"There will have to be another programme in Greece," said Mr Schaeuble, addressing a campaign audience in northern Germany. However he maintained that, despite this, there would be no further debt haircut for Athens. Just hours before Mr Schaeuble spoke, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was quoted in a regional newspaper dismissing questions about further aid for Greece, saying there was no point in discussing the matter until its second package expires at the end of next year. However, economists have long predicted a third rescue package for Greece, which is struggling to control its mounting debt burden as the economy shrinks under tough austerity measures. Opposition leaders, who have relentlessly accused the government of hiding the truth about Greece, pounced on the finance minister's comments. Peer Steinbrueck, leader of Germany's Social Democrat Party, declared it was "time that Frau Merkel tells people the truth". Juergen Tritten, head of the country's Green party, also seized the opportunity to hit out at the Chancellor.While a third bail-out for Greece, paid for by eurozone taxpayers, will anger German voters, the sums involved are set to be much lower than the previous two rescue packages, which run to €210bn (£179bn).

Any new aid money would be funnelled towards an expected shortfall in Greece's public finances in the next two years, according to a Greek finance ministry official. Athens is also looking at using leftover funds from a bank bail-out programme to help plug the funding gap. In Frankfurt, the European Central Bank said Joerg Asmussen, one of its most senior officials, would visit Greece on Wednesday to discuss progress on reforms needed to ensure more bailout money.

If the E.U. Elite have their way they will not allow the EU Project to die or fail, not at least until they have stolen what they see and believe is justly theirs and as far as I can ascertain they are about ten years into the final stages of the grand plan, the Elite being the people behind the showmen at the forefront.
Mrs. Merkel is just such another Maggie a strong woman politician placed in her position by election where as Barosso, van Rumpuy, Drahgi etc. were mere placements and through general agreement cannot be removed other than by death or resignation, a most unsatisfactory arrangement; sooner or later the whole edifice will collapse for my part the sooner the better....

The euro is still stronger than the US dollar.  Europe went socialist with a medium to small sized economies and the US is trying to go socialist with a much larger economy but give us time we will also self destruct like the southern Europe is.  I include France in that group also. 

Of course this fall will be followed by the rest of Europe. Fortunately USA has a slim chance to correct our socialism issues. Europe does not  as they are to far ingrained in their economies.
Catastrophic though it certainly is there may yet still be more mileage in the troublesome euro and EU project but the end is nigh....Well..."The economic situation is worsening from month to month, and unemployment has reached a level that puts democratic structures ever more in doubt," Oskar Lafontaine the founder of Euro said !

Allegations of corruption against Spanish PM Rajoy and reports that former Italian PM Berlusconi is gaining ground in the country’s polls ahead of this month’s election took some of the shine off the euro on Monday.

Notwithstanding its latest wobble, we continue to forecast an appreciation of the euro to $1.40 by mid-year as sentiment towards the euro-zone slowly improves. But we are also sticking to our forecast that that the exchange rate will slip back to $1.25 by year-end – a view which is predicated on the assumption that the crisis will flare up again in the second half of the year.

That being said, Monday’s news underlines the fact that such a flare-up could happen at any time. 

Spain’s governing People’s Party (PP) has just said it will take legal action against whoever has leaked documents published last Thursday that purported to show Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy receiving €250,000 that had been hidden from tax authorities.

"All those who may have attributed, leaked and published,” the documents -- allegedly drawn up by two former PP treasurers -- may be subject to the action, third-ranking PP member Carlos Floriano told a news conference called before Rajoy is due to speak to the media alongside Angela Merkel after a summit in Berlin.

Rajoy denied the allegations in a televised speech on Saturday, but did not take questions. On Sunday, opposition Socialist leader Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba called for Rajoy to resign, which the premier has ruled out.

Also on Sunday, opinion polls showed the PP’s popularity had tumbled from when they won power in November 2011 to within a whisker of the Socialists, although neither party would be able to command anything like a majority.

Fed up with record unemployment, an economic crisis with no signs of ending after five years and now fresh reports of corruption almost daily, Spanish voters have increasingly turned to small parties or the streets. Police helicopters buzzed central Madrid rooftops for three nights in a row after Thursday’s allegations as protestors rallied outside PP headquarters.

