 6,000 jobs, or more than 10% of its workforce. Secret Monte dei Paschi document found in 14th-century palace. At the risk of sounding flippant, Italy's Monte dei Paschi scandal has to be one of the more colorful banking scandals. For a start, it deals with the world's oldest bank, established in 1472 to lend to "the poor or miserable or needy". Now it seems the secret document at the heart of the scandal lay for months in a concealed safe in a 14th-century Tuscan palace. Silvia Aloisi and Stefano Bernabei of Reuters report: Chief executive Fabrizio Viola said he learned about the safe's contents only last October, a full 10 months after he had been called in to sort out Italy's third biggest bank. The 2009 document revealing derivatives deals that have run up huge losses for Banca Monte dei Paschi (BMPS.MI) came to light in the office of Viola's predecessor at the bank's headquarters in Siena. 'The document was in a safe, moreover in an office that was no longer mine,' said Viola. 'I don't think that the person who put it there had been trying to hide it. But there is no doubt that the document had not been used in the bank's accounting.' The document found at the 540-year-old bank's head offices – which are appropriately in a restored ancient fortress – was a contract mandating Japanese bank Nomura to carry out deals on behalf of Monte dei Paschi.

The number of jobless people in France rose by nearly 40,000 (1.2%) in April, to hit an all-time high. The increase took the number of registered jobseekers in mainland France to 3,264,400, the worst since records began in 1996, marking two uninterrupted years of monthly rises, official figures revealed.

Looking at the last five years, it was the 53rd month out of 61 showing a rise, highlighting France's chronic job crisis as the economy fell back into recession in the first quarter and jobless figures were driven up by industrial layoffs.

The new record is a blow to President François Hollande, who is sticking to a pledge to reverse the unemployment trend by the end of the year, despite multiple forecasts to the contrary.

The UK labor market has done much better than expected since the start of the recession. Although we are suffering the worst recovery for over a century – national income has shrunk by almost 3% since 2008 – jobs have held up. Professor John Van Reenen explains that the main reason for this paradox is that real wages have collapsed, allowing firms to enjoy cheaper labor despite low demand for their goods and services. More jobs than ever before?  The headline claim that ‘there are more people in work today than before the economic crisis started’ is true but it is also profoundly misleading. Employment has risen a little – from 29.5 million in 2007 to 29.7 million up to the release of the jobs figures – but the adult population has also risen. This means that the proportion of people over 16 who are in work, the employment rate, has actually fallen from 73.1% at the end of 2007 to 71.4% in 2013. What’s more, there is evidence of underemployment as there has been a big rise in the proportion of part-timers, temporary workers and ‘zero-hours’ contracts. Even more striking is the boom in the number of people who would like to work more hours at their current wage rates, but cannot get the extra work. Although the unemployment rate rose from 5.2% at the end of 2007 to 7.8%, estimates of the underemployment rate rose from 6.8% to 10.5%.