France in free fall: "A shocking deterioration in competitiveness"

Karl Lagerfeld - not afraid of speaking out.

Karl Lagerfeld, the creative director of the French fashion house Chanel recently grabbed headlines with this statement:

"Outside of fashion, jewellery, perfume and wine, France isn't competitive," Lagerfeld said. "The rest of our products don't sell. Who buys French cars? I don't."

France's socialist president Francois Hollande may not have liked the comment, but a look at the French economy shows that Lagerfeld's description is most accurate:

A deeper look shows that France is mired in no less than an economic crisis. The eurozone's second-largest economy (2012 GDP: 2 trillion euros) is suffering more than any other member from a shocking deterioration in competitiveness. Put simply, France's products -- its cars, steel, clothing, electronics -- cost far too much to produce compared with competing goods both from Asia and its European neighbors, including not just Germany but even Spain and Italy. That's causing a sharp and accelerating fall in its exports, and a significant decline in manufacturing and the services that support it.

The virtual implosion of French industry is overlooked by analysts and pundits who claim that the eurozone had dodged disaster and entered a new, durable period of stability. In fact, it's France -- not Greece or Spain -- that now poses the greatest threat to the euro's survival. France epitomizes the real problem with the single currency: The inability of nations with high and rising production costs to adjust their currencies so that their products remain competitive in world markets.

So far, the worries over the euro have centered on dangerously rising debt and deficits. But those fiscal problems are primarily the result of a loss of competitiveness. When products cost too much to make, the economy stalls or actually declines, so that even modest increases in government spending swamp nations with big budget shortfalls and excessive borrowings. In this no-or-negative growth scenario, the picture is usually the same: The private economy shrinks while government keeps expanding.

That's already happened in Italy, Spain and other troubled eurozone members. The difference is that those nations are adopting structural reforms to restore their competitiveness. France is doing nothing of the kind. Hence, its yawning competitiveness gap will soon create a fiscal crisis. It's absolutely astonishing that an economy so large, and so widely respected, can be unraveling so quickly.

Read the entire Fortune article here

Francois Hollande enjoys grandstanding in his role as president, with all the traditional trappings of a royal head of state, but - as we have said before - he is in reality nothing but an emperor without clothes. 

It will not take long before the citizens of the once mighty and powerful La France will wake up and ask the question, why on earth did we elect this incompetent party apparatchik as our president?

"Vorsprung durch Technik": Germans seem unable to build an airport

"Vorsprung durch Technik" ("Advancement through technology") is the familiar slogan of a well known German car manufacturer, also symbolizing the technical and industrial prowess of the eurozone paymaster in general. 

However, judging by what is going on in the capital Berlin, the German leadership role may have to be reconsidered:

The saga of Berlin's hapless efforts to build a new airport has taken another embarrassing twist with reports that its opening will be delayed for a fourth time because of continued problems with the fire safety system.

The opening of Berlin's new airport BER, set for Oct. 27, has been delayed for the fourth time and will not go ahead this year in a further blow to the city's reputation. Although not yet confirmed by official sources, the news has triggered calls on Mayor Klaus Wowereit to resign and spells at least another year of congestion at the city's two small, increasingly overstretched eastern and western airports.

Newspapers reported on Monday that the airport's management company had informed contractors in December that an opening before 2014 was unfeasible due to construction errors. The main problem, which also led to previous delays, is the fire safety system. --

Bild added that construction experts checking the building had found hundreds of other faults including cracks in the floor tiles, and more seriously, problems with the airport's local area network that steers everything from the check-in system to the runway lights.

Experts have also warned that the airport doesn't have enough check-in counters and baggage claim conveyor belts to cope with passenger numbers at peak times.

The new airport is, or was to have been, a major prestige project for the German capital, replacing the two ageing and outdated western and eastern airports, Tegel and Schönefeld, which are due to close once it opens.

Construction started in September 2006, and the airport was originally due to open on Oct. 31, 2011. It was then delayed to June 3, 2012, then to spring 2013, and finally to October 2013.

And in addition to the Berlin airport, there are several other construction scandals in Germany.

Heavy snowfalls making life unbearable in Syrian refugee camps

Heavy snowfall and freezing temperatures are making life unbearable for tens of thousands of Syrians fleeing the violence in the country:

Brutal winter weather is making dire conditions even more unbearable in parts of the Middle East, particularly for Syrian refugees who must endure frigid temperatures in tents.

