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Several European countries, including Cyprus, have been mired in economic stagnation or decline for five years or more. Yet other countries in Asia and Latin America have flourished. What are the weakest economies doing wrong? What are the strongest doing right? Economist Jim O’Neill coined the acronym BRIC in 2001 to refer to four economies which showed great potential then and now — Brazil, Russia, India and China. More recently, he added four more promising MIST economies — Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea and Turkey. In mid-2008, The Economist magazine drew a sharp contrast between the booming BRIC economies and four...

So… in the last few months we’ve discovered… EU political leaders were on the dole during the boom times often receiving bribes and then hiding the money via tax evasion schemes. EU political leaders feel it’s acceptable to throw out issues like personal property rights and Democracy during the bust times. EU political leaders are so corrupt they don’t even deny their crimes. When push comes to shove, EU leaders won’t hesitate to STEAL citizens’ money to bail out their banker friends.

Amid signs that recession in the single currency area may be deeper than expected, Eurostat, the European Union's statistical agency, announced than the jobless rate in February was 12%. … Unemployment has now hit 58.4% in Greece, 55.7% in Spain, 38.2% in Portugal and 37.8% in Italy. Joblessness is lowest in Austria (4.8%), Germany (5.4%), Luxembourg (5.5%) and the Netherlands (6.2%). …

Eurozone unemployment reached a record 12pc in February and looks certain to ratchet higher as fiscal cuts deepen and manufacturing continues to struggle, raising the spectre of social explosion across southern Europe. A total of 19m people were out of work in the 17-member bloc in February, the European Union’s statistics office said on Tuesday, a rise of 1.77m on the same month last year. Greece was the worst affected, with unemployment at 26.4pc, but Spain remains the hardest hit of the large economies with a jobless rate of 26.3pc. Youth unemployment is above 60pc across large parts of the...

Infamous for little boys plugging holes with their fingers and grown-ups plugging their mouth with their foot (D-Boom), it seems Holland, Berlin's most important ally in the goal of greater fiscal discipline in Europe, has fallen into an economic crisis itself. As Spiegel reports, the once exemplary economy is suffering from huge debts and a burst real estate bubble, which has stalled growth and endangered jobs.The statistics make for some worrisome reading: no nation in the euro zone is as deeply in debt as the Netherlands, where banks have a total of about €650 billion in mortgage loans on...

<p>The punishment regime imposed on Cyprus is a trick against everybody involved in this squalid saga, against the Cypriot people and the German people, against savers and creditors. All are being deceived.</p>

A rescue program agreed for Cyprus will serve as a model for dealing with future euro zone banking crises and other countries will have to restructure their banking sectors, the head of the region's finance ministers said. The approach would mark a radical departure for euro zone policy after three years of crisis in which taxpayers across the region have effectively been on the hook for resolving problem banks and indebted governments via multiple rescue programs. "What we've done last night is what I call pushing back the risks," Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who heads the Eurogroup of euro...

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A rescue program agreed for Cyprus will serve as a model for dealing with future euro zone banking crises and other countries will have to restructure their banking sectors, the head of the region's finance ministers said. The approach would mark a radical departure for euro zone policy after three years of crisis in which taxpayers across the region have effectively been on the hook for resolving problem banks and indebted governments via multiple rescue programs. "What we've done last night is what I call pushing back the risks," Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who heads the...

In the wake of declining to raid the country’s private bank accounts as part of the terms of a proffered bailout package from the EU and IMF, Cyprus was hoping they might be able to entice Russia to work out an alternative rescue plan for them, partially in exchange for some kind of claim on Cyprus’s gas reserves.So much for that plan. Russian gas giant Gazprom and oil company Rosneft did not display any interest in Cyprus’ hydrocarbons deposit offer to Russia, an Energy Ministry source told journalists. …Another problem is Cyprus’ territorial disputes with Turkey, he added.Asked to assess...

That provoked a threat from the ECB that it would cut off emergency lending to banks in Cyprus, with effect from next Monday night. The government of Cyprus is now trying to come up with an alternative plan, more palatable to parliament, before the ECB’s deadline. On Thursday, reports emerged that Cyprus Popular Bank PCL — also known as Laiki Bank — will be split into a “good bank” and “bad bank” to avoid bankruptcy. Bank deposits totaling €100,000 or less, would also be protected, according to Cyprus central-bank Gov. Panicos Demetriades. Still, that implies that deposits of more than...

