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Mariano Rajoy, the Spanish prime minister, has called for the eurozone to have “centralized control” over the budgets of all the countries using the euro. Rajoy has become the latest European politician to call for countries to, in effect, abandon their sovereignty in a last-ditch attempt to save the beleaguered currency. Rajoy said a new central authority would go a long way to alleviating Spain’s economic crisis as it would send a clear signal to investors that the single currency is an irreversible project. He said: “The European Union needs to reinforce its architecture. This entails moving towards more integration,...

It’s not just the US, which is a point that Barack Obama will likely seize in the same manner a drowning man clings (bitterly?) to a life preserver in a storm-tossed ocean. The EuroZone hit a 17-year high unemployment rate this spring at 11%, and the rate in the larger European Union rose to 10.3%: The jobless rate in the 17-nation euro zone reached 11 percent in March and April, the highest since the start of the data in 1995, Eurostat, the European statistical agency said in Luxembourg. The previous record had been 10.9 percent in February, Eurostat said, after...

The latest example is the prison in Corinth where after the supply stoppage from the nearby military camp, the prisoners are at the mercy of God because, as reported by prison staff, not even one grain of rice has been left in their warehouses. When a few days earlier the commander of the camp announced to the prison management the transportation stoppage, citing lack of food supplies even for the soldiers, he shut down the last source of supply for 84 prisoners. The response of some Corinth citizens was immediate as they took it upon themselves to support the prisoners,...

The damage caused by the global financial crisis requires additional federal intervention, according to the Obama Administration, which is launching a new program to “foster growth and stability at a time of increasing economic turmoil.” This particular endeavor, however, will focus its efforts on improving conditions in Eastern Europe, the Western Balkans, and the “newly independent states,” or NIS, of the former Soviet Union. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is designing this Europe & Eurasia (E&E) regional project in order to “promote trade, investment and regulatory integration; enhance regional competitiveness, and support financial sector stability.” The agency did...

Greece handed 18 billion euros ($22.6 billion) to its four biggest banks on Monday, an official said, allowing the stricken lenders to regain access to European Central Bank funding. The long-awaited injection—via bonds from the European Financial Stability Facility rescue fund—will boost the nearly depleted capital base of National Bank, Alpha , Eurobank and Piraeus Bank.

Dismissing the propaganda-like vision of growth and jobs that is now at the forefront of any and every word from the status-quo seekers that are the European Elite, England's Nigel Farage notes the hypocrisy of the forthcoming summit's agenda. The Euro itself was supposed to create growth and jobs and yet it is actively destroying both of those things - more of the same - as the medicine is killing the patient. He attacks the idea that the world will end if Greece were to exit the Euro - "European leaders say if Greece leaves the sky will fall in...

We were lamenting just the other day, yesterday in fact, that California’s 11.0 percent unemployment rate was identical to Ghana’s, that sub-Saharan economic stalwart. Today we awoke to the good news. California’s unemployment rate has plunged to (drum roll please) 10.9 percent! That’s as good as the unemployment rate in the euro zone, where people out of work also account for 10.9 percent of the working population, a new high for those folks...

Tomorrow brings the opening of the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, the 65th anniversary. But signs of economic reality are everywhere. Even though Tuesday before Cannes is quiet, today was more than unusually not busy. The best indicators are in hotel lobbies and out front of the main palaces like the Majestic and Carlton. At the latter, the entryway is cleverly adorned completely in ads for “The Dictator.” But there’s very little else going on so far. The hotel has only one large billboard affixed to its facade–for an upcoming Tom Cruise movie. Otherwise, the hub-bub was at minimum today. The...

The French economy did not grow at all in first three months of 2012 and the previous quarter's growth was cut, in a blow to new president Francois Hollande. Official figures released on Tuesday showed that French GDP growth was 0pc in the three months through March . Growth in the last quarter of 2011 was revised to 0.1pc from 0.2pc. Official statistics agency INSEE said the economy grew by 1.7pc overall in 2011. Inflation rose 0.1pc on a monthly basis after a jump of 0.8pc in March. Year-on-year inflation dipped to 2.1pc, back to the level seen in mid-2011....

Athens has the highest rate of empty office space in Europe, according to data for the year’s first quarter presented by BNP Paribas Real Estate. Its report on the course of the European office market showed that the availability rate in the Greek capital soared to 20 percent in the January-March period from 15.5 percent in the same period last year.

