Free Republic

Norwegian PM Erna Solberg doesn’t want to have to skirt her country’s responsibilities under the Geneva Convention and she doesn’t want to trample over human rights either, but she will if she has to. "It is a force majeure proposals which we will have in the event that it all breaks down,” Solberg said, in an interview with Berlingske, describing new measures she believes Norway may have to take if Sweden buckles under the weight of the refugee influx which saw some 163,000 asylum seekers inundate the country last year. Solberg is effectively prepared to turn everyone away and go...

Belgium has called for vast refugee camps holding up to 300,000 refugees to be built in Greece in a desperate attempt to stem the flow of migrants from Syria and other nations outside Europe. At an emergency summit of European leaders yesterday, Belgian migration minister Theo Francken raised the spectre of setting up 'closed facilities' in Greece to be operated by the EU. He said that the Greeks 'now need to bear the consequences' of being too weak to guard their own borders and called for Athens to face an EU 'sanction mechanism' under which the rising number of refugees...

Law of Unintended Consequences: New EU Tax Laws Force Thousands of Businesses to Close in Just Six Months { Full title ]. New European Union tax rules introduced in January have already driven thousands of small companies out of business, with thousands more set to follow as awareness of the change in the VAT law grows. Research has shown that incompetence on the part of collecting agencies has further added misery to the situation. After an eight-year consultation which excluded the voices of micro-businesses, the EU introduced new rules on VAT returns at the beginning of this year, which required...

Here’s an astonishing statistic; more than 30pc of all government debt in the eurozone – around €2 trillion of securities in total – is trading on a negative interest rate. With the advent of European Central Bank quantitative easing, what began four months ago when 10-year Swiss yields turned negative for the first time has snowballed into a veritable avalanche of negative rates across European government bond markets. In the hunt for apparently “safe assets”, investors have thrown caution to the wind, and collectively determined to pay governments for the privilege of lending to them. On a country by country...

It is important for clients to be aware of the total amount they paid for day care, and have the day care provider's tax ID number, Social Security number or employer identification number (EIN). A new requirement in 2015, those filing tax returns must bring proof of health insurance, for example Affordable Health Care Act Forms 1099 A, B, or C. Clients should know birth dates for the members of their family. Health Care Marketplace Navigators will be at each tax site to assist families with enrollment in the health insurance marketplace and to answer questions regarding tax credits and...

5 years into the euro zone crisis the ECB announces a €1.1 trillion quantitative easing programme to boost economy. Bolder than expected. Draghi Commits ECB to Trillion-Euro Asset-Purchase Plan to Fight Deflation Mario Draghi led the European Central Bank into a new era, committing to a quantitative easing program worth at least 1.1 trillion euros ($1.3 trillion) to counter the threat of a deflationary spiral. The ECB president shrugged off determined opposition led by German officials with a pledge to buy 60 billion euros every month through September next year in a once-and-for-all push to put more cash into circulation...

The question as to WHY is the European Banking System so screwed lies in the problem of the design of the Euro. The failure to create a national debt by consolidating all debts of member states from the outset (explained in detail in the special report), left the European banks vulnerable to the mix of their “reserves” that were bonds of all member states. Now Portugal is moving to rescue to rescue its largest listed bank, testing the Eurozone’s ability to handle another banking crisis just months after Lisbon exited an international bailout. The total amount of this rescue is...

Europe’s debt-crisis strategy is near collapse. The long-awaited recovery has failed to take wing. Debt ratios across southern Europe are rising at an accelerating pace. Political consent for extreme austerity is breaking down in almost every EMU crisis state. And now the US Federal Reserve has inflicted a full-blown credit shock for good measure. None of Euroland’s key actors seems willing to admit that the current strategy is untenable. They hope to paper over the cracks until the German elections in September, as if that is going to make any difference. A leaked report from the European Commission confirms that...

Iceland just elected the parties which plunged them into crisis only five years ago. Is it casino capitalism all over again, or just a slap in the face of the EU? In terms of redemptive electoral stories, the return of the Independence Party in Iceland is quite significant, albeit that they will come back to government with only a few percentage points more votes than they polled at their nadir in the depths of the Icelandic crisis in 2009. However the biggest winner was Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, the leader of the Progressive Party, who propelled his party to hold 19 seats...

Europe will take longer to recover from its economic crisis as it tackles a worse-than-expected recession in the eurozone and unemployment at record levels, the European Union warned Friday. In its spring economic forecast, the EU said that gross domestic product in the 17 member countries that use the euro will shrink by 0.4 percent this year; better than the 0.6 percent contraction in 2012, but 0.1 percentage points worse than the EU had forecast back in February. The report also had bad news for the wider 27-country EU: it now expects the region’s economy to shrink by 0.1 percent...

