European Commission to criminalize nearly all seeds and plants not registered with government
A new law proposed by the European Commission would make it illegal to “grow, reproduce or trade” any vegetable seeds that have not been “tested, approved and accepted” by a new EU bureaucracy named the “EU Plant Variety Agency.”
It’s called the Plant Reproductive Material Law, and it attempts to put the government in charge of virtually all plants and seeds. Home gardeners who grow their own plants from non-regulated seeds would be considered criminals under this law.
The draft text of the law, which has already been amended several times due to a huge backlash from gardeners, is viewable here.
“This law will immediately stop the professional development of vegetable varieties for home gardeners, organic growers, and small-scale market farmers,” said Ben Gabel, vegetable breeder and director of The Real Seed Catalogue. “Home gardeners have really different needs - for example they grow by hand, not machine, and can’t or don’t want to use such powerful chemical sprays. There’s no way to register the varieties suitable for home use as they don’t meet the strict criteria of the Plant Variety Agency, which is only concerned about approving the sort of seed used by industrial farmers.”Virtually all plants, vegetable seeds and gardeners to eventually be registered by government
All governments are, of course, infatuated with the idea of registering everybody and everything. Under Title IV of the proposed EU law:
Title IV Registration of varieties in national and Union registers
The varieties, in order to be made available on the market throughout the Union, shall be included in a national register or in the Union register via direct application procedure to the CVPO.
Gardeners must also pay fees to the EU bureaucracy for the registration of their seeds. From the proposed law text:
The competent authorities and the CPVO should charge fees for the processing of
applications, the formal and technical examinations including audits, variety denomination, and the maintenance of the varieties for each year for the duration of
the registration.
While this law may initially only be targeted at commercial gardeners, it sets a precedent to sooner or later go after home gardeners and require them to abide by the same insane regulations.
(via seattle-gadgets)
Handbagged by Nigel - EU is the New Communism (by ukipwebmaster)
A 52-million-euro House of EU Vanity (by UKIPmeps)
News to Me: Why We Must Fight To The Death Against The Fascists
By Benjamin Fulford
(2013/04/11) – Anybody who is even partially aware knows that a fascist coup d’etat has taken place in the West. History teaches us that if we do not fight this take over to the death, we will be killed anyway. The only people who do not understand this are either part of the fascist regime or else so hopelessly dumbed down and brainwashed they can only be saved when the fascist propaganda machine is turned off. History also teaches us that if the people do become ready to fight to the death, fascists, who are cowardly bullies at heart, surrender almost without resistance.
To understand how and why we must overthrow the criminal regimes of the West, especially the United States, I believe Argentina makes a good case study because the group that took over Argentina is the same one that staged a fascist coup in the US after 911 and staged a slow motion take-over of the EU.
My father was Canadian Ambassador to Argentina during the dirty war and as a result I was a front line witness to those events. Although he was an atheist, he worked with the Catholic Church in a secret battle to save lives there.
The first thing to note is that the Jesuits have been slaughtered en masse several times in Latin America for helping the poor and downtrodden and thus learned to be very careful when dealing with the military wing of the Roman Empire in South America. To get an idea, please watch the movie “The Mission.” The Argentine dirty war, in which 30,000 people were kidnapped, tortured and killed, was just the latest in an ancient history of Roman military slaughter.
When I was there our next door neighbor was kidnapped twice. We had a 24-hour Argentinian special forces guard stationed at our house. One of them showed me his notebook from the police academy; it was filled with instructions on how to make bombs. He said he had been told to set off bombs so the military government could justify their fascist government by blaming it on the “terrorists.” He also said that he and his buddies grabbed leftists, hippies as well as “known criminals or troublemakers” and killed them in order to “make Argentina safe.”
Once, when some of the junta generals were at our house for dinner, my mother asked about the fate of some “leftists” who had recently been arrested. The general (I cannot remember which one) said “torture must not be handled by sadists, it needs to be done rationally and without emotion.”
During a bus trip down to the South of the country, me and a friend talked about things like Carlos Castaneda (of the Don Juan books) and marijuana. The bus was suddenly stopped by military policemen who came into the bus, pointed machine guns at us and dragged us off the bus. If I did not have a Canadian passport saying my father was a diplomat, we would have been tortured and killed. In our case, we were let go after they searched us thoroughly (and took whatever they liked). It turns out the police went after us because the lady sitting in front of us did not like our conversation and informed on us.
