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Greece cuts minimum wage, pensions as austerity drive begins (Reuters)
Originally posted by Vitchilo
In other news...
Greece cuts minimum wage, pensions as austerity drive begins (Reuters)
Let it begin... the great Greek rape of 2012.
Originally posted by Vitchilo
In other news...
Greece cuts minimum wage, pensions as austerity drive begins (Reuters)
Let it begin... the great Greek rape of 2012.
"America is at that awkward stage; its too late to work within the system but too early to shoot the bastards." Claire Wolfe
The competing attempt by George Bush Sr. and the Nazi faction to set up a 1000 year reich is also collapsing. Geithner has already told the police that both he and Obama work for Bush. The Bushes, like Geithner and others are not allowed to leave the US
In the space of two months, the ECB has now injected more than a trillion euros into the financial system, banishing the threat of a credit crunch.
A total of 800 banks borrowed money at the tender, with demand exceeding the 500 billion euros expected by traders polled by Reuters and the 489 billion allotted in the first such operation in December.
The ECB unveiled the funding operations, known as LTROs, late last year to counter frozen interbank lending and dampen tensions on euro zone bond markets that threatened to tear the bloc apart.
ECB President Mario Draghi, whose native Italy was at the epicenter of the crisis when the bank announced the measure late last year, said after the first of the operations that "a major, major credit crunch" had been averted.
Anecdotal evidence suggests banks especially in Spain but also in Italy used the first LTRO to pursue this "Sarkozy trade" - a term adopted by markets after the French president suggested governments should encourage banks flush with ECB cash to buy their bonds.
Spanish banks bought a net 23.1 billion euros of government debt last month and Italians 20.6 billion, both record increases.
"Italian and Spanish bonds are likely to benefit from this and equity markets as well," Luca Cazzulani at UniCredit said of Wednesday's operation.
Banks have the option of paying back all or parts of the loans at any time after one year.
Financial markets are watching to see how effectively governments use the time the ECB has given them to deliver growth and sustainable budgets.
"Without growth, the LTROs are a bridge to nowhere," said Andrew Bosomworth, senior portfolio manager at PIMCO.
During Congressional testimony, Ben Bernanke defended the Fed's FX swap lines by saying that the ECB was "well-capitalized."
Every year in February, the Treasury department releases its adjustment to foreign purchases of Treasury bond holdings as of the previous June (with revised and overriding estimates for all the intervening months in the interim, as well as previous monthly forecasts). It did that earlier today. And while many may have been expecting the revision to show that contrary to Zero Hedge claims China has in fact been building up its Treasury stake (following the now traditional transfer of UK purchases to China), the reality is that not only has China indeed been dumping US exposure (first reported by us previously when we observed the plunge in holdings in the Fed's custodial account), selling over $100 billion in Treasurys in December alone (bringing its total to $1152 billion, and down 12% from its June total of $1307 billion) but that probably far more curiously, the UK is no longer a shadow buyer of Chinese bond accumulation and instead has become a secret accumulator of Russian holdings.
Originally posted by Vitchilo
Oh boy... I just learned that in a few places in the US, things are so bad that there are armed guards in grocery stores so people don't steal...
Damn... is it that bad??
Any links? Is it that unusual?
In remarks that hit Wall Street stock prices, the central bank boss suggested the economy could hit a serious roadblock if Congress allows the Bush tax rates and a payroll tax cut to expire and $1.2 trillion in spending cuts to be implemented simultaneously in January.
The jobless rate in the 17 countries that use the euro rose to 10.7% in January, while December's figure was revised up from 10.4% to 10.6%. There are now 16.9 million people out of work in the bloc, Eurostat said.
Trends forecaster Gerald Celente and several other financial experts are predicting even worse turmoil ahead, including another stock market crash worse than the last one in '""9, nationwide bank runs, and widespread social unrest, all to occur before '"'4.
In a recent USA Today piece, Harry Dent, author of the book The Great Crash Ahead, Robert Prechter, author of Conquer the Crash, and Celente all shared their opinions on some of what lies ahead for Americans in the next two years. Despite differences in their advice to investors about how to approach the upcoming collapse, all three experts seem to agree that things do not look pretty, and that people need to be prepared for the worst.
"'"'' is when many of the long-simmering socioeconomic and political trends that we have been forecasting and tracking will climax," wrote Celente in his recent Top '' Trends '"'' newsletter. "When the money stops flowing down to the man on the street, the blood starts flowing in the streets."
"The only mandate of the Federal Reserve is to keep the bankers in power and the people underneath them," said Celente during a recent interview with Russia Today. "They're devaluing the dollar and enslaving the people"