The euro currency union, a centerpiece of Europe’s efforts to knit its far-flung nations into a coherent whole, edged toward a rupture Thursday when the region’s central bank said it was ready to pull the plug on Cyprus. The stark ultimatum came in a terse statement Thursday from the European Central Bank’s governing board, which said that on Monday it would cut off the flow of euros to Cyprus’s struggling banks unless the country’s leaders reach agreement with the International Monetary Fund and other European nations on the terms of a $20.5 billion bailout to save their country from financial...

Markets Turn South As Euro Train Wreck Continues At Full Speed Joe WeisenthalMarch 21, 2013, 4:58 AM The Euro train wreck continues. Just this morning we've got: * A horrible German Flash PMI number. * A horrible French Flash PMI number. * An announcement from the ECB that it will shut off emergency funding for Cypriot banks by Monday. And the day's really just started. Markets are red. Italy is down 0.6%. Germany is down 0.8%. France is off 1%. For more on the Cypriot drop dead date, see here

zerohedge‏@zerohedge2 min So this is what "Positive Contagion" means... zerohedge‏@zerohedge3 min LSE’s de Grauwe Says Euro Area in ‘Deep Trouble’ zerohedge‏@zerohedge11 min Russia's Klepach says Cypriot situation unlikely to be resolved soon. So... March 25 deadline ixnay? erohedge‏@zerohedge23 min Euro Official On Cyprus: "Markets Believe We Will Find A Solution, This Might Not Be The Case" http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-21/euro-official-cyprus-markets-believe-we-will-find-solution-might-not-be-case-we-have zerohedge‏@zerohedge11 min Russia's Klepach says Cypriot situation unlikely to be resolved soon. So... March 25 deadline ixnay? Gregor Peter‏@L0gg0l1 min RT @NickMalkoutzis: #Tsipras: #Greece is not behaving like the motherland for Cypriots but the step mother

You don’t need to worry about the financial crisis in Cyprus sparking trouble for the U.S., according to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. European officials’ marathon efforts this week to head off a collapse of the tiny island nation’s banking system have raised fears that the renewed turmoil in the euro zone could threaten the gathering momentum in the U.S. housing and job markets. But Bernanke said that’s not likely. “We are monitoring very carefully but at this point we’re not seeing major risk to the U.S. financial system or the U.S. economy,” he told reporters Wednesday.

Slowly but surely we have seen the walls that once limited what government could do pulled down. Retroactive tax increases are now permitted. U.S. residents can be taxed as punishment for private services they choose not to purchase. Can confiscation of assets with due process, in the name of the greater national good be far behind—even though such a move would violate the constitutional protections we all currently enjoy? The welfare state is out of control and cannot pay its bills. It is writing checks it literally cannot cash, having to take out IOU after IOU to get the markets...

Cypriot parliament rejects ruling party request to postpone vote!!! PIMCO says it is cutting allocations to Eurozone after Cyprus deposit levy!!! zerohedge‏@zerohedge Cypriot parliament rejects ruling party request to postpone vote zerohedge‏@zerohedge PIMCO says it is cutting allocations to Eurozone after Cyprus deposit levy – PM https://twitter.com/zerohedge Juergen Baetz‏@jbaetz NICOSIA (@AP) #Cyprus’ Parliament’s speaker says vote on bank levy will go ahead today, despite delay request by the governing party. #sigh Cyprus parliament rejects deposit levy: reports http://www.marketwatch.com/story/cyprus-parliament-rejects-deposit-levy-reports-2013-03-19-14912938?link=MW_home_latest_news Former Cyprus Central Banker Goes Off On The EU And Says The European Project Is Dying “We are witnessing historic times. What...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel stressed in a phone call with the president of Cyprus that his country hold talks only with international creditors on its bailout deal and not third parties like Russia, a government spokeswoman said on Tuesday. "A telephone call between Mrs Merkel and the Cypriot president took place yesterday evening," the spokeswoman told news agency AFP. " The chancellor once again emphasised that the negotiations are to be conducted only with the Troika," she added, referring to the term used for the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The comment was made...

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...

Cyrpus police outside of the parliament

Good morning and welcome back to the land of anarchy where contracts and guarantees don’t mean anything anymore. Over the weekend, as I’m sure you’ve already heard, Cyprus and the EU and the IMF (and the U.S. Treasury which is part of the official decision-making body at the IMF) all decided that it was in society’s best interests to confiscate the money in people’s checking and savings accounts. Not all of it, at least not yet.But as there’s a ton of confusion and misdirection about what this latest round of theft of private capital and descent into anarchy really is,...