There were also cases at the time of things like people getting rid of rival suitors by calling the police and anonymously accusing them of being communists or the like.
My father risked his career to fight these fascists.
Here is a shortened version of the recollections of my father published in a local Ottawa, Canada news site by his colleague Pierre Beemans:
It was in a line-up at the supermarket on Holy Saturday that I learned of the death of Dwight Fulford, some four years ago…the news left me feeling that I had a chance to say goodbye and to remind him of why I held him in such high esteem.
It goes back to 1978, when Dwight was Head of Post in Argentina and I was in Buenos Aires as the working head of the Canadian delegation to one of those endless UN conferences on how to improve the world. As ambassador, Dwight was the formal head of delegation, but he made it clear when I checked in to the embassy that he had lots of other things on his plate and would be happy if he could show up for only the opening and closing sessions. Buenos Aires in 1978 wasn’t the happy place that I had first known in 1962. The generals were in power and the ‘Dirty War’ was in full swing: union leaders, journalists, student radicals, progressive priests, leftwing politicians and just about anyone with the wrong kind of books were being rounded up and questioned — if not jailed, tortured and tossed out of planes over the South Atlantic. A few militant groups, notably the ‘Monteneros’, were trying armed resistance but theirs was a hopeless cause.
Little of this touched the several thousand foreign delegates to the conference as we shuttled between our luxury hotels…Then he touched my arm and said, “Something’s come up at the Embassy. You might want to join me for this.” It seemed that a young woman and her 4-year old son had come into the Embassy early in the afternoon and, after closing hour, were refusing to leave and asking for protection…It seems that she had received two visits from the police asking her for the whereabouts of her husband, known to be a sympathizer of the Monteneros. She had told them that she hadn’t seen him for two years, that he was in hiding somewhere unknown, that she had received neither news nor money from him, and that she wanted nothing to do with him or his politics. The police didn’t believe her and in the second visit they told her that if she didn’t know, she certainly had ways to find out; if she didn’t provide them with an answer in 48 hours, she would be arrested and interrogated more ‘formally’, and she could say good-bye to her child. She and her son had left their house [and went to the embassy] with just the clothes on their backs so as not to arouse suspicion.
I asked Dwight if he believed her story. “Of course,” he replied, “this is happening every day in Argentina. Just the fact of coming here like this makes it impossible for her to return home. Their lives are in danger but they can’t stay here.” Dwight went out to the police guards outside the doors, told them he was locking up for the night, thanked them for their attention and wished them a pleasant night with their families. As soon as they were gone, we took the elevator with the woman and the child down to the basement garage. After the driver checked carefully, we bundled them into the ambassadorial limousine and drove away.
I asked Dwight where he was going to take them. “I don’t know yet,” he said, “and no need for you to know. I’ll figure something out. Good night and have a safe trip home.” Dwight was not a person for long speeches.
I learned some years later when our paths crossed again that he had found a place for them to stay while he made arrangements to get them out of the country. I gather it was worked out through the good offices of the Papal Nuncio. If he had been found out, of course, he would have been ‘ persona non grata-ed’ within hours, probably with an even frostier fate awaiting him on his return to Ottawa.
My father never talked about such things with us and he carried most of such stories to the grave with him. My mother recalls he once got a call from somebody thanking for saving his live and he did not even remember who the person was. The fact is though, he saved somewhere between 7,000 and 15,000 lives during his tenure as Ambassador to Argentina. He also saved large amounts of people from Fidel Castro’s concentration camps in Cuba during the early 1960’s. The only thanks he got from his government was to be taken off the fast track for promotion by the corrupt Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.
It makes me deeply ashamed the current Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, is cooperating with those same tyrannical forces by allowing the Canadian military to participate in criminal military actions in places like Libya. You can be sure, though the forces of justice will one day catch up with him.
In any case, although my father did what he could in the circumstances he was in, I believe we need to be more pro-active and take the battle to the fascists.
If the US patriotic military wishes to restore the Republic of the United States and fight for justice and human rights, then it is time to act.
News to Me: Eurozone Crisis: Risk Of Social Unrest Rises In EU
With unemployement at unprecedented levels in the EU, the risk of social unrest is rising, says the UN’s International Labour Organization. The ILO is warning politicians to abandon austerity and embrace job creation.
