Everyone came to realize that efforts to deepen Ukraine's ties with the EU had failed. But no one at the time was fully aware of the consequences the failure would have: that it would lead to one of the world's biggest crises since the end of the Cold War; that it would result in the redrawing of European borders; and that it would bring the Continent to the brink of war. It was the moment Europe lost Russia.  For Ukraine, the failure in Vilnius resulted in disaster. Since its independence in 1991, Ukraine has strived to orient itself towards the EU while at the same time taking pains to ensure that those actions don't damage its relations with Moscow. The choice between West and East, which both Brussels and Moscow have forced Kiev to make, has had devastating consequences for the fragile country.  But the impact of that fateful evening in Vilnius goes far beyond Ukraine's borders. Some 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and almost 70 years after the end of World War II, Europe is once again divided. The estrangement between the Russians and the Europeans is growing with Moscow and the West more inimical toward each other today than during the final phase of the Cold War. It's a reality that many in Europe have long sought to ignore. The story of the run-up to Vilnius is one filled with errors in judgment, misunderstandings, failures and blind spots. It is a chronicle of foreign policy failure foretold -- on all sides. Russia underestimated the will of Ukrainians to steer their country toward the EU and was overly confident in its use of its political power over Kiev as a leverage.  For its part, the EU had negotiated a nearly 1,000-page treaty, but officials in Brussels hadn't paid close enough attention to the realities of those power politics. Even in Berlin, officials for too long didn't take Russian concerns -- about the encroachment of NATO and the EU into Eastern Europe -- seriously enough. The idea that Moscow might be prepared to use force to prevent a further expansion of the Western sphere of influence didn't seem to register with anyone.

With the special role it plays and the special responsibility it has for Europe, the meltdown also represented a failure for Germany. Foreign policy has long been considered one of Chancellor Angela Merkel's greatest strengths, but even she ignored the warning signs. Merkel has proven herself over the years to be a deft mediator who can defuse tensions or work out concrete solutions. But crisis management alone is not enough for good foreign policy. Missing in this crisis was a wider view and the ability to recognize a conflict taking shape on the horizon. Instead, officials in Berlin seemed to believe that because nobody wanted conflict, it wouldn't materialize.

Merkel did say at the summit that, "The EU and Germany have to talk to Russia. The Cold War is over." But the insight came too late.

Reasons why oil prices are dropping:

1. 1. Obama is against Keystone XL because he wants the oil to be still in the ground when his Islam take over Canada and the United State.
2. 2. As long as prices stay high in the U.S. the people will keep DEMANDING that Obama approve of the Keystone XL. Only a large oil country like Saudi Arabia could solve that problem by se; omg oil to the U.S. at much lower prices, which they are doing.
3. 3. When the gasoline and heating oil prices drop to a reasonable amount to quiet the public. the drop will stop and remain constant for a long period during which time the Islamic terrorists will get their attacks moving on a large scale to take over Canada and the U.S..
4. 4. At the point when both Canada and the U.S. are taken over then the Islamic terrorists will have no one to capture except other Islamic countries; which will surely happen.
5. 5. However, I do not think that the Islamic terrorists will succeed in taking over Canada and the U.S. and I think the suicidal efforts will fail to capture and in the meantime many other Islamic captives will begin a world-wide rebellion and Islam will be done for 10,000 years....
6. In order for the U.S. economy to continue with the Fed’s goal of 2% inflation moving forward, Americans need to start spending more money. The strategy of low interest rates to stimulate the housing market and consumer spending has exhausted.  With QE coming to an end, what’s left to stimulate the American economy?
7. As the holiday season nears next month, oil prices continue to fall, with global oil prices posting a fifth consecutive weekly loss. Is it simply a coincidence that oil’s decline has come on the heels of the end of QE?  Is it possible for the United States to manipulate the price of oil to further stimulate growth?

Auditors have identified a black hole in European Union budgets that could lead to extra demands for cash from the British taxpayer of up to £34billion over the next six years.

David Cameron will be legally obliged to make up a share of a shortfall of £259billion by 2020 with liabilities for the Treasury estimated at £33.7bn, calculated at the usual rate of Britain’s EU contributions.  The hole in EU spending has been identified by the European Court of Auditors and represents a political disaster for the Prime Minister who has made after repeated pledges to bring down the amount Britain pays into Brussels budgets.  In a special report earlier this week, EU auditors identified the sum in outstanding bills for legally binding spending commitments made by the European Commission over the last four years. “Assuming that commitments will not be de-committed, and we don’t see how most of them could, it might be problematic to get this money from member states to finance the expenditure foreseen,” Igor Ludborzs, an EU auditor, told the Euractiv website. The shortfall is known in Brussels jargon as “reste à liquider”, or “outstanding amount” and, while Britain has a veto on going above the maximum payment cap, national contributions are still expected to reach record highs.  Hitting the ceiling would push British EU contributions to above £13billion a year over the next six years, higher that the previous record high £11.3bn paid into Brussels coffers last year.

