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Post by jdredd on Apr 2, 2012 12:43:09 GMT -5
www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2012/04/201242132328791769.html"Unemployment across the 17-nation eurozone hit a record high of 10.8 per cent in February, up from 10.7 per cent the previous month, according to official figures." "The eurozone's unemployment rate has risen for 10 consecutive months, as nations across the region enforce austerity measures to fend off the two-year-old debt crisis. Eurozone leaders have vowed to install growth and job-creation strategies to counter a looming recession. They insist that budget cuts and structural reforms must continue to restore market confidence."
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Post by jdredd on Apr 4, 2012 19:51:55 GMT -5
Here's something for the "on the other hand" department: www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-04/burger-king-to-be-a-public-company-again-18-months-after-buyout.html"Burger King Worldwide Holdings Inc. (BKC), the fast-food chain taken private in 2010 by New York investment firm 3G Capital Inc., will go public again after merging with a company owned by William Ackman. Justice Holdings, started by Nicolas Berggruen, Martin Franklin and Ackman, raised 900 million pounds ($1.4 billion) in a February 2011 initial public offering in London. Berggruen is the owner of Karstadt, Germany’s biggest department-store chain, and also co-leads the New York-based Liberty Acquisition Holdings Corp. with Franklin. Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management LP oversees about $9 billion. Berggruen targets companies loaded with debt or those with family owners looking to retire. He restructures those businesses’ debt and invests in expansion, typically owning them for a decade or more." I guess this is what you call "vulture Capitalism", but vultures are a valuable part of an ecosystem. Only the strong companies survive, and the weaker ones are eaten. What would the alternative be? Still, while corporate Darwinism makes some sense, I think it's wrong to apply it to the health care of our citizens.
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Post by jdredd on Apr 11, 2012 22:35:25 GMT -5
www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/04/20124894553253392.html"Boston, MA - Leaders of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will convene in Washington this month for their annual spring meetings. The last meetings were sidetracked because of the eurozone's woes. Since those waters have (temporarily) calmed, the IMF needs to address the "tsunami" of speculative finance that is wreaking havoc in emerging market and developing countries. The IMF's own work has shown that cross-border financial flows have been flooding stock and bond markets in developing countries and raising the value of many currencies as well. Indeed, in the current climate, speculating on the poor seems like a no-brainer for many global investors. Low interest rates and slow growth in the rich countries and higher interest rates and faster growth in the developing world create ample incentive for investors to pull money from rich countries and send their investments to emerging and developing country markets. In the immediate wake of the global financial crisis until late in September 2011, cross-border capital flows had reached their pre-crisis crests in many places, especially Latin America and East Asia. Then, when the eurozone started to spiral into a whirlpool toward the end of 2011, the sea winds changed course and capital flew out of developing countries back to the "safety" of the United States market."
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Post by jdredd on Apr 24, 2012 1:27:25 GMT -5
money.cnn.com/2012/04/23/markets/stocks/index.htm?hpt=hp_t3"NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- European political uncertainty and another sign of a slowdown in the Chinese economy pushed stocks down Monday, with the three major U.S. indexes falling more than 1% before rebounding somewhat in afternoon trading. Investors reacted to news that French President Nicolas Sarkozy came in second place in the first round of elections there behind Socialist candidate Francois Hollande, who has been openly hostile to EU austerity measures."
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Post by jdredd on Apr 24, 2012 19:47:10 GMT -5
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17824427"A day after the fall of his government, Dutch PM Mark Rutte has urged MPs to react "responsibly" to the serious economic problems facing the country." "Since it came to office in October 2010, the minority government of Mr Rutte's liberal VVD party and the Christian Democrat CDA had been reliant on the support of Geert Wilders' Freedom Party (PVV). "When Mr Wilders walked out of vital budget talks on Saturday arguing that the proposals would harm pensioners and affect growth, the two coalition parties could no longer stay in power." Mr Wilders told MPs on Tuesday that he regretted the collapse of budget talks, but said he could not sign up to a package that hit the typical Dutch household most of all. "Either we opt for Henk and Ingrid, or we opt for the unelected eurocrats from the superstate that's called Brussels," he said."