Gross domestic product (GDP) in the world's second-largest economy expanded 7.8pc last year in the face of weakness at home and in key overseas markets, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced on Friday.  But it grew 7.9pc in the final three months of 2012 as industrial production and retail sales growth strengthened at the end of the year, snapping seven straight quarters of slowing growth in a positive sign for the spluttering world economy.

The official statistics come as optimism grows among analysts that China will pick up steam in 2013 after two years of relative weakness, although they - and the government - caution that the improvement will not be dramatic. "The international economic environment remains complicated this year and... there are still unbalanced conflicts in the Chinese economy," NBS spokesman Ma Jiantang told reporters.  Still, Ma added: "We expect China's economy to continue to grow in a stable manner in 2013."  The problem is that the economic and social arrangements that have emerged in China on the back of a decade or so of double-digit growth don't work, ie are unsustainable when the growth rate subsides. This is what worries the hell out of the Chinese leadership. The risk is that Chinese society becomes unstable. It's really no different to us over here having got used to trend economic growth of, say, 2.0% - 3.0% pa trying to sustain our own massively indebted complex societies on annual growth rates of 1.0% - 1.5%. In essence, we're going bust....The fundamental issue in all of this is that politicians won't tell their societies that they/we are indeed going bust. By the same token, many/most folk don't fully appreciate that a society that has emerged on the back of 60 years of a trend of, say, 2.5% pa growth (as is the case in the UK) cannot survive in recognisable form for more than about 5 years, 10 years at the very most, without that society fracturing. China certainly has its problems; we certainly have ours. Our mutual predicament is that "infinite" economic growth predicated on "infinite" supplies of cheap energy, primarily cheap oil, is by definition unsustainable. .....We have entered interesting times.

TRUTH IS : Private sector activity shrank for the tenth time in 11 months

Who on earth is investing to raise these stock markets so high? If I were Warren Buffet I would say this is a typical bubble Companies are not making real profits Banks aren't either so who is doing the investing????...Bond yields are down, oil prices high, USA crops are devastated by drought, housing in USA is still very much wasted. So are "the powers that be" simply doing what analysts do talking up the benefits of share ownership until even "my mate Joe Blw" decides that investing in stocks beats keeping his money under the mattresse ? I have had it with markets banks and politicians lies and deceits. I am closing all my banking accounts and simply paying in earwigs from now on.We are living in the Alice of Wonderland World. The more bad economic data we gets, the more the worlds stock markets rise..... Hopes that Europe’s leaders will act decisively drowned out weak data showing the eurozone endured another torrid month in July. Private sector activity shrank for the tenth time in 11 months and pointed to a 0.6pc rate of quarterly contraction, according to the purchasing managers index. Offsetting that was the strong US jobs data. July saw 163,000 people find work in the world’s largest economy, beating forecasts of 100,000. The sense of relief was sharpened because almost all the recent US data have pointed to a deterioration since the first quarter of the year. “It will alleviate fears that the US might be tipping back into recession,” said Nigel Gault, an economist at IHS Global Insight. The utterly repellent EU freak show stumbles from crisis to crisis, a crisis which conveniently gives the bureaucrats an excuse to force member countries into a fiscal union with budget control being handed over to Brussels, effectively crushing the last breath of democracy of the nation state in favor of an EU super state, but the light of freedom, sovereignty, cultural identity and the ability to decide one owns destiny will not be extinguished whilst the euro sceptics still have a voice. The common market worked well, that is where Europe should be heading not more Europe.....However : While U.S. employers hired an additional 163,000 "human resources" they also sacked an additional 195,000 "human resources" last month, including a decrease of 228k full-time jobs which was only partially offset by a 31k rise in part-time jobs (defined as 1 to 34 hrs/wk). Furthermore, a new group of 199,000 Americans joined the "Working-Age" pool last month and will need jobs as well. Not only is the U.S. economy in such a severe situation as reported, it is, in fact, in a worse one. Currently some 87 million Americans, or about 36% of the working-age population of the U.S., are no longer even looking for work and are considered "out of the labor force." If it were not for workers who dropped out of the labor force, the real UE rate would be far north of 11%. All of this MSM "rah-rah" reporting and "growth and recovery" hopium smoking needs a reality check.

