???? "DUCH" REFERENDUM ON uKRAINE ???? WHY "DUCH" ???

A Dutch referendum is to be held on an EU agreement for closer relations with Ukraine, after 427,000 people backed a citizens' initiative.The No Level movement is taking advantage of a new law allowing advisory referendums.  The Dutch parliament had already backed the EU deal, which removes trade barriers between the EU and Ukraine.  But campaigners fear that it could be a step towards EU membership and would cost Dutch taxpayers billions of euros.  "This is a chance to say we're here too," says Eurosceptic Thierry Baudet, who argues that Dutch voters should have their say on policies such as EU expansion, legislation and aid packages.   In particular he says the treaty would enable Ukrainians to travel without visas across Europe when their country is in conflict with Russia. Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych triggered months of unrest in Ukraine and eventually his overthrow when he pulled back from signing the EU Association Agreement in November 2013. Since then, Ukraine's new government has signed the deal and parts of the treaty have provisionally come into place. The trade part of the agreement will come into provisional effect on 1 January 2016, but will not be fully in force until all 28 EU member states ratify it. Six countries have yet to do so.

"A very big part of the agreement such as political dialogue on financial co-operation [will come into effect] but not everything," a spokeswoman told the BBC. Under the new Dutch law, which requires 300,000 signatures to trigger a vote, the referendum has to take place within six months. Although the result will not be binding on the government, it will have to be considered if turnout is above 30% and a majority votes against the agreement. Jan Roos from No Level ("GeenPeil" in Dutch) said it was vital for turnout to go above 30% as it would then be "hard for the cabinet to again ignore the voice of the people".

The creation of a "United States of Europe" has been seen as a necessary step to insulate the eurozone from the financial contagion that bought it to its knees after 2010.  It is a view shared by Mr Blanchard's successor at the IMF, American Maurice Obstfeld, who has championed deeper eurozone integration as the best way to plug the institutional gaps in EMU. Mr Blanchard, however, said no institutional fixes would bring back prosperity back to the single currency.  Without the power to devalue their currencies, peripheral economies would forever be forced to endure "tough adjustment", such as slashing their wages, to keep up with stronger member states, he said.  In this vein, Mr. Blanchard dismissed any talk of a growth "miracle" in Spain - which has been hailed as a poster child for Brussels' austerity diktats. He added he was "surprised" that sluggish eurozone economies were not doing better in the face of a cocktail of favorable economic conditions.  "When people talk about the Spanish miracle, I react. When you have 23pc unemployment and 3pc growth, I don't call this a miracle!!!!!!!!" "I thought that the zero interest rate, the decrease in the price of oil, the depreciation of the euro, the pause in fiscal consolidation, would help more than they have", he said. I don't want to leave the EU because "there are technocrats I don't like."  I want to leave because it is the only way DEMOCRACY will be restored to Romania ! I do not want foreign politicians and foreign bureaucrats making laws which will be imposed on me when our own Government has opposed them because they are not in our interests. I want the ability to vote OUT the people who make the laws. The issue is SOVEREIGNTY and DEMOCRACY.

Anybody with a bachelor's degree in economics could have predicted the problems with the Euro. The creation of the Euro was done with full understanding that floating currencies are powerful adjustment mechanisms, and that the risks that one country's problems could poison the well for all. What everyone is missing is that the creators of the Euro thought/hoped they would be able to control these problems before they arose, and that the gains from lowering transaction costs and trade barriers would outweigh the difficulties that resulted from the Euro.  What everyone is ignoring is the fact that the ECB (and others) did next to nothing to stop this crisis from happening during the last decade when important steps should have been taken. Also, there were countries that profited mightily as a result of the Euro, and part of their success is directly due to the same setup that caused Greece's downfall - but they're now largely unwilling to do anything to repair the situation. So the lesson of this crisis shouldn't (IMO) just be that currency unions are bad and that opponents of the Euro were right. There are costs and benefits to common currencies. More importantly though, people need to be conscious of both, and not just accepting all the benefits and ignoring any potential disasters. I realize this is all 20/20 hindsight, but so many of the problems of the Greece crisis could have been avoided even with a currency union, but nobody had the willpower or the desire to tackle them at the time...What everyone is ignoring is the fact that the ECB (and others) did next to nothing to stop this crisis from happening during the last decade when important steps should have been taken.  No pre-emptive action will ever be taken to deal with bubbles while politics dominates economics. The public will never be able to distinguish between an artificial correction forced so that a bubble popped before it became economy sized and a real recession. If the ECB had intervened it would have caused a political crisis as politicians hammered the body for ruining the economy.  Of course this is nothing to do with where the boundaries of power lie. This is a general problem with politics. Somebody could have forcibly popped the leverage bubble in the world economy in 2005 but that man would have been known as the man who took all your money away.

