A US appeals court panel has said that federal officials must reconsider their decision not to regulate the size of airline seats as a safety issue. In a ruling on Friday, one of the judges called it “the case of the incredible shrinking airline seat”.  The Flyers Rights passenger group challenged the Federal Aviation Administration in court after the agency rejected its request to write rules governing seat size and the distance between rows of seats.  New York senator calls for FAA action over 'shrinkage' of airplane seats A three-judge panel for the federal appeals court in Washington said the FAA had relied on outdated or irrelevant tests and studies before deciding that seat spacing was a matter of comfort, not safety.  The judges sent the issue back to the FAA and said the agency must come up with a better-reasoned response to the group’s safety concerns.  “We applaud the court’s decision, and the path to larger seats has suddenly become a bit wider,” said Kendall Creighton, a spokeswoman for Flyers Rights.  The passenger group says small seats bunched too close together slow down emergency evacuations and raise the danger of travellers developing vein clots.  FAA spokesman Ian Gregor said the agency was considering the ruling and its next steps. He said the FAA considers the spacing between seat rows when testing to make sure airliners can be evacuated safely.

A potential exit of Great Britain from the European Union (Brexit) could affect the exchange rate of the sterling, according to a poll made by Bloomberg, which shows that the currency of this country could drop to 1.35 dollars or even lower, within a week from the vote to leave the EU. Such a level has never been reached since 1985. The Bloomberg analysis was conducted on a sample of 34 economists, and 29 of them anticipate the aforementioned evolution. Also, 23 of the polled economists think that the pound will not recover from the 1.35 level earlier than three months after the Brits' vote on the EU exit, scheduled for June 23rd. Seven of the polled specialists think that the British currency will drop below 1.20 dollars immediately after a vote in favor of the Brexit.   The pound has already lost over 2% in 2016, compared to the currencies of the G10 countries (the Group of the ten most developed countries in the world), as the unequal economic recovery and the increasingly weaker outlook for the hike of the policy rate join the fears of a possible exit of Great Britain from the EU. The depreciation is increasingly pronounced after prime-minister David Cameron announced on Saturday the date of the referendum and some politicians decided to launch campaigns for leaving the EU. "A Brexit vote will affect the pound sterling heavily", said Nick Kounis, head of the macroeconomic research division of "ABN Amro Bank" NV of Amsterdam.   He predicts the pound sterling going below 1.20 dollars a week after a potential vote in favor of the Brexit.  Peter Dixon, an economist with "Commerzbank" AG, the London branch, predicts that the pound sterling will fall to 1.25-1.30 dollars a week after a potential vote in favor of the Brexit.

Top 10 Imports to USA

1. Oil: $389.3 billion (16.7% of total US imports)

2. Machines, engines, pumps: $311.2 billion (13.4%)

3. Electronic equipment: $303.5 billion (13%)

4. Vehicles: $253.3 billion (10.9%)

5. Medical, technical equipment: $72.1 billion (3.1%)

6. Gems, precious metals, coins: $67 billion (2.9%)

7. Pharmaceuticals: $63.4 billion (2.7%)

8. Organic chemicals: $54.7 billion (2.3%)

9. Furniture, lighting, signs: $51.4 billion (2.2%)

10. Plastics: $46.5 billion (2%)

In 2013, total U.S. trade with foreign countries was $5.02 trillion. This consisted of $2.272 trillion in exports and $2.744 trillion in imports of both goods and services. This makes the U.S. the world's third largest exporter, after the European Union (EU) and China, and the world's second largest importer, after the EU.

America is in the Global Economy. If cutoff, it would most likely collapse pretty quickly.

The markets are correct to worry about a slowdown, because the main reason for the fall in oil prices is simply a lack of demand, possibly supplemented by some geopolitical shenanigans.

Whilst the fall in the price of petrol and diesel is to be welcomed, these low crude oil prices are unlikely to last, and will depend on how much financial pain oil producing nations and energy companies can stand. Beyond 12 months or thereabouts too many energy companies will have, or be in the process of going bust. To delay bankruptcy, many energy companies are already cutting back on investment in newer more expensive sources of oil, especially for US oil shale where rig counts are already falling as US Rig Count Continues To Plunge To 10-Month Lows reveals. If this reduction in supply capacity goes too far it will result in future shortage and higher prices.

These low prices are a mixed blessing so make the most of them while they last.

Five banks – Wells Fargo, JP Morgan, Citigroup, Bank of America and Ally Financial – hit in 2012 with bill totalling £15.6bn for abusing the procedures to repossess homes.

$9.3bn 13 Banks, including JP Morgan, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, ordered this year to pay equivalent in cash and other help to homeowners for abusing procedures to repossess their homes. $1.9bn

HSBC's 2012 fine for failing to prevent money laundering on a massive scale.

