Feb 192017
 
 February 19, 2017  Posted by at 10:23 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,


John Vachon Beer signs on truck, Little Falls, Minnesota 1940

 

Fed: From Lender Of Last Resort To Destroyer Of American Wealth (DDMB)
“There’s Something Weird Going On”: The Global Dollar Shortage (ZH)
Merkel Suggests Euro Is Too Low For Germany (R.)
Empowering “Deep State” is Prescription for Destroying Democracy (Greenwald)
Sekulow: Obama Should Be “Held Accountable” For “Soft Coup” Against Trump (ZH)
Russia Calls For ‘Post-West’ World Order – Lavrov (R.)
Lavrov on US Election Hacking Claims: ‘Give Us Some Facts’ (BBG)
Nine People Flee US Border Patrol To Seek Asylum In Canada (R.)
GMO Crops Are Driving Genocide And Ecocide – Keep Them Out Of The EU! (Paul)
‘From Bad To Worse’: Greece Hurtles Towards A Final Reckoning (O.)
Greek Banks Worry Over Sudden Bad Loan Spike In January (K.)
Greeks Turn to the Black Market as Another Bailout Showdown Looms (NYT)
Tensions Escalate In Aegean As Turkish Boat Fires Shots in Greek Waters (K.)
Defend The Sacred (Bell)

 

 

Looks like a must read: [..] a special preview excerpt from FED UP: An Insider’s Take on Why The Federal Reserve is Bad for America by Danielle DiMartino Booth.

She agrees with me: “The one true growth industry? That would be all that high cotton harvested in high finance. Since 2007, world debt has grown by about $60 trillion, enriching legions of investment bankers one bond deal at a time.”

Fed: From Lender Of Last Resort To Destroyer Of American Wealth (DDMB)

Created in 1913 after the Panic of 1907, the Federal Reserve was founded to keep the public’s faith in the buying power of the U.S. dollar. After failing miserably in the 1930s, the Fed aimed to be more responsive. This led the institution to find discipline in the rising macroeconomic models championed by top monetary theorists. During the ensuing “Quiet Period” in American banking, deposit insurance prevented panics, the Fed controlled interest rates and manipulated the money supply, and though occasional disruptions flared, like the failure of Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company in 1984, no systemic risk erupted for seventy years. The Fed had tamed the volatile U.S. economy.

Until September 2008, when all hell broke loose in a worldwide panic that completely blindsided and, embarrassed the Federal Reserve. The Fed had used billions of dollars in taxpayer funds to bail out Wall Street fat cats. Everyone blamed the Fed. Just before 9 a.m., the door to the chairman’s office opened. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke took his place in an armchair at the center of a massive oval table. The members of the FOMC found their designated places around the table; aides sat in chairs or couches against the wall. With staff, the room contained fifty or sixty people, far more than normal for this momentous occasion. In front of each FOMC member was a microphone to record their words for posterity. To a casual observer, the content of their conversation would be obscured by economic jargon.

This day, their essential task was to vote on whether to take the “fed funds” rate—the interest rate at which banks lent money to each other in the overnight market—to the zero bound. The history-making low rate would ripple throughout the economy, affecting the price to borrow for businesses and consumers alike. Bernanke was calm but insistent. His lifetime of study of the Great Depression indicated this was the only way. His sheer depth of knowledge about the Fed’s mishandling of that tragic period was undoubtedly intimidating. By the end of the meeting, the vote was unanimous. The FOMC officially adopted a zero-interest-rate policy in the hopes that companies teetering on the brink of insolvency would keep the lights on, keep employees on their payrolls, and keep consumers spending. It would even pay banks interest on deposits.