“When unemployment is as high as it is right now – as poverty and welfare protection become worse – then the danger of social unrest grows along with it,” says Miguel Angel Malo.
Malo is a professor of economics in Salamanca, Spain – a country where youth unemployment is at 56 percent. Additionally he’s an economics expert at the International Labour Organization (ILO), a UN agency seeking to promote labor rights.
It was for the ILO that Malo co-authored a paper with an unsettling thesis: the likelihood of social unrest is increasing. Or at least, it’s becoming far more likely in certain areas of Europe.
As a Spaniard, Malo has a personal stake in avoiding unrest in his home country and helping it recoverMore unemployment
According to the report, 26.3 million Europeans are unemployed – 10 million more than just before the outbreak of the crisis in 2008. For 22 of the EU’s 27 countries, the labor market is in worse condition than before the crisis began. Just five countries have higher levels of employment than in 2008: Austria, Germany, Hungary, Luxembourg and Malta.
EU unemployment now stands at 10.9 percent, write Malo and his colleagues, which is 4.1 percent more than just five years ago. In the 17 countries that have adopted the euro as their currency, unemployment has risen faster than outside it, reaching a historic high of 12 percent in February 2013.
With little happening in the job market, unemployed EU citizens are now competing for fewer and fewer positions.
Idle hands
The conclusions the report draws are even more interesting than the bare statistics: if one looks at who the losers are, it becomes clearer exactly why the ILO is warning of unrest. The losers are made of three groups which have scarcely any access to the labor market.
The first group is young people: one in four youths – a group that includes those who have finished higher education but have not found work – is currently unemployed. In Spain and Greece it’s more than half. In 26 of 27 countries, youth unemployment has risen since the beginning of the crisis. Germany is the only exception.
Spain’s “Indignados” protestors, or “indignant ones,” are suffering the pain of unemployment firsthandThe second group is the long-term unemployment, whose numbers have nearly doubled, from 5.8 million in 2008 to 11 million today.
And the third group is those with few qualifications: “unskilled labor” has been hit particularly hard by negative economic developments, much more so than skilled workers or university graduates.
Blowing its top
As to whether Europe will finally “blow its top,” Martin Dieweld, a professor of sociology at Bielefeld University, doesn’t believe so.
“I don’t see any sign of that at all with relation to Europe,” he told DW. Yet neither would he rule it out in countries particularly hard hit by the financial crisis, such as those on the Mediterranean.
“But painting the bogeyman all over the wall – I consider that over the top,” Diewald added.
Professor Diewald does not like alarmist claims – but does see reason for concernThe risk of unrest cannot be measured precisely, but the ILO estimates that it’s currently 12 percent higher in the EU than it was before the crisis. In order to reach this conclusion the organization developed its own evaluation procedure based on the views of those participating in surveys. “Our procedure is tied directly to people’s living conditions,” says ILO expert Malo.
Confidence down
As a rule, the ILO believes that the worse the EU’s economic and political position becomes, the higher the risk of social unrest. That means the potential for social unrest has risen in countries such as Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Slovenia the Czech Republic. Simultaneously, risks have lowered in Germany, Finland, Belgium, Slovakia and Sweden.
Diewald believes that risk should be judged on a country-by-country basis. Some countries have shown few economic problems up to this point, and in any case, citizens in crisis-struck countries are reacting differently.
In Greece, protests have already resulted in deaths. In Italy and Spain, by comparison, demonstrations have remained peaceful. “More and more, we’re observing that well-educated youths in well-off countries are leaving,” Diewald says. “It’s more ‘exit’ instead of ‘voice,’ to quote the old line from sociologist Albert Hirschman.”
Frustrated protestors often portray Germany (or Brussels) as the “bogeyman” of the eurozone crisisIn order to avoid violent unrest, the ILO suggests that battered countries in the eurozone change course. Austerity measures, of which the ILO has been outwardly critical since the outset, should be replaced by a concentrated attempt to improve the job market. “Jobs must be as much a target as budget discipline or other economic goals,” says Malo.
Among the ILO’s demands are calls for wages and salaries that are stable at the very least and, at best, will actually increase. That would allow pent-up consumer demand to be released, injecting cash into the economy. The organization would also like to see more bank loans for small and medium-sized businesses as well as labor market programs and employment guarantees for young people.