$1.5bn

UBS (Switzerland) was fined this much last year for manipulating Libor, the interbank lending rate.

$1.4bn

10 banks, including JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, hit in 2003 with fines for serious conflicts of interest between their research for investors and their investment banking businesses.

Super speach...watch IT IS A GOOD ONE !

USA-Fiscal cliff deal in peril as Senate negotiations enter standstill... Obama says he intends to strong-arm Congress into scaled- back measures if no deal can be reached by the end of SundayHopes of a last-minute deal to avert the fiscal cliff faded on Sunday when Senate leaders failed to meet a target for agreement and said they remained far apart on key issues.

Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate majority leader, and Mitch McConnell, who heads the Senate's Republican minority, emerged from closed-door talks shortly before 3pm to inform colleagues in the chamber they remained deadlocked.

McConnell said no single issue remained an "impossible sticking point" and blamed Democrats for not responding to a Republican offer made on Saturday evening.

"It's now 2pm and we've yet to receive a response to our good-faith offer. I'm concerned at the lack of urgency here."

He said he called vice-president Joe Biden, with whom he has worked before, to try to "jump start" negotiations. "I'm still willing to get this done but I need a dance partner."

Reid said the Republicans had a made a good-faith proposal but that both sides remained apart on "pretty big issues" and that Democrats could not respond.

We've been negotiating now for 36 hours or thereabouts. We've been trying … but at this stage we're not able to make a counter-offer."

As such, the 3pm target for them to present a framework agreement to colleagues passed with no hint of a deal forthcoming.Here's the problem in terms even liberals can understand:

* U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
* Fed budget: $3,820,000,000,000
* New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000
* National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
* Recent budget cuts: $ 38,500,000,000

Let’s now remove 8 zeros and pretend it’s a household budget:

* Annual family income: $21,700
* Money the family spent: $38,200
* New debt on the credit card: $16,500
* Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710
* Total budget cuts so far: $38.50

Make sense now?

A little known historical fact that will collapse even further the reputation of the City of London!

It will also disgust you!...But first... Abraham Lincoln had the US Treasury print interest free, non-repayable GREENBACKS dollars for the American people to pay their debts to the evil private bankers and he was assassinated. John Kennedy tried the same - and he was going to 'nationalise' the Federal Reserve and he too was assassinated in 1963 by Lee Oswald (altho, the banks try to blame the Russians).

In World War One... the English banks fell into trouble and the GOVERNMENT had millions of £pounds printed by the Bank of England, that they called BRADBURY's which were used to bail out the banks. These were also, debt and interest free. This truth was kept from the public at the time for fear of a run on the banks.

The crime of the government was that they could have continued to print free money, to pay for the defense of our country. Instead, they chose to then borrow at high interest from the banks and our national debt went from £650 million in 1914 to £7,500 million by 1918.   Lloyd George and his gang committed a heinous crime against the people of this country and that debt has been growing ever since until now when even many school kids are over their heads in debt - we are ALL tied in debt slavery and servitude - and it is getting worse, far worse. IT HAS TO STOP.

IT IS PERFECTLY LEGAL AND LAWFUL FOR THE GOVERNMENT - ANY GOVERNMENT, even Greece TO HAVE THE TREASURY PRINT AND ISSUE MONEY FOR THE CITIZENS TO USE AND SEND THE EVIL BANKERS PACKING FOREVER.

Let the banks challenge - under Common Law, WITH A JURY... THERE IS NO DEBT - and this country operates under Common Law. WE CAN START AFRESH.

The German (Fourth Reich's ) Governor of Greece - Horst Reichenbach made no comments !!!!!

No final decision on next tranche of Greek bailout expected today, despite "broadly positive" Troika report ( Governor's Horst Reichenbach report in fact).

The German finance ministry has declared that there is no chance of a deal today on Greece's bailout programme, despite Athens approving its 2013 budget last night.

Ministry spokeswoman Marianne Kothe told reporters in Berlin that it wasn't realistic to expect a decision at tonight's Eurogroup meeting (of euro finance ministers), particularly as German MPs must have their say first.

Kothe said: Everyone is working under a lot of pressure to resolve questions which are still open...I think it's rather unrealistic to expect a final decision today as in Germany the Bundestag has to agree to it in advance.

There are also reports this morning that Jean-Claude Juncker, chair of the eurogroup, has also ruled out a decision this evening.

The precise whereabouts of the Troika report on Greece is another issue ... Germany's Kothe said today that she didn't think the final version was complete yet...in fact The German (Fourth Reich's ) Governor of Greece - Horst Reichenbach made no comments !!!!!

....What an incompetent! - Ollie Rehn's opinion in WSJ...

"A casual reader of much recent commentary could be forgiven for believing that European governments are blindly enacting harsh policies of austerity, under the watchful eye of a European Commission obsessed with enforcing arbitrarily chosen nominal deficit targets. It is time to debunk this damaging myth.