Over the years, our friends at the Norway Sovereign Wealth Fund have gone from jeered to cheered. To wit from March 30: "Remember this from September 2010? "Norway, which has amassed the world’s second-biggest sovereign wealth fund, says Greece won’t default on its debts. “The point is, do you expect these guys to default?” said Harvinder Sian, senior fixed-income strategist at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, in an interview. “Norway has taken the view that they will not. The Greek holdings are particularly interesting because the consensus in the market is that they will at some point restructure...

SENIOR Eurocrats are secretly plotting to create a super-powerful EU president to realise their dream of abolishing ­Britain and other nation states, the Daily Express can reveal. A covert group of EU foreign ministers has drawn up plans for merging the jobs currently done by Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European Council, and Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission. The new bureaucrat, who would not be directly elected by voters, is set to get sweeping control over the entire EU and force member countries into ever-greater political and economic union.

Public confidence in scientific “consensus” regarding the theory of manmade climate change is threatening the believing scientists’ confidence. While polls show that taking action to fight climate change is off the radar of most Americans, the behavior of the theory’s advocates is even more telling. They are behaving like "cornered rats"—taking extreme actions to protect their turf.

According to Bloomberg, The Netherlands is experiencing backlash against austerity, France is seeing Sarkozy possibly losing to a Socialist and Merkel’s austerity policies are coming under increased attack. This, of course, is no surprise. No one wants to pay for the massive entitlement and government spending programs. So, the answer is … print more money. Fed Vice Chair Janet Yellen said today that there will be no monetary tightening after Operation Twist expires. On it’s own, expiring Twist will in the 10 year rising about 25 basis points. Notice that the U.S. Treasury 10 year yield dropped this morning while...

The eurozone is not equipped to bail out Spain, the country's prime minister Mariano Rajoy has admitted, as global traders continued to punish the nation's stocks and bonds. Mr Rajoy said it was "not possible to rescue Spain" but insisted his country did not need a Greek-style international bail-out anyway. "To talk about a bail-out for Spain at the moment makes no sense," he told reporters. "Spain is not going to be rescued; it's not possible to rescue Spain, there's no intention to, it's not necessary and therefore it's not going to be rescued." Despite his comments, the Madrid bourse...

"If they don't get the Drachma back, you will be responsible for something truly truly horrible!".

This is a google translate translation: Ministers participating in the "great train robbery" First registration: Tuesday, February 7, 2012, 16:28 The legal use Katsios was perfectly clear, speaking Tuesday at noon in Makis Triantafyllopoulos and zougla Radio . In the circuit of corrupt government officials, tax collectors, managers and auditors of SDOE various institutions involved and politicians. The new element, however, that makes the difference is that between those policies, are ministers. The scam is repeated over time and after the introduction of Value Added Tax in 1987, namely how the circuits set up the "Great Theft of the Nation"...

No, I’m not suggesting she buy more Greek debt, I’m talking about buying the country of Greece. Buy it lock, stock and barrel, just like the Americans bought Alaska from the Russians in 1867. Russia was hurting financially from the Crimean war and Czar Nicolas needed to replenish his coffers. Alaska was a drag. Russian hunters had pretty well wiped out the fur seals and nothing would grow in the far north soils because of smelly black stuff that oozed out it. So he dumped it for $7.2 million on those gullible Americans. What would Germany and Greece get out...

ATHENS (Dow Jones)--Talks between Greece and its private sector creditors over a debt writedown plan appeared to stall Saturday as the banks' top negotiator left Athens amid signs of fresh disagreements over how much Greece would pay its bondholders in the future. Officials close to the talks said they may not conclude before a meeting Monday of euro-zone finance ministers where a second bailout which will keep Greece from defaulting is supposed to be discussed. Without a deal on the write-down of the debt held in private hands, the loan can't be released. Institute of International Finance chief Charles Dallara,...

In a paper entitled “Greek debt: The endgame scenarios”, Buchheit, one of the most prominent lawyers globally in debt restructuring cases, said that that “the restructuring could be facilitated in some way by a change to Greek law”. If English law is applied to the new bonds issued under the complex PSI, the Greek side would have to face the following consequences: Property confiscation: According to international law as well as many national legal systems, when a property is located within the jurisdiction of the legislating state, the latter has the power (de facto or by law) to nationalise or...

Thursday’s meeting of the governing body of the European Central Bank (ECB) will happen as calls for the central bank to take further action to solve the euro zone debt crisis by acting as lender of last resort for troubled countries increase. The committee is expected to keep interest rates on hold at the historic low of 1 percent, and hold back on further action, despite growing calls for the bank to resort to quantitative easing – buying government bonds in primary markets, like the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve. “(Mario) Draghi (the head of the ECB) can’t...