The coldest air of the season is moving in behind a heavy snowstorm that has blanketed refugee camps in Turkey and Lebanon.
And inside Syria, residents in cities pummeled by warfare are taking drastic measures to stay warm -- and alive -- through the winter.
In a video posted online, three men and two children are burning pages of school books to stay warm in the besieged city of Rastan,
"We cant use the heaters inside our residences. No fuel, no wood, no electricity," one of the men says.
Jordan:

Torrential rain and increasing snowfall are paralyzing much of the country, and most government and public offices in Jordan will be closed Wednesday, the state-run Petra new agency said.
In the next three days, temperatures in Amman will drop below freezing, Petra said, citing the Jordan Meteorological Department.
Lebanon:

More than 40 displaced Syrians in Bar Elias were trapped inside their tents Tuesday by rising floodwater from the Ghazeel River, Lebanon's National News Agency reported.
Authorities rescued those trapped and provided them with adequate housing, the NNA said.
Elsewhere in the country, the army evacuated residents trapped by torrential snowfall, according to the NNA.

Read the entire article here

Promoters of the Mother Earth cult have "blessed" the new Greenpeace mega yacht

Matauri Bay in New Zealand, has over a kilometre of beautiful white sand and crystal clear water. It is particularly popular in the summer when thousands flock there. (Image wikipedia)

High priests of Greenpeace, one of leading promoters of the Mother Earth cult, have "blessed" their new mega yacht in the "spiritual home" of the Greenpeace fleet:

The new Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior made its first public appearance in New Zealand today when its crew visited Northland's Matauri Bay, described as "the spiritual home" of the environmental organisation's ships.

They paid tribute to the original Rainbow Warrior, bombed by French agents in 1985, and to Ngati Kura, the guardians of the old ship's gravesite on the seabed surrounded by the picturesque Cavalli Islands.

Kuia and kaumatua from Ngati Kura and Ngati Rehia were taken out to the ship for a blessing and a whakatau (formal welcome) in blazing sunshine around 11am.

Among the speakers was captain Joel Stewart, who thanked Ngati Kura for giving the first Rainbow Warrior such an inspiring resting place and for giving all Greenpeace ships a spiritual home.

By visiting Matauri Bay the crew was accepting the baton from the first and second ships, and the duty of caring for Mother Earth.

Read the entire article here

PS

Captain Stewart and his fellow travelers must be congratulated for picking the right date for their Pacific cruise. The "blazing  sunshine" of the pristine Matauri Bay most certainly beats the cold and grey January weather here in the northern hemisphere. 

(While the greenies are enjoying their holiday in the sun, heavy snowfall is making life untolerable for thousands of Syrian refugees in the Middle East and close to 200 people have died in India due to severe Siberian winter weather.) 

Siberian winter killing people in India

Icy Siberian winds are chilling  northern India - with New Delhi having the coldest day since 1969 - and will according to weather forecasts intensify in the days ahead, making the winter even more severe:
For companies selling beverages, winter-wear and heaters, business is booming with sales rising up to 40% in one of the coldest Indian winters in decades, but farmers are getting anxious about the impact on vegetables, pulses and oilseeds although the wheat crop is secure. The weather office says there is no quick relief in the offing.

"There's no respite from the bone-chilling cold. A high-pressure system created over Siberia is pushing cold waves to India. The system doesn't phase out and persists at least for a couple of weeks once it is created," said Laxman Singh Rathore, director-general,India Meteorological Department.

Thee BBC reports that more than 170 people have already died in the cold snap sweeping across northern India.

China is experiencing the coldest weather in almost thirty years:
Ice swimmers were taking their shocking plunges in north China through the thickest ice in years, but most Chinese nationwide are shivering through the coldest weather in nearly three decades.

Freezing weather has sent temperatures diving to a national average of 25 degrees Fahrenheit since Nov. 20, the lowest average temperature in 28 years, says the China Meteorological Administration.


"Nobel laureate" R.K. Pachauri of course knows the reason for the Siberian winter in India: Global warming! 
Precipitation in the form of heavy rain and snow could worsen the winter," said RK Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Pachauri said the frequency of extreme weather events is bound to rise if no action is taken against greenhouse gas emissions.

The EU is shamefully failing young people: Eurozone youth unemployment close to 25%

While EU commission president José Manuel Barroso is bragging ( and lying) about the end of the euro crisis, he - and all the other European leaders - do not have anything to say about this: 

The eurozone unemployment rate hit a new record high of 11.8% (November 2012) with  18.820 million people out of work 

Youth unemployment rate in the eurozone is now 24.4%.

