There has been no recovery in the west since 2007-8. Communism had to collapse and now its sister socialism will collapse too. Governments can not keep borrowing money with no intension of paying anything back. All western economies are collapsing because everyone has too much debt. We are about to go into a deflationary cycle which will see multiple sovereign defaults and wealth destruction like never before. We will all be looking for someone to blame. The laws of maths are universal and apply to everyone. You can not enjoy a life style you have not earned. The Fed has infected the world with all that cheap USD it has been printing and has inflated nearly every housing market in the world. When the flight to quality starts and the herd causes the dollar to rally, then those loans wont be looking so cheap. Emerging markets will get wiped out and the process has begun. Remember that Japanese real estate is still 60% down from its highs in the 90's. If you have not prepared by now its probably too late. If you have a medium to large mortgage get out now because when the panic starts the exit will get really busy. When the bond bubble bursts liquidity will dry up over night and interest rates will go sky which will really squeeze the housing market. These are only economic concerns but normally when an economic event so extreme happens there is usually lots of civil unrest or they take us to war.The French economy stagnated in the second quarter as household spending slowed and business investment contracted.

The Bruxelles delapidators need "new fresh meat" to rub and destroy...here comes the Danish comenwealth !!

EU Observe (source) - Danish PM, Lars Loekke Rasmussen, announced on Friday (21 August) a referendum on replacing Denmark's “opt-out” on EU justice and home affairs with an “opt-in” model, similar to the one used by Ireland and the UK.  The decision to hold the referendum - on 3 December 2015 - follows a political agreement between five parties in parliament - the Liberal Party, the Conservative Party, the Social Democrats, the Social Liberals, and the Socialist People's Party - from 10 December 2014.   Announced on a hot Friday afternoon, the public debate on the referendum is yet to start in earnest (Photo: quietdangst)  Under its opt-out, which dates back to 1993, Denmark automatically stays out of all supra-national EU justice and home affairs policy and doesn’t take part in EU Council votes in these areas.  The EU dossier was slim in the early 1990s.  But it has ballooned since then, including on EU police and judicial co-operation and on migration, with Denmark still on the outside.  A Yes vote in December will let Denmark, in future, choose which home affairs policies and laws it takes part in. It will also let Denmark agree specific legislation in the area without the need for further referendums. The Yes-parties have already identified 22 existing EU initiatives they want Denmark to opt into. They’ve also promised Denmark won’t take part in 10 other EU initiatives - including the hot-button issue of asylum and immigration.   Big shift -- The Yes would mark Denmark’s first important shift in EU relations since Danes, in a referendum, soundly rejected eurozone membership. In a less significant step, Danish voters, at the same time as the EU elections last May, agreed to join the EU's Unified Patent Court.  Announced on a hot Friday afternoon, the public debate on the referendum is yet to start in earnest.  But the last opinion polls, from June, show Yes on 53 percent, No on 24 percent, and 23 percent undecided.  For its part, the second largest party in the Folketinget, the Danish People's Party, is to campaign for a No.  It is critical of the EU and hostile to immigration. It sits with UK tories in the European Parliament and will be the major force in the No-side….It also has a trump card: Its European Parliament candidate in 2014, Morten Messerschmidt, won with an unprecedented 465,758 personal votes in a country of just 5.6 million people. The leftist Red-Green alliance will also campaign on the No-side, saying Denmark must have full sovereignty on divorce, child custody, and criminal sentencing, among other topics.  Its EU spokesperson, Pernille Skipper, noted that Denmark doesn’t share values with some other EU states.   "The European Union includes countries banning abortion or so-called homosexual propaganda. The vote is thus about much more than Europol, contrary to what the EU-rave parties claim”, she said. The Yes side has chosen Europol as the corner stone of its campaign…The pro-Yes parties’ compromise agreement says: “Currently, the Council is negotiating a revision of the regulation on Europol. Once adopted under the new rules of the Lisbon Treaty, Denmark can no longer participate in this co-operation”.   "The perspective of Denmark having to leave Europol is the main reason behind the agreement to hold a referendum”.  Norwegian model…But the No side says Denmark could continue Europol co-operation via a voluntary parallel agreement, on the Norwegian model.  Europol is the European Union’s joint police agency…Headquartered in The Hague, it works closely with law enforcement bodies in EU member states, as well as in Australia, Canada, Norway, and the US.  By choosing to have the Danish poll on 3 December, the PM, Loekke Rasmussen, will, for the most part, avoid getting the campaign mixed up with the UK’s referendum on EU membership.  An EU summit on 17 December is expected to discuss in greater details the UK prime minister, David Cameron's demands for EU reforms in the run-up to the British vote, due at the latest in 2017.