In fact, the European Union's Stability and Growth Pact can adapt a country's agreed fiscal adjustment path if the economic situation calls for it.   Alongside the nominal targets for deficit reduction, each new recommendation issued to a member state specifies the structural fiscal effort to be achieved each year until the excessive deficit is corrected. While the nominal targets may continue to dominate the headlines, the Commission focuses its assessments of member states' actions first and foremost on their compliance with the agreed structural effort.

This is consistent with another little-known, yet key element of the pact: the medium-term objective of a balanced budget in structural terms. The appropriate pace of progress towards this medium-term objective is agreed by taking into account the specific economic circumstances of each EU member state. Accordingly, a member state may receive extra time to correct its excessive deficit. This has occurred twice this year already: in July for Spain, and in October for Portugal. Both now have until 2014 to bring their government deficits back below 3% of GDP. ".... excerpt of OR's article in the WSJ

South Euro leaving the Euro would give them a chance to their currency / new currency to devalue .... TRUE and this will benefit their export and their GPD will got high sky! Unemployment in those countries will be drastically reduced. The opposite would happen to Germany whose new currency would increase value and ... BOOM! A new nation of unemployed people will come to life! Where would ***those*** (North Europe) unemployed go?? UK is the country i Europe with the highest private debt. Many people in the UK are very poor and live with social aids. These people are NOT considered unemployed while they are considered such in other countries! The UK government is running out of money and that's one of the reasons why we have a horrible NHS service. Many here in the UK are full of debt while in other Southern European countries they still have plenty founds in the banks. When those poor go abroad they *seems* to be rich but that's just an illusion created by a strong currency. True there are many wealthy people in the UK but they represent a minority and they are mainly concentrated in London. Most people living in Southern European countries are home owners while this can't be said for many Northern European countries. France is having HUGE problems at the moment --- Have a look to the REAL situation at http://markosun.wordpress.com/... ... and see where is the UK its real Total Debt (PUBLIC + PRIVATE) ratio is ... 398% of the GDP!!!
Italy has a 124%, Spain 157%, Germany 143%.
True the UK is a very powerful country but don't forget Italy is part
of the G7 and never asked/needed any help.
Japan has GDP/PUBLIC DEPT ratio of 220%, which is the highest in the world, about double of Italy and 3.5 times more than Spain.
In conclusion ... everyone can think what they want but ...when you make your considerations get first the full picture of the situation.
Remember also that Germany is playing a dirty game with Southern European countries. Germany is happy to have a weak Euro as it helps their export. At the same time they want to keep the bond market separate to the other countries. Very selfish. Final but not last .... the UK has been struggling with unemployment. Think to what it will happen here when the Olympic bubble will be gone in few weeks time ....
Having said this ... I really hope the best for our beautiful UK but the future is getting darker.

The ECB declined comment on Friday

"Private creditors have already suffered big writedowns on their Greek bonds under a second bailout for Athens sealed in February, but this was not enough to put the country back on the path to solvency and a further restructuring is on the cards. The latest aim is to reduce Greece's debts by a further €70bn to €100bn, several senior eurozone officials familiar with the discussions told Reuters, cutting its debts to a more manageable 100pc of annual economic output. This would require the European Central Bank and national central banks to take losses on their holdings of Greek government bonds, and could also involve national governments also accepting losses. The favoured option is for the ECB and national central banks to carry the cost, but that could mean that some banks and the ECB itself having to be recapitalized, the officials said. The ECB declined comment on Friday".

Spain is Bust. Italy is pretty much bust and if the truth be told is bust. Ditto Portugal.. Greece is just the weakest and as such fell first.
You have to let people including Governments fail if they are incompetently run. Let them go to the wall and any bank that was dumb enough to buy debt from these States.

The introduction of eurobonds – joint, aggregate eurozone liabilities – could be part of the solution, if designed properly. There is certainly demand for them in China and other major emerging countries, which are desperate for an alternative to low-yielding US government securities.... But Germany remains opposed on moral-hazard grounds: a joint guarantee of eurozone members' liabilities would strengthen individual national governments' incentive to spend beyond their means. Indeed, this version of eurobonds would fail, both economically and politically. But a different version has begun to gain traction in Germany. The German Council of Economic Experts has proposed a European Redemption Fund (ERF). The plan would convert into de facto 25-year eurobonds the existing sovereign debt of member countries in excess of 60% of GDP, the threshold specified by the Maastricht criteria and the SGP. Steps toward this solution to the short-term debt problem would be paired with implementation of the "fiscal compact," German leader Angela Merkel's proposed solution to the long-term problem.

