The forced collective suicide of European nations

In speeches and interviews, Juncker has always claimed that Luxembourg has in no way enriched itself "at the expense of its neighboring countries," and especially not by encouraging tax avoidance. In everyday political life, however, Juncker's people fought for precisely the kinds of corporate advantages their boss used such rich language to denounce. In order to attract as much corporate money as possible into the country, his officials played around with tax models like "hybrid financial instruments" and, especially, so-called "patent boxes." Introduced in order to spur technological advancement, finance policy experts in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg led the pack in transforming tax advantages into an instrument allowing corporations to steer proceeds from patents or licenses to their Benelux subsidiaries in order to pay lower taxes there. Under the system, national subsidiaries of large corporations in countries with higher corporate tax rates would pay large patent and licensing fees to subsidiaries in lower tax countries. The system ensured that money got pumped into the government coffers of the Benelux countries, but it also put other EU countries at a disadvantage, in addition to the majority of small- and middle-sized businesses for whom such preferential treatment wouldn't even be considered.  Representatives of the other EU member states knew very well what was going on. The German representative in the Working Group on Tax Questions, for example, filed a cable to Berlin in March 2013 in which he noted there had been repeated "doubts about the harmlessness" of a few of the tax models, "mostly having to do with the license box rules of LUX and NDL," the abbreviations being references to Luxembourg and the Netherlands.  But nothing was done about it for years. Each time the Working Group on Tax Questions proposed changes, Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands warded them off successfully. It's no wonder, either, given that representatives of the Benelux countries regularly coordinated their decisions in advance at their own meetings... It's not just European Commission President Juncker whose past as the leader of the tax-haven Luxembourg is catching up to him. Another important man at the top of an EU institution also now has some uncomfortable questions to answer: Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem. Even after ascending to his current position as head of the Euro Group, his country continued to block every call for change.  Sven Giegold, 45, has spent years trying to shed light on the darkness of EU corporate taxation arrangements. A member of the European Parliament with the Green Party, he's used to resistance. But what he experienced when he requested access to meeting transcripts from the secretive tax groups was an altogether new experience.  First, the European Council stonewalled and then the European Commission delivered documents in which important sections had been redacted. Despite all the blacked out passages, Giegold was forbidden from bringing his mobile phone into the room in one of the Commission's buildings in Brussels where he was allowed to view a few of the documents. Officials allowed him to take notes using a pencil and paper, but they didn't let him take his notes with him when he left the building.   The documents seen by SPIEGEL reveal that what EU agencies have long been denying, is in fact mass-scale cheating with the help of the tax law. Internal EU documents show how companies took advantage of patent boxes to simply sign their licenses, copyrights, patents or marketing rights over to their subsidiaries in Luxembourg or The Hague, allowing them to cash in on sweetheart corporate tax deals in those countries. It didn't matter whether the research had actually taken place in those nations, either. 

As long as we don't worship the Keynesian Dogma we are going to read things like this one.

Mr Rajoy said the eurozone's fourth largest economy was "out of recession but not out of the crisis", and faced a long period of more austerity before the country could sustain the recovery.

"The task now is to achieve a vigorous recovery that allows us to create jobs," he told the Wall Street Journal.

Spain's unemployment rate, at 25pc, is among the highest in the eurozone. The bloc's official unemployment rate of 12.1pc also masks huge disparities. While Austria boasts an unemployment rate of just 4.8pc, the jobless rate in bailed-out Greece is 27.6pc.

The recovery in Germany, Europe's largest economy, has also been fragile. Data on Tuesday showed business sentiment rose for a fifth consecutive month in September. The Ifo Institute's business climate index, which is based on a survey of 7,000 firms, rose to 107.7 in September, from 107.6 in August. However, the reading fell short of the 108.2 expected by economists.

European Central Bank rate-setter Ewald Nowotny said on Tuesday that the bank had "flexible" tools at its disposal if it needs to take additional measures, including providing banks with additional central bank money. ECB President Mario Draghi said on Monday that the ECB stood ready to deliver a fresh injection of cash into Europe's banks. Asked about the possibility of the central bank giving banks another chance for those loans, known as Long Term Refinancing Operations (LTRO), Mr Nowotny said: "It is certainly important to show all that we have in the way of instruments, which are flexible...Pier Carlo Padoan, the OECD's chief economist, said he expected growth in the 17-nation bloc to be negative this year, despite several countries showing signs of recovery. Mr Padoan said the single currency area, which emerged from its longest recession in more than 40 years in the second quarter, remained "a considerable source of risk" to the global recovery, though he added that the systemic risk from the eurozone's debt crisis had subsided. He added that while countries should continue to implement austerity policies, automatic stabilisers such as unemployment benefits should be allowed to kick-in if economies stalled. Mr Padoan also urged policymakers to tackle high jobless rates. "There is no doubt that policy priority number one in the euro area is fighting unemployment. Let's not fool ourselves and expect unemployment to come down in a stable fashion," he said.

Economists expect growth in the eurozone to pick up in the second half of the year. On Monday, Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy said the country would exit recession - defined as two or more consecutive quarters of negative output - in the third quarter, following two years of contraction. 

Oh, NOOOO...trouble in "natziland"???

The FTSE fell 74 points, or 1.2%, while the German Dax and French CAC tumbled 1.5% as markets digested rumors that the resignation of Portugal's finance minister and foreign minister could be followed by more colleagues. Market unease over the health of the world economy was exacerbated by the political drama unfolding in Egypt and a weakening in China's growth.

The Portuguese ministers quit the coalition government this week in a row over the ruling party's handling of the country's economic plight, amid fears that they will be followed by two ministerial colleagues who are members of the junior coalition partner. If that happened, observers fear that they could take down the centre-right government. However, the junior coalition party, CDS-PP, said this evening that there would be no more ministerial resignations.

