Keyword: euro
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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.
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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.
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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(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.
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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...
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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...
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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.
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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...
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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)
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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,...
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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...
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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...
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