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Post by jdredd on May 4, 2012 11:54:28 GMT -5
More worries from the Moonies about "Socialism": www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/may/3/argentina-takes-oil-stake-with-nod-to-socialism/?page=2"Argentina’s neighbors now worry that the YPF seizure will do further damage, casting all of Latin America as “not very reliable” and scaring off investors, said Chilean Economy Minister Pablo Longueira. “The others say, ‘We are not like the Argentines,’ ” Mr. Morales Sola said. “Those countries worry that this wave of nationalizations will end up contaminating the entire region.” Domestically, though, the takeover has been hugely popular. YPF, a universally known and near-legendary brand here, was privatized in 1993 as part of President Carlos Menem’s free-market reforms, which many Argentines blame for the country’s 2001 crisis and default."
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Post by jdredd on May 6, 2012 15:31:42 GMT -5
money.cnn.com/2012/05/06/markets/stocks-lookahead/index.htm?hpt=hp_t1"NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- When U.S. investors start trading in the coming week, they'll have two big bits of global news to chew over: Election outcomes in France and Greece. In France, socialist Francois Hollande defeated president Nicolas Sarkozy, raising questions about the future of austerity throughout Europe. "A change in leadership brings uncertainty because you don't know exactly what you're getting into," said Ryan Detrick, senior technical strategist at Schaeffer's Investment Research. "It won't be a be-all end-all sell signal, but new leadership in France could cause investor jitters that reverberate throughout global financial markets," said Detrick." "Investor jitters"? Is there a pill for that?
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Post by jdredd on May 6, 2012 16:36:00 GMT -5
Thoughts on the Hollande victory: Has the world financial elites ever considered that the world's voters might not like perpetually bending over for their benefit?
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Post by jdredd on May 10, 2012 1:39:30 GMT -5
www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2012/05/greeces-election"THE citizens of Greece have delivered a stinging rebuke to the politicians who plunged them into the worst recession they can remember. At yesterday's general election they voted overwhelmingly for anti-austerity parties, wrecking hopes that the two mainstream parties, the centre-right New Democracy (ND) and the centre-left PanHellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok), could form a stable coalition to continue reforms agreed with Greece’s creditors, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. With more than 99% of the vote counted, New Democracy has won just 18.9% of the vote and 108 seats in the 300-seat parliament (thanks to a law that gives the winning party an extra 50 seats). Pasok fell back to third place, with 13.2% of the vote and 41 seats. The big winner was Syriza (Left Coalition), which surprised even opinion pollsters by coming in second, sucking support from Pasok. The party took 16.8% of the vote (up from just 4.6% per cent at the previous election, in 2009), and will take 52 seats in parliament. A nastier surprise was the strong showing by Chryssi Avghi (Golden Dawn), a Greek neo-Nazi group which campaigned for the expulsion of thousands of illegal immigrants. It will enter parliament for the first time after winning 7% of the vote and 21 seats. Its blackshirts have won hearts and minds by stepping in where Greece's social services have failed, handing out food and clothing to impoverished families and pensioners. They also provide escorts in gritty districts of Athens for elderly shoppers afraid of getting mugged by desperate Afghans and Somali asylum-seekers.
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Post by jdredd on May 11, 2012 12:18:13 GMT -5
www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-11/obama-winning-investors-by-49-38-against-romney-in-poll.html" Global investors increasingly prefer President Barack Obama to Republican challenger Mitt Romney and most say they believe the incumbent will remain in the White House for another four years. "Asked who would be the better leader for the global economy, 49 percent favor Obama against 38 percent for Romney, according to a quarterly Bloomberg Global Poll. In January, the two candidates tied on the question. "Obama “managed the U.S. economy pretty well, solving a lot of imbalances created by the previous administration,” says poll respondent Mario Di Marcantonio, 35, a senior portfolio manager at Eurizon Capital in Milan. “I believe the second Obama term will be better than having a U-turn with Romney,” he says. “More stability will mean more visibility and more investment in the future.” What did I tell you? You can't trust investors...
