Free Republic

Sharing this for those Freepers concerned about the dollar. It's actually strong compared to the euro and yen, but that's only cuz the Central Bankers there have opted to use more fire power against the weak dollar and make their currencies even WEAKER. What does this mean for those of us with real skin in the game, as in money in the markets?

Even if Germany had to write off the loans it extended to Southern European countries as part of the eurozone’s emergency rescue measures, the economic advantages of its membership would still be overwhelming, according to a recent study by the Bertelsmann Stiftung. … “Without the euro, growth of the real gross domestic product [GDP] in Germany would be lower by about 0.5 percentage points per year,” the study says, warning that without that euro, Europe “would fall apart politically” and become “a losing player in international competition.” And projections for the future are looking bright, the study adds. “Adding up...

Nigel Farage, well known for his anti-centralized government diatribes in which he has repeatedly targeted European leadership and finance ministers for the destruction of the Eurozone economy, warns yet again that the consequences for the actions of elite politicians and bankers will soon pour into the streets. You won’t see straight forward candidness like this from mainstream politicians, because most are terrified of speaking the truth and accepting blame. They know it’s coming and the fallout won’t be limited to just Europe. My fear is that, in the end, what will break up the Euro isn’t the economics of it....

Greece is planning to pursue a long-dormant claim for reparations from Germany over World War Two, a further strain on relations with Berlin, which foots most of the bill for its 240-billion euro rescue. The Finance Ministry has compiled a report that takes stock of all relating available documents spanning more than six decades, Greek Foreign Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos told parliament on Wednesday. It will be submitted to Greece's legal advisers and then Athens will decide how to officially press its claim, he said.

Analysis: Don't underestimate Germany's new anti-euro party By Noah Barkin BERLIN | Sun Apr 14, 2013 5:22pm BST (Reuters) - The political establishment has dismissed Germany's new anti-euro party as a fear-mongering populist aberration that could implode even before a looming federal election. But the first congress of the "Alternative for Germany" (AfD) showed that the movement, launched only a few months ago by a group of renegade academics, journalists and businessmen, is striking a chord with voters and may prove an influential force come September.

Say what you will about the rest of her legacy, but when it comes to the economic disaster today known as the euro, Margaret Thatcher was downright prophetic. In a delightfully acidic speech delivered before Britain's House of Commons in 1990, and posted below, she summed up her feelings about European integration: "No. No. No." Specifically, Thatcher opposed to the idea of handing political power to a European parliament, giving up the pound for a single European currency, or handing over its monetary policy to a European central bank. As she put it (in the blunt way only British politicians...

A heavily edited version of Margaret Thatcher's statement of 30 October 1990 to the House of Commons on the European Council meeting at Rome held on 27/28 October. The Council was meant to discuss the Uruguay Round on General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade which was due to end in a few months but for which the EC had not developed a policy (alone out of the trading blocs). However the Italian Prime Minister, Giulio Andreotti, decided that the Council would refuse to discuss the GATT and instead push for the final stage in European Economic and Monetary Union in...

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...

Brussels' Naked Ambition Revealed?

Cyprus has gotten a great deal of attention recently because it has run into very severe problems with its banks. As a result, it has come looking for a bail-out from the European Union. How did this come about? It turns out that Cyprus is something of a banking haven for Russian plutocrats who were looking for a “safe” place to stash cash. As we all know, banks accept deposits but they don’t simply keep those deposits in the vault. They lend the money out to make a profit. The problem the Cypriot banks faced is that they received so...

Savings accounts in Spain, Italy and other European countries will be raided if needed to preserve Europe's single currency by propping up failing banks, a senior eurozone official has announced. The new policy will alarm hundreds of thousands of British expatriates who live and have transferred their savings, proceeds from house sales and other assets to eurozone bank accounts in countries such as France, Spain and Italy. The euro fell on global markets after Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch chairman of the eurozone, announced that the heavy losses inflicted on depositors in Cyprus would be the template for future banking crises...

SOCGEN: 'Depression For Cyprus' Sam RoMarch 25, 2013, 6:50 AMEuro zone leaders have finally structured a deal to bail out Cyprus' financial system. But the terms come with harsh austerity and a massive deleveraging requirement. "As part of the agreement, the Cypriot financial sector will be downsized to match that of the EU average by 2018," writes Societe General economist Michala Marcussen. So, Cyprus' financial system may have been saved (for now). But it doesn't mean all will be well in the economy. Here's Marcussen: Depression for Cyprus: Our Cypriot GDP forecast entails a drop of just over 20% in...

