Free Republic

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...

Anyone who spends their time analyzing the euro debt crisis will know that there is one question you get asked again and again. When will the single currency finally collapse? You can have fun giving a spuriously precise answer — July 28th, 2014, is my favorite (look it up on Wikipedia if you are wondering why). But the truth is no one really knows. The euro could stagger on from crisis summit to emergency bailout for another decade. Then again, it could be gone by the end of the month — if Greece is refused its third bailout, the country...

8 Years Later, Athens Olympic Venues in Decay There's still one group that loves the training pool for athletes at the former Olympic village in Athens' northern fringe. Frogs. They appear to delight in sitting on debris that floats on the half-filled pool's murky waters. The athletes village itself has fared somewhat better, turned into housing for workers. Eight years after the 2004 Athens Games, many of the Olympic venues Greece built at great expense remain abandoned or rarely used. They are the focus of great public anger as the country struggles through a fifth year of recession and nearly...

Retirement In Germany May Rise To Age 69 While Greece Is At Age 58 A senior German retailer pointed out to me that the current economic environment in Europe is unfair and that retirement age for workers should be higher – not lower as the situation exists for workers in Greece. He believes that a productive country is a healthy country. He is pessimistic for the near term outlook of retail trade in Europe, saying that any bailout will lead to higher taxation and depress sales. In 2007 Germany raised its retirement age from 65 to 67 and the German...

The German news magazine Spiegel reports that the IMF has told the EU it will provide no additional funds for Greece. The report has sparked fresh fears that Greece could fall into bankruptcy by the autumn. A report by a German news magazine on Sunday sparked fresh concerns about the possibility of Greece being forced into insolvency. In an article published on its website, Spiegel cites unnamed senior European Union sources in Brussels who told the news magazine that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had signaled it would not contribute to any further aid for Greece.

(Reuters) - Hundreds of unemployed Spaniards who had walked hundreds of kilometres (miles) to Madrid joined protests on Saturday against Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's government and its handling of an economic crisis. Demonstrations have swollen across Spain since the centre-right government announced 65 billion euros in new spending cuts two weeks ago to cut its deficit and avert a full-blown bailout, with firefighters and police joining a mass protest on Thursday. Several hundred people journeyed on foot from the southern region of Andalucia, which has one of the worst unemployment rates in Spain, and from northern Catalonia and other areas...

My first experience with a physical euro was mid-December 2001 when I travelled to Europe for preliminary discussions with potential partners for the startup I ended up launching later that year. First stop: Germany. Bank showcases were filled with euro feel-good agitprop. Euro bills and coins would enter circulation on January 1, and this was part of the long-running campaign to persuade Germans to surrender their Deutsche marks. People had some apprehensions, and some wanted to retain the D-Mark, but my business contacts were gleeful: the euro would become the dominant reserve currency in the world; oil would be priced in...

The euro crisis continues to weigh down the global economy, the International Monetary Fund said Monday (16 July), putting pressure on the European Central Bank to lower its interest rate even further and issue more cheap loans to the banks. "There is room for monetary policy in the euro area to ease further. In addition, the ECB should ensure that its monetary support is transmitted effectively across the region and should continue to provide ample liquidity support to banks under sufficiently lenient conditions," the IMF said in its annual World Economic Outlook. … The specific reference to the ECB is...

MADRID, Spanish workers blocked streets and railways in Madrid on Friday in protests against new austerity measures they said hurt ordinary people more than the bankers and politicians they blame for the economic crisis. As the Spanish government approved the deepest cuts in 30 years, including a second round of wage cuts and reduced benefits for civil servants, Spain's main unions called on public workers to strike in September. Traffic was blocked in central Madrid for hours as hundreds of public workers - many wearing black t-shirts in support of striking miners or green ones for public school teachers -...