All of which will hopefully prevent the proverbial lid from blowing.
Thatcher: “No! No! No!” (by ninthwave)
In her honor of her death Margaret Thatcher’s speech that killed her political career. When she so bravely came out against the EU and the euro.
What ever else you can say about her. You have to admire her stance, a no win stance. When both the so called left and right in the UK wanted to be part of the euro and the EU.
Infowars: Will The Banking Meltdown In Cyprus Be A “Lehman Brothers Moment” For All Of Europe?
Michael Snyder
Economic Collapse
March 20, 2013Cyprus lawmakers may have rejected the bank account tax, but the truth is that the financial crisis in Cyprus is just getting started. Right now, the two largest banks in Cyprus are dangerously close to a meltdown. If they fail, depositors could end up losing virtually all of their money. You see, the banking system of Cyprus absolutely dwarfs the GDP of that small island nation. Cyprus is known all over the world as a major offshore tax haven, and wealthy Russians and wealthy Europeans have been pouring massive amounts of money into the banking system over the last several decades. Yes, those bank deposits are supposed to be insured, but the truth is that there is no way that the government of Cyprus could ever come up with enough money to cover the massive losses that we are potentially looking at. This is a case where the banking system of a nation has gotten so large that the national government is absolutely powerless to stop a collapse from happening. If those banks fail, depositors may end up getting 50 percent of their money or they may end up getting nothing. We just don’t know how bad the damage is yet. And considering the fact that many of the largest corporations and many of the wealthiest individuals in Europe have huge mountains of cash stashed in Cyprus, the fallout from a banking collapse could potentially be absolutely catastrophic.
So Cyprus needs to come up with some money from somewhere in order to keep that from happening.
Basically, there are three options at this point…
1) Even though the bank account confiscation tax was voted down today, there is talk that it could come back in another form. This is really the only place inside of Cyprus where enough money can be raised to bail out the banks.
2) Cyprus could go back and beg the IMF and the EU for money, but the IMF and the EU have already said that they want depositors to share in the pain.
3) Cyprus could get the money that they need from the Russians. This will be discussed in more detail later.
A lot of people will see the headlines proclaiming that Cyprus has voted against the wealth tax and think that everything is going to be okay now, but that is very far from the truth.
The reality is that this is only the first move in a very complicated chess game. The problems for Cyprus are only just the beginning…
“This is not the end of the process, but instead kicks off a further round of negotiation with Moscow and Berlin,” JPMorgan economist Alex White wrote in a research note. “The Cypriot authorities wanted to conduct the vote so that they could reaffirm the extent of their difficulties to the Europeans.”
When the banks of Cyprus reopen in a few days, there is going to be a stampede of people trying to pull their money out of the banks.
In fact, this was starting to happen even before the “bank holiday” was declared. According to The Sun, bank insiders were tipping people off about what was going to happen in the days leading up to the crisis…
But Russian oligarchs and big investors emptied accounts in the days beforehand, prompting claims they were tipped off by bank insiders. A source told The Sun: “It leaked out. Bankers warned their best clients. Government officials warned their friends and relatives.
“Billions disappeared from accounts in days, most from accounts held by Russians.”
And according to David Zervos, we could see billions more euros withdrawn from banks in Cyprus once they reopen. There will be mass panic as depositors scramble to reclaim their money before it can be taxed…
The die is cast. There is no going back for the Cypriots or the Eurozone leaders. As soon as the banks open in Cyprus there will be billions in withdrawals. The question of course is – “where will the money come from?”. Well, if the parliament votes YES, then the Euros will have to come from the Eurosystem. But there is a glitch. The Cypriots have already borrowed 10b euro via the ELA and Target2. How can Mario just wire over 20 billion more (less the 10 to 15 percent haircut) for the Russians, and another 20 to 30 billion for the wealthy Greeks. What collateral will an economy with 20b in GDP post to get this cash? Unless Mario violates every collateral rule at the ECB, the Cypriot financial system will collapse even with a YES vote. Its a wonderful life – Cyprus style.
It may not even matter what Cyprus eventually decides to do about a “wealth tax”. The bank run that is about to happen may be enough to bring down the banks of Cyprus all by itself.