Free cash. We’ll even pay you to take it! As they gathered their belongings, everyone shook hands, all very collegial despite the sometimes vigorous discussion. They journeyed back to their nice homes in the toniest neighborhoods of America’s richest cities: New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, Washington, DC. They returned to their lofty perches, some at the Eccles Building, others to the executive floors of Federal Reserve District Bank buildings, safely cushioned from the decision they had just made. Most of them were wealthy or had hefty defined benefit pensions. Their investments were socked away in blind trusts. They would feel no pain in their ivory towers.

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A Eurodollar is a dollar held anywhere outside the US.

“There’s Something Weird Going On”: The Global Dollar Shortage (ZH)

While we urge readers to listen to the full interview below, here are some of the highlights, starting with “why the Dollar shortage a symptom of an inherently unstable system.” As Snider explains, “the dollar shortage isn’t so much the shortage per se, it’s the fact that it’s a symptom of what is an inherently unstable system.” He notes that “the reason banks are withdrawing from the system is that it’s just is no longer tenable” and “so there has to be some kind of – whether you want to look at it like another Bretton Woods – conference, a global monetary system, a global monetary get together where people start to analyze solutions to the problem as they are rather than keep trying to apply band aids that are not going to work. ” But, he concludes, “step one of that task is to actually recognize the problem as it is and so doing more stimulus or doing more QE isn’t going to solve anything it isn’t do anything just like prior QEs and prior stimulus haven’t done anything either because the problem is an unstable system.”

Snider focuses on the Eurodollar system, which he defines as a problem of “decay and dysfunction” and explains that “nothing ever happens in a straight line even the Eurodollar problem has not been a singular event. It’s not been a decade long straight line of decay and dysfunction.” He goes on to say that the fact that after enough time these markets have adjusted to the fact that the economy’s going to be bad for a very long time until something actually changes and so true reflation is predicated on something actually changing rather than the hope that something might change.

Looking at history, Snider observes that “what happened in July 2008 obviously was the fact that everyone decided almost all at once that wasn’t the right interpretation of what the Fed was doing nor was it the right interpretation of the dollar system overall. So, that reflation ended in reality which was the dollar system was eroding and it was eroding in a very dangerous way and that’s why oil prices essentially crashed from July till I think January 2009.” An implication of the ongoing reserve currency funding shortage is that, according to Snider, despite the occasional blip (arguably funded by massive Chinese credit creation), “reflation is going to fail and there’s nothing the Fed can do about it.” He goes on to state that “until they fix the global dollar problem we’re not going to fix the global economy and so we’re kind of stuck gyrating between various levels of really bad. We go from the lack of recovery to what looks like a global recession to the lack of recovery and back again” as a result he thinks that “reflation is going to fail.”

[..] Snider summarizes by saying that “the fact that these markets realize that there’s a problem in Eurodollar system, there’s no banking to be had, no additional marginal banking capacity being added and without it none of these stuff really matters, none of these other stuff really matters. That’s the only thing that truly matters” and concludes gloomily that “the probability scenarios for economic and financial future are much darker now than they were three years ago.”

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It’s blowing the EU apart but its de facto leader says she has “no power to address this problem”. That’s just great.

Merkel Suggests Euro Is Too Low For Germany (R.)

German Chancellor Angela Merkel suggested on Saturday that the euro was too low for Germany but made clear that Berlin had no power to address this “problem” because monetary policy was set by the independent ECB. Merkel made her remarks at the Munich Security Conference as U.S. Vice President Mike Pence looked on. They seemed aimed at addressing recent criticism from a top trade adviser to President Donald Trump, who has accused Germany of profiting from a “grossly undervalued” euro. “We have at the moment in the euro zone of course a problem with the value of the euro,” Merkel said in an unusual foray into foreign exchange rate policy.