The youth unemployment "leaderboard":

Greece (57.6%) 

Spain (56.5%)

Italy (37,1%)

SHAME ON YOU, BARROSO AND THE REST, FOR FAILING THE YOUNG PEOPLE OF EUROPE!

PS

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, who is refering to the dismal employment statistics cited above, comments in his Telegraph column:

Mr Barroso may be right that the euro will not implode in 2013. But what matters henceforth is whether the victim nations wish to stay in a project that is causing so much damage, or indeed whether is any moral purpose in holding the euro together at this stage.

The march towards fiscal union (overtly, or by ECB stealth) strips elected parliaments of the final control over tax and spending. It thus eviscerates democracy. The Project breaks the back of historic nation states that are the only real defence of liberal representative government.

So one has to ask, what is the euro for? Why is it self-evidently a positive public good for the peoples of Europe?

Why sacrifice the lifeblood of parliaments for an economic experiment that is not even offering a `Chinese' trade-off of prosperity in exchange for abridged liberties. Why sacrifice democracy for a Barroso Model that has generated a youth jobless rate of 56.5pc in Spain?

These are the questions that Mr Barroso and his successor will have to answer over the next three years as the Club Med slump grinds on. We are no longer in the frothy – dare I say trivial – phase of financial crisis. We are by now in the deadly serious phase of economic and political crisis.

Britain's Prince Charles and environmental hypocrisy

Britain's Prince Charles says that he is worried about leaving "a dysfunctional word" to his grandchild:

“I don't want to be confronted by my future grandchild and (have) them say: 'Why didn't you do something?',” he said in a pre-recorded interview for the high-rating  ITV program This Morning.

“So clearly now that we will have a grandchild, it makes it even more obvious to try and make sure we leave them something that isn't a total poisoned chalice.”

Prince Charles said with the Duke of Cambridge, Prince William, and Duchess Kate expecting a baby this northern hemisphere summer, he hoped not to leave them a “dysfunctional world”.

“I've gone on for years about the importance of thinking about the long-term in relation to the environmental damage, climate change and everything else,” he said.

Read the entire article here

Read what Willis Eschenbach recently wrote, and you will understand what a hypocrite the prince is:

So when James Hansen (NNoN: and prince Charles) gets all mealy-mouthed about his poor grandkids’ world in fifty years, boo-boo, it just makes me shake my head in amazement. His policies have already led to an increase in something I never heard of when I was a kid, “fuel poverty”. This is where the anti-human pseudo-green energy policies advocated by Hansen and others have driven the price of fuel so high that people who weren’t poor before, now cannot heat their homes in winter … it’s shockingly common in Britain, for example.

In other words, when James Hansen is coming on all weepy-eyed about what might possibly happen to his poor grandchildren fifty years from now, he is so focused on the future that he overlooks the ugly present-day results of his policies, among them the grandparents shivering in houses that they can no longer afford to heat …

And the hypocrisy of Prince Charles is not only related to fuel poverty and poor people. The prince also fakes an interest in birds:

HRH The Prince of Wales today officially opened the latest Live Build project, a Bird Hide at Llangorse Lake in Wales, completed by our Building Craft Apprentices earlier this year.

The bird hide aimed to replace an older version, also situated at Llangorse Lake, as growing reeds were increasingly limiting views of the local wildlife.The new structure was designed in close partnership with the local community, who played a crucial part in helping the students understand what the new building needed to incorporate in its design.

In reality the Prince, who in 2011 received the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds Medal, is cashing in on bird and bat killing wind turbines:

The Royal Family have secured a lucrative deal that will earn them tens of millions of pounds from the massive expansion of offshore windfarms.

They will net up to £37.5 million extra income every year from the drive for green energy because the seabed within Britain’s ter­ritorial waters is owned by the Crown Estate.

Last year energy firms were given green light for 45 windmills on Crown Estate land, which will rake in  in £1million a year in subsidies.

Although Prince Charles has previously said that he opposed onshore wind farms, he has now changed his tune:

“I recently flew over the German countryside where ancient buildings and castles now merge into a new landscape dotted with solar panels and wind turbines. I certainly support the commitment to working with nature’s freely-given forms and clean energy.”

(But the prince of course does not want wind turbines to "merge into" the landscape close to his own "ancient buildings and castles"). 

This is what Prince Charles does not want to people to know:

Wind farms are devastating populations of rare birds and bats across the world, driving some to the point of extinction. Most environmentalists just don’t want to know. Because they’re so desperate to believe in renewable energy, they’re in a state of denial. But the evidence suggests that, this century at least, renewables pose a far greater threat to wildlife than climate change.