European commission president José Manuel Barroso, a former Portuguese premier, said the indebted nation risked damaging its hard-earned financial credibility after two years of closely following its €78bn (£66.4bn) bailout programme, coordinated by the International Monetary Fund, European Union and European Central Bank.

"This delicate situation requires a great sense of responsibility from all political forces and leaders," he said.

The government's future hung in the balance after president Aníbal Cavaco Silva's office said he would meet the leader of the main opposition Socialists and other parties to discuss the deepening schism in the coalition. Under the constitution, he has the power to dissolve parliament and can invite opposition parties to form a government.

Speaking in Berlin, where he was attending the EU summit on youth unemployment, prime minister Pedro Passos Coelho reiterated that he had no plans to resign. He said: "I am confident that we will be able to surpass this difficulty … I hope this internal crisis can be overcome very quickly."

With no solution imminent, the euro fell and the interest rate on Portuguese government debt soared past the 7% level – where debts are considered unsustainable – to hit 8.1% at on point, before settling back at 7.5%. The PSI 20 stock index in Lisbon fell by 5%, led by sharp losses of over 10% in bank shares

Experts "travaille" sur les "eurobonds" à Strasbourg - we are screwed !

Les "eurobonds" reviennent. La Commission européenne a annoncé mardi 2 juillet à Strasbourg la formation d'un groupe d'experts pour évaluer les avantages et les risques d'une mutualisation partielle de la dette au sein de la zone euro, vue comme une première étape vers la mise en place d'obligations communes (euro-obligations).

La Commission avait décidé de mettre en place ce groupe d'experts en contrepartie d'un renforcement de la discipline budgétaire décidée au printemps, et sous la pression du Parlement européen. Onze experts font partie de ce groupe, dont l'économiste française Agnès Benassy. Ce groupe devait initialement présenter ses conclusions d'ici mars 2014, mais aucune indication calendaire n'a été fournie mardi.

Le rôle de ce groupe est d'analyser les avantages et obstacles à la mise en place d'un fonds d'amortissement, qui permettrait de mutualiser une partie de la dette de la zone euro, ou la mise en place d'"eurobills", des titres de dette communs à court terme.

PRESSION DE BERLIN - Le sujet est particulièrement délicat car l'Allemagne, qui emprunte à très bas coût sur le marché de la dette, refuse toute forme de mutualisation de la celle-ci au sein de la zone euro. Le sujet a été maintes fois évoqué, et toujours repoussé à plus tard, sous la pression de Berlin.

Pendant la partie la plus aiguë de la crise, de nombreux responsables politiques et économistes plaidaient pour la mise en place d'euro-obligations, afin de faire baisser la pression sur les pays les plus fragiles de la zone euro, dont les taux d'emprunt atteignaient des niveaux insupportables.

"Les membres de ce groupe d'experts, dirigé par M^me Gertrude Tumpel-Gugerell, ancienne membre du directoire de la Banque centrale européenne, possèdent une expertise impressionnante et ont des parcours variés. Je leur fais confiance pour donner des conseils précieux sur ces questions très complexes d'un point de vue politique, économique et juridique", a affirmé le président de la Commission, José Manuel Barroso, qui s'exprimait devant le Parlement européen.

A political and economic system in which underachievers forcibly redistribute their mediocrity to the rest of society

E.U = Socialism: A political and economic system in which underachievers forcibly redistribute their mediocrity to the rest of society...or is it ???....Liberal bloggers always point to socialist Europe as a shining example of how wonderful life can be? Oliver Stone is coming out with a documentary about how Hitler and Stalin were just misunderstood. I read daily about how Europe is in economic free fall and see the same in the tea leaves for America. So death and destruction are goals to admire now??? God help us! Oh yeah, god is dead according to these nihilist lunatics. Oh yeah, I can't say lunatic anymore now that Congress has voted to ban that word. I'll stick with God help us.

Life is actually much better for European working class than in the US. US workers are more and more like obedient little slaves, working two jobs just to earn enough for living. 10-12 hour days and maybe two weeks holiday per year. Then they eat shit food which basically poisons them over the decades slowly but surely, causing high cholesterol, hypertension, diabetes and all sorts of other sicknesses. When they got sick, their health insurance is a form of financial torture, designed to find ways to not to pay. Public education is quite crappy and social safety nets are mostly missing.

The creation of the EU and the common currency was never anything more than a thinly veiled campaign to force European nations into a monolithic Socialist union and help the new Soviet Union (EEC) acquire the production and energetic capacities of Europe, while Germany gets to "administer" the EU states. Economists around the globe warned of the consequences and kept on warning over the last 15 -20 years. The voters in Europe ignored the harsh facts and instead chose bread and circus... and now they reap the benefits of their stupidity and greed. The Forth Reich is ruling Europe since the "independent union nations" budgets have to be approved by the Bundestag before being implemented !!! Deucland uber ales !!!

In a dramatic about-turn, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble ditched his earlier objections that had led him to clash openly with his French counterpart, Pierre Moscovici, last week over the ECB's role in banking supervision.
With time running out to meet a year-end deadline, both sides managed to settle their differences and Germany won concessions to temper the authority of the ECB's Governing Council over the new supervisor.
Agreement on bank surveillance is a crucial first step towards a broader "banking union," or common euro zone approach to dealing with failing banks that in recent years dragged down countries such as Ireland and Spain.
The next pillar of a banking union would be the creation of a central system to close troubled banks.
The decision also sends a strong signal to investors that the euro zone's 17 members, from powerful Germany to stricken Greece, can pull together to tackle the bloc's problems.