“The ECB has a monetary policy that is not geared to Germany, rather it is tailored (to countries) from Portugal to Slovenia or Slovakia. If we still had the (German) D-Mark it would surely have a different value than the euro does at the moment. But this is an independent monetary policy over which I have no influence as German chancellor.” The euro has fallen nearly 25% against the dollar over the past three years, touching a 14-year low of $1.034 in January. But it has since risen to roughly $1.061. In late January, Peter Navarro, the head of Trump’s new National Trade Council, said the euro’s low valuation was giving Germany an edge over the United States and its European Union partners. His comments came weeks after Trump himself said the dollar’s strength against the Chinese yuan “is killing us”, deepening concerns that his administration could pursue a more confrontational, protectionist approach to trade. Merkel and other German officials pushed back forcefully at the time.

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Lots of Deep State pieces these days. Greenwald provides some balance.

Empowering “Deep State” is Prescription for Destroying Democracy (Greenwald)

The deep state, although there’s no precise or scientific definition, generally refers to the agencies in Washington that are permanent power factions. They stay and exercise power even as presidents who are elected come and go. They typically exercise their power in secret, in the dark, and so they’re barely subject to democratic accountability, if they’re subject to it at all. It’s agencies like the CIA, the NSA and the other intelligence agencies, that are essentially designed to disseminate disinformation and deceit and propaganda, and have a long history of doing not only that, but also have a long history of the world’s worst war crimes, atrocities and death squads. This is who not just people like Bill Kristol, but lots of Democrats are placing their faith in, are trying to empower, are cheering for as they exert power separate and apart from—in fact, in opposition to—the political officials to whom they’re supposed to be subordinate.

And you go—this is not just about Russia. You go all the way back to the campaign, and what you saw was that leading members of the intelligence community, including Mike Morell, who was the acting CIA chief under President Obama, and Michael Hayden, who ran both the CIA and the NSA under George W. Bush, were very outspoken supporters of Hillary Clinton. In fact, Michael Morell went to The New York Times, and Michael Hayden went to The Washington Post, during the campaign to praise Hillary Clinton and to say that Donald Trump had become a recruit of Russia. The CIA and the intelligence community were vehemently in support of Clinton and vehemently opposed to Trump, from the beginning. And the reason was, was because they liked Hillary Clinton’s policies better than they liked Donald Trump’s.

One of the main priorities of the CIA for the last five years has been a proxy war in Syria, designed to achieve regime change with the Assad regime. Hillary Clinton was not only for that, she was critical of Obama for not allowing it to go further, and wanted to impose a no-fly zone in Syria and confront the Russians. Donald Trump took exactly the opposite view. He said we shouldn’t care who rules Syria; we should allow the Russians, and even help the Russians, kill ISIS and al-Qaeda and other people in Syria. So, Trump’s agenda that he ran on was completely antithetical to what the CIA wanted. Clinton’s was exactly what the CIA wanted, and so they were behind her. And so, they’ve been trying to undermine Trump for many months throughout the election. And now that he won, they are not just undermining him with leaks, but actively subverting him. There’s claims that they’re withholding information from him, on the grounds that they don’t think he should have it and can be trusted with it. They are empowering themselves to enact policy.

Now, I happen to think that the Trump presidency is extremely dangerous. You just listed off in your news—in your newscast that led the show, many reasons. They want to dismantle the environment. They want to eliminate the safety net. They want to empower billionaires. They want to enact bigoted policies against Muslims and immigrants and so many others. And it is important to resist them. And there are lots of really great ways to resist them, such as getting courts to restrain them, citizen activism and, most important of all, having the Democratic Party engage in self-critique to ask itself how it can be a more effective political force in the United States after it has collapsed on all levels. That isn’t what this resistance is now doing.

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The timing is indeed very peculiar.

Sekulow: Obama Should Be “Held Accountable” For “Soft Coup” Against Trump (ZH)

[..] what until recently was a trickle of private data captured about US individuals by the NSA with only a handful of people having full, immersive access, suddenly became a firehose with thousands of potential witnesses across 16 other agencies, each of whom suddenly became a potential source of leaks about ideological political opponents. And with the universe of potential “leaking” culprits suddenly exploding exponentially, good luck finding the responsible party. However, the implications are far more serious than just loss of privacy rights. According to civil right expert and prominent First Amendement Supreme Court lawyer, Jay Sekulow, what the agencies did by leaking the Trump Administration information was not only illegal but “almost becomes a soft coup”, one which was spurred by the last minute rule-change by Obama, who intentionally made it far easier for leaks to propagate, and next to impossible to catch those responsible for the leaks.