Governments and central banks risk tipping the world into a fresh financial crisis, the International Monetary Fund has warned, as it called time on a corporate debt binge in the developing world.  Emerging market companies have "over-borrowed" by $3 trillion in the last decade, reflecting a quadrupling of private sector debt between 2004 and 2014, found the IMF's Global Financial Stability Report.  This dangerous over-leveraging now threatens to unleash a wave of defaults that will imperil an already weak global economy, said stark findings from the IMF's twice yearly report. The Fund warned there was no margin for error for policymakers navigating these hazardous risks. The slightest miscalculation, they said, could collapse into a "failed normalisation" of interest rates and market conditions, wiping 3pc from the world's economic output over the next two years. Governments borrow, and borrow and borrow from banks in order to spend. Their security is their power to tax the people. But by spending they buy the electorate. But the ability to tax is being eroded by companies registering in tax havens. So they borrow even more, which sets the interest rates through demand.   Eventually the system collapses. All Governments should be restricted in their ability to borrow as a prudent measure. "The IMF forecasts that global output will fall to its lowest level in five years at 3.1%" I think you'll find that refers to the GROWTH of output rather than its level. Which is hardly Armageddon, even if you believe the IMF's forecast - which as we know, are notoriously unreliable. "The world's major central banks should ensure policy remains "accommodative" for fear of setting off a new wave of instability that would see bond prices rise and asset prices collapse, said the IMF." I think you'll find they fear a FALL in bond prices (the counterpart to a rise in yields). Do any of you journos understand anything about economics and finance? As for the IMF itself, clearly they are aiming for a new Great Inflation. They know the current level of debt is unsustainable, and the only question is who takes the loss? By stoking up inflation they will ensure that ordinary savers take most of it, rather than banks and governments.

The same economists that governments of every political colour have listened to for decades still rule supreme! They have been paid to tell each administration all they need is to spend more money to make it 'right'. That money has never existed because it has never been produced as a profit, so excess, of anything! It's merely been printed as valueless paper.  Governments have freely allowed the banks to make profits regardless making governments the problem, not the banking system!

We have no clue how economies may have improved had governments let banks fail before these crises ever became a part of our economies.  An earlier comment welcomes the demise of capitalism and sees that as the whole problem. I'm not sure whether there has ever been a true capitalist or free market economy in any modern country in recent history? There is certainly not a single one today. Capitalism, right or wrong, only succeeds when it is accepted that some will fail and there will be victims who cannot succeed and so will not survive.  We all now live with only left wing governments who are not allowed to accept the concept of failure in any member of their societies regardless of any self imposed shortcomings!  No economy can afford that which is why socialism has never worked anywhere it has been tried. Government control and mismanagement have been totally to blame for the economic mess we find ourselves in. The only other culprits who bear just as much blame are we the voters who put them in place. If a child has only a pound/dollar, or whatever, in its hand and the object in the store it must have costs that pound/dollar plus a couple of pennies or cents, it understands it can't afford to buy it!  The child may have hysterics and demand its parents make it right and find the extra, but it still actually recognizes basic economics, something our governments have chosen to ignore for decades.  The IMF is no less crooked than any other financial agency, the world's banking system or the governments who support them all. You can bet your life that when this inevitable recession and world financial crisis arrives it will still be the likes of the IMF, the bankers and a majority of politicians world wide who make sure they are taken care of well before the communities they will ruin.  Wake up and welcome to the real world. You can't live on ever increasing debt. Our biggest shame is that it is quite obvious that those who will be left to survive the economic mess we are making are the children who we all pretend are the future of our world. We all continue to be hypocrites and narcissists only interested in ourselves.

During the weekly meeting of commissioners, Juncker  made it clear that new chapters in Turkey's accession negotiations could be opened. Furthermore, Turkey is to receive a billion euros for the refugee camps, in addition to the billion euros that have already been promised.  There will be no solution without Turkey, but what motivation does Erdogan have for making Merkel's life easier. The chancellor has always been opposed to Turkish accession to the EU. Furthermore, there are parliamentary elections in Turkey on Nov. 1 and 68 percent of the Turkish population is in favor of stricter rules pertaining to refugees. It sounds nice when Merkel says that fences aren't the solution. But such positions also make her susceptible to political blackmail. What if Erdogan isn't really interested in a solution? What if he is happy to see the camps on the Turkish-Syrian border empty out? What if he is okay with the situation in Syria worsening?  At the end of February, Merkel visited Pope Francis in the Vatican, and brought back with her a question that has remained with her ever since: What if the Middle Eastern conflict between the Sunnis and the Shiites is the modern-day version of the Thirty Years' War, the battle between Catholics and Protestants that turned half of Europe into rubble in the 17th century?  To that question, Merkel has no answer. She has said that Germany will grant protection to those who need it. But if her plan to pacify the world doesn't work, it could be that so many people will come to Germany that Germans will no longer stand for it. Merkel is aware of that, which is why she doesn't want to become involved in a discussion about numbers. She doesn't want to name her own threshold of failure.