Europe Has A Crisis — And It's Much Bigger Than Cyprus Joe WeisenthalMarch 23, 2013REUTERS/Christian Hartmann In a way, Europe should be thrilled by the week that was because financial markets barely batted an eye at the crisis in Cyprus. But Europe has a problem on its hands that's bigger than Cyprus: The economy stinks. This week we got fresh proof that things are bad or getting worse. In France, the Flash PMI report (which is a mid-month look at the combined services and manufacturing sectors of the economy) came in dismal, with the output index falling to a four...

However the crisis in Cyprus is resolved, there will be lasting effects on the European Union that may well have sealed the fate of the euro. After a brief respite with the markets focused on the U.S. Federal Reserve’s monetary policy meeting, the crisis returned to the forefront when the European Central Bank set a deadline of Monday to agree on a rescue for Cypriot banks or it would withdraw its liquidity support for them. The rejection of a bailout requiring a tax on deposits by the Cyprus Parliament and failure to reach a new agreement forced the government to...

Well, Cyprus rejected the bank deposit levy that rattled financial markets around the world. After all, if the EU/IMF can call for such an extreme tax on a nation’s depositors, where will they stop? March 20 (Bloomberg) — European policy makers must weigh how far to push Cyprus after lawmakers in the Mediterranean nation rejected an unprecedented levy on bank deposits, throwing into limbo a rescue package designed to keep it in the euro. Neil Farage, the leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) has an interesting take on the Cyprus problem: let Cyprus declare bankruptcy and leave the banks...

Cyprus parliament rejects haircut bill The Cypriot House of Representatives rejected overwhelmingly on Tuesday the bill that would have inflicted a haircut on bank accounts. There were 36 No votes and not a single Yes vote, as the 19 deputies of ruling Democratic Rally (DISY) who were present abstained, while another one of them was absent. Cyprus speaker Yiannakis Omirou urged MPs to say «no to blackmail» as angry crowds also called for a «No» vote outside Parliament and held up signs warning that other financially crippled European nations like Italy and Spain could be next in line. "There can...

Cyrpus police outside of the parliament

Cyprus is a beta test. The banksters are trying to commit bank robbery in broad daylight, and they are eager to see if the rest of the world will let them get away with it. Cyprus was probably chosen because it is very small (therefore nobody will care too much about it) and because there is a lot of foreign (i.e. Russian) money parked there. The IMF and the EU could have easily bailed out Cyprus without any trouble whatsoever, but they purposely decided not to do that. Instead, they decided that this would be a great time to test...

Apparently people have short memories. In the decade following the collapse of the Soviet Bloc the possibility of war on the European continent was considered so remote as to be laughable. Then came the horrors of the Bosnian war as cultural and ethnic divisions splashed blood over such pretensions. Quickly however most slipped back into complacency, this time is different they said, it can't happen again, this isn't the Europe of the 90s. They are right, the situation in Europe isn't the same....it's worse. Unemployment in Greece and Spain now rivals that of the Great Depression. In France "youths" (or...

In news that is hardly welcome to Chancellor Merkel and her September reelection hopes, German Focus magazine revealed that a substantial 26% of all Germans would back a party that wants to quit the euro. Even more disturbing is that a whopping 40% of all Germans in the prime 40-49 age group are tired of supporting a failed monetary regime and will just say "nein" to the European globalist experiment at preserving the status quo if just given the opportunity. The Italian virus is spreading: the question is which "clown" will show up on the cover of the Economist...

In the terrible economic crisis of 1922 Benito Mussolini got 25% of the vote in Italy. Two years later he had more than a majority. You know the rest. In the economic crisis of 2013, Beppe Grillo received 24% of the vote (see last week's analysis of Grillo's political beliefs). This week he blocked a government from forming. Grillo now controls the Senate, but he is going for a majority in both houses in the upcoming vote in June. That's in Italy, but in Greece the Golden Dawn party is following the same path. So is the new Hungarian fascist...

Yesterday Jean-Claude Juncker, who presides over meetings of European finance ministers, complained that the euro’s value has become “dangerously high.” The comments took many by surprise; it’s when the currency has been strongest that investors have shown the most faith in the euro’s continued survival. The euro hit $1.34 on Monday—its highest value since February 2011. But ironically, this renewed faith in the euro currency comes at the worst possible time for the euro-zone economy. Although policymakers finally appear to be making a concerted slog towards union, the years of political turmoil have severely stunted investment in the euro zone,...