Reuters reports (via ForexLive) that Italian PM Mario Monti is flying to Brussels unexpectedly, and his office is giving no details about who he's going to meet or what he will while in the European capitol. News of his sudden trip coincided with a momentary drop in the value of the euro versus the dollar below $1.28, a value it hasn't hit since September 2010, according to CNBC. The euro has been falling steadily since Tuesday

(Reuters) - The half a trillion euros the European Central Bank pumped into the financial system buys hard-hit banks valuable time but will not in itself protect them from threatened rating downgrades, one of Standard and Poor's top executives said. The ratings firm put almost the entire euro zone and some of its biggest banks, including Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, Societe Generale and UniCredit, on a downgrade warning this month. In a telephone interview with Reuters on Friday, S&P's Managing Director of its Financial Institutions division, Scott Bugie, said this week's unprecedented injection of three-year loans by the ECB was...

European Union (EU) bureaucrats received a tongue-lashing from Michael O'Leary, CEO of the Irish airline Ryanair, who criticized EU leadership for dishonesty, stifling innovation, and over-regulating and taxing successful industries and companies. "The reason [other airlines] fail to innovate, and the reason why the airline industry is in such a mess, is because its run by politicians and bureaucrats who like nothing more than to pass another regulation when something is working," O'Leary said at an EU conference on innovation. "I remember Ronald Reagan's quote in the U.S. that the economic policy of government and bureaucrats is always, 'if it...

French leaders have launched outspoken public attacks on Britain, calling for the UK to lose its AAA credit rating and comparing its economy with that of Greece. Christian Noyer, the governor of the Bank of France, said that Britain faced larger national debts, higher inflation and slower growth than France. François Baroin, the finance minister, said Britain was “marginalised” and faced “a very difficult economic situation” because of Coalition policies. The blunt remarks are the latest sign of Anglo-French tension following David Cameron’s refusal last week to back a new European treaty drawn up in response to the eurozone crisis....

Some of the world’s most powerful investment banks were downgraded by ratings agency Fitch as Germany’s cherished European fiscal compact appeared to be unravelling. [Snip] Credit ratings of the world’s biggest lenders have come under pressure as weak economic growth and concerns about whether European politicians have done enough to end the Eurozone debt crisis. [Snip] Meanwhile, Germany’s attempt to save the Eurozone was hanging in the balance as Hungary and the Czech Republic claimed it would be damaging and protesters in Warsaw demanded Poland stands firm against Angela Merkel. Amid fresh warnings that Europe is triggering a 1930s-style global...

Stocks on Wall Street have dropped sharply as credit ratings firms gave the thumbs down to last week's European summit. A profit warning from Intel also weighed on blue chip stocks. It plunged 5.4% after warning that fourth-quarter revenue would fall about $US1 billion short of its previous guidance. Financial stocks were the weakest sector in the S&P 500 while Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase were two of the Dow's biggest decliners, shedding 5.1% and 4.1%, respectively. Fitch Ratings said the summit did “little to ease pressure" on the sovereign-debt crisis and that a comprehensive solution was “not...

RIGA, Latvia - Latvia's largest bank scrambled Monday to head off a run among depositors who were gripped by rumours of the bank's imminent ruin. Weekend rumours that Swedbank was facing legal and liquidity problems in Estonia and Sweden sent thousands of Latvians to bank machines on Sunday, with some lines reaching as many as 50 people.

The deal signed by the eurozone countries still faces huge hurdles, because of simmering tensions between the member states – and growing disenchantment within their own borders. A startling poll last night showed that only a third of French people believed that their country should stay in the euro indefinitely. The situation in Germany was scarcely better with support for staying in the single currency long-term standing at just 41 per cent. The figures were revealed in a ComRes survey for CNN last night. It shows how the leaders pressing for closer integration are dangerously out of touch with their...

The 17 eurozone states and six other EU countries agreed early Friday to create a new treaty that will allow them to introduce stricter fiscal rules in the hope of containing a worsening debt crisis, but Britain's prime minister immediately threatened to block the new accord. The failure to get agreement among all 27 members of the European Union at a summit meeting in Brussels reflected in large part a deep split between France and Germany on the one hand and Britain on the other. France and Germany are the two largest economies in the eurozone; Britain does not use...