The next Great Depression is already happening - it just hasn't reached the United States yet. Things in Europe just continue to get worse and worse, and yet most people in the United States still don't get it. All the time I have people ask me when the "economic collapse" is going to happen. Well, for ages I have been warning that the next major wave of the ongoing economic collapse would begin in Europe, and that is exactly what is happening. In fact, both Greece and Spain already have levels of unemployment that are greater than anything the U.S....

1) Have your Standard Preparedness Supplies in Order. 2) Have Cash. 3) Have Precious Metals. 4) Buy a safe, then buy another one. 5) Off Shore Banking.

Austria has accused the UK of being a haven for money launderers ahead of an EU meeting in Dublin, with Cyprus, Ireland, Portugal and Slovenia’s (potential) bailout needs also on the agenda. The Austrian finance minister, Maria Fekter, described Britain as “the island of the blessed for tax evasion and money laundering” in an interview with her country’s Kurier newspaper on Thursday (11 April). Comparing the UK and its “protectorates”—micro-states subject to British law—to Cyprus in terms of hosting secretive foundations and trusts, she noted: “Just as we urged the abolition of sealed foundations in the Cyprus rescue to drain...

First they purloin the savings and bank deposits in Laiki and the Bank of Cyprus, including the working funds of the University of Cyprus, and thousands of small firms hanging on by their fingertips. Then they seize three quarters of the country’s gold reserves, making it ever harder for Cyprus to extricate itself from EMU at a later date. The people of Cyprus first learned about this from a Reuters leak of the working documents for the Eurogroup meeting on Friday. It is tucked away in clause 29. "Sale of excess gold reserves: The Cypriot authorities have committed to sell...

US treasury secretary Jack Lew on Tuesday (9 April) hinted that Germany should boost its internal demand to help Europe get out of the crisis. But German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble said Berlin has no need for US tutelage. “We need to balance policies of growth and fiscal consolidation. The driving force behind any recovery is consumer demand, so any policies to help encourage consumer demand in countries that have the capacity would be helpful,” Lew said during a joint press conference with Schäuble in Berlin. …

Right now there is no trust binding together the original ideas of the European free trade zone. Without that commercial backbone, there can be no confidence in the future of Europe. … The truth is that as confidence has drained from the EU, now trust too is evaporating. The recent acts—whether enacted or not—in Cyprus has delivered a hammer blow to the credibility of Brussels as a trustworthy steward of anybody’s finances. Beneath a thin tissue of brazen statements of confidence there lie festering sores of economic mismanagement going septic as a result of previous poultices and treatments which are...

President Obama’s budget will be released tomorrow and Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew is visiting Europe to preview President Obama’s budget: increase in debt of $7.3 trillion and removal of spending controls. Lew is advising Europe to borrow and spend more. Washington Post’s Zach Goldfarb reports Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, “quickly embracing his role as the leading US diplomat on the economy, pushed his counterparts in Europe on Monday to do more to drive economic growth and enact stronger and more unified defenses against financial panics.” In Brussels on Monday morning, Lew met with “a series of officials that included European...

Most attention lately has been on Cyprus, Spain, and Italy. Long-time troubles have been brewing in Portugal and I have an update coming up shortly. First consider Underwater: The Netherlands Falls Prey to Economic Crisis.The Netherlands, Berlin's most important ally in pushing for greater budgetary discipline in Europe, has fallen into an economic crisis itself. The once exemplary economy is suffering from huge debts and a burst real estate bubble, which has stalled growth and endangered jobs. "Underwater" is a good description of the crisis in a country where large parts of the territory are below sea level. Ironically, the...

BRUSSELS (AP) — European countries should ease off their austerity and adopt more growth-friendly policies, U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said Monday as he kicked off a series of meetings with the region's top leaders. America's biggest trading partner and the world's largest economic bloc has entered the fourth year of its debt crisis, which has plunged many of the 27 EU governments into recession. The U.S. administration hopes Europe will relent in its focus on debt reduction, which has been hurting growth through spending cuts and tax increases. Lew, who became treasury secretary in February, started his first official...

President Vladimir Putin said Russia had confidence in the euro and had made the right decision to keep much of its reserves in the European currency. "I would like to say it outright: yes, we trust the euro," Putin said, according to a Kremlin transcript of an interview with German public broadcaster ARD before a trip to Germany and the Netherlands. Putin said Moscow and the European Union have disagreements, but that the leading euro zone countries were moving in the right direction in handling the current crisis. "That gives us confidence that we have made the right move to...