Politicians and business leaders everywhere are now calling for new growth initiatives, but the governments' arsenals are empty. The billions spent on economic stimulus packages following the financial crisis have created mountains of debt in most industrialized countries and they now lack funds for new spending programs.  Central banks are also running out of ammunition. They have pushed interest rates close to zero and have spent hundreds of billions to buy government bonds. Yet the vast amounts of money they are pumping into the financial sector isn't making its way into the economy.  Be it in Japan, Europe or the United States, companies are hardly investing in new machinery or factories anymore. Instead, prices are exploding on the global stock, real estate and bond markets, a dangerous boom driven by cheap money, not by sustainable growth. Experts with the Bank for International Settlements have already identified "worrisome signs" of an impending crash in many areas. In addition to creating new risks, the West's crisis policy is also exacerbating conflicts in the industrialized nations themselves. While workers' wages are stagnating and traditional savings accounts are yielding almost nothing, the wealthier classes -- those that derive most of their income by allowing their money to work for them -- are profiting handsomely.

According to the latest Global Wealth Report by the Boston Consulting Group, worldwide private wealth grew by about 15 percent last year, almost twice as fast as in the 12 months previous.

The data expose a dangerous malfunction in capitalism's engine room. Banks, mutual funds and investment firms used to ensure that citizens' savings were transformed into technical advances, growth and new jobs. Today they organize the redistribution of social wealth from the bottom to the top. The middle class has also been negatively affected: For years, many average earners have seen their prosperity shrinking instead of growing. Harvard economist Larry Katz rails that US society has come to resemble a deformed and unstable apartment building: The penthouse at the top is getting bigger and bigger, the lower levels are overcrowded, the middle levels are full of empty apartments and the elevator has stopped working.

DOWN WITH VICTOR PONTA - DO NOT VOTE THIS SHEISTER !!!!

Hundreds of Romanians abroad faced humiliation on Sunday as they had to wait in long queues at voting stations in many cities across Europe in an attempt to cast their ballots in the presidential elections. Unprecedentedly bad organisation saw many of them incapable of voting after waiting for hours. The responsibility for the organisation of voting abroad belonged to Romania's Foreign Ministry according to the law regulating presidential elections. So question marks appeared about a supposed intention to undermine voting abroad, as the Romanian diaspora is known for voting against the Social Democrats, who are now led by prime minister Victor Ponta, the leading candidate in these elections. Paris, London, Brussels and even New York, among other cities, saw queues of hundreds of Romanian citizens trying to cast their votes on Sunday. In Paris, police was called as about 1,000 people were still waiting to vote as time came for closing polls (9.00 p.m. local time). In London, a major fail hit the embassy where the voting station was organised as a voting official called pensioners to vote first - but none was to be found in line (the elderly are known to generally favor the Social Democrats), according to reports on Sunday evening. The situation caused major uproar in Romanian media, as the PSD and TV stations supporting Victor Ponta blamed the situation on ambassadors who were named by incumbent President Traian Basescu, Ponta's rival. That is, despite that embassies serving only as host to polling stations, with the Foreign Ministry being in charged with the organisation. As polls closed in Bucharest, Traian Basescu called for the resignation of Ponta's Foreign minister and of the minister in charge with the Diaspora. Other candidates called major irregularities about the situation abroad. And several hundred people gathered late on Sunday to protest in front of the Foreign Ministry, chanting slogans against PM Ponta and urging authorities to let Romanians abroad to vote. In his first speech after the announcement of exit polls, PM Ponta claimed that the duty to organise elections abroad fell with electoral authorities, despite Romanian legislation saying that his government and Foreign Ministry were the ones in charge. His claim was rejected by the head of the central electoral office. The vote of the Romanian diaspora - known to be against Ponta and his Social Democrats - is of major importance as it might considerably narrow the difference between Ponta and the opposition candidate with the most votes, Klaus Iohannis.

MADRID - The number of people registered as unemployed in Spain increased by 79,154 people in October in comparison with September, according to data published on Tuesday by the Spanish Ministry of Employment and Social Security.  The figure meant that unemployment increased by 1.78 percent from September to October, bringing the total number of unemployed people to 4,526,804. The rise was mainly due to the end of the tourist peak season in the country, which traditionally causes a rise in unemployment.  Unemployment increased in all sectors except in construction, where it fell by 8,975 people. It rose by 24,606 people in the agriculture sector, by 61,224 people in the services sector, and by 3,043 people in the industry sector.