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Post by jdredd on May 28, 2012 4:17:05 GMT -5
www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-28/european-stocks-rise-after-greek-opinion-polls-bhp-gains.html"Greek Opinion Polls" "Greece’s New Democracy, which supports the spending cuts and tax increases imposed by the European Union, came first in all six opinion polls published on May 26 as campaigning continued for the general election on June 17. Party leader Antonis Samaras portrayed the consequences of a euro exit, saying Greek incomes, bank deposits and property values would lose at least half their value within days, while food prices would rise by a quarter. International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde upbraided Greek taxpayers and Juergen Fitschen, the incoming co-chief executive officer of Deutsche Bank AG, referred to the country as a “failed state.” Looks like the Greeks are ready to bend over again for investors...
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Post by jdredd on May 29, 2012 4:22:28 GMT -5
www.economist.com/node/21555927"A consensus is slowly emerging that, whether a Greek exit is to be averted or weathered, there will have to be a greater level of integration in the euro zone, with tighter constraints on the freedom of national governments. Some countries, under some conditions, may put up with seeing their governments so constrained for a while: Italy and Greece (until recently) have had unelected, technocratic prime ministers, in large part as a result of pressure from outside creditors. But elsewhere, and in the long run, people seem likely to want to do the constraining they think proper by means of the ballot box, rather than having it forced upon them."
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Post by jdredd on May 31, 2012 13:54:49 GMT -5
www.economist.com/node/21556238"This fiscal focus gets things exactly backwards. Spain’s poor public finances, unlike those of Greece, are a symptom rather than the cause of the country’s economic woes. Before the crisis Spain was well within the euro zone’s fiscal rules. Even now its government debt, at around 70% of GDP, is lower than Germany’s. As in Ireland, the origins of Spain’s debt problems are private, not public. A debt binge by Spanish households and firms fuelled a property bubble and left the country enormously in hock to foreigners. After adjusting for all the foreign assets they own, Spain’s households, firms and government collectively owe foreigners almost €1 trillion ($1.25 trillion), or more than 90% of GDP. That is on a par with crisis-hit Greece, Ireland and Portugal, and far higher than in any other big rich economy. Spain’s banks were the conduit for this private borrowing binge, and are being hit hardest by the bust."
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Post by jdredd on Jun 17, 2012 4:52:53 GMT -5
www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/16/greece-elections-euro_n_1602947.html"ATHENS, June 17 (Reuters) - Greece's election on Sunday is too close to call and could push the debt-ridden country out of the European single currency, rocking the euro to its core and sowing turmoil in global financial markets. The election, a re-run of a May 6 vote that ended in stalemate, amounts to a referendum on the punishing terms set by international lenders as the price of saving Greece from bankruptcy - withering tax hikes, job losses and pay cuts that have helped condemn Greeks to five years of record recession. Riding a wave of anger to rise from political obscurity to contender for power, radical leftist SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras is threatening to tear up the terms of the 130 billion euro ($163.75 billion) bailout." If I had to bet, I'd bet the Greeks will end up playing it safe (in an era where we all play it safe; it's the middle class thing to do) and vote for the pro-austerity party. But if by some chance they don't, it could be interesting...
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Post by jdredd on Jun 18, 2012 0:20:00 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2012/06/18/world/europe/greek-elections.html?_r=1&hp"ATHENS — Greek voters on Sunday gave a narrow victory in parliamentary elections to a party that had supported a bailout for the country’s failed economy. The vote was widely seen as a last chance for Greece to remain in the euro zone, and the results had an early rallying effect on world markets." Did I call it or what?
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