What a shock. Listening to the news this morning it was clear to me that Shell has done slightly better than expected and the market was happy. In fact Shell is up 60 this morning. Imagine my surprise when I read the "shock horror" headline, and this from a, so called, Business Reporter. Not having read the accounts I am assuming that the "exceptional items" include a great deal of write downs which of course do not affect the cash position. More information and less hyperbole would have been helpful.  Royal Dutch Shell has become the latest victim of the oil price rout after it confirmed 10,000 jobs would be axed amid its sharpest decline in income in 13 years. Pummelled by low crude prices, income for the year slumped 87pc to $1.9bn.  The oil major said earnings on a current cost of supplies basis, its preferred way of measuring profits, tumbled 56pc in the final three months of 2015 to $1.8bn, compared to $4.2bn in the previous year.  The torrid quarter took its toll on the Anglo-Dutch group, dragging its full-year profit from $19bn in 2014 to $3.8bn - an 80pc fall. Excluding exceptional items, profits for the year came in marginally below market expectations at $10.7bn. Earnings in Shell's upstream business - which seeks out and produces oil - were hindered by “the significant decline in oil and gas prices”, the group said.  Ben van Beurden, chief executive, said: “We are making substantial changes in the company reorganising our upstream, and reducing costs and capital investment, as we refocus Shell, and respond to lower oil prices”.

A senior Romanian government source, who also insisted on anonymity, added: “We are analysing this proposal. Changes like this have been considered a red line for us until now so we are debating what to do and how to react.” He said Romania would “not want to be the one blocking a compromise which would lead to Britain leaving the EU. But we have to analyse whether it passes our red line.”  Some commentators argued that eastern Europe should swallow welfare cuts for a greater good. “In the case of a Brexit, the EU would be weakened, economically but also politically towards Russia … and more focused on the euro, which would be of detriment to countries (such as Poland) that have not adopted the single currency,” Tomasz Bielecki argued in the liberal Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza. “For that reason, the government … needs to be willing to compromise on the question of migrant workers. It is better to forego certain benefits than face Brexit.”... Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, said Warsaw – a vocal opponent of any measures that might discriminate against its citizens working in Britain – broadly approved of measures to strengthen sovereignty and bolster EU members’ ability to stop legislation, but was looking carefully at the proposal to suspend in-work benefits for migrant workers.   “This is a preliminary deal; let us see how the negotiations unfold,” Duda told the TVP Info news channel. “But free movement of workers and services is a fundamental value of the EU. There is a clause saying that in the case of a sudden influx of wage migrants, some benefits could be curbed. We will see what the interpretation [of the clause] is.”..The European council president Donald Tusk’s plan, which must be accepted by all 28 EU member states, seeks to address Britain’s demand for reforms to stem immigration and boost British sovereignty. It includes welfare reforms that are controversial in several east European countries, including Poland, which have sizeable populations of migrant workers in the UK.  The Polish foreign minister, Witold Waszczykowski, told a press conference with his Hungarian counterpart on Wednesday that both countries aimed to present a joint statement on the UK reform package in Budapest on Monday.  While sentiment towards the proposal was generally positive, Waszczykowski said, and “we share the UK’s push to respect the will of sovereign countries more, we must not see any solutions that discriminate against some groups of people”. Up to 1.3 million Poles are thought to live in Britain.

The f*cking psychopaths running our economies are hellbent on leading us to war. We should have put the whole establishment against the wall in 08 when we still had some power. Now they will be putting us all up against the wall. As I said it will be a miracle if this decade doesn't end with a major conflict.  All of the financial world is hocus pocus and the digital age was the ultimate magic wand to send it in overdrive. It's all bullshit and we all know it.  Yet these financial wizards, these insincere quacks preach at the high altar of capitalism and we are forced to take their mass. Our politicians sit at the front row of this mass and nod their heads like obedient dogs.  Anybody who votes for the mainstream political parties is a vote for this corrupt Kabbala. Mainstream parties always belittle the fringe parties as incompetent nutjobs followed by the media who always paint them as unviable.  More importantly they the establishment always cynically point out that there is no point voting for a small party by stating they will have no impact on the stream of general opinion. We are all doomed by our feckless complacency...eat the shit of the 'celeb age'whilst we rob you of everything. The greatest freedom the liberals have won for us is the freedom to be ignorant of the reality which betrays us.

According to CNBC's Robert Frank, a Bank of England report shows that its quantitative easing policies had benefited mainly the wealthy, and that 40% of those gains went to the richest 5% of British households. Dhaval Joshi of BCA Research wrote that "QE cash ends up overwhelmingly in profits, thereby exacerbating already extreme income inequality and the consequent social tensions that arise from it". Anthony Randazzo of the Reason Foundation wrote that QE "is fundamentally a regressive redistribution program that has been boosting wealth for those already engaged in the financial sector or those who already own homes, but passing little along to the rest of the economy. It is a primary driver of income inequality". In May 2013, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Richard Fisher said that cheap money has made rich people richer, but has not done quite as much for working Americans.  The majority of citizens lost a great deal since the financial crisis in 2008. Savage 'austerity' cuts, increase in VAT, (yet tax cuts for large corporations) has led to a devastating impact on public services, small businesses on our High Streets going bust, over a million people using food banks and an increase of suicides... I could go on.  The finance industry toxic financial products; price manipulations; market bubbles and just blatant fraud, is unsustainable and ordinary people should not continue to pay for this crime in the financial sector. This is not 'capitalism', this is not a 'free-market' and smaller business cannot compete.  If the bankers were prosecuted and went to jail for their crimes back in 2008, like they did in Iceland and the US reinstated the Glass–Steagall Act and we had the equivalent in the UK, the Markets would not be in the volatile state we constantly see. Savers would be more protected. Only robust effective regulation can stabilise the Markets.