But this seems upside down. To use eurobonds as the mechanism for eliminating the big sovereign-debt overhang jeopardizes the longer-term objective of eliminating moral hazard: it offers absolution precisely on the 60%-of-GDP margin where countries will have the most trouble resisting temptation. After all, there is little reason to believe that the fiscal compact or proposed "debt brakes" will succeed where the Maastricht criteria and the SGP failed. Rules need a credible enforcement mechanism....It is about German imperialism acquiring a captive market through an undervalued currency, while the poorer countries of Europe have overvalued currencies, the Euro's value being between the two poles of real necessary currency value. Its a mechanism for redistributing wealth from poorer countries to richer ones. Germany wants the benefits of a currency union in this way, but not the responsibility to drag up the poorer nations to its level which it would be obliged to do if it was part of a common state and fiscal union. .... It just shows that capitalism cannot unite Europe because the ruling classes are stuck fast to the nation-state, which is obsolete. Only socialism can do unite Europe.
AMUZING ...ISNT' IT ?...Mrs Merkel warned the policies of the new Socialist president could destroy the eurozone by bringing the sovereign debt crisis to France itself. The bleak assessment came on the eve of an important weekend that will see elections in Greece and France and a key G20 meeting of world leaders in Mexico. "Europe must discuss the growing differences in economic strength between France and Germany," she said. Tensions are running so high that Jean-Marc Ayrault, the French prime minister, was forced to deny that Paris had broken off the Franco-German partnership, following Berlin anger at a Franco-Italian summit in Rome on Thursday. There was a growing sense of crisis in European capitals after David Cameron, the Prime Minister, took part in a tense conference call with Mrs Merkel, Mr Hollande and Mario Monti, the Italian prime minister. ... Well done Merkel for telling this idiot Hollande you might be able to fool your own electorate that everything is rosy but if you expected the Germans to foot the bill for your fantasy growth plan & to bail out your bankrupt banks well you've just had your answer.As one of the German finance ministers said last week "let France & Italy go to the markets on their own with their plans & see how they get on.".Hollande will be the next European leader denying his country require a bailout....I'm sure !

A bad night for Mrs Merkel - her ruling Christian Democrat party suffered a major setback in regional elections, scraping a one-point lead over resurgent Social Democrats allied to Mr Hollande. The anti-austerity movement across Europe is a huge challenge to Germany and its economic doctrine of austerity that until last night has ruled supreme with the support all of Europe’s leaders, the EU, European Central Bank and financial markets. After the French and Greek votes that consensus has been shattered at a time when Europe’s economies are plunging further into recession, leaving little room to maneuver for governments. Mr Sarkozy became the 11th European leader to fall foul of the economic crisis since 2008 in a catastrophic result for the French Right. He was ousted from the Elysée after just one term in the worst setback for the centre-Right for over 30 years and lost crucial votes to the National Front.

......As I have said elsewhere remember one of the supposed main benefits for joining the Euro was said to be that we won't have all that really annoying bother of changing different currencies when we travel abroad and businesses would know exactly what goods cost without constantly consulting exchange rates. The situation in which we find ourselves today makes the hassle of getting out a £2.50 calculator and typing in a few figures pale into insignificance doesn't it?

Equity funds were the most profitable in the first two months of the year, with yields of up to 8.5%, but since investors lacked fresh money, the funds' performance is below that of the main stock exchange indexes. BCR Expert, an equity fund managed by Erste Asset Management, is the top performer in the first two months of the year, with an 8.53% yield, followed closely by OTP Balansis and Avantis funds, with above 7.6% yields. During the same period, the main stock exchange index BET of the ten most liquid shares, rose 11.3%, while the BET-FI index of the five SIFs (financial investment companies) gained 8.2%. "The yields of equity funds are obtained based on the same volume of assets, considering that some shares in which the funds invested saw declines last month. In order to beat the market, equity fund managers need capital inflows that allow them to adjust their portfolio," said Dragos Neacsu, chairman of management company Erste Asset Management. (Z.F.)house for sale,bucharest,imobiliare,imob,travel,supermarket,

Goldman Sachs Asset Management warning

Jim O'Neill, chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, warned that the Irish rescue package did not solve the problems at the heart of the single currency.
"Unless there's an underlying solution to not just the debt challenge, but also to … how European monetary union sits together involving all these domestic political partners, how can we forget about the problems lurking with Portugal and Spain," O'Neill said in a TV interview.
Other market experts were also concerned about the eurozone. Graham Turner of GFC Economics said the solution for weak members might be for Germany to walk away from the single currency.
He suggested that Austria, Finland, the Netherlands and Germany could form a new deutschemark bloc which would allow the other 12 members of the eurozone to devalue and reflate their way out of the crisis. "It has to be a better option than the present straitjacket of a single currency," said Turner.
Stock markets tumbled as anxiety about contagion from Ireland was exacerbated by news, just as European trading began, that North Korea had shelled the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong, near their disputed western border.Wall Street Journal,The Washington Times,Athens News,The New York Times,USA Today