The eurozone on the brink: Spain asks for invitation to beggars´ banquet

Spain has now declared that it will join the not anymore so exclusive club of eurozone beggars: 
Spain indicated during a conference call of the euro zone's 17 financeministers that it wanted aid for its banks but would not specify the amount until two independent consultants deliver their assessment of the capital needs some time before June 21.

Roger C. Altman, chairman of Evercore Partners and former deputy Treasury secretary under President Clinton from 1993 to 1994 describes the dire situation for the entire eurozone:

Europe is on the verge of financial chaos. Global capital markets, now the most powerful force on earth, are rapidly losing confidence in the financial coherence of the 17-nation euro zone. A market implosion there, like that triggered by Lehman Brothers collapse in 2008, may not be far off. Not only would that dismantle the euro zone, but it could also usher in another global economic slump: in effect, a second leg of the Great Recession, analogous to that of 1937.

This risk is evident in the structure of global interest rates. At one level, U.S. Treasury bonds are now carrying the lowest yields in history, as gigantic sums of money seek a safe haven from this crisis. At another level, the weaker euro-zone countries, such as Spain and Italy, are paying stratospheric rates because investors are increasingly questioning their solvency. And there’s Greece, whose even higher rates signify its bankrupt condition. In addition, larger businesses and wealthy individuals are moving all of their cash and securities out of banks in these weakening countries. This undermines their financial systems.

PS
It should again be stressed that the euro crisis is entirely self afflicted. The politicians - among them Germany´s Helmut Kohl - who created the common currency, against the advice of most economists are the ones to be blamed.

The destructive power of the failed euro project hits Spain

The destructive power of the failed euro project is hitting Spain with full force. The once so proud kingdom is according to news reports going to beg for rescue money from Brussels tomorrow. But the question remains,  whether there will be enough money to bail out the Spanish banks:

While the International Monetary Fund thinks Spanish banks require €40bn or so in fresh capital, any loan package may have to be much larger to restore shattered confidence in the country.

Megan Greene from Roubini Global Economics says Spain's banks will need up to €250bn, a claim that no longer looks extreme. New troubles are emerging daily. The Bank of Spain said on Thursday that Catalunya Caixa and Novagalicia will need a total of €9bn in new state funds.

JP Morgan is expecting the final package for Spain to rise above €350bn, while RBS says the rescue will "morph" into a full-blown rescue of €370bn to €450bn over time -- by far the largest in world history.

"Where is the money going to come from?" said Simon Derrick from BNY Mellon. "Half-measures are not going to work at this stage and it is not clear that the funding is available."

Read the entire article here

What makes the case of Spain so sad, is that Spain´s poor people will  be the ones who are going to suffer most of the euro madness - and there are many of them. Few people outside of Spain know that among the EU countries only Romania and Latvia have a higher poverty rate than Spain: 

The study commissioned by the Spanish Roman Catholic Church charity organisation, draws attention to the danger facing 11 million people who could fall below the poverty threshold, while confirming that there are around 30.000 homeless people across the country.


Among the findings in the report ‘Exclusion and Social Development 2012’ was pusblished this week by Caritas Spain it states that already 22% of Spanish households are living under the poverty line with a further 30% facing serious difficulties in making ends meet at the end of the month and 580.000 Spaniards, nearly 3.3% of the population, receiving no income whatsoever.


“There are more poor people than last year, and they are poorer. After four years of financial hardship poverty is more widespread, more intense and it is creating a polarised society in which the difference between rich and poor is growing,” said Caritas Secretary Mora.


Spain is among the European countries with the highest poverty rates, totalling up to 21.8% of the population -- over the EU average of 16.4%. Only Romania and Latvia rank before Spain in the list.