And of course people all over southern Europe are watching developments in Cyprus very closely. As former British Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling recently noted, if depositors in southern Europe start getting nervous that their bank accounts will be targeted too, they will be likely to start pulling money out of the banks very rapidly…
“They have actually now said to people ‘We will come after your deposits, no matter how small your savings are’ and that seems to me to make it more likely that, if you are a saver in Spain or in Italy, for example, and you have just the sniff of the EU or the IMF coming your way, you will take your money out and you will get a run on the bank”
Cyprus could actually get out of this mess by turning to Russia, but the United States and Europe really do not want to see Russia gain so much control over that very strategic island nation.
So why would Russia get involved? Well, it has been estimated that Russians have approximately $31 billion stashed in banks in Cyprus. It is the favorite offshore banking destination for the Russian oligarchs. Dennis Gartman recently detailed why the tiny island nation is so appealing to the Russians…
Cyprus has been their own private Switzerland for many years. Legal and non-legal Russian cash has swamped the banking system in Cyprus since the early 90’s. The beauty of the island; the ease of admission too and exit from the island via boat or plane; the secrecy of the banking laws; the warm Mediterranean climate and the ease of which Cypriot authorities could be bribed and bought all worked to make Cyprus the center of Russian capital flight.
And right now the Russians are not happy at all that their money is being threatened.
In particular, the Russian mafia launders a lot of money in Cyprus. The Russian mafia is not about to let anyone steal their money, and they have an international reputation for being absolutely brutal. In the end, pressure from the mafia may have been one of the primary reasons why many Cyprus lawmakers voted against the bank account tax. As Dennis Gartman astutely noted, by voting against the wealth tax they may have literally been saving their own lives…
“One could only laugh as such a comment; of course Cyprus was complacent about laundering. To think otherwise was and is naïve. Ah, but now you’ve stolen Russia money… or soon shall depending upon the vote in the Cypriot parliament… and that is dangerous… very. One does not steal Russian mafia money and get away with it. There are fewer statements of fact that are more certain, more factual, more unyielding than this statement. Russian Mafia figures do not take well to being stolen from, and they take even less well to be made fools of. We see no reason to mince words at this point: People will be hurt over this decision; some shall be killed.”
And the Russians definitely do not want to see the banking system of Cyprus collapse. In fact, proposals have been made that would provide the money necessary to keep it afloat. But of course that money would not come cheaply.
Some of the proposals that Russia has put forward were summarized by the Daily Mail…
But in a move that has raised eyebrows, the Russian energy giant Gazprom offered Cyprus a plan in which the company will undertake the restructuring of the country’s banks in exchange for exploration rights for natural gas on the island.
Representatives of the Russian company submitted the proposal to the office of Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades on Sunday evening.
It is also rumoured that the Kremlin is privately offering to help bail out Cyprus in exchange for the right to use a naval base in the Greek part of the island.
In addition, as I wrote about yesterday, some Russian investors have stepped forward and have offered to buy majority stakes in the two largest banks in Cyprus.
So why hasn’t Cyprus accepted help from Russia yet? Well, it is a geopolitical thing. Cyprus is a part of the EU, and European officials do not want Russia to become the dominant influence in Cyprus.
But if the IMF and the EU are not going to step up and help Cyprus, the Russian offers will become more tempting with each passing day.
Meanwhile, the attempted attack on bank accounts in Cyprus is making people nervous all over Europe. For example, the following is whatGerman economist Peter Bofinger had to say about what the situation in Cyprus is doing to confidence in the European financial system…
Making small-scale savers pay is extremely dangerous. It will shake the trust of depositors across the Continent. Europe’s citizens now have to fear for their money.
And if you don’t think that this could ever happen anywhere else, you are just being delusional.
In fact, it is already happening. In fact, the Finance Minister of New Zealand is now proposing that depositors in his nation should be required to “take a haircut” if any banks in his nation fail…
The National Government are pushing a Cyprus-style solution to bank failure in New Zealand which will see small depositors lose some of their savings to fund big bank bailouts, the Green Party said today.
Open Bank Resolution (OBR) is Finance Minister Bill English’s favoured option dealing with a major bank failure. If a bank fails under OBR, all depositors will have their savings reduced overnight to fund the bank’s bail out.
“Bill English is proposing a Cyprus-style solution for managing bank failure here in New Zealand – a solution that will see small depositors lose some of their savings to fund big bank bailouts,” said Green Party Co-leader Dr Russel Norman.