David Cameron is at the centre of a furious row with Nicolas Sarkozy after Paris tried to isolate the prime minister at the EU summit by suggesting that Britain is seeking to exempt the City of London from all European regulations. In a move dismissed by officials in Brussels as an attempt to set Britain up as the fall guy, senior French figures said Cameron wanted an opt out from EU financial services regulation. The French were said to have found themselves isolated in their attempt to limit an agreement on tough fiscal rules for the single currency just to...

A legal loophole in international brokerage regulations means that few, if any, clients of MF Global are likely to get their money back. Although details of the drama are still unfolding, it appears that MF Global and some of its Wall Street counterparts have been actively and aggressively circumventing U.S. securities rules at the expense (quite literally) of their clients. MF Global's bankruptcy revelations concerning missing client money suggest that funds were not inadvertently misplaced or gobbled up in MF’s dying hours, but were instead appropriated as part of a mass Wall St manipulation of brokerage rules that allowed for...

French President Nicolas Sarkozy warned on Thursday that there would be "no second chance" if a crucial European Union summit failed to reach a deal to save the euro. "Never has Europe been so necessary and never has it been in so much danger... Never has the risk of Europe's explosion been so great," Sarkozy said with only hours to go before the EU summit in Brussels. "If we don't have an agreement on Friday, we will not have a second chance," Sarkozy told a meeting of European conservative parties in the French port of Marseille. As EU leaders geared...

FRANKFURT, Germany - Ratings agency Standard & Poors says it's putting the European Union on review for a possible downgrade of its triple-A credit rating. The move Wednesday follows up on a similar action taken Dec. 5 in regard to 15 of the 17 members of the euro because of the eurozone's debt crisis.

AFP - British Prime Minister David Cameron threatened to block a new European Union treaty designed to save the euro from the debt crisis if London's demands are not met. Cameron said Britain's huge financial sector and the single market would have to be protected if he were to sign up to a new EU-wide treaty aimed at resolving the crisis in the euro, which Britain does not use. His threat increases the likelihood that France and Germany, who proposed rewriting the treaty Monday, will end up pushing for an agreement between just the 17 nations who use the euro...

With the euro zone crisis still dominating headlines, developments in the European Union's eastern neighborhood are perhaps not drawing as much attention as they deserve. Ukraine has had to be content with being part of the EU's European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) and Eastern Partnership and been given a “to-do-list”, which, over time seems to become longer and more difficult. Being situated at the heart of Europe, Ukraine is without doubt a bona fide European state. Kiev has craved closer ties with the EU, but progress has been slow, because the EU has preferred to keep the country at arm's length....

Why bother with the one true barbarous relic - democracy - when good ole' fascism will suffice. As The Telegraph's Bruno Waterfield reports, "EU to avoid any votes - parliamentary or popular on treaty change - via obscure Lisbon Treaty 'passerelle' clause, Art. 126 (14) via protocol 12. "This decision does not require ratification at national level. This procedure could therefore lead to rapid and significant changes," says confidential Van Rompuy text. Funnily enough, only Britain will have to have a parliamentary vote under the Tories recent Sovereignty Act even though it is eurozone only changes." And that is how...

There was some excitement today over the announcement that Merkel and Sarkozy have decided that the European Union treaty needs to be rewritten to include sanctions on countries that exceed the 3% debt/GDP limit that they all agreed to way back when the EU was first established. The problem with this "solution" is that the mechanism for enforcing sanctions is a deeply flawed concept. The best, and probably the only way to impose real sanctions on governments who spend and borrow too much is to let the market do it. When the yield on your bonds starts to skyrocket, you...

FXstreet.com (Córdoba) – The Financial Times reported that the credit rating agency, Standard and Poor’s placed the six remaining AAA Eurozone countries on creditwatch negative. Germany, France, Netherlands, Austria, Finland and Luxembourg are the countries putted on watch for a possible downgrade. Economic turmoil in Europe is the main reason for the action by S&P. These implicates that there is a probability of a downgrade of about 50% within 90 days in the mentioned countries. According to the FT report, S&P will announce later the action.

US President Barack Obama is "very engaged" in talks with EU leaders on the eurozone rescue, but is keeping his advice behind closed doors rather than adding to the "cacophony" of solutions floated publicly, Washington's envoy to Brussels, William Kennard, told reporters on Friday (2 December). With the experience of the 2009 financial crisis, the US administration "can offer a lot of advice, but we made a point in not discussing it publicly," Kennard said. Ever since the G20 summit in Cannes last month, Obama "has been very engaged privately" on the eurozone crisis and "made many phone calls and...