Czar Putin is flexing his muscles

              Vladimir Putin is afraid of peaceful demonstrators - as all authoritarians and dictators are

Vladimir Putin, the thug masquerading as president of Russia, has barely been back in the Kremlin for four weeks, but he is already flexing his muscles: 

This week, the Russian parliament approved a controversial bill which will significantly restrict the right to demonstrate. Under the new law, individuals who take part in unauthorized protests could face maximum penalties of 300,000 rubles (€7,400 or $9,300) or 200 hours of community service, while organizations could face fines of up to 1 million rubles. The fines are a massive increase over the previous penalties.


German newspapers have - rightly - been rather scathing in their comments. Here are a couple of examples: 


The center-left daily Der Tagesspiegel: 

"Who will still have the courage to oppose Putin on the streets when threatened with financial ruin? The new law is an answer to the large-scale demonstrations that Russia has seen since the parliamentary election in 2011. It is also an expression of the state power's absolute helplessness, because ultimately it shows the fear Russia's leaders have of their own fellow citizens."

"Instead of reacting to the protest movement and ushering in more democracy, Putin is leading his country in the opposite direction. Nothing good can be expected to come from his next four years in office."

The conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung:

"The restriction of the right to demonstrate by the Russian parliament represents the essence of Vladimir Putin's rule: the arbitary exercising of power, cloaked in a pretense of legality. While media loyal to the regime have praised, as a sign of liberalism, the fact that the maxium penalties in the original bill were significantly reduced during the law's passage through the parliamentary consulation process, a host of clauses were written into the law which de facto abolish the right to demonstrate."

"It was already the case in the past that the right to demonstrate existed more in theory than in practice, but even that was apparently too dangerous for Putin, after he was forced to witness, in the months before his re-election, just how quickly theory can turn into practice."

Read the entire article here

Regrettably, there seems to have been no reaction from the Merkel government. They are probably too busy trying to fix the unfixable euro crisis and the the mess created by the failed energy transition policy. 

New peer reviewed study: Good food, walking and cycling keep climate change away

A team of "international experts" have published a paper on climate change in this week´s edition of PloS Medicine: 

The experts are from institutions in South Africa, Sweden and Germany. They will be highlighting the need to enhance climate and health benefits at the UN level.

--

The authors state that there is proof of significant health impacts of climate change in many sectors and these impacts lead to crisis in public health very similar to the impact of tobacco on the health of individuals. The authors highlight that this negative impact on health is because the general population is not sufficiently informed on the importance of public health.

The authors suggest that reduction in climatic impact and individual health benefits can be achieved if individuals are encouraged to cycle and walk instead of using other modes of transport and to eat healthy locally produced foodstuffs.

Maybe there is something to what these "international experts" say. Why not just eat, drink and be merry? A certain amount of cycling and walking will not hurt, either. If all these beneficial activities help to keep us away from Dr.Pachauri and the rest of the UN global warming hoaxters, then the fresh PloS Medicine paper would have served a real purpose. 

Football legend Beckenbauer joins Putin´s Gazprom team

Franz Beckenbauer will join former Stasi  agent  Matthias Warnig  in  Putin´s  Gazprom team
(image by wikipedia)

Germany´s soccer legend Franz Beckenbauer is probably in a great need of cash. Otherwise it is difficult to understand why the former soccer star allows himself to be used as a promoter of Gazprom, the state controlled gas giant, used as a political weapon by Russia´s lifetime ruler Vladimir Putin.

Gazprom is facing inreasing problems in Germany - and the rest of Europe - due to the American led shale gas revolution and economic stagnation, as well as political concerns. 

Schröder together with his friend, the  "flawless democrat"

The Gazprom bosses obviously think that Beckenbauer, will do a better job as former chancellor Gerhard Schröder as the company´s public face in Germany. You may remember that Schöder, who was rewarded by his friend Vladimir Putin with the well paid job as chairman of the board of the Nord Stream gas pipeline, still maintains that the former second rate KGB spy is a "flawless" democrat.

Putin and his protege, former Stasi agent Matthias Warnig

Schröder has never had any problems working together with Nord Stream´s CEO Matthias Warnig, an old Stasi agent and friend of Putin´s from his time as a KGB spy in DDR. It will be interesting to see how well "Der Kaiser" - as Beckenbauer is called by fans in Germany - will be able to co-operate with the former Stasi spy and his former KGB friend in the Kremlin. 