A failed plan to tax the rich at 75 percent. A glaring lack of global competitiveness. Famous actors trading in their French citizenship for Russian to avoid paying high tax rates. The news from Paris as of late has been a bit sensational, but also dire. Could France be the first northern country in the European Union to confront potential economic demise in 2013? Perhaps that assessment is not unlike Gerard Depardieu's highly publicized Moscow defection—a bit dramatic. But according to recent economic figures, there is some cause for concern. The French economy—Europe's second largest—grew at just 0.1 percent in...

Five Greek journalists working for major media outlets have had their homes targeted by small makeshift bombs. The attacks, made in the early hours of Friday by unknown assailants, are believed to be fuelled by discontent over the reporters' portrayal of the country's financial crisis. Greece - in its sixth year of recession - has so far received international bailouts from its troika of lenders - the IMF, EU and European Central Bank - totalling €240bn (£198bn). The bombings were the first such coordinated offensives against mainstream journalists since the Greek debt crisis erupted in 2009. Among those targeted by...

Reminding the world of just the kind of truthiness that got him sacked originally by that other Italian, the Ex-Goldmanite Mario Draghi, back in November 2011, and which the world has to look forward to when Silvio Berlusconi returns to power some time in 2013, even if not as PM (a position he currently has a snowball's chance in hell of regaining based on current political polls), Reuters informs us that the Italian, who certainly has not read the Goldman book on status quo perpetuation, just said the unimaginable: the truth. To wit: "If Germany doesn't accept that the...

Hedge fund manager Kyle Bass was on Bloomberg’s Market Makers with Stephanie Ruhle talking about his bearish views on the E.U. and the status of the currency union as a whole. He said that the E.U. is “three times more levered” than the U.S. and that the entire system is “on life support.” He believes that the there's a small window of short-term investment opportunities in the E.U. that are akin to "picking up a dime before a bulldozer." Bass also echoed the popular opinion that Greece needs to leave the E.U. if it is ever going to be competitive....

THE threat of the euro’s collapse has abated for the moment, but putting the single currency right will involve years of pain. The pressure for reform and budget cuts is fiercest in Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy, which all saw mass strikes and clashes with police this week (see article). But ahead looms a bigger problem that could dwarf any of these: France. The country has always been at the heart of the euro, as of the European Union. President François Mitterrand argued for the single currency because he hoped to bolster French influence in an EU that would otherwise...

The Dutch economy shrank by 1.1pc in the third quarter amid a deep housing slump, and even Austria has begun to succumb. Finland’s economy has shrunk by 1pc over the last year. “Recession comes as no surprise and it is going to get worse next year,” said Desmond Supple from Nomura. “Europe has imposed dusted-off policies from the 1930s and they are driving peripheral countries towards depression,” he said. “We are seeing a mix of pro-cyclical fiscal austerity, overly-tight monetary policy, and regulatory overkill under the Basel III bank rules that are forcing lenders to tighten credit. Europe is stuck...

Protesters on Wednesday flooded Madrid in a massive show of force against biting austerity policies, capping a Europe-wide day of strikes and protests. Many of the demonstrators, who also turned out in large numbers in other parts of Spain including in northeastern Barcelona, wore T-shirts declaring their allegiance to education and public health. "Public health for all," said some shirts. "We have the solution, send the bankers to prison!" protesters chanted in a sea of flags of the main CCOO and UGT unions, who organized Spain's second general strike in just eight months. Many tens of thousands of people joined...

Workers angry over austerity cuts and tax rises launched a Europe-wide string of rallies and strikes on Wednesday, shutting transport, grounding flights and closing schools. In Lisbon, protesters tore down the barricades surrounding the Portuguese parliament, as a day of peaceful protests turned violent as night fell. Riot police stepped in to make a human barrier outside the parliament as they faced off against the advancing demonstrators. Allegedly pelted with rocks and bottles by some of the protesters the police later charged forward from the parliament steps lashing out with their batons.

The number of people out of work in the euro zone climbed to another record high in September, the latest evidence of the damage the region's long-running fiscal crisis is doing to the real economy as governments cut spending to try to control their debts. Eurostat, the European Union's official statistics agency, said Wednesday that 18.49 million people were unemployed in the euro zone in September, after 146,000 more people lost their jobs during the month. The total is the highest on record for the 17 nations that now use the euro, based on data going back to 1995.