Germany is the only country in Europe that can act to save the eurozone and the wider European Union from “a crisis of apocalyptic proportions”, the Polish foreign minister warned on Monday in a passionate call for more drastic action to prevent the collapse of the European monetary union. (See more at link)

In 2008, the United States government and Federal Reserve helped bailout European banks to the tune of trillions of dollars.  The reactions to this by Congress and the public ensured that any future bailouts would have to be performed through the use of a proxy institution. It appears that this proxy institution has been found, as the IMF on November 22nd just opened a new credit facility with the primary purpose of providing liquidity to sovereign nations, especially those currently in the Euro Zone. IMF talking points on new credit facility * IMF APPROVES CREDIT LINE PROGRAM CHANGES TO PROVIDE...

In virtually all the debates about the eurozone I have been engaged in, someone usually makes the point that it is only when things get bad enough, the politicians finally act – eurobond, debt monetisation, quantitative easing, whatever. I am not so sure. The argument ignores the problem of acute collective action. Last week, the crisis reached a new qualitative stage. With the spectacular flop of the German bond auction and the alarming rise in short-term rates in Spain and Italy, the government bond market across the eurozone has ceased to function. The banking sector, too, is broken. Important parts...

LONDON (Reuters) - A "disastrous" sale of German benchmark bonds sparked fears on Wednesday the debt crisis was beginning to threaten even Berlin, with the Bundesbank forced to dig deep into its pockets to ensure the auction did not fail. In one of the least successful debt sales by Europe's powerhouse economy since the launch of the single currency, the low returns offered -- just 2 percent annually over 10 years -- deterred investors made uneasy by the escalating cost of the crisis to Germany. That meant the central bank had to pick up 39 percent of the 6 billion...

In an apparent suggestion of United States hypocrisy on debt issues, a journalist in the German media challenged White House Press Secretary Jay Carney on the role of the United States in responding to the European debt crisis. "The U.S., as far as I know, has a worse debt-to-GDP ratio than the whole eurozone, and we are talking about the eurozone, not about the United States and that Congress can't get its act together," said a member of the German press during the briefing. "So from the European perspective, it seems that this country is in a bigger mess than...

As fears that Greece will leave the euro have grown, a quiet bank run has proceeded. Deposits held by corporations and households fell 22% from the start of 2010 through September. Deposit outflow from Greek banks reportedly accelerated in recent weeks, spurred by a threat that Europe would rescind its bailout package if Athens failed to meet austerity demands.

Kyle Bass practically cracks up when an interviewer asks him about Germany "resolving the problems within Europe." Bass responds, putting emphasis on each reference to "resolution": "The only way to quote resolve any problems in Europe is to have massive debt restructuring... One of the things we've said in our office recently is you know how screwed up Europe is when you have a German pope and an Italian central banker. We have a scenario today in which debt has grown globally in the last nine years from $80 trillion to $210 trillion. Global credit market debt has grown at...

Spanish voters on Sunday are expected to dismiss the Socialist government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and usher in the conservative People's Party (PP) and its leader, Mariano Rajoy. Mr. Zapatero’s Socialist party (PSOE), which has been in power for eight years, has borne the brunt of public blame for Spain’s increasingly perilous economic situation, which has tainted the party’s leadership candidate, Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba. Meanwhile, Mr. Rajoy has been coasting toward an expected landslide victory without saying much about how he plans to reverse Spain’s economic course... The situation is bleak for the eurozone’s fourth-largest...

LONDON (AP) — The economy of the 17-nation euro bloc expanded 0.2 percent in the third quarter, thanks largely to growth in Germany and France during a turbulent period in which a raging debt crisis raised fears of a new recession, official data showed Tuesday. The second consecutive quarterly rise of 0.2 percent, reported by the EU statistics office Eurostat, was widely-anticipated. Figures earlier had showed Germany and France grew grow solidly — 0.5 percent and 0.4 percent — during the July to September period as consumers continued to spend.

With interest rates on its sovereign debt surging well above seven per cent, there is a rising risk that Italy may soon lose market access. Given that it is too-big-to-fail but also too-big-to-save, this could lead to a forced restructuring of its public debt of €1,900bn. That would partially address its “stock” problem of large and unsustainable debt but it would not resolve its “flow” problem, a large current account deficit, lack of external competitiveness and a worsening plunge in gross domestic product and economic activity. To resolve the latter, Italy may, like other periphery countries, need to exit the...