This is his explanation: “There was a sea-change here at the NSA with an order that came from president Obama 17 days before he left office where he allowed the NSA who used to control the data, it now goes to 16 other agencies and that just festered this whole leaking situation, and that happened on the way out, as the president was leaving the office. Why did the Obama administration wait until it had 17 days left in their administration to put this order in place if they thought it was so important. They had 8 years, they didn’t do it, number one. Number two, it changed the exiting rule which was an executive order dating back to Ronald Reagan, that has been in place until 17 days before the Obama administration was going to end, that said the NSA gets the raw data, and they determine dissemination.

Instead, this change that the president put in place, signed off by the way by James Clapper on December 15, 2016, signed off by Loretta Lynch the Attorney General January 3, 2017, they decide that now 16 agencies can get the raw data and what that does is almost creates a shadow government. You have all these people who are not agreeing with President Trump’s position, so it just festers more leaks. If they had a justification for this, wonderful, why didn’t they do it 8 years ago, 4 years ago, 3 years ago. Yet they wait until 17 days left. One potential answer: they knew they had a “smoking gun”, and were working to make it easier to enable the information to be “leaked” despite the clearly criminal consequences of such dissemination.

As this point Hannity correctly points out, “it makes it that much more difficult by spreading out the information among 16 other agencies, if they want to target or take away the privacy rights, and illegally tap the phones, in this case General Flynn, it’s going to be much harder to find the perpetrator. Sekulow confirms, noting that back when only the NSA had access to this kind of raw data, there would be a very small amount of people who have access to this kind of data. “But this change in the Obama Administration was so significant that they allowed dissemination to 16 other agencies, and we wonder why there’s leaks.” Sekulow’s conclusion: “President Obama, James Clapper, Loretta Lynch should be held accountable for this.”

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Russia’s no big fan of -unfetterred- globalization either: “I hope that (the world) will choose a democratic world order – a post-West one – in which each country is defined by its sovereignty.”

Russia Calls For ‘Post-West’ World Order – Lavrov (R.)

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called Saturday for an end to a world order dominated by the West and said Moscow wanted to establish a “pragmatic” relationship with the United States. Lavrov was speaking at the Munich Security Conference shortly after US Vice President Mike Pence told the audience Washington remained “unwavering” in its commitment to the US-led NATO military alliance as it faced a more assertive Russia. Lavrov said that the time when the West called the shots was over and, dismissing NATO as a relic of the Cold War, added: “I hope that (the world) will choose a democratic world order – a post-West one – in which each country is defined by its sovereignty.”

Lavrov said Moscow wanted to build relations with Washington which would be “pragmatic with mutual respect and acknowledgement of our responsibility for global stability.” The two countries had never been in direct conflict, he said, noting that they were actually close neighbours across the Baring Straits. Russia wanted to see a “common space of good neighbour relations from Vancouver to Vladivostok,” he added. Pence was in Europe along with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and defence chief James Mattis as part of efforts to reassure allies rattled by President Donald Trump’s “America First” stance and his calls for improved ties with Russia despite the continuing crisis in Ukraine.

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“He said Russia had “many years ago” initiated work at the United Nations to discuss information security. “Our western partners evaded that work..”