The European Union is a horrible, stupid project. The idea that unification would create an economy that could compete with China and be more like the United States is pure garbage. What ruined China, throughout history, is the top-down state. What made Europe great was the diversity: political and economic. Having the same currency, the euro, was a terrible idea. It encouraged everyone to borrow to the hilt. The most stable country in the history of mankind, and probably the most boring, by the way, is Switzerland. It’s not even a city-state environment; it’s a municipal state. Most decisions are...

Dressed in black shirts with faces hidden by helmets, ten men on motorbikes came to find him on a Saturday, after darkness fell. Finding the door bolted at his home in a pot-holed Athens side street, they smashed the windows, broke in and trashed the place. Then, their dirty work done, the neo-Nazi gang roared away into the hot evening. It had taken less than a minute for them to sound an ugly warning that foreigners were not welcome in Greece. Their target was Imam Shahbaz Siddiqi, a 42-year-old spiritual leader of the Greek capital’s 500,000 Muslims. ‘I was at...

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble is determined to end the euro crisis once and for all. On Sunday he effectively ruled out a Greek bankruptcy, and is now proposing far-reaching reforms to stabilize the currency union. Under his plan, Brussels would be granted far greater powers over national budgets. … The European commissioner for economic and currency affairs is to become equally powerful as the commissioner for competition. The competition commissioner is entitled to make decisions independently and does not require the agreement of the other commissioners in making those decisions. If the currency affairs commissioner were truly independent when...

Spain is ready to request a euro zone bailout for its public finances as early as next weekend but Germany has signalled that it should hold off, European officials said on Monday. The latest twist in the euro zone's three-year-old sovereign debt crisis comes as financial markets and some other European partners are pressuring Madrid to seek a rescue programme that would trigger European Central Bank buying of its bonds. "The Spanish were a bit hesitant but now they are ready to request aid," a senior European source said. Three other euro zone senior euro zone sources confirmed the shift...

President Francois Hollande's Socialist government unveiled sharp tax hikes on business and the rich on Friday in a 2013 budget aimed at showing France has the fiscal rigor to remain at the core of the euro zone. The package will recoup 30 billion euros ($39 billion) for the public purse with a goal of narrowing the deficit to 3.0 percent of national output next year from 4.5 percent this year - France's toughest single belt-tightening in 30 years. But with record unemployment and a barrage of data pointing to economic stagnation, there are fears the deficit target will slip as...

Today’s AM fix was USD 1,781.00, EUR 1,374.65, and GBP 1,098.77 per ounce. Yesterday’s AM fix was USD 1,755.25, EUR 1,365.32and GBP 1,084.16 per ounce. Silver is trading at $1,670.75/oz, €26.96/oz and £21.52/oz. Platinum is trading at $1,670.75/oz, palladium at $637.90/oz and rhodium at $1,075/oz. Gold climbed $26.00 or 1.48% in New York yesterday and closed at $1,777.30. Silver surged to hit a high of $34.74 and finished with a gain of 2.15%. Euro gold rose to a new record high at €1377. Gold prices are up on Friday, as the new austerity budget from Spain was received favourably and...

Judging by the very favorable market reaction to Mario Draghi's announcement in July 2012 that the ECB would do whatever it took to save the euro, one could be forgiven for thinking that the European debt crisis has now finally been resolved. However, European policymakers would be making a grave mistake if they were to allow themselves to be lulled into a false sense of security by the market's relative calm. Since once again the ECB is only addressing the symptoms rather than the underlying causes of the crisis. And it is only a matter of time before Europe's weak...

For those to whom this comes as a surprise, following the periodic jaunts of Tim Geithner to Europe explaining just what is truly important in life, not to mention Obama's daily phone calls to Mario Monti, we feel truly sorry: •EU-IMF REVIEW OF GREEK DEBT SITUATION SET TO BE DELAYED UNTIL AFTER U.S. ELECTION - EUROPEAN OFFICIALS And the punchlines: •"Obama doesn't want anything on a macroeconomic scale that is going to rock the global economy before Nov. 6," a senior EU official told •"As far as European leaders are concerned, they don't want Romney, so they're probably willing to...

The mainstream media in the United States is almost totally ignoring one of the most important trends in global economics. This trend is going to cause the value of the U.S. dollar to fall dramatically and it is going to cause the cost of living in the United States to go way up. Right now, the U.S. dollar is the primary reserve currency of the world. Even though that status has been chipped away at in recent years, U.S. dollars still make up more than 60 percent of all foreign currency reserves in the world. Most international trade (including the...