“The Reserve Bank is in the final stages of implementing a system of managing bank failure called Open Bank Resolution. The scheme will put all bank depositors on the hook for bailing out their bank.
“Depositors will overnight have their savings shaved by the amount needed to keep the bank afloat.”But surely there will never be any major banking problems in the United States, right?
Well, large numbers of Chase customers that logged into their accounts on Monday discovered that a “computer glitch” had reset all of their account balances to zero…
Chase bank experienced a problem Monday that had customers scrambling to figure out where their money went.
JP Morgan Chase said it hadn’t been hacked but was having a problem “related to an internal issue” as customers found their accounts showing zero balances.
Some customers shared their frustration on Twitter and showed screen shots of zero balances.
How would you feel if you suddenly discovered that you had no money in the bank?
Most Americans just assume that their money will always be there because their bank accounts are “guaranteed” by deposit insurance and by the full faith and credit of the federal government.
But that is exactly what the people of Cyprus thought too, and look how that turned out.
It would be hard to overstate how dangerous the situation in Cyprus is. Yes, their nation is very small but their banking system is absolutely huge.
If the banking system of Cyprus fails, it could be a “Lehman Brothers moment” for all of Europe. At this point, the entire European banking system is leveraged 26 to 1, and once European banks start to fail they could start falling like dominoes.
There is also a very strong possibility that Cyprus could be forced to leave the euro, and if that happens everyone will be wondering who will be next to leave the common currency.
So don’t think for a second that the crisis in Cyprus is over. The banking meltdown is just getting started, and the consequences could end up being far more dramatic than any of us could possibly imagine.
Spain protesters accuse EU of servility to markets
Thousands of protesters marched Saturday in Madrid and other cities in Spain against European Union leaders’ handling of the financial crisis, condemning “an EU that belongs to the markets”.
The marches, organised by Spain’s “indignados” protest movement, came after Cyprus announced it would dip into its citizens’ bank accounts to help save the government from a debt default, part of a 10-billion-euro ($13-billion) EU bailout deal.
“We don’t owe anything. We won’t pay anything,” said a banner carried by protesters in the northern city of Valladolid, a rallying cry echoed at the march in Madrid.
“Get out Troika,” protesters chanted in the capital, a reference to the trio of creditors — the EU, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund — that are overseeing eurozone bailouts brought on by the debt crisis.
In Madrid, the protesters marched to Puerta del Sol, a central square that was occupied for several months by the indignados, whose movement was born in May 2011 and inspired protests in other countries.
Their slogans and banners covered a wide array of issues ranging from austerity cuts to corruption scandals to unemployment.
So much for budget cuts (by DanHannanMEP)
The Nazi-Fascist Origins of the EU Superstate Idea - Rodney Atkinson (by ChooseLibertyTV)
Alex's Blog: Watch The Financial Markets In Europe
Michael Snyder
Economic Collapse
Feb 8, 2013Is the financial system of Europe on the verge of a meltdown? I have always maintained that the next wave of the economic crisis would begin in Europe, and right now the situation in Europe is unraveling at a frightening pace. On Monday, European stocks had their worst day in over six months, and over the past four days we have seen the EUR/USD decline by the most that it has in nearly seven months. Meanwhile, scandals are erupting all over the continent. A political scandal in Spain, a derivatives scandal in Italy andbanking scandals all over the eurozone are seriously shaking confidence in the system. If things move much farther in a negative direction, we could be facing a full-blown financial crisis in Europe very rapidly. So watch the financial markets in Europe very carefully. Yes, most Americans tend to ignore Europe because they are convinced that the U.S. is “the center of the universe”, but the truth is that Europe actually has a bigger population than we do, they have a bigger economy then we do, and they have a much larger banking system than we do. The global financial system is more integrated today than it ever has been before, and if there is a major stock market crash in Europe it is going to deeply affect the United States and the rest of the globe as well. So pay close attention to what is going on in Europe, because events over there could spark a chain reaction that would have very serious implications for every man, woman and child on the planet.
As I noted above, European markets started off the week very badly and things have certainly not improved since then. The following is how Zero Hedge summarized what happened on Thursday…
EuroStoxx (Europe’s Dow) closed today -1% for 2013. France, Germany, and Spain are all lower on the year now. Italy, following ENI’s CEO fraud, collapsed almost 3% from the US day-session open, leaving it up less than 1% for the year. Just as we argued, credit markets have been warning that all is not well and today’s afternoon free-fall begins the catch-down.