During talks in Brussels on Friday night, senior British officials reassured other EU countries that David Cameron would not pick a fight over the issue during the summit today. Without its own institutions at a 'federal' or EU level, the main enforcing role the new pact has is the ECJ role and the Prime Minister is not prepared to be accused of sabotaging the eurozone by blocking it. “The British have made it clear that they would not challenge the treaty before it is signed or before it enters into force,” said a EU negotiator in the talks. "Britain is going to give the eurozone the benefit of the doubt so it can put its house in order." The latest and fourth draft of a "Stability, Coordination and Governance (SCG) Treaty" will be given political agreement today, probably with some amendments before being signed in March. The SCG treaty “empowers the Court of Justice to verify the transposition of the balanced budget rule at national level”. “The current draft gives the court the authority to impose financial sanctions in case a contracting party was found by the court not to have taken the necessary measures to comply with its judgement,” says an EU paper on the text. The main debate is between Poland, an other non-euro members over who can attend fiscal compact summits.

Europe is in trouble because you, THE UNION MEMBERS ( amusing thought - union- what union?) borrowed too much money. If your politicians had not spent so much of your money, and borrow more to boot, to buy the votes of various constituencies, you would not have these problems now. You continue to blame everyone but yourselves. The EU will collapse because European society is a welfare state that could never be sustained. There is no way to fix it without pain (i.e., spending cuts). The reason every plan your "leaders" dream up fails is because they try to fix debt by more borrowing. You're finished. Your society is a failure. I hope the US does not follow you, but our current leadership seem bent on doing just that. You're spoiled just like Americans are spoiled. Don't take my word for it. Rather, listen to the head of the Chinese Sovereign Wealth Fund, to whom your leader went begging last week? “I think if you look at the troubles which happened in European countries, this is purely because of the accumulated troubles of their worn out welfare societies,” Jin Liqun said in an interview with Al Jazeera television. “I think the labour laws are outdated – the labour laws induce sloth, indolence rather than hard working. The incentive system is totally out of whack.”

I'm quite impressed with Mr. Pappandreou's performance. As I thought earlier, this pantomime seems to be designed entirely to allow him a somewhat dignified exit.
He 'negotiated' (i.e., 'had imposed on him') the EU debt relief package and then, when the conservatives railed against him for the terms of that package, floated the idea of a referendum (although I doubt he ever intended there to be one). That caused sufficient panic among his opponents that he proposed a 'government of national unity' (i.e. 'a government not led by him') to do the dirty work of actually implementing the requirements of the EU package. Now he can place the leader of the conservatives squarely in the gunsights for the duration of the worst of the cuts that must hit Greece, walk away and say, "But I wanted the people to choose!"
They shouldn't clean out his office as he or his successor will be back within two years.

Dublin and IMF

DUBLIN—After a week of declining offers of a bailout, Irish Finance Minister Brian Lenihan said Sunday he will recommend his government formally apply for an aid package from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund to shore up its public finances. Mr. Lenihan said on state broadcaster RTE Radio he will make the recommendation at a cabinet meeting later in the day. The finance minister said Ireland's banks have become "too big a problem for the country."
The government must now ensure that it is able to fund itself, that the economy remains stable and that Ireland can still borrow money in the financial markets, he added.
"So for all these reasons I will be recommending to the government that we should apply to a program and open formal negotiations," he said.
The step paves the way for the 16-country euro zone's second government bailout this year, following the emergency €110 billion ($150 billion) bailout plan for Greece in May.
Ireland will have to knuckle down on public spending to meet EU guidelines, which many worry will trigger protests like the ones seen in Greece. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions already has planned a protest Nov. 27 against more government cuts.
Irish bond investors could become better protected against default risk. But market watchers worry whether the latest blow to the prestige of the euro will intensify scrutiny on the finances of other fiscally weak governments, such as in Portugal or Spain.traian basescu,emil boc.vadim.radu tudor,imobiliare,restaurante,auto.ro,ziare.ro

Published articles, opinions, usefull informations about Eastern Europe and The European Union

is where my documents live!