Keep interest rates zero bound and ensure another crash. It is causing all the volatility, damaging investment and reducing wages. Eventually economies will hit the buffers and will have nothing to respond with...The financial services "industry" cannot function indefinitely (or even for much longer) with interest rates this low. Savers must get some sort of reward for saving; they shouldn't, at least, be penalized - seemingly without end - for saving. The insurance business, to give just one example, is already warning of trouble ahead.  The IMF should be reminding policy-makers that interest rates need to return to a "normal" rate - say 3% - as speedily as possible. If our systems of production, distribution and exchange, as presently organized, of are incompatible with interest rates in the 3% range, then it is the way we organize those systems of pde that needs to change.  A more sensible policy for the IMF to pursue would be to set a target of, say, 3% interest-rates across the "advanced" world by 2020, and then work back from that target to determine what changes to our systems of pde are needed, now, to enable them to sustain those rates.  Low interest rates have simply bought policy-makers time - time that has been mostly wasted...The dance at the top of the slide disappoints and this bogie's chorus of dissentious staccato rattles the teeth. The abrupt end of this amusement ride is near when central bankers' control levers are stripped clean. Central bankers saved the world, alright,... saved it for the tax man. A plea from central bankers to governments around the world to further impoverish their citizens to save their sorry arses or government's debt will be called in is the message. Sound money is bad and debt is good are the new speak from the MOT. No amount of rope will rescue this...We are now in a Catch-22 situation. If interest rates are kept low, the huge mountain of debt will eventually cause a crash. If interest rates are raised, many people will be trapped by increases in mortgage rates, loans etc. and so the economy will collapse because people will stop spending on all but essentials (and some won't be able to afford those). So what's the solution? I believe the capitalist system is disintegrating and we need a new economic model - not communism, but a mixed-economy model that has fairness, equality and justice as its basic principles, with real and transparent accountability systems. Surely, humans have the creativity for such a model. The most difficult problems will be political will and wresting the wealth and power from the global elite.

Finding solutions for Syria was amply debated  by the European Parliament. Protecting innocent lives and achieving peace for the sake of the whole region is the number one priority. EPP Group MEPs showed their concern about escalating violence, Russia's military intervention and the threat of expanding the conflict throughout the region. They stressed that the impact on Europe is critically important. MEPs called for more EU involvement at international level to put an end to the conflict, combat the so-called Islamic State and stop the migration flow.  The Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Elmar Brok MEP, stressed that the current network of different political interests must be stopped: "Russia, the US and the EU must come together and talk about a common geopolitical strategy like they did in the past in the case of nuclear arms in Iran. The current proxy war, especially by Saudia Arabia and Iran but also Turkey, must come to an end. Regional cooperation should be in the interest of all of them. We need to find a common solution for the situation in Syria to finally achieve progress in the peace process and the migration crisis."

"The contribution of the countries of the region is key to preventing the further propagation of radicalisation", stressed Mariya Gabriel MEP, Vice-Chairwoman of the EPP Group responsible for relations with Mediterranean countries: "A clear and specific commitment of the countries of the region should be made to contribute to the improvement of coordination and to the opening of an exit window. The role of the EU is to work to make this commitment happen and play a balancing role in the redistribution process of influences in the region and to bring back both regional and great powers to the table for a peace process in Syria."  Russia's military intervention worries the EPP Group's Spokesman on Foreign Affairs, Cristian Preda MEP: "Russia has already shown us in the past its willingness to impose its vision of things by force. Its intervention in Syria is no different and makes the situation all the more fragile. By creating more pressure in Syria, Russia is doing nothing short of accentuating the refugee crisis. This is clearly against EU interests. We are deeply concerned about the recent incursions in Turkey's airspace. Turkey is our NATO partner."  The EPP Group Members believe that a lasting solution requires a political transition through a Syrian-led inclusive process with the support of the international community. All parties in the conflict should ensure the protection of the civilian population and honour their obligations under international humanitarian law and human rights law.  By August 2015, 12.2 million Syrians were in need of humanitarian assistance, according to the European Commission.