NEW YORK — The downdraft on Wall Street intensified Monday as the Dow Jones industrial average – which was briefly down more than 1,000 points -- suffered its second drop of more than 500 points in as many days and the broader Standard & Poor's 500-stock index tumbled into official correction mode for the first time since 2011.  Investors hoping for a market bounce after the Dow's worst week in four years got a vicious plunge instead after the opening bell when the Dow went into freefall and fell 1,089 points in a dive described as a "huge whoosh," by Bespoke Investment Group. The Dow's closing point loss of 588.40 points, or 3.6%, to 15,871.35, was its 8th worse one-day point loss in history and worse daily point decline since Aug 8, 2011.The freefall on Wall Street has now infected every corner of the stock market, with the blue-chip Dow, small-company Russell 2000, large-company S&P 500 and tech-dominated Nasdaq composite all now down more than 10% from their record peaks this year and into full-fledged corrections. In volatile trading, the Dow initially plunged as much as 1,089 points in early trading before almost clawing back to even, only to succumb to a late-day swoon. At its low point, the Dow was in danger of suffering its worst one-day point loss on record -- a 777.68 drop on Sept. 29, 2008.  The Standard & Poor's 500 index was down 77.68 points, or 3.9%, to 1893.21 as it dipped into correction territory — which is defined as a drop of 10% or more. The Nasdaq composite index fell 179.79 points, or 3.8%, to 4526.25. The Dow is now down 13.3% from its high. The S&P 500 is off 11.2%, the Nasdaq is 13.3% below its closing peak and the Russell 200 is down 14.2% from its record.

Think of some ships at sea and a storm is coming. The ships want to clear their decks so they aren't top heavy. For the SS Eurozone to take on 200 billion or so euros of defaulted Greek debt now would make it top heavy. Better to leave it 'off balance sheet' as a contingent liability and worry about it later. Let's say some big European banks are heading for trouble because of some Latin American loans ( Brazil is near collapse) or because they are short the dollar. The SS Eurozone is going to need all the financial ballast it has to keep the ship from capsizing. Greece won't matter if that happens...Bank doing predatory lending. It is all they can do now. These are not loans to Greece they are bailouts for the creditors. If you borrow money you can spend it how you choose. If the lender tells you how you must spend it, then it isn't a loan.  If you are responsible for spending the money you are responsible for paying it back. But here, it is the creditors who are making all the decisions. Nobody is forcing them to lend the Greeks money, so the question is WHY ARE THEY LENDING MONEY TO GREECE?..The Greek people were sacrificed. I have to wonder who made Tsipras make this 180 degree turn. Wouldn't it have been better if Tsipras didn't call for elections if this is the result? His closest allies are Nea Democratia now...It was reported this week that Germany stands to get 85bn out of Greece's misery and the change to the interest arrangements.
Should there be no write off of Greek debt, this crisis will be permanent, but the Eurofanatics cannot let the dream die, whatever the cost......Deutschland Uber Alles never had such resonance...

What should worry everyone is that, for some reason, all the parties are moving this new deal along without the usual haggling and complaints. This appears to be not so much an exercise in kicking the can as 'sweeping the whole mess under the rug'. So one might ask why the need for a quick resolution of an intractable problem?  My guess is a much bigger storm is about to hit. The turmoil in Forex started by the Chinese devaluation of the RMB and the collapse of commodity prices and the shrinking of trade, indicate a major financial crisis is imminent and Greece just does not matter anymore. Greece, if you will is yesterday's problem. A Northern Rock when RBS and Lehman Brothers are crumbling.

The Greek government RESIGNED AND NEW ELECTIONS WILL BE HELD ON SEPT. 20th. 2015 but, it  has rowed back on promises to halt the fire sales of the country's strategic assets by approving the sale of its airports to a German company. In fact the Tzipras Government sold it's country to the 4th, Reich, so much in charge of Europe. Operating rights to 14 regional airports, including those on popular holiday destinations such as Crete, will now fall under the control of German company Fraport AG, the operator of Frankfurt airport.   The €1.23bn deal represents a significant climb-down for Alexis Tsipras who had denounced attempts by the Troika to force various Greek governments to de-nationalize the country's ports, electricity networks and airports.  But the embattled prime minister has been forced into a number of concessions in return for an €86bn aid package to keep the country in the euro for the next three years. The deal comes as Germany's Bundestag prepares to vote on the package on Wednesday... more than 60 of Ms Merkel's parliamentarians already voted to reject new bail-out talks in July. The rebellion is set to escalate to around 100 out of her 311 MPs.  The Chancellor and her finance minister have been on a charm offensive to convince skeptical lawmakers that Greece will be able to carry out the raft of reforms in return for a first disbursement of €26bn due to be made by Thursday.  Disquiet in Berlin has also grown over the position of the International Monetary Fund, which is only likely to release its own funds to Greece in October.  The Dutch parliament, another tough creditor nation, will also convene for a vote on Wednesday. Eurosceptics such as Geert Wilders have threatened to issue a motion of no confidence in Prime Minister Mark Rutte over the deal.   Parliaments in Portugal and Austria are also due to vote on the measures before Greece is due to repay €3.2bn to the European Central Bank of the package.