“If the EU spends right up to the payment ceiling, as now seems to be likely, that means that national contributions will go up,” said an official. Implicitly conceding that contributions could increase, British officials said that the “bottom line” would be ensuring that spending did not go above the payment ceiling, negotiated at a historically low level by Mr Cameron last year. “We’re making sure that the EU sticks to the budget limit that the Prime Minister successfully negotiated last year, and which is crucial to controlling the cost of the EU to Britain,” said a diplomat. “The figure from the European Court of Auditors does not affect the ceiling in the current long term EU budget.”

I have found that sometimes the more unlikely scenarios are the ones that actually pan out to be true. We don't know how big the world population would get,how many new emerging economies would come online, How much oil and gas would be discovered, technology that would limit oil use would come online.  Sometimes we say something because we so desire that result. Sometimes we say something because we actually believe what we say. Either way our thoughts are meaningless things are going to happen the way their going to happen whether we can see what would be a possible factor or not.  We simply dealing with too many variables which makes a myriad of future possibilities true.  Based on all the press, comments oil prices could drop below $30 a barrel or go above $150 a barrel. People who are predicting what the future would be like are fools. No one knows what's going to happen in the future.  We don't know which factors would become important and which ones would be nothing more than ghost threats. It's a fact up to 2003 that oil prices were in their 20s and the expectation was for them to stay at that price or lower.  No one ever expected the emerging markets China, India and other new markets to grow as fast as they did. Setting in place the current regime of prices far above $20 a barrel ever since. Also all prices by the late 70s were expected to be near extinction by now.  Yet we seem to have more oil than ever to handle the worlds population that has grown by almost 50% since.  So predicting the future for prices of oil and who would be a big player and who would slip into insignificance is impossible to say. None of us can see the future. I guess with inability to do so. We just have to sit back and see what this crazy and wild ride called life brings us... It wouldn’t be the first time that a meeting of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) has taken place in an atmosphere of deep division, bordering on outright hatred. In 1976, Saudi Arabia’s former oil minister Ahmed Zaki Yamani stormed out of the Opec gathering early when other members of the cartel wouldn’t agree to the wishes of his new master, King Khaled.  The 166th meeting of the group in Vienna next week is looking like it could end in a similarly acrimonious fashion with Saudi Arabia and several other members at loggerheads over what to do about falling oil prices.   Whatever action Opec agrees to take next week to halt the sharp decline in the value of crude, experts agree that one thing is clear: the world is entering into an era of lower oil prices that the group is almost powerless to change. 

This new energy paradigm may result in oil trading at much lower levels than the $100 (£64) per barrel that consumers have grown used to paying over the last decade and reshape the entire global economy.  It could also trigger the eventual break-up of Opec, the group of mainly Middle East producers, which due to its control of 60pc of the world’s petroleum reserves has often been accused of acting like a cartel.

Swiss elections, gold, currency and such...

With the prospect of the ECB engaging in full-blown quantitative easing in the coming months, it is possible that the SNB will have to buy up more euros to keep it above the 1.20 franc cap. If this were to be the case, a vote in favor of the “Save Our Swiss Gold” campaign would have meant further gold purchases to maintain the 20pc quota. The sales ban would mean gold making up an increasing proportion of the central bank’s balance sheet when it attempts to shrink its euro holdings.  "The resolute ‘no’ to Switzerland’s referendum on re-building its gold reserves is clearer than expected," said Reto  Foellmi, Professor of International Economics at the University of St Gallen. "The result is certainly due to the fact that the Swiss population is largely confident in the monetary policy pursued by the Swiss National Bank.   "It sends a clear sign that there will be no immediate change in Swiss monetary policy."   Recent opinion polls predicted that the motion would be defeated, but the price of gold may fall further on Sunday’s confirmation.  Voters also strongly rejected strict limits on immigration that could have threatened Switzerland's relationship with the EU, as well as voting against tax privileges enjoyed by wealthy foreigners.   I note the US Treasury released a statement last Wednesday afternoon revealing that they had been forced to issue $1,040,965,000,000 in new debt since fiscal 2015 started just eight weeks ago in order to raise the money to pay off Treasury securities that were maturing and to cover new deficit spending by the government. I don’t know how long this international printing money out of thin air (Ponzi Scheme) can go on for, but the Swiss vote notwithstanding, I’m keeping my pile of gold sovereigns safely tucked up in my mattress...  Gold is mostly a speculative bubble. It's intrinsic value is marginal compared to what it is traded at. The value of Gold largely depends upon the whim of the people who like to own it and the amount of disposable money they possess .If you notice today huge swathes of Indians and Chinese are buying gold. They are only buying because of increased disposable wealth they are generating due to actual economic activity and growth. If that economic activity ceases - gold will lose its value pretty fast.  The situation was the same in ancient times - when kings and local warlords had excess disposable wealth. Those tiny group of people drove gold demand. Today more people are driving the demand - all thanks to increased economic activity. If the world economy collapses gold value will also collapse along with it.  Gold value depends on economic activity. If economy grows - the value of gold increases. Or else your gold is only worth the eye of the beholder - glitter. You cannot eat it, nor can make any tools out of it.