Lavrov on US Election Hacking Claims: ‘Give Us Some Facts’ (BBG)

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pushed back against accusations that Russian hackers meddled in last year’s U.S. presidential election, saying no one had put forward any proof and former President Barack Obama’s administration ignored repeated overtures to discuss cyber-security norms. “Somehow when we are blamed, no one asked for facts,” Lavrov said at the Munich Security Summit on Saturday. “Give us some facts.” In his remarks, made in response to an audience question about whether Russia interferes in other countries’ elections, Lavrov portrayed Russia as a leader in efforts to focus on information security. He said Russia had “many years ago” initiated work at the United Nations to discuss information security. “Our western partners evaded that work,” he said.

After Donald Trump won the election in November, the U.S. intelligence community issued an assessment that Russia sought to sway the election in his favor through the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign staff. In the waning days of his administration, Obama imposed new sanctions on Russia’s military intelligence agency and the successor agency to the KGB, saying the actions had been directed “at the highest level” of the government. [..] “I have seen no facts, there were just some accusations that we tried to hack some Democratic party website; that’s happening in France, Germany, Italy,” Lavrov said. He went on to point blame at the U.S. and make a reference to recent leaks that the CIA may have spied on French political parties before the 2012 election there. WikiLeaks released e-mails making that claim this week.

Lavrov said he had suggested to the Obama administration in 2015 that the two countries discuss working together on cyber-security, and repeatedly asked former Secretary of State John Kerry about the proposal. “For a year we had no reaction from them,” he said. “Then in December last year they said let’s meet, and later they said now we have transitional administration let’s postpone it.”

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Not the first time in history people flee from the US to Canada.

Nine People Flee US Border Patrol To Seek Asylum In Canada (R.)

Nine asylum-seekers, including four children, barely made it across the Canadian border on Friday as a U.S. border patrol officer tried to stop them and a Reuters photographer captured the scene. As a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officer seized their passports and questioned a man in the front passenger seat of a taxi that had pulled up to the border in Champlain, New York, four adults and four young children fled the cab and ran to Royal Canadian Mounted Police on the other side. One by one they scrambled across the snowy gully separating the two countries. RCMP officers watching from the other side helped them up, lifting the younger children and asking a woman, who leaned on her fellow passenger as she walked, if she needed medical care. The children looked back from where they had come as the U.S. officer held the first man, saying his papers needed to be verified.

The man turned to a pile of belongings and heaved pieces of luggage two at a time into the gully – enormous wheeled suitcases, plastic shopping bags, a black backpack. “Nobody cares about us,” he told journalists. He said they were all from Sudan and had been living and working in Delaware for two years. The RCMP declined on Friday to confirm the nationalities of the people. A Reuters photo showed that at least one of their passports was Sudanese. The man then appeared to grab their passports from the U.S. officer before making a run for the border. The officer yelled and gave chase but stopped at the border marker. Canadian police took hold of the man’s arm as he crossed. The border patrol officer told his counterpart that the man was in the United States illegally and that he would have detained him. Officers on both sides momentarily eyed the luggage strewn in the snow before the U.S. officer took it, and a walker left on the road, to the border line.

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Overview of the damage done across the world by GMO.

GMO Crops Are Driving Genocide And Ecocide – Keep Them Out Of The EU! (Paul)

We currently face a desperate, almost farcical push for GM crops in the UK and Europe, characterised by hyperbolic and inaccurate claims. So rather than taking those claims on trust, let’s look at the impacts of GM crops in countries that have adopted them. That means North and South America, where GM crops were first launched in 1996. The cultivation of herbicide tolerant crops in Argentina began in 1996 with GM soya and spread swiftly through the country. As Argentina’s Grupo Reflexion Rural (GRR) wrote to the Vatican in April 2013, “The model was based on the political decision that Argentina, which had once been the grain basket of the world and a producer of healthy and high-quality foods, would be transformed into a producer of animal forage, firstly, to provide fodder for European livestock, and then for livestock in China.”