(Reuters) - Germany should leave the euro zone if it is not prepared to take a more decisive lead in helping the euro zone's weaker nations escape a spiral of increasing indebtedness and economic decline, veteran financier George Soros said on Saturday. Soros said Europe faced a prolonged depression and an acrimonious end to the European unification project if steps were not taken to help its southern nations grow their way out of the debt crisis by collectively assuming some of their debt and relaxing its German-led insistence on austerity.

Even as Greece desperately tries to avoid defaulting on its debt, American companies are preparing for what was once unthinkable: that Greece could soon be forced to leave the euro zone. Bank of America Merrill Lynch has looked into filling trucks with cash and sending them over the Greek border so clients can continue to pay local employees and suppliers in the event money is unavailable. Ford has configured its computer systems so they will be able to immediately handle a new Greek currency. No one knows just how broad the shock waves from a Greek exit would be, but...

Spain has issued a veiled warning that it will not accept a full bail-out from Europe if the terms are too harsh, a move that would paralyse the European Central Bank and call the euro’s survival into question. In an escalating game of brinkmanship, Spanish finance minister Luis de Guindos said his country is not yet willing to sign a Memorandum giving up fiscal sovereignty to EU inspectors. “First of all, one must clarify the conditions,” he told German newspaper Handelsblatt. Mr de Guindos said the crisis engulfing the region is larger than any one country and warned north Europe...

Most of us have seen the new official Oz campaign bumpersticker - the tricolor flag: But unless you paid close attention in Geography class, you may not realize what the Oz campaign is telling you. Not even Carter would have sent a message this clear. This is where the Obama left stand.

Angela Merkel pledged to keep Greece in the eurozone - but her comments failed to convince traders who bet on yet more dangerous procrastination in Berlin and Brussels. After talks with prime minister Antonis Samaras in Berlin, the German Chancellor said she was “deeply convinced” that the new Greek government was “doing everything to solve the problems.” Mr Samaras insisted that Greece “wants time not money.” But Ms Merkel refused to even address Greece’s plea, signalling a continuation of the deadlock at the heart of the debt crisis. The sense of vacuum rather than solution was compounded by revelations that...

One thousand two hundred and fifty companies of Thessaloniki put "padlock" from the beginning of the year until the end of August, according to a statement of the Crafts Chamber of VETH city. Individual companies seem to be the most "weak link", and 998 of them have ceased to operate in the specified period of 2012. The picture shows the craft community is a continuation of 2011, when during the same period (January 1 to August 22) removed from the register of companies VETH 1269. (mangled thru google translator)

Jacob Rothschild, John Paulson And George Soros Are All Betting That Financial Disaster Is ComingMichael SnyderAugust 20,2012 Are you willing to bet against three of the wealthiest men in the entire world? Jacob Rothschild recently bet approximately 200 million dollars that the euro will go down. Billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson made somewhere around 20 billion dollars betting against the U.S. housing market during the last financial crisis, and now he has made huge bets that the euro will go down and that the price of gold will go up. And as I wrote about in my last article,...

A 54-year-old man died on Sunday after setting himself on fire outside the Italian parliament last week to highlight his struggle with unemployment, police said. Angelo di Carlo suffered 85 percent burns after the incident in front of the lower house of parliament - the Chamber of Deputies - in central Rome during the early hours of August 11, Italian media reported. Police on duty nearby put out the flames with fire extinguishers and took him to hospital. The widower was facing economic difficulties after losing his job and had struggled for years before that with temporary work contracts that...

Eurozone Finland: 'Prepare for eurozone breakup' Finnish politicians are beginning to evaluate the worst-case scenarios of the eurozone's debt difficulties. They have called on fellow European leaders to consider contingency plans should the currency union collapse. Finland's Foreign Minister, Erkki Tuomioja, told the Friday edition of the Daily Telegraph that European leaders must be prepared for the possibility, however undesirable, of the euro area breaking up. He stated in his interview with the right-leaning newspaper that Finnish officials had been preparing for the demise of the single currency in its present form with an operational plan for any eventuality. Tuomioja...

Eurozone GDP sunk .2% in the second quarter and is clearly back in recession as a whole. For that matter, the eurozone has been in recession all year if not starting in the final quarter of 2011. Thus I am amused by headlines such as this one from the Financial Times: Eurozone edges back towards recessionThe eurozone edged closer towards its second recession in three years after a resilient economic performance from Germany and France failed to prevent the single currency bloc from contracting in the second quarter. Gross domestic product in the euro area shrank 0.2 per cent in...