Oops trying to concentrate on some thing else and make a balls up . Was going on to say the Banks and the establishment also knew that austerity wasn't the answer as the collapse in the 1930s proved this The top economist knew this and were saying so .Salmond, who is also an economist was saying so .We should have used the Billions thrown at the banks to implement a strategy in getting the country working and investing in a host of projects . It was an ideological decision rather than one based on sound financial judgment,  and certainly the working class man /woman weren't taken into consideration at all. We could have become the manufacturing country which we once were instead of a third rate Service industry, and economy with a race to the bottom with regards to low wages.

We are possibly on the cusp of another financial downturn although the Banks are still carrying on as before and it seems they never learned any lessons at all from the crash .

It really wasn't rocket science, just greedy bankers and their right wing friends in the Tory party and press who decided the pathway and the stupid Labour party had neither the guts or sense to fight against it. And it looks like Osborne's policies are still failing, although we might be creating jobs it's the caliber of job and the wages that are obviously keeping the country back. AS mentioned before with the 2 million jobs created one would expect a thriving economy, and it certainly doesn't seem that way to the majority of people, and many economist were forecasting this and now the OECD are just catching up.

Between 1980 and 1985 the dollar had appreciated by about 50% against the Japanese yen, Deutsche Mark, French Franc and British pound, the currencies of the next four biggest economies at the time.[1] This caused considerable difficulties for American industry but at first their lobbying was largely ignored by government. The financial sector was able to profit from the rising dollar, and a depreciation would have run counter to Ronald Reagan's administration's plans for bringing down inflation. A broad alliance of manufacturers, service providers, and farmers responded by running an increasingly high profile campaign asking for protection against foreign competition.  Major players included grain exporters, car producers, engineering companies like Caterpillar Inc., as well as high-tech companies including IBM and Motorola. By 1985, their campaign had acquired sufficient traction for Congress to begin considering passing protectionist laws. The prospect of trade restrictions spurred the White House to begin the negotiations that led to the Plaza Accord.[2][3]  The justification for the dollar's devaluation was twofold: to reduce the U.S. current account deficit, which had reached 3.5% of the GDP, and to help the U.S. economy to emerge from a serious recession that began in the early 1980s. The U.S. Federal Reserve System under Paul Volcker had halted the stagflation crisis of the 1970s by raising interest rates, but this resulted in the dollar becoming overvalued to the extent that it made industry in the U.S. (particularly the automobile industry) less competitive in the global market. Devaluing the dollar made U.S. exports cheaper to purchase for its trading partners, which in turn allegedly meant that other countries would buy more American-made goods and services.

 

The Safe Harbour deal was brought before the ECJ after whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the extent of US-led mass surveillance programmes. With American internet services popular among Europeans, the EU side wanted to know if it could still trust the US authorities on data collection.  “The US side has clarified that they do not carry out indiscriminate mass surveillance of Europeans,” said Ansip, adding that the US intelligence activities underwent “substantial internal reviews”. His colleague, justice commissioner Vera Jourova, said the written assurances would include one from the office of the director of national intelligence in the White House.

“This is a unique step the US has made in order to restore trust in our transatlantic relations,” noted Jourova, adding that the EU would “hold the US accountable on the commitments they made”.

The deal sees the phrase Safe Harbour replaced by a new name: the EU-US 'Privacy Shield'.

“We decided to rebrand, rename the scheme,” said Jourova.The framework will also include redress possibilities for EU citizens who feel their data has been misused. “The US will create the role of a special ombudsperson within the US State Department who would follow up complaints and inquiries by individuals on national security access upon referral by EU data protection authorities,” said Ansip.  In a conference call with journalists, US secretary of commerce Penny Pritzker said they were “tough negotiations”.  “It's been a long road but we've turned a corner and now we stand together,” she said, adding that the new framework would provide certainty to EU and US businesses and citizens alike. “This new mechanism will allow the digital economy in both the EU and the US to grow, which is so critical to jobs and economic security,” noted Pritzker. She said she was “confident” that the new deal met the requirements of the ECJ. A senior official at the US department of commerce said the new deal, just like Safe Harbour, was “not a multilateral agreement or a treaty in the formal sense”. This has already prompted some criticism. Liberal Dutch member of the European Parliament Sophie in 't Veld said the “legal status of these safeguards is very unclear”. “The assurances seem to rely exclusively on political commitment, instead of legal acts. So any change in the political constellation in the US may undo the whole thing,” she said. The deal was announced a day after the 10-month race for the White House kicked off in Iowa.  The American Chamber of Commerce to the European Union is happy with the agreement, however.

“This new framework gives business the necessary confidence to continue to invest in the transatlantic marketplace,” it said in a press release. Jourova and Ansip will draft a so-called “adequacy decision” in the following weeks to determine if the US commitments provide adequate protection for European citizens' data. The decision is a legal tool under the comitology procedure, whereby decisions are taken by experts from EU countries. Jourova expects the new framework to be in place in three months.