At first, herbicide tolerant crops seemed to simplify the farming process, especially for larger mechanised farms. Instead of skillful weed management, farmers applied large quantities of the herbicide glyphosate, mainly from the air. Powerful groups of investors helped drive GM soya production. Small farmers could not compete and many have left or been driven off their land, often into urban slums. People who remain in the countryside and small towns find themselves bombarded from the air with increasingly complex mixtures of chemicals intended to combat the problem of increasing weed and pest resistance. Although GM crops were promoted as a means to reduce levels of pesticides used, pesticide use in Argentina has increased massively, “from nine million gallons (34 million litres) in 1990 to more than 84 million gallons (317 million litres) today”.

[..] Europe has been wise to resist the pressure to adopt GM crops for cultivation except for a GM maize mainly grown in Spain. In the face of the evidence from countries with experience of these crops, and their associated cocktails of agrotoxics, why should Europe be forced to consider another GM crop for cultivation? But Europe should go further. The soya boom is driven by markets for animal feed, in the form of soya meal or cake, and biodiesel from soya oil. Vast quantities of both are imported into Europe, making it a major driver of South America’s unfolding GM disaster. The EU should surely stop importing GM animal feeds and oils from North and South America.

Indeed Europe should change its whole approach to livestock and crop production to address human health impacts, biodiversity loss and climate change. Far from being a “museum of world farming” as the UK’s current environment minister, Owen Paterson, likes to claim, Europe could show the way to a rich and varied GM free agriculture that provides nutritious, healthy food and jobs. It would at the same time address the profound degradation of soils and accelerating biodiversity loss, caused to a great extent by the industrial model of agriculture to which genetically engineered crops belong.

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“All I know is that we are all being pushed,” he said, searching for the right words. “Pushed in the direction of somewhere very explosive, somewhere we do not want to be.”

‘From Bad To Worse’: Greece Hurtles Towards A Final Reckoning (O.)

The assumption is that the prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, will cave in, just as he did when the country came closest yet to leaving the euro at the height of the crisis in the summer of 2015. But the 41-year-old leader, like Syriza, has been pummelled in the polls. Persuading disaffected backbenchers to support more measures, and then selling them to a populace exhausted by repeated rounds of austerity, will be extremely difficult. Disappointment has increasingly given way to the death of hope – a sentiment reinforced by the realisation that Cyprus and other bailed-out countries, by contrast, are no longer under international supervision.

In his city centre office, the former finance minister Evangelos Venizelos pondered where Greece’s predicament was now. “[We are] at the same point we were several years ago,” he joked. “The only difference is that anti-European sentiment is growing. What was once a very friendly country towards Europe is becoming increasingly less so, and with that comes a lot of danger, a lot of risk.” When historians look back they, too, may conclude that Greece has expended a great deal of energy not moving forward at all.

The arc of crisis that has swept the country – coursing like a cancer through its body politic, devastating its public health system, shattering lives – has been an exercise in the absurd. The feat of pulling off the greatest fiscal adjustment in modern times has spawned a slump longer and deeper than the Great Depression, with the Greek economy shrinking more than 25% since the crisis began. Even if the latest impasse is broken and a deal is reached with creditors soon, few believe that in a country of weak governance and institutions it will be easy to enforce. Political turbulence will almost certainly beckon; the prospect of “Grexit” will grow.

“Grexit is the last thing we want, but we may arrive at a point of serious dilemmas,” said Venizelos. “Whatever deal is reached will be very difficult to implement, but that notwithstanding, it is not the memoranda [the bailout accords] that caused the crisis. The crisis was born in Greece long before.” Like every crisis government before it, Tsipras’s administration is acutely aware that salvation will come only when Greece can return to the markets and raise funds. What happens in the weeks ahead could determine if that is likely to happen at all. Back in Syntagma, Costopoulos the good-natured farmer ponders what lies ahead. Like every Greek, he stands to be deeply affected. “All I know is that we are all being pushed,” he said, searching for the right words. “Pushed in the direction of somewhere very explosive, somewhere we do not want to be.”

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Greek banks never recovered.