According to the ministry, the number of unemployed men increased by 40,459 people to a total of 2,136,227 people, while the number of unemployed women increased by 38,695 people to a total of 2,390,577.  Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy emphasized on Tuesday that the number of people registered as unemployed in October was 284,579 people less than the same time last year.

 

LONDON - Eurozone manufacturing purchasing managers' index (PMI) was at 50.6 in October, up from September's 14-month low of 50.3, reported Markit on Monday.

The eurozone manufacturing sector remained in a state of near-stagnation in October, as weak demand continued to restrict growth of both output and employment across the board, Markit reported.  Only four countries' manufacturing industries signaled expansion during October; they were Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain and Germany.  Irish PMI remains far out in front and is ticking higher following a slight easing in September. Germany was the only other nation to show improved overall manufacturing performance in October.  But national PMI data highlighted the ongoing performance disparities between countries.  The downturn in France snowballed and Italy fell back into contraction. Austria fell further from the rest of the pack as its PMI sank to a two-year low.

"Final manufacturing PMIs for October suggest that global growth may be slowing a little at the start of Q4, dragged down by the euro-zone's chronic problems," said Andrew Kenningham, global economist at Capital Economics, a London-based economic research company.  Rob Dobson, Senior Economist at Markit said: "The performance of eurozone manufacturing remained broadly flat at the start of the final quarter, as the sector struggles to recover the traction lost following its mid-year slowdown. Manufacturing is therefore unlikely to provide any meaningful boost to the currency union's anaemic GDP growth."   Markit is a global provider of financial information services. It produced the Eurozone Manufacturing PMI based on original survey data collected from a representative panel of around 3,000 manufacturing firms.

LISBON - The Troika of international lenders will complete their first assessment of the Portuguese economy since the country ended its bailout program in May this year, according to Portuguese media reports.   The center of the debate during the Troika's one-week visit has been the state budget for 2015.   According to local media, the three financial heads, namely the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank, are likely to praise the government for positive results but will also call on the country to stick to budgetary control measures and targets set out in May.   The country is expecting its economy to grow 1.5 percent next year. In light of this, the budget will see certain tax raises, such as that on tobacco, alcohol and fuel while others will lower, such as the tax companies pay for employees.   Personal income tax will only be cut if the government manages to clamp down on tax evasion and fraud, it said.   Portugal is attempting to cut its budget deficit from 4.9 percent in 2013 to four percent of GDP this year and to 2.5 percent next year.  The debt-laden country signed a 78-billion-euro bailout (about 97 billion U.S. dollars) with the Troika in May 2011 and this program officially ended in May this year, marking a "clean exit" without a credit line.

Chancellor George Osborne has insisted the UK will pursue its "national interest" in Europe despite German warnings about its future in the EU.

Mr Osborne said the British people wanted concerns about EU immigration and access to benefits addressed.  The German government has insisted the right of EU nationals to live and work in other member states is sacrosanct.  Angela Merkel has reportedly said she would rather see the UK leave the EU than allow a quota system for migrants.  The BBC's Europe Editor Gavin Hewitt said the German chancellor wanted the UK to stay in.  But he said an article in Der Spiegel news magazine, which quoted German government sources as saying she feared the UK was near a "point of no return", signalled Berlin's view that British calls for curbs on the free movement of people was a "red line" that could not be crossed.  David Cameron wants to renegotiate the terms of the UK's continued membership before holding an in-out referendum, if he remains in power after next year's general election.  The prime minister, who is expected to set out his next steps on immigration before Christmas, has insisted freedom of movement of workers would be "at the very heart" of his renegotiation strategy.  Der Spiegel reported that Mr Cameron was now looking at a plan to stretch the EU rules "to their limits" in order to ban migrants who do not have a job, and to deport those who are unable to support themselves after three months.

Speaking to journalists on Monday, Mrs Merkel's spokesman - Steffen Seibert - said this was "not a bilateral matter between Germany and Britain but between Britain and all of its European partners".

It was up to the UK to "clarify" what wider role it wanted to play in the EU, he added.

Mr Osborne said a Conservative government would always "do what is in the interest of our country and our economy" but the UK would approach future negotiations in a "calm and rational" way.

Tory backbencher David Davis: Merkel's warning is "bloodcurdling"

"What we have today is a story based on speculation about what Angela Merkel might have said about something David Cameron might say in the future," he told BBC Breakfast.

"The Germans understand the disquiet caused among the British people when you have people coming from other parts of Europe to claim our benefits who do not necessarily have jobs to go to."