In addition, the euro has been dropping like a rock all of a sudden. Just check out this chart which shows what happened to the euro on Thursday. It is very rare to see the euro move that dramatically.
So what is causing all of this?
Well, we already know that the economic fundamentals in Europe are absolutely horrible. Unemployment in the eurozone is at a record high, and the unemployment rates in both Greece and Spain are over 26 percent. Those are depression-level numbers.
But up until now there had still been a tremendous amount of confidence in the European financial system. But now that confidence is being shaken by a whole host of scandals.
In recent days, a number of major banking scandals have begun to emerge all over Europe. Just check out this article which summarizes many of them.
One of the worst banking scandals is in Italy. A horrible derivatives scandal has pushed the third largest bank in Italy to the verge of collapse…
Monte dei Paschi di Siena (BMPS.MI), Italy’s third biggest lender, said on Wednesday losses linked to three problematic derivative trades totaled 730 million euros ($988.3 million) as it sought to draw a line under a scandal over risky financial transactions.
There is that word “derivative” that I keep telling people to watch for. Of course this is not the big “derivatives panic” that I have been talking about, but it is an example of how these toxic financial instruments can bring down even the biggest banks. Monte dei Paschi is the oldest bank in the world, and now the only way it is able to survive is with government bailouts.
Another big scandal that is shaking up Europe right now is happening over in Spain. It is being alleged that Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and other members of his party have been receiving illegal cash payments. The following summary of the scandal comes from a recentBloomberg article…
On Jan. 31, the Spanish newspaper El Pais published copies of what it said were ledgers from secret accounts held by Luis Barcenas, the former treasurer of the ruling People’s Party, which revealed the existence of a party slush fund. The newspaper said 7.5 million euros in corporate donations were channeled into the fund and allegedly doled out from 1997 to 2009 to senior party members, including Rajoy.
That doesn’t sound good at all.
So what is the truth?
Could Rajoy actually be innocent?
Well, at this point most of the population of Spain does not believe that is the case. Just check out the following poll numbers from the Bloomberg article quoted above…
According to the Metroscopia poll, 76 percent of Spaniards don’t believe the People’s Party’s denials of the slush-fund allegations. Even more damning, 58 percent of the party’s supporters think it’s lying. All of the Spanish businessmen with whom I discussed the latest scandal expect it to get worse before it gets better. Their assumption that there are more skeletons in the government’s closet indicates what little trust they have in their leaders.
Meanwhile, the underlying economic fundamentals in Europe just continue to get worse. One of the biggest concerns right now is France. Just check out this excerpt from a recent report by Phoenix Capital Research…
The house of cards that is Europe is close to collapsing as those widely held responsible for solving the Crisis (Prime Ministers, Treasurers and ECB head Mario Draghi) have all been recently implicated in corruption scandals.
Those EU leaders who have yet to be implicated in scandals are not faring much better than their more corrupt counterparts. In France, socialist Prime Minister Francois Hollande, has proven yet again that socialism doesn’t work by chasing after the wealthy and trying to grow France’s public sector… when the public sector already accounts for 56% of French employment.
France was already suffering from a lack of competitiveness. Now that wealthy businesspeople are fleeing the country (meaning investment will dry up), the economy has begun to positively implode.
As the report goes on to mention, over the past few months the economic numbers coming out of France have been absolutely frightful…
Auto sales for 2012 fell 13% from those of 2011. Sales of existing homes outside of Paris fell 20% year over year for the third quarter of 2012. New home sales fell 25%. Even the high-end real estate markets are collapsing with sales for apartments in Paris that cost over €2 million collapsing an incredible 42% in 2012.
Today, the jobless rate in France is at a 15-year high, and industrial production is headed into the toilet. The wealthy are fleeing France in droves because of the recent tax increases, and the nation is absolutely drowning in debt. Even the French jobs minister recently admitted that France is essentially “bankrupt” at this point…
France’s government was plunged into an embarrassing row yesterday after a minister said the country was ‘totally bankrupt’.
Employment secretary Michel Sapin said cuts were needed to put the damaged economy back on track.
‘There is a state but it is a totally bankrupt state,’ he said.