Greek Banks Worry Over Sudden Bad Loan Spike In January (K.)

Nonperforming loans last month posted a major spike of almost 1 billion euros, reversing the downward course set in the last few months of 2016. This has generated major concerns among local lenders regarding the achievement of targets for reducing bad loans, as agreed with the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) of the ECB for the first quarter of this year. Bank sources say that after several months of stabilization and of a negative growth rate in new nonperforming exposure,the picture deteriorated rapidly in January, as new bad loans estimated at €800 million in total were created. This increase in a period of just one month is considered particularly high, and is a trend that appears to be continuing this month as well.

Bank officials attribute the phenomenon to uncertainty from the government’s inability to complete the second bailout review, fears for a rekindling of the crisis and mainly the expectations of borrowers for extrajudicial settlements of bad loans. Senior bank officials note that a large number of borrowers will not cooperate with their lenders in reaching an agreement for the restructuring of their debts, in the hope that the introduction by the government of the extrajudicial compromise could lead to better terms and possibly even to a debt haircut

Banks further observe that the issue of the extrajudicial settlement, along with the matter of the deferred tax assets for the tackling of banks’ losses from the write-off or sale of bad loans, are of major significance to the general issue of dealing with the NPL problem, so they have to be arranged rapidly. Even more important to the banking sector is the completion of the pending bailout review, as uncertainty and the re-emergence of fears over a possible Greek exit from the eurozone have frozen the market and encouraged many people to avoid paying their dues in anticipation of negotiations. This unexpected deterioration in the quality of loan portfolios in recent weeks has banks on edge, as NPLs will have to be reduced by €2.5 billion by end-March, which will be particularly difficult to achieve given the fresh addition of another €800 million.

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Forced out of work by Troika demands.

Greeks Turn to the Black Market as Another Bailout Showdown Looms (NYT)

During seven years of a grinding economic crisis, Dimitri Tsamopoulos has lost at least half the clients from his once bustling tax consultancy. But in the past few months, business has jumped, not because the Greek economy is finally recovering but because it is falling even deeper into the abyss. With the Greek government pushing through more tax increases to comply with austerity requirements, more than 21,000 self-employed workers and small firms have shut down in the past two months, with many seeking help from accountants like Mr. Tsamopoulos to close their books. Yet many are not actually closing their businesses. “Most of these people will keep working,” Mr. Tsamopoulous said, arching an eyebrow from behind his desk as clients waited in a smoky room outside. “But now, they’ll do it on the black market. They’re saying they need a way to survive.”

Greece is the crisis that never quite goes away for the EU, and with another tense negotiation with creditors scheduled for this coming week, the country is struggling to recover from the longest downturn in the eurozone. The budget-slashing policies and reform medicine required by creditors have done little to revive growth, leaving Greece even more dependent on the three international bailouts the country has received since 2010. Few problems are more ingrained, or harder to combat, than the shadow economy, which appears to be growing again as new austerity measures compel once law-abiding Greeks to go off the books. Greece’s black market is estimated at 20 to 25% of the gross domestic product, as more people have stopped reporting their income to avoid paying taxes that, by some estimates, have risen to 70% of an individual’s gross income.

As of last month, unpaid taxes in Greece had soared to €95 billion, up from €76 billion two years ago. Most of that is considered uncollectable. “The heart of the matter for an ever-rising number of citizens and businesses is that they simply do not have the financial resources anymore to meet their rising tax obligations,” said Jens Bastian, an economist and a member of a team of European Union specialists that helped supervise the country’s earlier bailouts. Short on alternatives, he said, “many are falling back into the gray economy.”

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Again: US and EU need to be very careful about this. And act.

Tensions Escalate In Aegean As Turkish Boat Fires Shots in Greek Waters (K.)