As a relatively detached observer (I live in neither the Eurozone nor the EU), I find this ongoing wrangling between Greece and the German-led austerity bloc extremely interesting, but I also find myself unable to completely take anyone's side. As a fiscal conservative my sympathies tend naturally toward Germany, and I have a certain degree of respect for Merkel and Schauble in standing up for the their own people and for the principles which underpin Germany's own economic success.

However, I'm also in the same camp as British right-wingers who dislike the EU and find the concept of a single currency (and those who continue to try to prop it up) utterly ludicrous. As much as I sympathize with the Germans, I can't see an agreement which imposes ever more austerity on the Greeks while keeping them tethered to the euro as any kind of successful outcome. We keep hearing that Greece leaving the euro wouldn't solve its problems, that what it really needs are structural reforms.   That may be true, but I also think that those problems can't be solved without Greece first recovering its own monetary sovereignty, so that in the short term it can devalue and regain some degree of competitiveness. Unfortunately all sides in this, from German fiscal hawks to Greek socialists, see Greece remaining in the euro as a best case scenario. That's why any agreement reached is doomed to failure...Europe is stuck on a roundabout and cant find an exit; For the last 5 years its been fixated on a failed Euro conceit. Fire hosing our money at the Greek and other receiving nations, whilst policies for boosting growth across Europe have been cast aside. What a Joke. Lets get out fast. Cant wait for 2016 referendum...The IMF should have nothing to do with this deal. It was not created to prop up a currency union, when the policies of the major player in the currency union are making a bad situation even worse.  Not much point the Greeks holding further elections either. If they remain in the Euro, no Greek Government will be able to change the terms of their serfdom. They need to leave the Euro and reclaim the ability to govern their own country.  Varofakis leaving the Tsipras Government after the Referendum is looking like a clever move. Perhaps he's readying himself for a comeback.

Greece - It looks as if the new agreement will have lower surplus targets. But it's not as if there's been a change in the contractionary measures that will be adopted by Greece - these have already been voted in, they were part of the prior actions. What has happened is the lenders and the Greek government have realised that this year, the Greek economy will contract by between 2pc and 3pc and therefore the target for a surplus of 1pc this year and 2pc next year are ludicrous. To lower the targets because the economy is in recession is one thing, to present this as lightening the recessionary burden is quite another and wrong. Nothing has been lightened because the taxes have been voted in. Also, what exactly happened to the debt? What is the understanding with regards to the debt? I have no idea. We're completely in the dark about that.   So we don't have a change of measures and a change of policy. The measures and the policies are the same. It's just that the targets have been adjusted downwards. What this means for the debt, I’m not entirely certain. To me it looks like the lenders have had their way and have won hands down. We knew this from early July. The government has accepted austerity and the lenders' policies - those same policies that have been tried in Greece for the last five years and have failed.  For such a small unimportant country (I am not passing qualitative judgement here) to have hogged the headlines, day after day after day, for the best part of a year and virtually every other day for the five years before this, takes a special kind of incompetence.  I don't blame the Greeks. They are not the incompetence ones, they are just the subject of the EU/EZ institutional incompetence, which has brought us to the present day farce. There is not a hope in Hades, this latest 'bail out' will resolve the Greek/EZ crisis.

We are about to throw yet another €100 billion into the bottomless pit of Greek cash consumption. It will achieve nothing, beyond delaying the eventual decision for another year, if that. We used to laugh, at the stupidity of the FinMin group who spend an increasing amount of their time trying to make the financial systems they control fit the political demands of the Europhiles. Now we just pity the group. They have lost all credibility. If the FinMins were a hopeless failing animal, we would have put them out of their misery, a long time ago. When is someone going to come out and tell the uncomfortable truth to power that needs to be spoken? 

It is over for Greece in the €uro zone.