The People’s Bank of China said it would lower its one-year benchmark lending rate at the weekend by almost half a percentage point to 5.6% and cut its one-year deposit rate amid concerns that the world’s second largest economy is weakening. The FTSE 100 closed 1% higher at 6750.76 on Friday, while the Dow Jones was also higher in early trading.  Analysts said one of the main effects of the interest rate cut would be to force down the Yuan against the yen and the dollar, helping China to export its way out of trouble. The Yuan has already fallen 10% against the dollar since the summer from a level that was widely regarded as overvalued and may have further to go in the coming months as the economy struggles and the US recovery gathers pace.  The interest rate cut will be welcomed by the millions of Chinese homeowners who pay a large proportion of their salary each month on mortgage payments. Rocketing mortgage debt has become a huge problem in China alongside the massive debts racked up by state enterprises and local authorities.  Officials at the central bank, aware that many homeowners have reduced spending on other items, will hope lower borrowing costs and the cut in deposit rates will encourage them to boost expenditure in other areas of the economy.  China’s slowdown was highlighted by David Cameron as one of his red warning lights signaling the danger of a second financial crash. He said faltering growth in emerging markets was a cause for concern alongside the escalating dispute in Ukraine and the Ebola crisis.  Beijing has maintained that GDP growth continues to stay above 7%. Government figures for the third quarter this year estimated growth at 7.3%.   Meanwhile back in unemployment and recession hit Europe no action from the EU Eurocrats; 7 years after the event they continue to run up their expense claims and take their pay and pensions, while debating what to do.... Pitiful...

Mr.  Juncker said Europe needed a kick-start and the Commission was offering the jump-leads

He said Europe had to face "the challenge of a generation" head-on, without a money-printing machine, and described his plan as the greatest effort in recent EU history to trigger additional investment without changing the rules.

The plan would take the burden off national governments, already facing big debts after the financial crisis. But they could contribute to the fund if they wished, and would be asked to come up with a list of projects with "high socio-economic returns" that would start between 2015 and 2017.

Illustrating the type of projects he has in mind, Mr.  Juncker said he had a vision of:

 

• Schoolchildren walking into a brand new classroom equipped with computers in the Greek city of Thessaloniki
• European hospitals saving lives with state of the art medical equipment
• French commuters charging electric cars on motorways in the same way as petrol stations are used now
• Households and companies becoming more energy efficient

The Commission and the European Investment Bank (EIB) would create the fund's €21bn reserve, according to Mr Juncker, which would then enable the EIB to fund loans worth €63bn. Private investors would be expected to put forward the lion's share of the money, some €252bn.

Only €16bn of the original money would come from the European Union budget.

However, critics doubt it can attract so much private investment.

There was immediate scepticism from the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) whose General Secretary, Bernadette Segol, suggested the Commission was "relying on a financial miracle like the loaves and fishes".

She said she did not believe that €315bn could be raised from €21bn, a leverage factor of 15 which the ETUC argued was "almost certainly unrealistic".

The Commission believes it could create up to 1.3 million jobs with investment in broadband, energy networks and transport infrastructure, as well as education and research.

BERLIN, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday warned that Europe could slide back into recession, German newspaper Frankfurt Allgemeine reported.

"If we do not want to be left behind by the growth markets, then Europe has to hurry up," Merkel told a conference of European family entrepreneurs here.
She called for an early conclusion of ongoing trade agreement negotiations with Canada and the United States.
Given the increasing weight of Asia in the global economy, "Europe is no longer the measure of all things," said Merkel.
She noted that opportunities may outweigh risks once the free-trade agreements with Canada and United States are put into place.