The Heartland Conference and the Chicagoland media

This letter to the Editor of the Madison Record is worth citing in its entirety: 


To the Editor:

The question, "When a tree falls in a lonely forest, and no animal is near by to hear it, does it make a sound?" appears to have originated in the 1910 book Physics by Charles Riborg Mann and George Ransom Twiss. 

The same question could be asked of the recently held Seventh International Conference on Climate Change sponsored by Chicago-based Heartland Institute. 

From May 21-23, an impressive group of about 50 experts from around the world, among them physicists, astronauts, meteorologists, physicians, politicians, policy analysts, a head of state and a member of the European Parliament, met at Hilton Chicago Hotel united in their belief that the battle over climate change demands honest debate based scientific evidence, not empty appeals to a mythical "consensus" of those advancing a political agenda.

As with a tree in the forest, the ICCC7 conference was ignored - censored - by the Chicagoland media. Not a single one bothered to send a reporter to cover the event. 

But the event did happen! 

SunNews, Canada's version of Fox New, produced a spectacular hour-long special on global warming using footage from the event. 

Canada's Financial Post published excerpts from the comments made by Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic. 

Heartland recorded all the presentations and has posted them on a Web site at climateconferences.heartland.org.

Heartland's conferences may be criticized for featuring only skeptics of man-made global warming, but this year, more than 50 "warmists" were invited to speak, but all refused to show up.

It is fair to judge a scientific theory by whether advocates are willing to show up to defend their position. By this measure, the theory of catastrophic anthropogenic (man-made) global warming is a failure. Its advocates fall on their faces when pitted against scientists and economists dealing with the hard facts of scientific truth.

Shame on the Chicago media for their dogmatic, closed-minded approach to global warming by choosing to stand with the Al Gore camp instead of doing their job and reporting on the real scientific and policy debates taking place right now over the causes and consequences of climate change. 

It's way past time for the Chicago media and media outlets across this nation to stop feeding false propaganda to its readers and to realize that not only Illinois but this nation will suffer economically and competitively in the future world market if restricted from using its own natural resources of coal, oil and nuclear to produce cheap energy.

Nancy J. Thorner
Lake Bluff, Ill.

UNEP is scaremongering on the eve of the megalomaniac Rio+20 conference

The megalomaniac UN Rio+20 conference is soon to open in Rio de Janeiro. True to its traditions, UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) is trying to hype the event with a new version of the armageddon awaiting us if the "world leaders and nations meeting at Rio+20" do not agree on "a decisive and defining transition towards a low-carbon, resource-efficient, job-generating Green economy".

The usual UN scaremongering is included in the fifth edition of the Global Environment Outlook (GEO-5), "launched on the even of the Rio+20 Summit":


The report cautions that if humanity does not urgently change its ways, several critical thresholds may be exceeded, beyond which abrupt and generally irreversible changes to the life-support functions of the planet could occur. 
"If current trends continue, if current patterns of production and consumption of natural resources prevail and cannot be reversed and 'decoupled', then governments will preside over unprecedented levels of damage and degradation, said UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner.
GEO-5 reminds world leaders and nations meeting at Rio+20 why a decisive and defining transition towards a low-carbon, resource-efficient, job-generating Green Economy is urgently needed, said Mr. Steiner. ―The scientific evidence, built over decades, is overwhelming and leaves little room for doubt."The moment has come to put away the paralysis of indecision, acknowledge the facts and face up to the common humanity that unites all peoples, he added. ―Rio+20 is a moment to turn sustainable development from aspiration and patchy implementation into a genuine path to progress and prosperity for this and the next generations to come.


The UNEP also informs us about the enormous waste of resources which was required to produce this piece of green propaganda:


The report was produced over three years in a process that involved more than six hundred experts worldwide, who collated and analyzed data from every 
continent to build up a detailed picture of the world‘s wellbeing.