So what does all of this mean?
It means that the crisis in Europe is just beginning. Things are going to be getting a lot worse.
Perhaps that is one reason why corporate insiders are dumping so much stock right now as I noted in my article yesterday entitled “Do Wall Street Insiders Expect Something Really BIG To Happen Very Soon?“ There are a whole host of signs that both the United Statesand Europe are heading for recession, and a lot of financial experts are warning that stocks are way overdue for a “correction”.
For example, Blackstone’s Byron Wien told CNBC the other day that he expects the S&P 500 to drop by 200 points during the first half of 2013.
Seabreeze Partners portfolio manager Doug Kass recently told CNBCthat what is happening right now in the financial markets very much reminds him of the stock market crash of 1987…
“I’m getting the ‘summer of 1987 feeling’ in the U.S. equity market,” Kass told CNBC, “which means we’re headed for a sharp fall.”
Toward the end of 2012 and at the very beginning of 2013 we saw markets both in the U.S. and in Europe move up steadily even though the underlying economic fundamentals did not justify such a move.
In many ways, that move up reminded me of the “head fakes” that we have seen prior to many of the largest “market corrections” of the past. Often financial markets are at their most “euphoric” just before a crash hits.
So get ready.
Even if you don’t have a penny in the financial markets, now is the timeto prepare for what is ahead.
We all need to learn from what Europe is going through right now. In Greece, formerly middle class citizens are now trampling one another for food. We all need to prepare financially, mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically so that we can weather the economic storm that is coming.
Most Americans are accustomed to living paycheck to paycheck and being constantly up to their eyeballs in debt, but that is incredibly foolish. Even in the animal kingdom, animals work hard during the warm months to prepare for the winter months. Even so, we should all be working very hard to prepare during prosperous times so that we will have something stored up for the lean years that are coming.
Unfortunately, if events in Europe are any indication, we may be rapidly running out of time.
News to Me: Soros Fears ‘Rebellion’, Warns “The Euro Could Destroy The EU”
February 7, 2013
Source: Zero Hedge
From a discussion of the Dutch political system being in the pocket of Big Oil to warning that German policy stipulations and the Euro itself could “potentially destroy the European Union,” amid rebellion, George Soros has drastically reduced all Euro-related exposure from his portfolio – only a few weeks after his cautious optimism that Europe is ‘revived’ in Davos. As Open Europe blog notes, Soros fears that “there is a real danger that the [Euro] solution to the financial problem creates a really profound political problem.” The interview below with Dutch TV shows Soros grave concerns that the Southern nations are “being pushed unwittingly… into a long lasting depression,” as Germany’s austerity program is “counter-productive – cannot actually succeed.” Just as we recently noted the similarities between the European Union and the Soviet Union, so Soros believes the ‘Euro’ itself is “bound to break up the European Union.” It may take generations, he notes, as a terrible tragedy of “lost political freedom and economic prosperity.”
From Davos – two weeks ago…optimism that the banking system had been revived but even then he was concerned…
…the european banking system, the interbank market, has revived so there’s a general sense of let’s say almost euphoria that the crisis is over. I think that is somewhat premature. because the fundamental internal inconsistencies in the dis-tim have not been addressed, and actually, therefore, you face political dangers.The Euro is transforming the European Union into something very different from the original conception which was a voluntary association of equal states, and instead of that, the financial created a two-class system where the euro, the creditors and debtors and the creditors are in charge. The political situation I think is going to get worse.
Nigel Farage Succinctly Blasting French Socialist President Holande on Both Domestic and Foreign Interventionism
Nigel Farage’s UKIP On The Increasing European And Soviet Union Similarities
Zero Hedge
Feb 4, 2013From Margaret Thatcher’s original (now extremely prescient) warning of the European Union’s structure creating “insecurity, unemployment, national resentment, and ethnic conflict” to Nigel Farage’s recent clarifications on the agonizing direction in which the unelected leadership of the Union are pulling Europe, this brief 3 minute clip draws some significantly eery similarities between the former Soviet Union and the current European Union. Every now and again, a step back to look for context in history is important – as while the Soviet Union was created by armed force, the European Union is being forced by political coercion and economic bullying. Perhaps Churchill summed up best how it should be, “We are with Europe, but not of it; we are linked but not combined; we are interested and associated but not absorbed.”
