The other Europe ...today's developments - At this hour ( 1:30 pmlocal time), there are people gathering in the center of Bucharest once more.

ROMANIA: More than 30 people were injured Sunday during a protest that turned violent in Romania’s capital, with demonstrators throwing stones and riot police using tear gas, medical sources said. Around a thousand Romanians had gathered in central Bucharest to voice anger at falling living standards and call on President Traian Basescu to step down. At this hour ( 1:30 PM. local time), there are people gathering in the center of Bucharest once more.

CZECH REPUBLIC: The Czech government’s restitution bill that compensates churches for property and assets confiscated during communist rule has raised political tensions and fiscal costs, and as such is credit negative, Moody’s Investors Service said Monday. The bill commits the state to transferring CZK170 billion, or 4.3% of gross domestic product, to the churches, Moody’s noted. Furthermore, if tensions result in the exit of Public Affairs (VV) from the ruling coalition, early elections would have to be called to form a new government, the credit rating firm pointed out.
SLOVAKIA: Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services lowered its long-term sovereign credit rating on the Slovak Republic to ‘A’ from ‘A+’, and affirmed the short-term ‘A-1′ rating
BULGARIA: Miners at Bulgaria’s largest coal producer, state-owned Maritza East Mines, went on strike Sunday after failing to obtain demanded wage increases, miners’ union leader Valentin Valchev said.

Almost £50bn was wiped off the value of britain's 100 biggest companies on a day of global stock market mayhem triggered by a deepening of the eurozone crisis and fears for the US economy. After a day of massive stock market falls in Europe and the US of a kind not seen since the depths of the last economic downturn, traders said the atmospherewas reminiscent of the banking crisis of October 2008. Wall Street endured one of its worst days since the height of that crisis, with the Dow Jones Industrial Index closing more than 500 points or 4.3% lower at 11,383 in heavy volume, as it resumed a two-week streak interrupted only briefly on Wednesday. It was the biggest single-day loss since 2008. "For many traders this week has felt like the start of the banking crisis in 2008, which would go some way to explaining the panic selling we have seen today," said Will Hedden, sales trader at IG Index. The fall on Wall Street is expected to cause further falls in the FTSE 100 index of leading shares today, after the index fell to its lowest close, 5393.14, since September 2010 yesterday. The futures market was predicting a further 100 point fall. Rumours were swirling around the City that hedge funds were being forced to sell assets such as gold in order to cover deepening losses on other investments. This led to a surprise 1% drop in gold, which in recent weeks had hit record highs of more than £1,000 an ounce as a safe haven bet in the eurozone and US debt crisis. Brent crude fell 5% to $107 a barrel amid signs of slowdown in the west's economies. Anxiety over the debt crisis in the eurozone, and increasingly in Italy, set the tone for nervous trading during the London morning, but the pace of the decline accelerated as Wall Street opened sharply lower. By early afternoon in New York the Dow Jones had declined by 400 points, resuming the two-week losing streak only briefly interrupted on Wednesday. Despite this week's 11th-hour agreement to raise the US debt ceiling, Wall Street is increasingly anxious over the health of the world's biggest economy. A major test comes today with the release of US employment data giving the latest health check of an economy which barely grew in the first half of the year.

As he desperately tries to squash a popular rebellion, Libyan ruler Moammar Gaddafi is banking on the loyalty of a close circle of relatives and security officials whose personal fates depend on his survival, according to U.S. officials and analysts. Among them are four of his sons and two longtime spy chiefs accused of directing a series of assassination and terrorist plots during Gaddafi's four decades in power. While numerous Libyan diplomats and government officials have defected or abandoned Gaddafi in recent days, analysts said it is unlikely that his inner core will follow suit.
"The people who are in the bunker with him, they have pretty good reasons for sticking by Gaddafi," said John Hamilton, a Libya expert with Cross Border International, a British publishing and consulting firm that specializes in North Africa. "It's a bit late for the sons to revolt against their father . . . There's really nowhere for the others to turn, either." (W.P)

Mămăliga din Orientul Mijlociu" ("Middle East Polenta") that is the title chosen by Shachar Shaine, the former head of Tuborg Romania, for his speech delivered at the luxury Loft restaurant in Bucharest, held by a businessman closely connected to the beverage industry, Pepe Berciu, on Wednesday night. Shaine, 42, said goodbye to his co-workers, as well as to competitors in a relaxed atmosphere, pointing out that Romania was definitely "the country worth living and investing in". The manager who spent the last six years at the helm of United Romanian Breweries Bereprod (URBB), the bottler of Tuborg and Carlsberg, says he decided to stay in Romania, despite propositions from shareholders for whom he had worked to take over similar businesses in other countries. "I will stay and develop business here," Shaine said without providing further details. He is one of the managers with the longest-standing career in the beer industry, having worked for the same company for the last eleven years. Israeli-born Shaine has repeatedly said he loves Romania and even became a Romanian citizen six months ago.(Z.F.) BCE,ECB,IMF,Germany,France,Euro,currency,forex,investments,bucharest,Romania,cluj,

The story of Mokotów is one of the prominent bright spots in the history of how the commercial property developed in Poland. The former industrial district of Mokotow, Służewiec Przemysłowy has rapidly been transformed into Warsaw’s ultimate office hub, where fully-leased projects from leading developers are regularly snapped up by leading investors. In fact, Colliers International claims that investor demand has intensified so much over the past 12 months that that along with being the hottest office district in Central Europe, Mokotów can actually be considered one of the most liquid markets anywhere in Europe. Is this just marketing overkill from the Polish office of an international agency? After all, with just over 900,000 sqm, Mokotów is hardly among the biggest on the Continent. But according to Neil Gregory-Eaves, Colliers’ international director of CEE investment services, one shouldn’t look at total stock, but instead at how much of it has changed hands in the last 12 months.
“Over the past 12 months, Moktów has had six major office investment transactions which represent approximately 18 percent of the total gross lettable area. The total volume of these transactions is approaching €500m. These kinds of figures mean that Mokotow has easily been the most active office investment sub-district in all of CEE both in terms of the number of transactions and total investment volume,” says Gregory-Eaves.BCE, Citigroup, Comisia Europeana, FMI, Federal Reserve, Germania, Grecia, Irlanda, Marea Britanie, PIB, Rusia, SUA, Spania, Standard and Poor's, Ungaria, Uniunea Europeana,