There is a better way, worldwide strike June 21 2015...Social Justice, Climate Justice, Basic Income, nationalize corporations, nationalize banks....end the 1% forever....stay home for the duration do not take to the streets, work together with your community to ride out strike until we bring the system down..We shall install direct democracy, with regional, national and international administrative panels of experts hired on yearly contracts that can be terminated at any sign of corruption. Revolution Hub find us on facebook.....This is what Ucraine wants !! The pro-EU neo-faszist, ultra-nazi ucranian people want to join this desaster called EU !! Crimean people are being more intelligent and know very well how to choose between something bad and something much worse. Putin is bad but the EU is the worst option.

See here's the thing - all the fake activity the west and particularly the Anglosphere is built upon may be the 'engine of the world economy' but actually how relevant is this to the vast bulk of the world's population? ... We need a different model - great 'victories' like selling the same consumer product over and over and over in ever decreasing cycles is not sustainable. Raping the third world of its resources and bribing its elite for the privilege is not sustainable.   India and China are abetting the west by under cutting western workers and not advancing their own people. In India this is an emergent phenomena in China a deliberate one.   We're running towards the Marxist end game of stagnation as capital tries to shore itself up by forcing its customers to accept a lower standard of living via bought and paid for politics.  There is plenty of scope for activity to increase if it is geared towards something other than preserving destructive business models. But that is not as profitable in the short term as gambling in a rigged financial market and riding asset bubbles...  The global economy is in trouble because of a fundamental problem: the way institutional capital is concentrated in a few hands (the big banks and allied funds) and distributed to the usual suspects more often than not for the wrong reasons.  Skewed wealth distribution among individuals has received much more attention. But even the ultra rich individuals have to rely on the same financial network, managed by Central Banking with the Fed as the big daddy of the Central Banks. This network has become short sighted, greedy, incompetent, and often acts corruptly in a variety of ways. Too much power tends to do this.  The UK economy is not doing so well. Would be silly to think a few blips of growth, returning to the size of an economy several years ago (less per capita), in return for a mountain of debt is a positive development. No, it's just building up for a bigger disaster around the corner. The US and the EU have to realize that the recovery of the global economy has to emanate from four factors: (a) reforming the banking industry so capital, (b) investing in and developing emerging markets where the greatest growth potential is, (c) focusing on "real" products and services rather than financial manipulations, and (d) making capital available across the board to the bulk of the people rather than the cronies of the banks and the state.   The debt defaults of the poor are never so severe as the rich. Any single poor person will never have a debt default to rock the bank. But not so the case with the ultra rich. But the ultra rich tend to get far greater access to capital, underwritten by all of us thanks to the fiat currency structure, by orders of magnitude. And this capital is spent far from prudently or optimally for the economy.

Europe has so far stuck to the mutualisation model, in which individual states’ debts are underwritten by a common central bank or fiscal bailout system, ensuring security for investors and largely eliminating interest-rate spreads among countries, regardless of their level of indebtedness. In order to prevent the artificial reduction of interest rates from encouraging countries to borrow excessively, political debt brakes are instituted.  In the eurozone, mutualisation was realised through generous ESM bailouts and €1tn ($1.27tn) worth of TARGET2 credit from national printing presses for the crisis-stricken countries. Moreover, the European Central Bank pledged to protect these countries from default free of charge through its “outright monetary transactions” (OMT) scheme – that is, by promising to purchase their sovereign debt on secondary markets – which functions roughly as Eurobonds would. The supposed hardening of the debt ceiling in 2012 adhered to this model.  The alternative – the liability model – requires that each state take responsibility for its own debts, with its creditors bearing the costs of a default. Faced with that risk, creditors demand higher interest rates from the outset or refuse to grant additional credit, thereby imposing a measure of discipline on debtors.  The best example of the liability model is the United States. When US states like California, Illinois, or Minnesota get into fiscal trouble, no one expects the other states or the federal government to bail them out, let alone that the Federal Reserve will guarantee or purchase their bonds.  Indeed, the Fed, unlike the ECB, does not buy any bonds from individual states; investors must bear the costs of any state insolvency. In 1975, New York had to pledge its future tax revenues to its creditors in order to remain solvent.  Of course, the US was not always so strict. Shortly after its founding, it tried debt mutualisation, with Alexander Hamilton, America’s first Treasury secretary, describing the scheme in 1791 as the “cement” for a new American federation.  But, as it turned out, the mutualisation model – used again in 1813 during the second war against the British – fueled a credit bubble, which collapsed in 1837 and thrust nine of the 29 US states and territories into bankruptcy. The unresolved debt problem exacerbated tensions over the slavery issue, which triggered the Civil War in 1861.