Tension between Greece and Turkey escalated further on Friday after a Turkish coastal patrol boat fired live ammunition during a military exercise in Greek territorial waters in the eastern Aegean Sea. [..] a Greek diplomatic source described the incident in the area around the eastern Aegean island of Farmakonisi, as “a grave violation of international law.” “Turkey’s unacceptable act raises serious concerns about the potential consequences of its behavior on the stability of the wider region,” the same source said. Greek defense officials were reportedly preparing to lodge a demarche with Ankara and brief allies and international organizations on the incident.

According to the Defense Ministry, Turkish authorities issued a navigational telex, or Navtex, the day before informing of a military exercise with live ammunition within Greek territorial waters, east of Farmakonisi, on Friday [yesterday] morning between 7 and 9 a.m. The Greek Defense Ministry responded by issuing a Navtex turning down the Turkish notification, saying it covered Greek territorial waters. Turkish authorities have previously issued similar notifications without executing them. The Greek gunboat Nikiforos was sent to the area to monitor the Turkish Kusadasi vessel, which fired a volley of shots from small caliber (up to 40mm) guns between 7.40 and 7.55 a.m., until it left the area just before 8 a.m.

[..] Friday’s incident occurred in the wake of repeated Turkish violations of Greek air space and increased tensions between Athens and Ankara, which were further fueled last month when Greece’s highest court blocked the extradition of eight Turkish officers to Turkey for their alleged involvement in July’s failed coup. Reacting to the development on Friday, Greece’s conservative opposition requested a meeting of the country’s National Council of Foreign Policy. “We are deeply concerned to witness Turkey’s insistence on provoking [Athens] and maintaining a climate of tension in the Aegean,” New Democracy shadow foreign minister Giorgos Koumoutsakos said in a letter to Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias.

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“How do you capture Spirit?”

Defend The Sacred (Bell)

Defend The Sacred: Documentary from Kyle Bell on Vimeo.

Capturing the heart of a movement that is constantly evolving is difficult. How do you capture Spirit? “Defend The Sacred” is a short documentary that attempts to capture the spirit of Indigenous people at Standing Rock.

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Home Forums Debt Rattle February 19 2017

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  • #32737

    John Vachon Beer signs on truck, Little Falls, Minnesota 1940   • Fed: From Lender Of Last Resort To Destroyer Of American Wealth (DDMB) • “There
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle February 19 2017]

    #32738
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    DDMB’s comment re: high cotton, gave me a chuckle.
    I was remembering a saying I heard many decades ago; when a person was doing well financially they were said; “to be shitting in tall cotton.”

    #32742
    zerosum
    Participant

    People seeking refugee status have been pouring over the Canada-U.S. border…

    POURING

    Mountains and gullies are not enough.
    It’s time to build a wall made of … Signs saying,”Follow arrows to easy crossing”…. Snowbanks from snow storms?! … Cedar hedge?! …. A string of emergency shelters?!

    #32744
    Diogenes Shrugged
    Participant

    The protesters at Standing Rock are up against a much larger monster than an oil pipeline.

    (Watch to the end, if you can.)

    Fundamentally, there is much more at stake here than the imposition of an oil pipeline. Standing Rock represents another pivotal opportunity for the human race to challenge its subjugation, but most of humanity will abandon that opportunity in hopes that a handful of Native Americans can manage it all for us.

    Having seen it twice, I can’t recommend that entire video highly enough. No other video has ever opened my eyes so wide. An absolute must-see for anybody who remembers the Kennedy assassination, and for those who never felt that psychopathy provided a sufficient explanation for elite behaviors.

    #32753
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Diogenes Shrugged

    I watched almost 3 hours of your video link.
    99% of the “history” I have been long familiar with; but from other sources.
    What ran in the back of my mind the whole time is the 911 gambit proscribed by the author, which I categorically reject.
    Some of the JFK stuff was a bit iffy as well.
    I’m a firm practitioner of critical thinking and frankly; it didn’t pass the smell test.
    But thanks for your effort.

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